Big News

So the decisions have been made and we have finally been informed of our sites for the next two years. Yours truly is headed down to Libertad del Sur. It´s in one of the poorest parts of the country, in the department of Itapua in the far southeast of Paraguay. Apparently there´s been a lot of deforestation going on over the past 20 years to make room for large foreign-owned soy and wheat plantations. What forest remains is the last bit of the BAAPA (I´m not sure what that stands for, but it´s something about the Atlantic Forest--google it). The BAAPA used to cover about 70% of the country, but now only 3% of it is left. Sounds like I have lots of work and challenges ahead of me, but I´m excited about it all. Right now I´m in the city of Encarnacion waiting for the bus to Libertad del Sur. The next 5 days are our formal ¨site visit¨, where we stay with a ´contact´ who is supposed to start showing us around the place. My contact speaks very little Spanish, just like the rest of the community, so there´s going to be a lot of sitting around staring at each other while they talk about me in Guarani and I have no idea what´s going on. Good times..... I´m the first volunteer in this site so no one is going to have any idea why this crazy Norte is hanging around talking about trees and soil. Fortunately, there´s another volunteer just a few kilometers away from me so that´s going to make life very nice when I desperately need to speak English.

For those of you interested in knowing a little bit more about this place, you can google Procosara, which is an NGO working in the area to spread environmental awareness and help save what´s left of the forest. I´m sure I´ll be working with them at some point. In addition, the US Forest Service is actually involved in work in this part of Paraguay and I´m going to be meeting up with them the second week of December. Apparently there´s also a huge garden at the local school and the school also has a worm composting project which they make a lot of money off of by selling the castings to a local cooperative of some sort. I´m very excited about it all right now. My attitude may change after spending the next 5 days there, but I hope not.

I´ll be back in Guarambare next Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. A lot of us Peace Corps trainees are getting together to make a huge meal and celebrate in style. To all of my relatives reading this right now: I would absolutely love to talk to the fam on Thanksgiving. I´m thinking the easiest and cheapest way for me to do this will be on Skype. I´ll be able to get to a computer and log onto my Skype account around 5:00 or 6:00 pm my time, which is 4 or 5 hours ahead of you (I´m not sure which one). So, wherever everyone is, i.e. Rob and Carole´s house, Hal and Patt´s house or wherever, make sure there is someone with a Skype account. You can easily make one if you don´t already have one. My Skype username is leahguay, so look me up on Skype and add me to your contact list. Also, email me your Skype username so I can add you to my contact list and call you as soon as I get on the internet on Thursday. My email is: leahmro@gmail.com. And keep your computers on and logged onto Skype that day.

Wish me luck this week!!!!!!!!