Actual e-mail. Names changed to protect the innocent.

Hi (Peace Corps Paraguay Official),

I began to review the Guarani materials. The visual portion looks really good. However, as I started to listen to the podcast, there were certain expressions that I would be uncomfortable sharing including: “it could drive me to drink,” “jerk face” and other frustrations regarding learning the Guarani language. I think this may be better for a less formal channel.

Cheers,

(Peace Corps Headquarters Official)

My podcast is on hiatus but I plan to continue to produce episodes and more info will be on the site at letstalkguaranime.blogspot.com. See ya jerk face.

“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the "Universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

-Albert Einstein

So, you’re still writing on this blog, huh?

Yep.

Wasn’t your service over in, like, August?

Yep.

Isn’t that a little, I don’t know, pathetic?

I just moved in with my mother and I’m unemployed. This is the least of my worries.

But you’re not really ready to let it go, are you?

No, but I’m working on it.

Do you feel the need to write some grand, summing-it-all-up masterpiece blog entry?

Yes.

Do you think that’s possible?

I guess not.

Was the Peace Corps wonderful?

Yes.

Was the Peace Corps terrible?

Yes, at times.

Well, there you go.

...

What?

I know, it’s just, I have something to say to the people who are thinking about joining.

Go on.

I just wish I could explain how much of a DO IT! I would give them. Someone called the Peace Corps a "cool job" the other day, and it sounded like such a silly, empty word for it. It’s this entrance into another world, from which there is no return. The difference between doing it and not doing it... It’s... It’s... Had I not gone, it would have been the worst mistake of my life, and I never would have even known it. I was so, so scared to go. Immense amounts of Googling was done, trying to predict the future of how it would be. Peace Corps teaches you to let go. The world is wild and you just have to let it be that way. I’m still neurotic as hell, but I’m not the same person I was.

Is that all?

I still want to thank everyone so much. So many people talked me through it. So many people bought extension cords for their love that reached me all the way in Paraguay. So many people bought my favorite candies for $2 and spent $15 to ship it to me. So much complaining was distributed to so many patient ears via the crackling connection of Skype. I never felt forgotten in my impossible quest to have the best of both worlds -- roots and wings.

Thank you everyone.

And thank you especially to my mother, my amazing amazing mother. If my service were a book, the dedication would be to her. Love you, roomie!

Feel better now?

Yes

Will you have more to add later?

Maybe, even at the risk of being pathetic. I’ll move on soon, I swear.

Attention anyone going to the Peace Corps who owns a Mac.

One of the best tools you have for integration is the Photo Booth program, with all of its fun effects. Over the two years, it's helped break down barriers with adults and kids alike. Best of all, you don't have to speak the language. Here are some of my favorites.

From my first host family:

To friends along the way:

To my very last visit with my host family:

And sometimes, the picture is just right as it is:

Hello everyone,

I have left Paraguay. I'm in Colombia, looking for a job teaching English. It has been an intense time, so much to write about, but so little time to write. This below is something I wrote while getting ready to leave Paraguay. If I had more time, it'd be more edited, less rambling. The TANGENT is optional reading. More later.

Relief:

Let’s be honest, there’s a certain relief of not being in the Peace Corps anymore.

I realized I could stop wearing this stone on my back, this huge, heavy stone called All The Sufferings of a Third World Country. Deforestation, pollution, diabetes, poverty. We’ve been worried sick about Paraguay. For two years! Peace Corps is kind of like an intervention. Paraguay is our little brother who can't seem to get his shit together. We say, "Paraguay, you really shouldn’t cut down all your trees. You really shouldn’t steal all the money from the people. You really should brush your teeth a little more often." We somehow feel responsible for Paraguay, although we can only control what we do, we cannot control what Paraguay does.

But we try.

What is it they say is the biggest mistake a woman can make? Thinking that she could change a man. One man. Here we are, as an organization, thinking we can change an entire culture. It’s exhausting. And some of us, yes, thinking we can change one man, as well.

We go to change a culture, but then the culture changes us. We change our names. Our names. For two years, I was Pauli. Part of Pauli’s job was to get people to like here. Professional People Pleaser. Pauli didn’t tell people she was ridiculously full and ate until she was in pain, just because it was part of the culture. Pauli got told constantly that she was fat, because that’s how they do it here. When people told Pauli they would help her, and they didn't, Pauli just kept on smiling, and tried again the next day, even though it was them she was trying to help in the end. This is why I decided not to extend. I didn't like the person Pauli became. I didn't like how Pauli let some people treated her. She deserved better.

You’re told to act like them, talk like them, live like them, to make friends. Nobody likes a weirdo. All this trying is just sad, like when parents try to use the lingo of their kids. We are entirely weird. I kept trying to picture us, and the best I can do is the foreign kid from the classic movie “Can’t Hardly Wait”. He walks around entertaining party-goers by totteringly repeating the phrase that someone has taught him: “Would you like to touch my penis?” Laugh laugh laugh. That’s us. I can’t even tell you the things I was have said in Guaraní.

We have to get people to like us, even if it means screaming obscenities into the campo night air. We did other things too. Vegetarians ate meat. Gay people hid their gayness. Atheists found themselves in front of a statue of the Virgin, in a group reciting something, more times that they would have liked.

We attended parties where they arrange the chairs in one large circle around the room. This arrangement is a formula for the most awkward parties ever, and that’s why I’m saying this, we suffered.

TANGENT: You walk in these parties, and it’s like everyone’s in a line, just looking at you. Once you sit, you have no choice but to talk to the person on your left or, OR, your right. This constricts conversations to two people, max. And when you turn to someone, you have to turn away from the person on your other side. It’s like you want to make sure you’re giving them equal face time. So you’re sitting there, and you are either talking currently, or you looking to your right and your left, and you’re stuck looking at the back end of two feather-covered scrunchies as both your neighbors are talking to others. You’re in a social vacuum, if both sides are turned away. That’s why it feels like everyone’s starting at you when you walk in, because everyone’s so bored with their two-person conversation, the only entertainment is those people entering.

And then they serve meat and everyone eats it slowly. People leave immediately after dinner and then others gossip that they’re rude. A drunk guy gets drunk and dances sadly. Maybe there’s a cake that looks like American birthday cake. But it sure ain’t the same once you taste it. You wait 25 minutes to get the guts and the language skill and the pause to add something to the conversation. You start talking, in a foreign language, a new one you didn’t know a year ago. You look each of the listeners in the eyes, as you start talking, to see if they’re looking at you like a human or like some toy they’re about to break. Then you try to complete just one whole sentence and someone just starts talking, interrupts, T-bones the conversation and runs off in the other direction. You resume just sitting there. No one seems to remember that you were talking. If you think about parties in the United States, with your friends, you might just tear up and excuse yourself to go to the latrine. :END TANGENT

We attend these parties, because we want to be liked. We love them in their own way, after a while. There comes to be people we love. And they love us. But there are things expected of you, as a member of their community.

Then you leave Peace Corps. You think about that person you were two years ago, leaving home. You’re not that person anymore. If you saw that person, you’d trip him and give him a nuggie and laugh. You think about the person you’ve been the last two years. Were you Pauli or Paulette? Were you a normal person or some exhalted stereotype of the Americana with golden hair? Were you hard-working, or lazy? Were you rich or were you poor? It depends on who you ask, where you are. None of them stick anymore. Nothing just is.

So now you’re not who you were in the United States. Putting your name back on feels like putting on an old dress that feels stiff and baggy. More importantly, who are you now? Am I a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer or just another unemployed 20-something moving back in with her parents.

You set out. Where to? What matters anymore? Is it money or freedom?

Now I’m packing to leave, to start again. Making two piles, one for the person I’m leaving behind, and one for the person I want to go and be, as if I were a costume designer. This belt says everything about how New Paulette views on the world. Into the suitcase. This t-shirt says that I went to Paraguay. Suitcase. This shirt is too stained for New Paulette. It would have been fine for volunteer Pauli, but this is New Paulette. Give-away pile.

We know tree as tree, but then in spanish it’s arbol, then in guaraní its yvyra raka. Then you have the funny realization that these are all just sounds me made up to mean the same thing. We must sound like cavemen, just a step up from grunting. But the thing is that the tree stays the same. The word doesn’t touch the thing.

All these labels I have for myself: Volunteer, College-educated, Money Retard, Young, Old, Big, Smart, Clutzy, Pretty, Ugly. They change every day, have changed with the space I'm in, the people I'm around, the look in their eyes. They don’t touch me, they don't touch me. I have to remember.

If the racial sensitivity of Paraguay were to be expressed in one image, it might have to be this ad for the upcoming Reggaefest.

I've meaning to mention emos. Yes, there are emo kids in Paraguay. (Emo, if you haven't heard, are those kids who dress in all black and wear tight jeans, etc. Pronounced E-mo in English but Eh-mo in Spanish.) Here they call indie kids floggers. I had no idea what they were calling me an indie kid until they Googled "Characteristics of flogger" for me and pictures of indie kids popped up.

So, anyway, there are also these message services you can sign up for on your phone. You can get a daily message with the weather report, your horoscope, etc. Once I got a new number and kept getting an Aquarius horoscope, and I'm a cancer and someone who's not the kind of person who would get a bite of my phone bill taken out to know my horoscope anyway. I just didn't know how to cancel it.

I got a new number for this month, and it turns out the person before me, again, signed up for a message service. This one, it seems, is the daily informational message about emos. Every day, I receive information on how emo kids dress, who music they listen to, how they do their hair. Every day in the office, I get a message and say, "Quiet down guys, it's time for the emo fact of the day." I saw some emo kids walking down the street and said, Hey, now I know those are emos.

Thought I'd pass along some of the wisdom:

Los colores que llevan los emos son negro con rojo, verde, y a veces marrón.

The colors emos wear are black with red, green and sometimes brown.

La musica emo se caracteriza por un sonido medio punk o pop-punk complementado por letra introspectiva y vocales agudas y desesperadas.

Emo music is characterized by a quasi-punk sound or pop-punk complemented with introspective words and high-pitched and desperate vocals.

Los temas de las canciones emo generalmente se trata un amor imposible, lo cruel que vida, como quiere morir, etc...

The themes of emo songs generally discuss impossible love, how cruel life is, how they want to die, etc...

Pasa sus ratos libres en MySpace comunicandose con otros Emos y posteando entradas en sus blogs donde describe su terible agonia.

They pass their free time in MySpace communicating with other emos and posting entries en their blogs where they describe their terrible suffering.

Sometime in August...

I think I´ve seen myself before, years ago. I saw her while I was in training, lost, unable to speak, curious, overly camping-style dressed, full of questions. And I saw this girl across the room, and I heard her joking in Guarani, mixing in Spanish words to her English as if they were a part of her family, while to me they were still strangers I was trying to get to know. She had a confidence I had left in the United States. She looked comfortable in the strangest country I´d been in.

I feel like I was that girl today. I went to the training center to teach the trainees how to make ao po´i. I got a warm welcome from the trainers, I knew the coordinator and sat off to the side of the group, as if with the actors in a play. I even made the language trainers laugh. Those trainers who had seen me come in with the Spanish of a Paraguayan 18-month old. I told them that if I didn´t get the job I applied for in Paraguay, I was going to run around Bolivia "opapeve che plata", (until my money runs out). They laughed and laughed. Two years ago I was the butt of undecipherable jokes in Guarani. Now I´m telling them.

Other things have happened that seem like they should happen on my last week in town, as if they would be written into the last scene of a movie. Some people who listen to my Guarani podcast were really complimentary, which is nice. Plus Angelic bought me these earrings that only Paraguayan women wear. I feel initiated.

It occurred to me. "I did it." I was a Peace Corps volunteer. Done. Check. "I've always wanted to do that" became a careful "I´m thinking about doing that" which became "I think I'm going to do that" to " I'm going to do that" to "I'm doing this" to "I did it."

Where do you go from here? We wandered out of here as the longtime jailed wander out on parole day. Were you trapped, or were you freer in there than you are on the outside? Some went home and just laid down on their parent's couches. Some are traveling aimlessly until money runs out. Some are extending in Paraguay. Then there´s me.

=========================================================

Some time later in August...

You spend these two years changing and growing, becoming more Paraguayan. Integrating. By the time you've lived here two years, the culture has taken hold. You catch yourself in the mirror, bra straps hanging out, legs unshaven, wearing spandex shorts, and get some sense that you used to find these things offensive, yet you can't muster the feeling like before.

You see something, a green pepper, but the sound in your mind, the one that wants to come out of your mouth, is locote. When you have to do something, you want to say you'll do it si or si. When shit goes wrong, you just want to say Asi es la vida, and to say that same thing to your mother, you can't think of the words. This is the way it is for two years. Then you get on a tube with wings, and you wake up, and no one knows what Asi es la vida means, and furthermore, they think you're kind of an asshole if it slips out.

You aren't from Paraguay, and suddenly, you're aren't from America, either. We can't go back, and we don't know how to go forward.

All Peace Corps Volunteers leave the country with vouchers to see a psychologist.

I'm still in Paraguay. After the Life Plan Implosion and my unexpected not extending, the world shook under my feet, and I just needed to sit down a second. I realized that my culture is this tiny cult: Peace Corps Paraguay volunteers past their two year service. The ones who call delicious food heterei. The girls who know what it's like to have dated a Paraguayan. Those who know what it's like to fall out the other end of the Peace Corps machine and not know exactly what they've been made into.

I spent two years outside my culture, and now I don't know where to find a new one. I'm in this tiny twilight zone, ephemeral in both space and time, so I decided to give myself a minute to breath in it. I rented the apartment of a volunteer on home leave for a month. A month to sit still and say, "Ok, what the hell am I doing?"

I arrive at the Peace Corps office every day just in time for terere. The guard at the front makes sure to tell the others that I'm an EX-volunteer, and I get a red pass instead of yellow. I sit in the office with the coordinators, waiting for someone to suggest that perhaps it's inappropriate that I'm still there, but no one has, yet, instead support me and tell me everything's going to be ok. I prepare the terere, to earn my keep. They make fun of my red pass, and I pretend to sob, instead of really sobbing, which I save for later. Volunteers come in on their trips to the city, and they say, "So...what are you doing?" I have a variety of witty answers that I rotate. The most accurate being, "I have no idea."

I'm just another unemployed person. Suddenly I feel thrust into the world that I saw through the plexiglass of my protective Peace Corps container. My insurance, my paycheck, my plan. Paraguayans live in a scarier world, a world Americans know better, these days, where work is scarce and life is uncertain. I open 92 internet tabs of possible job leads. One involves wearing a costume on the side of the road and waving in customers. I close it with a shudder. I work on my computer until my head hurts from eyestrain.

People complain about their service, their sites, and I want to grab their little faces like Billy Madison grabbed that elementary schooler, and I want to shake them and say "Stay. Stay as long as you can."

I’ll move on, I will. Just give me a minute to focus my eyes, to remember English for Asi es la vida. I think it's something like, "That's the way life goes."

Long story short: I decided not to extend.

So as of Friday, I'm not a volunteer anymore. I have no home. I have no job. I have no responsibility. I have no keys. Not one.

I'm in a hotel room, and I can barely move for everything that's around, as my friends pack up to go to Bolivia. My friends. My community. It's now like a town where everyone's packing up and moving out, as if there was a nuclear contamination. I'm sitting here, writing up my resume and a cover letter, trying to stay in Paraguay as a trainer, just for 4 months, just to have a little warning sign that my life is about to decompose before it decomposes, like it is now, suddenly. More like imploding.

I have whatever I could carry from my house, which technically is more than I can carry. Seven bags in all. I could ship stuff home, but I don't know where that is exactly. I don't know what country I'll be in next week.

"We're not Peace Corps volunteers," we kept saying outloud last night, when the conversation died down enough to have a thought. It's over.

Although I wish I didn't have to leave like this, hustled, I have to look at how the service itself was. It's over, and all the drama falls away, like water from rocks. That chick who gossiped about me, I don't really care. Those talks that didn't work out, I can barely remember. But the times remain. All the memories. We really did this.

It was amazing. Amazing.

What if I had chickened out? It would have been the worst mistake of my life, and I would have never even known it.

It's really just Bolivia. 3:35 a.m. I'm in the airport.

Here's what's going on: My official Peace Corps time is up. I'm staying longer, of course, but almost everyone arrived with, the PC equivalent of my high school class, will be leaving on August 6. It's the opposite of moving away, but to the same effect.

Due to the timing of a family vacation, I decided to take a trip home and them come right back for our close-of-service ceremony. But some of them will already be gone. In Peace Corps, you have two lives: You're in-site life and your capital, hanging with the other volunteers life. I'm losing half of my life in Paraguay. (Although I have made new friends in other groups, of course. But no friendships are as battle-hardened as those that were formed during training.)

All that is adding to my Twilight Zone effect, but also, there's this nervousness about this trip that I've never felt for a flight before. I realized flying is the opposite of living in Paraguay. Paraguay is show up when you want, there's plenty of space, there's no forms you have to have in hand. With a flight you have to get there early, cram in, having your passport, your boarding pass, your customs slip. It's a word you hear a lot from Peace Corps volunteers having contact with the American world again after two years: overwhelming.

I forgot to fill out the official form for my vacation and had to rush to the PC office to write it out at 4:40 p.m. It was supposed to be approved 10 days in advance. The people at the airport tried to tell me I had to pay the $135 visa just to pass through the Bolivian airport. No no, I said. I'm waiting until the 5:30 a.m. boarding of my bottom-dollar frankenstein flight. My eyes and nose are burning from the altitude of Bolivia, at more than 13,000 feet. I'll be in a box with wings all day, trying to sleep. Then I just want to fall into the arms of my best friend in Miami, and let her take me away to another place were tranquility rules: Key West.

Angelic has put proof on her blog that I sometimes smile. Click here to see. (Family: I'm ok! Stop worrying.)

There's a race of men that don't fit in,

A race that can't stay still;

So they break the hearts of kith and kin;

And they roam the world at will.

They range the field and they rove the flood,

And they climb the mountain's crest;

Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,

And they don't know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;

They are strong and brave and true;

But they're always tired of the things that are,

And they want the strange and new.

--Robert W Service

There's a race of men that don't fit in,

A race that can't stay still;

So they break the hearts of kith and kin;

And they roam the world at will.

They range the field and they rove the flood,

And they climb the mountain's crest;

Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,

And they don't know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;

They are strong and brave and true;

But they're always tired of the things that are,

And they want the strange and new.

--Robert W Service

I'm taking a trip home in July, and when I come back I'll have just 9 months left. It's costing, well, a lot. But it feels something like necessary.

I've changed in Paraguay. As much as we like to think we are strong enough to be who we are, no matter what, the truth is we are where we are, we are the people we're with, we are others' reactions to us. In most cases, without realizing it, we become who our environments tell us we are.

People treat you just a smidgen less than human, or more than a smidgen. You can only laugh it off for so long. You think you're still laughing it off, until you realize you've become introverted. You want to stay home. You want to be with the few people who treat you, fully, as if you're another person. You don't want to be among the stares, anymore. You don't want to hear their voices, talking to you in the same voice as you would a child, then repeating your responses loudly and have a jolly round of laughter, minus you.

I've grown tired of it. I don't want to be out, listening to someone else's music, speaking someone else's language, sitting there, unintroduced. When I do go, I usually just sit there, the only one not laughing at the jokes said in speedy Guaraní, hanging on to Oscar's arm, and I want to sleep before it's even 11.

There are six Paraguayans who treat me like I'm a real-live human being. They make it alright. Other than that, I am the joke. I am that girl. Unless I'm in my house, alone, which has become my preferred spot. I didn't used to be like this.

The old me comes out over Skype, talking to my sister, my mom, my old friends. I have a distant memory of being the funny one. Of course I've provided a lot of laughs for Paraguayans, but there's that crucial "laughing at" versus the "laughing with" component.

In a way, I'm going home to visit my old self, seen through the faces of the people who are glad to see me. I'm a true friend there. I'm a sister. I'm a daughter. I'm an aunt. I can leave the foreign kid behind, go home and, for 22 days, be myself again.

Now that I've had a few days...

Presenting, dun dun du na! The culmination of my Peace Corps service, our new web page!

www.yataityaopoi.com.py

It's safe to say the web site presentation was set off to be a crash and burn, so I can't say I'm surprised. I'm so used to them by now, I just let it happen.

The day we picked to have it was today, the birthday of Yataity. There would be a festival in the plaza. Who of our socias would want to leave a festival to come to a talk about a web site? But The Boss could not be convinced. Although there was no reason not to do it next week, she was set on this week.

It was supposed to be a tranquilo gathering. But then The Boss heard that the governor was going to come through. Hell ensued. We could not just serve the governor (and his flock) coke out of plastic cups. We needed glass cups, blah blah, etc. She was worried that we needed food for all of them, plus for everyone we invited, should they ALL show up. This is about as likely as a tsunami hitting the co-op. This was my event and it was making life tough on the girls who worked in the co-op. Not good.

Nameless Peace Corps Higher Up was going to come, adding some prestige to the event, and bring the projector so that we could project the computer screen on the wall for all to see. Mariela and I worked on a PowerPoint of what the internet is and why our web page is important. We did three practice runs. Everything was set.

8:30 I arrive for the 11 a.m. meeting. I'm surprised to see that everyone is there, hustling. Making sandwiches, putting up decorations. I'm nn a common situation: I want to help, but I don't know what to do and worried about just getting in the way. I printed the business cards we needed and added last touch-ups to the PowerPoint. I began chatting with Mariela and one of the girls yelled at me, "It's already time and we need to get the sodas here now! Where are they?" Woah. It was my job to order the sodas, and I asked them to come at 10. We still had 2 1/2 hours. What's the big deal?

I found out later that The Boss had been calling people since 7 a.m., yelling at them to get over to the co-op, do this and that. She had injected anxiety into everyone.

At about 10 we were asked to go to the plaza. I wanted to stay, but I went. There was the governor. The Boss announced that we would be showcasing our web page. I left.

10:40: I call the Peace Corps Higher Up, and he's lost, but he'll get here soon. At 11 a.m., just Mariela and I are in the room for the presentation. This is normal.

Then come in The Boss, pulling by the arm important people. The Priest and the Mayor's people. All coming toward me. No projector.

I ask The Boss to say a few words, which she's more than happy to do, about all the work she's done for the co-op all her life. She introduces me, says I have 2 years in Paraguay, and although she still can't really understand what I say, they should all try to understand me.

I step over my ego on the way to the computer. We use just the computer screen to give the PowerPoint. He'll be here any second. I talk about why the internet is important, all the things Mariela and I have practiced, until The Boss stands up and tugs my arm and says, "That's great. Just show us the web page." She also says, "Why didn't you tell me your Peace Corps Higher Up wasn't going to be here, we could have just used my son's projector." Why didn't you say your son had a projector?

I begin talking about the web page, and just then, the Higher Up walks in, but nothing is in his hands. "And the projector?" is the first thing I say. He puts his hand to his forehead. He'd forgotten.

During the next 15 minutes I went down flaming. Is it the two years in disaster-prone Paraguay, or a study of spirituality based on accepting what is? Whatever it was, there was a calmness about my crash. The internet worked as slow as a snail, or not at all, please try again, in front of a squinting crowd. Sputtering sentence fragments, saying "cosa" (thing) when I wanted to say "window", "cursor" or "screen." I remained fairly calm. The words formed in my mind: Crash and Burn. I could feel the redness in my face, the physical reaction to humiliation, as natural to a Peace Corps Volunteer's bodily functions as sneezing.

The parade started outside, and to my relief, they all left. The subject of all this preparation and anxiety had passed in 15 awkward minutes where little was accomplished. The parade went by (at least there was a fat kid on a pony) and they ate a small portion of the food we'd painstakingly set out. I talked to the Higher Up, who was red in the face and couldn't stop apologizing. Was I just so used to things going horribly wrong? The governor and his flock never showed at the co-op.

A reporter from ABC Color did come by. The least curious reporter in the world. Mariela and I provided him with facts. "Our web page will be the first in inner Paraguay to accept credit cards." "Uh-huh," he said, perusing the snacks. "We won a grant from Peace Corps for 10 million Guaranies." "Hmm," bite of empanada. He took a picture of me at the computer.

That was the answer, Jeopardy players. And what was the question?

"What's it like to be a Peace Corps Volunteer?"

Before, I would have said nothing was wrong with this picture. I found it in my Apple dictionary, looking for synonyms for beef. Here's beef. Now tell me, what's wrong with this picture?

What's wrong is exactly what Oscar said when he walked up behind me. "It doesn't show the feet," he said. Or the tail. Or the head. It's American beef, the prime cuts. But it's left out all the parts that I can tell you are certainly considered beef, considered food, down here. This photo should be reclassified, under A, for American Beef.

I was looking through these Fulbright Scholar things, maybe you’ve heard of them -- and I saw the word Finland. It made me smile.

I had Finland on the mind when I was 13 years old. Somehow I’d gotten my hands on this exchange program brochure. Without the knowledge of my parents, I applied to one of the only ones that didn’t cost thousands of dollars and was a scholarship, to Finland. What did I know about Finland? Nothing. I just wanted to go, somewhere.

I can still remember how important it felt. The careful filling out of all the forms with the nice pen. The wanting. I got down to the finalist, and my mom, who now knew her daughter wanted to spend the summer across the Atlantic, drove me hours away for the interview. I’d never before been so nervous as I was, sitting at the head of all those people who got to decide if I went or not. I did get one laugh out of them, so I thought there was hope.

Then a thin little envelope arrived, that relieved my parents greatly. I didn’t get it.

It seems so funny now, but I was so crushed by that that I literally thought I’d missed my chance. I didn’t even look, really, for other opportunities. It reminds me of this quote:

“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”

-Alexander Graham Bell

I was blind to everything else. In my dramatic 13-year-old mind, Finland was it, like a boy who had dumped me who'd I swore I'd never get over. Luckily I didn’t stay that way, and I couldn’t really tell you what snapped me out of it. But here I am, putting Peace Corps Volunteer on my resume, looking at this program I used to think was just for people who were smarter than me. From now on I'll try to turn away faster from those doors that close.

Chicken sex comes darting out across the yard. Your eye will be caught, whether you like it or not. A chicken making a run for it, head forward and legs crisscrossing exactly like they draw in the cartoons. A rooster behind, gaining on her.

Uh oh, that chicken’s gonna get it.

Few get away, flapping their wings, bobbing their heads as they walk away as if to say, “That’s what I thought, mister.”

But for most of them, the chase only lasts but a few moments until the rooster is upon them. Without even a “Hello, good day to you,” he hops on and bites the back of her neck to hang on. Then it’s just a shake of some feathers and a flap of the wings. He hops off, and wanders off clucking as if she were just yesterday’s bucket of thighs, leaving her to face the judging eyes of the rest of the farm animals. Tisk tisk tisk.

So ladies, if you’re ever thinking about hanging out with a rooster, I’m telling you: Don’t do it.

Click here for disturbing footage:

So yesterday morning we're just outside in front of the house, and I look over and see something I've only ever before seen in a movie, a giant tarantula, only it's walking in real life, my real life, black and hairy but cruising across the walkway three feet from me as if it were just another chicken.

OSCAR!!!!

Oscar brings a pitcher.

They kind of think I'm crazy because I'm so hyped up and freaked out. They've all, as children, fished tarantulas out of their holes with gum on a string and played with them.

Pali, my host dad, just comes out and says, quietly, "Oh yeah, that's a tarantula." like it's a cricket or something.

Then he just picked up the pitcher and I'm squealing that he's crazy.

Once it was dead, Oscar put this fork tong under its fangs to show them off. Tramtizing! But we all survived. At least it wasn't in my house. That's what happened to Sasha!

Monday morning. 8:30, alarm clock goes off. I hear rain. I turn off the alarm clock. I go back to sleep until 10:30.

So maybe today is a good day to explain why I'm extending my service. I have asked for, and received, an extension until June of 2011. Nine extra months, a full 3 years of Paraguay fun times.

I think about how hard it was, that first year. How much I didn't know. All the confusion and frustration. Living in Paraguay is just so much better now. I'm good at it.

I know now, for example:

Which buses will enter my site and which will leave me 2 km. away, on the routa. That when I ask for vegetables at the store, I have to ask by kilo and not by number, so I don't ask for 2 anymore and get a look like I'm crazy.That when someone says, "And Oscar (or whoever)" They mean "Where's Oscar?"When someone asks me if I know how to eat something, they just mean, Do I like it?When someone says, Moogui reju that means "Where are you coming from?" (and a growing number of other Guarani phrases.)

You have to wash your bombilla every time, unless you want a mouthful of antsThere are a million things (at least half of them words) that I know now. Information I have crammed into my head that will be mostly useless as soon as I leave this place. I've worked damn hard, and now I'm coasting down the other side of my efforts.

Then there's the general benefits of Peace Corps:

I work whenever I feel like itI do whatever I want to doMy podcast is kickin' assMy Guarani is finally coming aroundI love YataityI have a ponyI don't have to work when it's rainingI get my lunch cooked for me every dayI get asado every SundayThere's also this boy next door...

And, for the first time in a long time, I feel like I finally have a home. Isn't that weird? All the way down here?It is not all pretty, I can tell you that right now. Some people I work for are real jerkfaces. I'm helping jerkfaces. Who don't appreciate me, at all. I miss my family. I can not wait to have a car again.

But the good outweighs the bad. I'm happy down here. Life is balanced, something it is not in the United States. This is the best thing I've ever done in my whole life. I took a big risk and it paid off. I think, then, that I'll stick around a little while longer.

Not only do we Americans have a lot of stuff, we have a lot of stuff around our stuff. Invisible stuff that other people can’t understand, and that I miss.

For example, those ladies shirts that criss-cross on top over the chest, and then have a horizontal seam underneath. This whole criss-cross top area is like a boob nest. That horizontal seam, that’s the bottom of the boob nest. Here, they have no respect for it. None. It goes straight across the boobs. It looks like the boobs are falling out of the boob nest.

And don’t even get me started on bra straps. I want to buy a mega phone so I can yell: "That's a strapless dress honey! You need to find its friend, Mr. Strapless Bra."

No respect.

I say no respect, but respect for what, our made up rules? It's just that those rules are so ingrained in us, evolutionarily stuck in our brains as fact, that you just can't help but be appalled when people do not have respect for the things you were taught to have respect for.

For instance. Dinner Time. It's dinner time. Set the table, forks on the left, knife (facing in) on the right. Turn off the tv. Turn off your cell phone. Wash your hands. Sit down. Wait for everyone before you start eating. Ask to be excused from the table. Don't tell the person who cooked how not delicious the food is. (This last rule was never taught, nearly implied.)

In Paraguay, it's the opposite. Every one of those things.

Movie time. Turn off the lights, Get your snacks ready. Don't answer your cell phone. Don't be in the other room and yell, "Just start it without me." It's movie time.

No movie time in Paraguay.

Same thing with class time. Can’t you see we’re having class?

There's also unspoken invisible image that we value in America. I see this especially with clothes. An old lady wearing a Quiksilver shirt. No, you don't understand. That is not only to clothe you, it's to tell the world you are young and a surfer/skater type and are cool. You cannot wear that shirt, silly old lady.

And there’s this other, somehow from nowhere, fad where people are wearing those GAP t-shirts that were popular 10 years ago in the United States. They’re trying to be American with shirts that say GAP Authentic, but anyone authentically American is just kind of left confused by the sight.

Lastly, I miss my invisible stuff of tradition, wrapped around our food, for example. When my Paraguayan boyfriend puts ketchup on the indian food I just made. Part of the anger that rises in me is a Joy-Luck-Club-mother-esque indignation that anyone would alter the food I just slaved over. But the other side is an outrage on the part of culinary tradition. Chefs everywhere who join me in a common cry: You don't put ketchup on indian food. And the’re with me on the fried rice too. You don't put ketchup on fried rice!

Today I made tuna casserole. It's expensive. A can of mushroom soup from the American aisle in the special Asuncion grocery store. Two cans of tuna, also pricey here. The time, the effort, and I go next door, and they're cooking cuts of beef, even though I said I would cook. They're cooking it, as usual, in an oily bath of oregano and cumin and salt salt salt. Just in case, they say.

Then at the table, they scoop out the the tuna casserole, which came out really well. And then, they scoop out the oily bathwater of the beef, and pour it all over. And they place a big chunk of meat, right on there. And I say no, no thank you. To their surprise, I'll eat it like this.

Some of my invisible things I’ve been able to let go. I’ll let some bra straps hang out. I’ll put my elbows on the table. But I will not put beef on tuna casserole. That, my countrymen, I promise you.

Howdy! The sun is shining on a nice breeze, it's finally cooling off, and instead of being cooped up in my air-conditioned cell, we've been outside enjoying the fall. Here are some pictures.

Mateo & Sasha's Visit

Taking the horse for a spin

Mateo rockin' it as he does

Campo sky

Sasha's turn

Giving pony rides to the little children.

Making Gyros Happen

I got this idea to make gyros, and Oscar knows a guy, so we had a lamb killed on a farm across the routa and in the campo town of Potrero. Instead of sending O-town on the moto, we made a trip of it on Bigote and bikes.

Leaving the paved streets of The Yat

The Road to Potrero

Vanessa riding a horse for the first time.

We stopped to take some pictures

Vane and me

The nice lady and her half of a lamb.

The gyros came out delicious and the host fam loved them!

Salto Cristal

Following the carefully placed signs, we headed to Salto Cristal.

In the campo of La Colmena

Oscar and sugar cane

We went in a car. I love a car! It's my dream to one day have one.

This is Oscar's buddy from the big city.

The climb down is steep and scary!

Oscar carrying the heavy stuff.

The falls are worth the climb.

The Partridge Traps

This started when Oscar brought his slingshot out to the campo, and he got hooked on trying to kill these partridges that are all over. We did some Googling, and next thing you know...

In the backyard earning our Boy Scout Badges

Just eat that corn little bird, I dare you.

Looking for a good spot

And now, we wait.

More views of the campo

Cactus, or, in spanish, tuna.

I feel like everyone's staring at me

Takin' some t-ray along

Cow

I have a dream...

Little cow at the pond

Smoke from a far-off fire

Back Home

Memories of my childhood fort-building give me an idea

while washing my sheets, then I turn around for one second and...

Let me tell you what that's like, just two people, one from the U.S., one from Paraguay, trying to sit down and watch a damn movie already.

Movies in Paraguay come from various places. Most Peace Corps volunteers carry their external hard drives to every Asuncion weekend, clicking and dragging from their friends' computers the movies their friends back home saw months ago, or seasons of The Office, Lost, True Blood or 30 Rock. I don't have a hard drive, so my computer, stuffed like 100 gigabytes of sitcoms in a 50-gigabyte bag, is constantly warning me that if I cram anything else into it, it will explode.

Sometimes we pass around DVDs, left in each others' lockers at the office or passed around at meetings. These are usually just the C-grade ones people are willing to pass on.

C-grade is good, I'll take C-grade. On television there's strictly D-grade. When my host sister asks if I've seen Miss Congeniality 2, I try not to act too offended when I say no. And I don't correct her when she says, "Oh, it's so awesome."

There's also a usual D-grade level on these DVDs Oscar brings, up to five movies on one DVD in a poor man's ziplock, with a cover printed on some computer, probably in Ciudad del Este, with the images of 5 normal DVD covers on one. They might be a collection of Jackie Chan movies, , bad Argentinian comedies, gory horrors of varying quality, whatever. I can now claim that yes, I have seen American Pie 6. Oscar's only seen an orginal disk once, in my house. He opened it like it was a treasure box lighting up his face and said, "Ooh, original." Those others, making us Americans look like idiots, are $100 worth of DVDs, one on disk and available at your local street corner for 10 mil (2$).

You put that disk in your computer and there could be anything. We once started "2012" and it began with a shot that looked like someone's volcano vinegar/baking soda experiment. Even if it is the movie you wanted, there could be Spanish with Russian subtitles, or Portuguese, especially with all the movies taped in the Brazilian theaters. I always hope for spoken English and Spanish subtitles.

I also hope it's a DVD rip, and not taped in the theater. When's it's taped in the theater, the sound comes out like you're trapped in a box and the movie is from 1942. Oscar and I were just watching Night at the Museum, and some subtitle came on that was on the real screen in the movie theater, only in the tilted camera, it just dove diagonally off screen, cut off into black. Sometimes people will cough, laugh, or their shadows get up to go pee. On my friend's copy of the New Moon movie, girls in the theater squeal at the part where Jacob takes off his shirt.

So many times we put the disk in, and it just doesn't work at all, or it's in a language that neither of us understand. Sometimes, there are just subtitles, in the doodles of Russian. Or, worse, there are too many choices. Audio in both English and Spanish, subtitles in both English and Spanish. So then, who gets to listen, and who has to read? To me, it is an injustice to take a film that was recorded in my language, change it over to Spanish that doesn't go along with mouth movements, and have the English words written on the bottom. But that's just me. Oscar does not share that opinion. We recently had a little bilingual lovers' spat over the fact that I didn't want to watch Avatar, again, in poor theater-taped quality, in Portuguese, which only understands, and only partly.

There are a hundred web sites to download subtitles, should I find something that otherwise works but doesn't have them. So you Google the movie and "subtitles" and "spanish" and you dig around on slow internet, and then you find them, and then you wait, in the dark because you thought you were about to watch a movie, for them to download. Not perfect, but it made possible the sharing of my love of The Office with Oscar. Sometimes the subtitles don't work and Oscar makes me translate the whole time, which, for the record, is The Worst. Sometimes the subtitles work, but the movie talks and then the subtitles come on 5 seconds later. You have to play with the delay until you get it just right. We watched one movie where we had to pause it every 10 minutes and set the subtitles back. They kept moving too fast, like they were on a different treadmill. When Inglourious Bastards turned out to have two discs, I figured out how to make the subtitles roll over by setting the delay forward to 4374. Worked like a charm.

Hello All! So I finally finished the catalog for the coop! If you click on the images you´ll be whisked away to a bigger view.

In other good news, we just got a big order (100 shirts) from a woman in Argentina who saw the little web page I made. Suddenly I´m working hard for the money over here. Everyone is. No more drinking terere and making ao po´i. We´ve been getting lots of e-mails, actually, just from the other blogspot page I made. And checking e-mail, making up price lists, organizing the embroideries and making up codes and names for them. I´ve been plopping these huge tablecloths on top of the scanner to put there patterns into digital form.

A history of Ao Po´i and information on the cooperative.

Clothes and patterns for the ladies.

Clothes and patterns for the menfolk. And ao po´i ties too!

Things for the household, including and ao po´i toilet paper holder!

Tableclothes, their patterns and borders in crochet or the locally made lace.

Information on special orders and our price list.

All the pretty colors

Life with my dad

Only a month after they called me out of class to tell me that my dad had been in an accident -- and that he didn’t make it -- I realized I’d started to forget little things about him. I wrote my journal then that soon it would be six months, a year, then 10 years, and my father would be reduced to a just a feeling I’d miss having.

It’s been 10 years since March 23, 2000, and I’m trying to feel that feeling I miss having. I’m thinking about how a father like that, and his death, just like that, put me on the road that led me to Peace Corps.

I’ll start, as I always do when I talk about him, with the fact that he was 6’6”, 300 linebacker pounds set on legs of a bear. People knew him, as Big Pete, not just for his size, but for the way he could make the world change when he walked in a room. I became Yetter-Yets or Little Dee, names of which neither had a logical origin. My mother was Mother Machree. My brother was Captain and my sister Whamos. The floor became a stage where he would whistle and sing while getting ready for work, twirling two black work socks in unison like propellers as he danced back and forth as if he were auditioning for The Drifters. We laughed until the sports came on the news and he said, “SportsCenter, nobody speak,” in a stern voice that maybe other fathers used for real, but only made us giggle.

Sunday morning pancakes were a performance as well. He would would flip each one high, punctuating each throw with noises like a football team -- “Hup, hub, hibby, hup!” -- Even at his size he could flip one under his leg like a baton twirler. He’d set my plate down in front of me and say, “Here you are Little Dee,” and then fill up my glass of milk. I’d look up at him and smile that smile that said, “Aren’t you going to cut them for me?” And he would.

I was the youngest and remember being told at the dinner table, in that voice you use when instructing children, that once I turned 12, I would have to cut my own pancakes. The birthday came and went, and for all the time that I had a father, he cut my pancakes, buttered my toast, tied my shoelaces and even tucked me in at night. Needing to make a joke of it as I got older, he’d dramatically pat the covers, sitting on my bed and doing this silly little giggle that, yes, I can still hear. As he left, he would look back and, one hand on the light switch, say, “Good night, Little Dee,” in a voice that’s like a star, growing dimmer when I try to look right at it.

I try to picture his face now. I remember his skin was smooth and cool, darker than the rest of ours. He’d let me cuddle while we watched tv, perhaps Law & Order or whatever else he’d deemed The Family Show. He’d guess what would happen and then hold up a finger and say, “Prediction!” in a high-pitched voice, and later, if he turned out to be right, it’d be followed by, “Brilliance!” If a sex scene started, he’d say, “Trouble Brewin’,” and cover my eyes.

There were those few times where my dad could take me to school. For him probably a small chore, for me precious alone time. Sometimes my best friend was in the car with me, in his brown towncar he called The Hoopty. There was this one corner with a collection of restaurants, bars and a Burger King. As we approached the corner with the deciding turn lane, we’d beg, “Please can we stop for breakfast? Please?” “Please Mr. P,” my best friend would say. “Not today girls,” he’d say in his fake stern voice. Then, at the last minute, he’d sigh and put on his blinker and say “I’m too good to you.” And he’d pull into the drive-thru to get us french toast sticks, or take us to the little café where he knew the owner, of course, to get us strawberry creamcheese croissants and himself a coffee. I’d lean on his side as the cash register rang and put out my hand and my best smile and he’d put the change right there every time.

It’s a cloud of confetti, all the moments, hard to get a look at just one. There are just the stories I’ve told over and over.

I tell people about the time our L.L. Bean-ish cousins were visiting, and we went to Adventure Island Waterpark. Dad put all of us in one of those big round tubes at the top of a huge waterslide. He went to get in then, and the attendent said, “No sir, that’s too many!” But my dad just said, “Hup, too late!”, then jumped in and shoved off. We soared off the slide’s bumps in a way that was clearly meant to be avoided by the set weight limit. My cousins went whooping back to their parents, saying, “You would not believe what Uncle Peter did!”

And Oh, yes, The ostrich. Another theme park. Drive-through safari. Of course, there were practically more DO NOT ROLL YOUR WINDOWS DOWN signs than there were animals. “Pass me a cookie,” he said to my mother. An ostrich was walking up to the car. To our amazement, he rolled down the window and passed the cookie to the bird, who pecked at his hand too fast. He jerked his hand back in the car, the bird followed into the car, to bite the cookie and my dad’s hand.

He taught me to drive, on I-275, yelling “Malfunciton Junction! People die out there!” while I tried to keep my eyes on the road. Driving over the bridge on 60, I’d be getting passed, my eye on my speed. And he’s sigh and say, “Step on the foot speeder, Yetter.”

On road trips, either up North or to the grocery store, we were nothing short of secret agents on a mission. “Road Warriors!” he’d call. He’d take my stuffed animals and act like they were driving, even bending down their little padded paws to flick off other drivers.

He was always breaking rules, social or otherwise. When I felt bad once because I was the only one in a group who’d never been to a real play, he made me feel better by saying, “Eh, that crap’s too artsy fartsy for me.”

I still think about that, any time I’m on the verge of taking life or myself too seriously. It’s in the same mental drawer as the time we went to Aragatos Restaurant and he told us he’d be ordering the Who Flung Poo.

When I got him alone for a few minutes, he would call me, again in the dramatic voice, “Paulette Perhach, cub reporter for the daily planet.” Because I’d joined the yearbook. Or he’d sing, “I love you, you love me, we’re as happy as two birds in a tree.” Or he’d say I had too much make up on and follow it up with, “You’re naturally beautiful,” again, in a joking, high-pitched voice.

When I was in elementary school I taught him one of those hand-smacking games little girls play at recess. Even until I was 17, he would stop me passing in the hallway, clap his hands together and dramatically say, “Ready?” He’d put his left to my right, his right to my left with a look of intense concentration. We’d play faster and faster until we were just smacking at each other and we’d laughed and he’d hug me and say, “Ya crazy cracker.”

My father never fully made that transition in to the father figure who pretended he never used a cuss word or got out of line himself. Many of his fatherly sayings included a word that would have gotten me in trouble had I repeated it in school. These included, with “stuff” filling in for a word I’d have to bleep: “If I need any stuff from you, I’ll squeeze your head.” “That looks like ten pounds of stuff in a 5-pound bag.” And, “If you throw enough stuff against the wall, some of it’s bound to stick.” This last one was repeated to me posthumously on his behalf by my mother years later as advice on meeting Mr. Right.

His finger was pulled upon request numerous times throughout my childhood, setting off the predictable physical reaction. If you’re face was burned, bruised, swollen or anything of the like, he couldn’t resist but ask if your face hurt, just so you could say yes, and he could say, “It’s killin’ me.” If you were excited go anywhere, he would talk about how just saw on the news that that very spot had just burned down. When my sister was about to leave to join the Marines, Parris Island was, according to him, a pile of ash.

In recollecting these scraps, I get that feeling. That feeling I miss having. There’s one memory where it’s strongest. We were walking through a department store and I started twirling a lazy susan of silver charms. There were flowers and hearts. He saw me looking and, like I hoped he would, he asked me if I wanted one. Out of all those beautiful trinkets, the one that caught my eye was a solid little piggy. He saw my choice and laughed this laugh, this “I don’t get you sometimes, but I love you anyway” laugh. Maybe that’s it. Of all the people in the world who laugh at you, that there’s one who’s always laughing with you. You can be as weird as you are.

On Valentine’s Day when I was 17, he got me this big card that had a bunny on the front. It said, “You know what I like?” Then I opened it up and it was a pop-up of three hearts that said Y-O-U, strung between the now popping open arms of the bunny. Under it he’d written, Little Dee, Will you be my Valentine? Love, Dad. I laughed and said, like a teenager, “Did mom pick this out for you?” He said, “No, why?” He had no idea how adorable he was. He hugged me and even at 17 I felt like a little girl wrapped in an entire world made up of him, and it was a world sweet and loving where even a trip to the grocery store is an adventure and all my little quirks made me just the much more perfect, the way I am.

Then he died, that next month.

There was so little left. A few clothes. So few pictures. So few notes with his all-caps writing I loved. Just, that’s it.

In ways I’m sure he wanted to, and in one big way he would have never wanted to, my dad taught me about freedom. In moments when other people would have been tense, wrapped up in whatever task they were doing, my father was relaxed, playing, with the freedom to choose his mood and to make life into the experience it was. He showed me freedom to reject the rules of people who wield whistles, or who tell me who I should be or what I should have done. In dying, he showed me how quickly all that we build up can turn to dust and just blow away. How little it all matters in the end. The only thing that matters is now. It’s the kind of attitude that might make someone say, “Screw it, I’m joining the Peace Corps.”

My dad’s gone, but his spirit is so present in my family. My little nephew, named Peter for my dad, has picked up, through osmosis, some of the habits of a grandpa he never knew. When he gets an answer right, he sticks up his index finger and says, “Brilliance!” in that high-pitched voice my dad used to use. We still yell “One down!” when someone drops a plate, just like he used to. He is scattered about us like his ashes in the sea, in our jokes, the mischievous turn of a grin, or any time I turn life into the silly game I know it can be.

My dad, Peter Perhach

Hello. Long time no talk. It's been a long, long, lazy, lazy summer. But I'm out from hibernation and in Asuncion, armed with good internet and with so much to share of what's been happening. I'm supposed to be washing my clothes in the tub, but Waterworld is on in English. I know it's sad.

Carnaval. Feb 19th

Carnaval was last night. So many people have asked me why I wasn’t going to dance this year. I decided last year, in the middle of the parade, that I would not. I was dancing, and this guy called me over to take a photo. Then he grabbed me around the shoulder, pulled me in, and gave me a kiss on the cheek, pressing his Paraguayan-summer-sweating face onto mine while his friend snapped the shot. Well, I thought, this is not to be repeated.

This year, I watched the queen come dancing down the street. She was in high heels, a sequined bra, and something like a large belt over a thong. From behind, it just looked like her naked ass.

She stopped for a moment, dancing in place, and this part came in the music where you take it down, rolling your hips around and dropping as sexily as possible into a squat. Right as she was about to descend, a shot of foam came from the side, covering half her face and body. This looks just like when someone gets hit in the face with a pie on tv. But still, pie on face, she girated her bare ass and dropped it, like someone who couldn’t decide if she wanted to be a stripper or Lucille Balle.

Me, happy in the stands

I also had to show you this CLASSIC Paraguayan dance move. This is us dancing in the street after Carnaval. 'Bout to put out a knee!

About the fam...

My host mom, Ña. Conchena, is a nut. She's a nut and also she loves me, which is just great. The other day she, Sandra and Vanessa and I were walking, and she reached out and took my finger in her hand and just held it. Then she said, "Mbohapy che memby." (I have three daughters). Being so accepted and loved by her and the family feels like, after months in a social blizzard, being warmed in a blanket, placed by the fire and given hot chocolate with marshmellows.

Also, she just cracks me up. She is constantly exasperated by how much work she doesn’t around the house. I think she has lost the ability to sit still. Even at parties, she will be in the kitchen helping with the dishes.

She makes that Paraguayan face, the big frown with the shaken head, as if it’s all such a shame. "No dormi nada," she says, (I didn’t sleep at all.) She may have gotten up at 4:30 to iron or wash the ao po’i she makes. And these lazy kids? Where are they? she asks, then answers. Sleeping. “Chejukata!” (It’s going to kill me.)

Then she makes this frustrated sound like a clogged filter and says, “Ay Pauli!” The rant can continue in one of several ways. How messy the house is, how much work she still has to do, how much her leg is still bothering her. It’s funny how, when you’re desperate for any kind of social acceptance, what a pleasure it is when someone genuinely complains to you. I could listen all day.

If I did something bad, like leave dishes out back or buy the wrong kind of chicken, she says, “Roinupãta Pauli” (I’m going to beat you.) You have to be careful, because sometimes she is a hitter! When I make a joke and she laughs really hard, she punctuates it with those slaps on the back that hurt! She comes in my house and calls me Puerco de Paz, which rhymes with Cuerpo de Paz (Peace Corps) and kind of means Piggo of Peace.

When she passes me in the street sometimes with Sandra, she grabs Sandra’s arm and pulls her close, and they both look the other way with their noses up as if I’m the town outcast. Then we laugh and I say, "Moõ pehota?" (Where are you going?) They’re usually on their way to pick up the ao po’i shirts she had sewn so that she can pack them up for her weekly trips to Asuncion to drop them off to her clients.

She makes fun of how lazy I am. At those parties where she’s in the kitchen cleaning, she’ll say, “Please, Pauli, rest for a moment, you work too hard. Sit for a moment.”

But it’s the kind of joking that I know is rooted in love, so it doesn’t bother me. Because sometimes we’re just sitting there and she just puts her hand on my shoulder and leaves it there.

This is where you can usually find Conchena.

I´m making a web site!

So I´ve been trying to get the co-op some nice product shots, for our soon-to-come web site and it´s been tough. On the mannequin was lame, the flash was too bright, etc. So I googled some stuff and found out that I needed softboxes, those light box things you see in photo shoots on tv. I finagled some mils out of the co-op to buy lights, covered them in cardboard boxes, way ghetto-style, and this is what we got. I think it´s coming along nicely. (I´ll put up some shots of the studio later!)

My beautious friend Leidyd

Thirteen year old´s birthday

It was my host sister Vanessa´s 13th birthday recently, and we tore it up. I might have to say it was the most fun I had at a Paraguayan party. Oscar had a flashlight and was scanning the crowd for maker-outers. I showed them how I´d memorized the dance to Bad Romance. Good times.

Putting out the little food plates. Oh so important. One empanada, one sopa, one milanesa, one triangle sandwich.

Breakin´it downBad Romance Lady Gaga Style

That´s all for now!

Hi friends. Just stopping by with some good news.

-There was a slight gossip situation which made me feel really kind of crappy. Oh no! But then it kind of turned around with my friend told me how she was giving this chick who was talking about me the evil eye. It just showed how much this friend loved me to see how mad it made here. Then someone else said that this person talks about everyone anyway and to not worry, that she is just a horrible horrible person. That made me feel great!

-I bought the third book in the Twilight series in Spanish, because now my Paraguayan friends have seen the first two movie versions and they're dying to know what happens next. "Ha ha! I will trick them into reading for pleasure," I thought. I bought the book, which was damn expensive if I do say so myself, or $20 in English. I used a twenty my aunt sent me. It was worth every penny as soon as I showed it to Mariela and Leidyd. They love it and swoon every five minutes talking about Edward Collin. Mariela told me she didn't sleep last night because she wanted to stay up reading.

-I upgraded my podcast service to include stats, to see how many people are using it to learn Guarani. Guess how many downloads I have? Almost 1,000! Holy crap, I said to myself. That's about 5 times more than I would have thought. It makes me feel good that I'm creating something people will actually use and something that will make service that much easier for other volunteers. However, it kind of makes me want to say: In my day we had to learn Guarani by overhearing it on our way to the river to wash clothes, 10 miles, uphill both ways, without virtual flashcards.

I always go to the co-op and tell my friend Mariela about whatever I'm reading. Mariela is so great. She's curious about the world, has great ideas for the co-op, and is learning English. When I talk to her about the books I'm reading, so always gets kind of a sad face and says, I wish I could read those books.

Or any books. There's no library in Yataity. And the price of a book is maybe half a month's rent. Can you imagine wanting to read and not being able to?

There's a new movement to start a library in Yataity, and I'm helping. But in the short run, I want to get some books in Yataity. I made an Amazon Wish List of some of my favorites and some other books that are needed here. It was fun looking through all my classics. Where would I be without Dr. Seuss, Roald Dahl or Shel Silverstein?

I really want to be part of introducing a reading culture into Yataity. Can you be part of it too?

If you'd like to donate a book (used is great), the link to the Wish List is at HERE. If anyone can add on a book for Yataity the next time they're ordering from Amazon, it would be awesome. I'd love to have some books to read to little kids!

Thanks on behalf of Yataity.

(And thanks to Mateo for some inspiration. He's reading Anne Frank's Diary with a girls group and will be passing the books on to me next. To think that I'm going to help some girls (including my host sister) read their first book ever just for fun!)

I talked to Mateo and Shola in the last few days, and both said exactly what I've been thinking.

"I just don't feel like doing anything. I don't know what my problem is."

I remembered, and reminded them, that it's 96 degrees outside. At least it is today. Mateo swears that's nothing, that it gets up to 110. Anyway, it's hot. You shouldn't want to do anything.

Clothes come off in twisted ropes, sticking to your body. Your hair mats down anywhere bare skin is. In the summer, "Haku," or "It's hot," becomes the greeting. I can't imagine that any babies are born in September in this country.

In the afternoons I retreat to my fortress of solitude, a.k.a. my air conditioned bedroom with my Snuggie hung in the door frame to keep the cool air in. I'm too ashamed to pay my electric bill to my friend who collects them, so I've been waiting to go to Villarrica to do it. I don't want them to know how much I'm willing to pay for some cool, sweet relief.

Once I'm in my room I have to stay. Going in and out of a 20 degree temperature change can make your head explode like a deep-sea fish brought up to fast. So I stay in and Oscar's happy to stay in with me, breathing out heavily and saying "Haku che ra'a," something like "Man it's hot."

I still work, here in the fortress. I'm on the 12th episode of the Guaranime podcast, which I can do from home. But other than that, my sweaty roped clothes pile up high, my dishes that I have to wash outside wait in a potential avelanche, the porch needs sweeping.

I'll be here on my bed, the slats of my magic cold box turned right on me, until March at least, available via e-mail, if anyone needs me.

For my mom's birthday, I made her two ao po'i placemats with crocheted edges. They literally took me a month and a half to finish, causing me to be the shame of Yataity. But I had to learn to make Ysypo'ity, this stitch below.

And I had to learn to crochet.

Oscar would like it to be stated that these gifts are half from him, because he had to serve the terere for the whole month and a half that I was working, instead of switching on and off like we normally do.

Happy Birthday mom. Hope they arrive in the mail soon! Thanks for teaching me to be crafty and adventurous!

My Pig Head, My Pig Head, wherever I go, you're gonna go...

Shh, he's sleeping...

Brazil. Roll that "r" and get real excited on the "i".

Brazil is a green land of wonder. They speak Portuguese, which is almost like Spanish until every other third word, which is nothing like Spanish. It was almost a little too much fun to watch Oscar struggling to speak with people. Ha ha! Now you know how I've been feeling for the last year and a half.

Brazil is also noted for its ladies. A place where I plummet to a 2. Here are some little-know facts about Brazilian Women.

Brazilian girls are born with a thong tan.

A womanhood, Brazilian women sprout coral-colored nail polish and three-tiered dangling earrings.

Brazilian women sleep hanging upside-down by their stiletto heels in a sub-zero anti-gravity chamber.

Our trip was with a college friend of Oscar's. Forty-five Paraguayans and one Americana, coolers packed with meat and beers, sheets and pillows. In Brazil the land became green. It became huge hills and houses stacked nearly one on top of the other. We all saw the beach at the same time, on our left and glistening.

We rented a house near the beach for 50 or so people and got out on the sand as soon as possible. We were in Camboriu, which is more crowded with buildings right up to the beach. There are vendors that come around with portable stores of beach cover-ups, necklaces and hats piled high on their own head. There are also churros filled with dulce de leche, chocolate or sweetened, condensed milk. Yum!

Then we headed to Florianopolis...

Me with my new Brazilian regulation sunglasses, purchased from my

trusted Prada dealer on the beach for 10 Reales.

At a Brazilian phone booth, tracking down our CouchSurfing host.

Florianopolis is a more natural part of Brazil. While the group went back after just one day, Oscar and I stayed for CouchSurfing! CouchSurfing is a web site where people from all over the world open their homes to host travelers. There is a reference and verfication system to make sure the people you are staying with are not ax murderers. We were not ax murdered but instead had a great time with a guy named Marcos. He spoke English and Portuguese and just a little Spanish. I speak English and Spanish and two words of Portuguese. Oscar speaks Guaraní and Spanish, a little Portuguese and English curse words. Between us all, we managed to have a conversation into the night. At one point, I was making Paraguayan rice salad and the guys were in the kitchen and we started talking about the differences in all of our cultures and it felt like what CouchSurfing should be.

Marcos told us about this awesome beach that is almost empty, because it takes an hour hike over a mountain or a boat to get there. I made Oscar try the hike.

At the entrance.

The scene going up and looking back.

Up Higher...

Arriving...to the left

To the right

Here's Oscar with a celebratory beer after the hike where he almost fell on me and killed us all. On this beach there was hardly anyone, just some people enjoying the waves and some campers.

On the beach, we found the biggest bug ever, dead piranhas and crabs.

We rode the waves a bit, then opted to take the boat back.

I started to get a little sea sick going backwards.

They told us to look up at the rocks.

Please don't puke, please don't puke.

At least we didn't end up like this chick, who puked and then fainted.

It rained on us on the way back. We were freezing and not sure if we would vomit or not. We got to shore really dazed feeling and I went into the first restaurant I saw to change into dry clothes. The restaurant owners took pity on us and warmed up a shot of liquor to warm us up.

This is a picture of the picture on front of the menu. It made us laugh because...

Here's how it looked that day.

While we were there, we ordered the Frutas del Mar (Fruits of the Sea), and Oscar tried his first oysters and fried shrimp and crabs.

Luke, I am your fa-ther.

Back in Camboriu, we took a tour in one of these bubble-like contraptions.

The view. Still a little cloudy.

Camboriu.

We rode this crazy two-person rollercoaster.

Then back for one last terere in the ocean before we left.

We returned like tourists, all of us in our Brazil/Camboriu/Florianopolis shirts. I hope to back one day!

Before Peace Corps, I was in Florida and working and kind of a little miserable at times. Worse, I was so angry at myself for being miserable. “You are American!” I’d say to myself. “You have enough food! Air conditioning. A good job. Friends. Family. What is your deal?”

Part of the reason I joined the Peace Corps was for a good “Alright young lady, let’s see if you can’t appreciate your life when you get thrown into poverty.” Obviously, that didn’t happen. But I did happen to read this book. It talks about something called Adaptation. Basically this is the idea that anything externally that happens to you, you get used to, for better or worse. Win the lottery? You’re initially happy, but you get used to it. Lose your hand in a fireworks accident? You’re initially miserable, but you get a nice hook and you get used to it. In a year’s time, people in both these situations reported being just as happy as they were beforehand, no more, no less.

We’re the richest people in the world. We know we don’t appreciate it and we hate ourselves for it. But it’s not our fault. It’s nature. Whew.

We enjoy our pleasures while they’re novel, our shiny new things. But the pleasure wears off, which still surprises us every time. This is called hedonic adaptation. (hedonic: of, characterizing, or pertaining to pleasure)

“As society’s affluence grows, consumption shifts increasingly to expensive, durable goods, with the result that disappointments with the consumption increases. Faced with this inevitable disappointment, what do people do? Some simply give up the chase and stop valuing pleasure derived from things. Most are driven instead to pursue novelty, to seek out new commodities and experiences whose pleasure potential has not been dissipated by repeated exposure. In time, these new commodities also will lose their intensity, but people still get caught up in the chase, a process that psychologists ... labeled the hedonic treadmill. No matter how fast you run on this kind of machine, you still don’t get anywhere.”

The hedonic treadmill. What a great name for how we live our lives.

Schwartz goes on to talk about another thing called the satisfaction treadmill. Let’s say that you get you’re life going good to where you are feel good about your rank in society, the comfort level in your home, the way you look in your nice clothes. It will feel good climbing the ladder at first, but you get used to the rung. Soon you want to move up to the higher rank, the bigger house, the more expensive clothes. You work your ass off at a job you’re starting to hate, thinking these things will make you happy, you get into debt buying newer, shinier things, (and more chained to that desk), but the thrill eludes you every time and fades farther into the distance. We expect to get to some level where adaptation won’t take place, but it always will.

That’s good. Now I know I don’t have to be rich, I’ll just get used to it. What I really need to work on is knowing that I'll be just as happy if I do have a lot of success with my work. (We all have our trophy we strive more. Mine is more success than riches. Although come to think of it, both would be nice.) I can accept where I am and accept that I’m pychologically incapable of really appreciating it. Yet I’ll appreciate it in practice. I won't sell out thinking it will make me happy. I'll remember to give back and not grab for more. I'll remind myself that I'm rich and should be content.

We slam another nail into our happiness's coffin with social comparison. It used to be that people lived in tiny villages and compared themselves with 100 or so people. Now we live in a world where we are fed with info about the lives of the most rich and famous of 6 billion people. We invite this information into our lives via gossip magazines and the E! chanel.

Advertisers tell us: “If you use this product you will be happy” and provide us with photographic evidence of people using their product and looking very happy. We buy the thing and we’re no more happier. Dammit. Of course none of think that we really fall for this, but why would companies spend billions on advertising if it didn't really work?

The Paradox of Choice suggests we limit our exposure to unrealistic social comparison. Stop reading women’s magazines. Stop watching so much tv. Dip your feet into reality and see how real people live.

By exposing yourself to too much advertising, too many gossip magazines, too many hours of shows like “The 100 Wealthiest Celebrities under 25,” you’re conciously stepping on that hedonic treadmill, choosing to remain forever unsatisfied with your own life.

***

And because I love that you find the truth where science and spirituality intersect, an excerpt from the Tao Te Ching:

If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never truly be fulfilled. If your happiness depends on money, you will never be happy with yourself.

Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.

I miss my American white lies.

Against my better judgement I went to the hair dresser to get my hair done for New Years. It is straight and thick and doesn't do well in curls. It didn't turn out well and I didn't want to come home. I knew what waited for me.

True to form, my host mom said: "Ivai kariay", which translates to: super ugly.

(Sigh)

Also, there's this rule where they ask you really personal questions and you pretty much have to answer or risk seeming rude, and then they make judgements on your personal life that you didn't want to share in the first place. It's like being strip-searched and then having the strip-searcher say: Wow, your thighs are so thick!

Like: "How much did you pay to get your hair done like that." (Internal sigh) "15 mil" "Oh my God, that's so expensive! Why did you pay so much when she doesn't know how to do anything?!"

All this on top of a bad hair day.

The ironic thing is that Paraguayans are at the same time timid and yet brutally honest. If you invite them to a party or a meeting and they know they won't go, they'll say "Sure, I'll be there," and then just not show. But if you're fat, your food isn't good or your hair is having a bad day, they have no problem telling you and everyone else.

Just yesterday I was wearing a dress and my friend said I looked pregnant. They other friend who was trying to help jumped in and said, "Oh no, she just needs a little exercise, right Pauli?"

Right.

The worst was a while ago when I spent a month on this ao po'i with a beautiful dress in mind. I had the dress made with the fabric I had embroidered, and it came out too short and too not-cute. Oscar did not spare me.

"Yep, it's really ugly," he said.

I got upset, mostly at the situation, but also at him.

"What?!" he said, genuinely confused. "It's an ugly dress. If your dress is ugly, I'm going to tell you. Why is that a bad thing?"

I wanted to say: Where are all the women in America when I need them to be on my side?

I want to say: It's RUDE! It's rude when he tells his mother her food sucks. It's rude when my host mom takes one bite of a cake at a wedding and says, "Ndahei" (It's not good). It's rude when they tell me all the time that I'm fat or I'm too skinny or I've burned my skin again and it looks really ugly. It's rude!

But it's not rude. It's just not acceptable in my culture. And although I know this in my mind, my heart can't seem to catch on to the spirit of it: It's just hair. It's just food. It's just your body.

Why do we lie those little white lies, in our culture? To spare feelings, we say. I'm in a place where those feelings are not expected to exist. Yet I can't help it, I packed them anyway.

Merry Cross-Eyed Christmas

Hello Everyone. Mary Christmas. Che kaigue means I'm feeling lazy. It's pretty much the official motto of the Republic of Paraguay.

So I will express myself with photos and caption.

Perhaps the best way in which I can explain cultural differences

I'm dealing with here is to say that the women at my coop think

this shirt is just beautiful.

These are the owls I see out in the campo.

For some reason Oscar walked in my house with one.

Peppers from my garden from which I made a rockin' hot sauce.

Anyone know what kind they are?

Angelic and I. A fellow very tall person who likes to write. She's the best.

Making sushi in my house with Mariela and Leidyd. Mariela is also the best.

In the Campo

I take it out to the campo just about every day before sunset.

This is funny only if you know the horse is walking very slowly.

There are about 5 little baby horses out there. They run around and play like puppies.

Wildflowers

The thing I like about wildflowers is that they're just supposed to be pixels in the picture of the countryside. But they're equally amazing close up.

Oscar with a catch from fishing. Gross!

The sunset in the campo with horses. I counted more than 30 out there the other day.

Back at home...

This is what a perfect Sunday looks like to me.

Stable man Tito and Bigote.

In other news:

My money came in for the coop. Nearly 10 million big ones. Or little ones, as I suppose we would call a currency of which it takes one thousand to buy a piece of gum. Anyway. We're getting a new computer, new camera, and a new web site. I'm sitting back and taking the afternoons off to spend more time with my air conditioner.

This other cool thing happened where I sent an e-mail to Barbara DeMarco-Barrett. She's a writer and I listen to her podcast Writers on Writing. And she just randomly was nice enough to send me a free copy of her book. So I sent her this photo as a thank you.

Also, I'm planning on going to Brazil. Back home at my Going-Away Garage Sale, a woman said to me, "If you ever get the chance to go to Florianopolis, you have to go." I got the chance to go, and although it might be a financial stretch, both my mother and my friend Fodor said the exact same thing: "You only go around once." Plus my grandparents threw me enough cash to cover my visa for Christmas. Score!

Ok, that's all for now...

So I had this big shame had that I bought all the outdoorsy stuff before I came. I basically had a panic attack via credit card and ended up with a bunch of ugly quick-dry clothes and outdoor gadgets that are still under my bed in mint condition.

My big shame was this one thing that I bought. I never even showed anyone to make fun of myself. I needed to come out of the closet, and so I cleansed myself through the power of the spoken word, and hence I read the following to the other volunteers at our Thanksgiving Day Talent Show. When the picture is is where my lovely assistant Sasha revealed the item. Thank you.

Survival Bandana

Thank God you’re here. This just might be the talent show that saves your life.

I have with me tonight a purchase I made in my preparation to leave my suburban life for the dangers of the deep South American jungle. Thankfully, I had the smarts to acquire this item just days before I left into the uncharted, unforgiving wilderness. I discovered it in the same outfitter where I purchased no-water camping soap and two pairs of $18 quick-dry underwear because the package said all the smart travelers used them, the same place where I almost bought a personal hand-held alarm, until the man at the counter said, “But who will be there to hear it?” At that very place, I had the fortune of spending $15.99 on a companion that has been the key to tipping the scales of life and death in my favor. To increase your own chances making it out of the Peace Corps alive, I advise you to listen up to some tips from this, The Survival Bandana.

The Survival Bandana is 2.5 square feet of orange knowledge that one day might just save your keister down here. As you can see, the Survival Bandana is complete with charts, tips, and basically the entire contents of the mind of a highly decorated eagle scout. Here’s one on how to find south and locate the North Star. Oh, that only works in the Northern Hemisphere, so ignore those, ignore ‘em, there’s lots of other good stuff to save your life.

For example, when you’re in the internet cafe and Facebook is taking forever to load, the Survival Bandana says to stay calm. In any situation where you’re lost of just don’t know what to do, the Survival Bandana offers the acronym STOP.

S! Stop and take a break, possibly to drink terere.

T! Think about what you have as tools or can use for survival, such as your cell phone, Google, Wikipedia, Skype, etc.

O! Observe your surroundings and look for a street sign or someone selling maps on the side of the road.

P! Plan your actions; make a distress signal to get Help, or just send a text message.

Or for example, if you want to drink terere but the water tap is dangerously far, there’s a nice little diagram here of how to build an underground still and suck water from the earth. The Survival Bandana would like you to remember that the human body can only go 3 days without water, so if there’s no terere, water can be collected from vines, dew on leaves, grass or by melting snow.

Your body can also go just 3 weeks without food. So, if Bolsi Bar (an expensive Asuncion restaurant) is taking too long on their delivery, the Survival Bandana says that all healthy mammals, birds and insects are edible. You can cook them over a low fire, along with the marshmallows your family sent from home. A fire can also provide warmth and a signal for help.

In extreme weather conditions, the human body can only go three hours without shelter. When selecting a shelter, you don’t just want to look for places close to the clubs in Asuncion. The Survival Bandana says you should also avoid water, wind and low-lying areas. And, should the Chaco Hotel be all booked up, the Survival Bandana says you can make emergency shelter by tying a line between two trees, draping a tarp over it, and staking the four corners to the ground. You can see this methods being used by the natives in Plaza Uruguaya (where homeless live).

If your cell phone battery dies and you get separated from your friends, perhaps at the bar, the Survival Bandana says that staying in one area increases your chances of being found. If you have to move, such as to get another Brahma, you should leave a trail of rocks or sticks.

You may want invest your own Survival Bandana, because the bandana itself might just save your life. It has on here a list of its uses, such as an ice pack, splinting, tourniquet, distress flag, or for something to carry beers from the fridge to a party. I think I might even be able to tie it up into a tube top if I need something to wear to Killkenny’s.

And to make sure everyone survives this year, I offer you one last piece of advice on this wilderness survival trip we call Thanksgiving. The Survival Bandana says that overall, staying dry is the key to survival, so please, don’t forget to bring a towel to the pool.

Today I was in my kitchen, speaking Spanish and cooking Chicken Scarpariello, and I honestly can't say which one is more amazing.

You might have had to have known me, before, and known what a fire hazard I was in the kitchen.

I had this full feeling: I was proud of myself, dammit.

After 24 years of non-cooking, the Peace Corps has finally forced me to learn. I think it's the boredom as well as not wanting to have to rely on a family to feed me. That means more fried meats and mayonaisey salads.

As a former restaurant junkie, I was used to thai, sushi, pizza, burgers, vegetarian hippy feed, etc. I still like that food.

So I'm like a recipe sleuth. It starts in one of two ways. Either I think of something -- Mmm, remember pad thai? -- and I look up the recipe to see if I could make it. I usually get to the third ingredient and say, nope, no way. Or, the second way is that I find something I've never seen before in a big, chuchi supermarket in the city. I go to Allrecipes and search and search for how I can use it. I found dried seaweed and successfully made sushi. I found plain yogurt in Oviedo and it's opened up a world of Indian. One of these days I'm going to translate all the cheese names in the Villarrica supermarket and figure out what I can do with them.

Today I felt like experimenting and tried a frappachino recipe. (Fail). And I made rosemary tea out of the rosemary in the back yard, which also lead to the chicken.

I never thought that if I went to a country I'd learn recipes from all over the world except that one place. (Although I am now, unfortunately, an expert fryer.)

But here are some of the recipes I love, with stuff that it is possible to find in Paraguay:

Chicken Scarpariello I made with rosemary growing in our back yard. For white wine I used toro viejo. Only the best!

This Aloo Phujia I made once I figured out that curcuma means tumeric. It is simple and so good and Oscar called it my rice from India and asks me to make it every third night.

This Thai Eggplant recipe is awesome, of course I just use regular eggplant and basil growing in the backyard. So good, even with low-grade soy sauce.

I wasn´t sure if I should publish that last blog. But a few friends have said, "Ugh, I know exactly how you feel."

But I´m better now. It´s good.

The thing that bothered me was quitting the radio show. It felt like quitting, failure. My show sucked and I let it suck and they wither up and die. That´s not how I want to be.

I hadn´t told the guy at the radio station yet, as I was bothered by this feeling. I mentioned it to Angelic, and she invited me to come to Oviedo every Thursday to do their show with them, her and Melissa. Yay! That feels a lot better. This is a move up, bigger market. And the show will reach the Yat. So I will now be a part of Rojapo Radio in Oviedo.

On Sunday I went to Oviedo and we went around visiting Chuchi people. One of the women said, Oh, I always listen to your show. Every thursday at 11. I learn a lot. That´s nice. More on chuchi people later...

I tried strained to integrate, and I've been feeling the frustration of grasping at a life that wasn't appearing where it should be. I didn't trust people I wanted to trust. Behind so many smiles I heard the faint rattle of a snake. People around me were so gossipy it was statistically impossible that they were gossiping about me too. I felt like I could count my real friends on one hand that had suffered a horrible table-saw accident.

My radio show was sucking. I got a message that said, "You know we can't understand what your saying, right? And could you please play the song Somos de la Calle?" Then my friend(?) at work said she heard my show. "How was it?" someone else asked. "I liked the music," she said. (Meaning not the talking) and then she laughed one of those laughs where they put the camera right in the laughing persons face and the laugh just gets louder and more menacing.

Then I found out that another friend(?) was gossiping about my porch floor being dirty. And suddenly Oscar has another crying girlfriend on his lap. He gave me yet another run-down of Paraguayan policy.

So fine. I get it. You don't fan out in Paraguay, make a million friends. You stick to your kin. The one person I actually know is a true friend to me, just stays at home with her family. You don't have a radio show.

I have Oscar. I have my fireworks-blast-damaged-hand finger-count of real friends. I can live with that. My podcast is going really well, so screw the radio. I let it all go, all that wasn't there to grasp. I'm quitting the radio show. I'm letting my friends with question marks be acquaintences period. I'm not worrying about pleasing everybody.

I caught myself having these thoughts: You just can't trust anyone besides _ and _. You just have to worry about yourself.

These are almost the exact words that came out of a Paraguayan's friend(?)'s mouth about a year ago. Back then I had been shocked and tried to convince her that it's ok, you can trust people.

Maybe I'm integrating better than I thought.

I overheard this conversation a while ago, and it's been stuck in my head ever since. I was at an event with my little host sister, going to watch her do the traditional Paraguayan dance with the big Ao Poi skirts.

Afterward, I was waiting for her to change in the back area. Two girls come in, about 10, looking like little women in their make-up. They stopped to change into their street clothes, looking a bit frazzled. One huffed: "What work it is to dance!"

The other one agreed, and then, pulling at her uniform, she said the line that sticks with me: "Our dance is our sacrifice."

It just tells you everything about a people who have maybe struggled so long that all they have left to cling to are their struggles, that a little girl would say something such as that.

Have I mentioned that, in Paraguay, you don't throw your toilet paper in the toilet, but in a little trash can next to it? Probably not, because it's just a little life detail. But it was a big adjustment for us volunteers, a reflex we never even thought of, but had to change.

How did we ever get on the subject last night, me and my Paraguayan friends at a little dinner party to make sushi? But, somehow the conversation landed on me saying, "In the U.S., we throw the paper in the toilet."

Oscar's face jerked into his "you're lying" face: tweaked to the side, eyes squinted, lips pressed -- as fast as if I'd said, "In the U.S., we fold our used toilet paper into origami frogs that come to life and hop away."

I laughed and laughed, just at his face. "En serio?" (Seriously?) he asked. "Ndejapu!" (You're lying!)

Mariela and Leidyd had the same shocked faces. Oscar said, "In the toilet? But it would clog up! It would just float there when you tried to flush it!"

It was as if I had suggested we throw our paper in the toilet, and not as if 300 million people already did it, and they were dismissing my new idea as stupid.

Also, they still didn't really believe me. "Call Sasha," I said. So we did. She corroborated my story.

But, but, Oscar had seen in movies that there are trash cans next to the toilets. But, but, where does the paper go?

After I answered all their questions, it was still, "En serio? En serio?" from all of them.

There's something about the little differences that hit you most. Not the languages, the different religions, we've all read about those. It's the tiny things that you never even think about and assume as constants, like breathing. I had never imagined that nobs on a sink would say C and F, but of course they do. Or that Christmas would be celebrated with watermelon, but it makes sense, now that I think about it.

It's the shock of finding out that those rock-hard constants are really variables, ingredients in life that can be substituted, that really shows you how small your own corner of the world is, and all the possibility that's out there.

November 7: From “The Paradox of Choice” by Barry Schwartz

"In the 1960s, psychologist Martin Seligman and his collaborators performed an experiment that involved teaching three different groups of animals to jump over a little hurdle from one side of a box to the other to escape or avoid an electric shock. One of the groups was given the task with no prior exposure to such experiments. A second group had already learned to make a different response, in a different setting, to escape from shock. Seligman and his coworkers expected, and found, that this second group would learn a bit more quickly that the first, reasoning that some of what they had learned in the first experiment might transfer to the second.

The third group of animals, also in a different setting, had been given a series of shocks that could not be escaped by any response.

Remarkably, this third group failed to learn at all. Indeed, many of them essentially had no chance to learn because they didn’t even try to escape from the shocks. These animals became quite passive, lying down and taking the shocks until the researchers mercifully ended the experiment.

Seligman and his colleagues suggest that the animals in this third group had learned from being exposed to inescapable shocks that nothing they did made a difference; that they were essentially helpless when it came to controlling their fate. Like the second group, they had also transferred to the hurdle-jumping situation lessons they had learned before -- in this case, learned helplessness.

Seligman’s discovery of learned helplessness has had a monumental impact in many different areas of psychology. Hundreds of studies leave no doubt that we can learn that we don’t have control. And when we do learn this, the consequences can be dire. Leraned helplessness can affect furture motivation to try. In can affect future ability to detect that you do have control in new situations.”

The scientists then sent in on of the group two animals to help the group three animals. At first, she was quite astonished that they were just sitting their being shocked away, while freedom was just over a small hurdle.

She made a big sweeping motion with her paws toward the hurdle, as if to say, “Jump!” By this time they had already laid down, and they just shook their heads, as if to say, “It’s no use.”

And the Group 2 animal became quite frustrated.

November 8: No, You Should Not Have Stayed Home

Before I joined the Peace Corps, I pictured the two years abroad as some kind of detour to the rest of my life, some kind of time out that I would take and then get right back on track, jump back in where I left off.

Now, it’s hard to remember that this is not my real life. That I’m in a foreign country. Sometimes it feels as easy as living. Other times when I wonder why it’s so damn hard, I remember this is supposed to be the toughest job I’ll ever love.

Then the jolt of memory comes that I’ll leave this place. My Guarani will become a party trick. I won’t have time to make Ao Po’i anymore. I won’t have a horse. I may have to work for a living. Worst of all, Oscar will not always be right next door.

If I thought about all that too much, I’d go insane.

Between the jolts, I get too comfortable. I forget I’m working 24/7 and just go on being Paulette, instead of Paulita, the volunteer. I don’t feel like trying to make more contacts. I don’t try to get out in the community more often. I don’t keep these social norms in mind.

I was in bed reading one of my non-fiction books I’ve become obsessed with, perhaps seeking at least a book-learning understanding of society if not a real one. Sandra, my host sister, invited me to play volleyball. Though I wanted to stay on my butt, I said, No, I should go.

I walk, slump shouldered, to a bunch of crazy kids, mostly boys about 12, playing over a net tied between two twisted tree limbs sticking out of the ground. Most were barefoot.

It’s been a year since I touched a volleyball, so I spent the first few games embarrassing myself. The rotations were like a shame cycle, peaking at when I had to serve, and the ball when everywhere but over the net. The children have no problem expressing themselves, meaning they laughed their asses off at me.

I should have stayed home.

When we sat out, Sandra showed me a game played with the inside of a flower, with the little stems that have a head on them, trying to knock the other’s off.

We played another game, and I finally remembered how to serve and everyone cheered, because when I can serve, I can serve, overhanded. I noticed during the game all these photos around us: boys sitting in a doorstep. Two chicken, one after the other, walking up the steps of bricks left of a half-crumbled wall.

During the next break, I talked with this kid Pablo, who’s studying English. We talked almost all in English, with this other little kid just looking on. Pablo told me that he learns all his English from watching movies, every night.

We got up to play another game. The sun was gone, and the sky was blue with pink cotton candy. Pablo was first to serve. He held the ball up, and paused to look back at me. He said in his English, “Stop this Mother F*ckers.” Then turned back and served it up.

I was asked by an aunt to put up a new list of things I could use for a possible Christmas package. So I will so ever tackily do that here:

Clothing catalogs for Ao Poi ideas for the co-op

Coconut milk (I have all these recipes...)Aerosol sunblockTester tube of Chanel Chance if you can find one (I've used one in a year, shows you how much I need it)Goodwill/used super-light long sleeve shirt for horse-riding and being outside

Light face lotion with high SPF

Just any old cotton double sheet if you have one lying around. (My sheets are made of polyester. Great idea in a country with 100-degree summers)Red Kool-Aid or Gator-ade packetsOne of those dish washing brushes with a handle. (Why did those never catch on south of the equator?)

I love you guys and as I've said I'm really fine and don't need anything. However, I am a struggling single horse mom, so I'll take any kind offerings.

Our arrival was a little rough. We weren't sure if the guy who sold us our tours was ripping us off. The Full Moon tour was sold out. I wasn't sure if the ATM would work, then I had no idea of the exchange rate for pesos.

At our hotel, they told us there'd been a mistake and they didn't have a room for us. They tried to get us to stay with the lady who lives across the street. Yipes. But we just ended up staying in a dorm-style room that first night.

Then we went to the Falls.

Iguazu is like Disney, where it attracts people from all over the world. I love to hear all the languages. Oscar and I talked a lot in Guarani. I realized how much I know. If I want to tell you about the time Aunt Norma broke her arm, it's Spanish. But "Let's go eat lunch," "Where'd I put my money," "Did you eat the last of the Cheetos?" That kind of stuff I can do in Guarani. It was like we had our own little code language.

When we first came over the threshold and I saw the waterfalls, I just ballooned up with emotion. It's like all that water flowing over everywhere just fills you up with the wonder of the world. It's amazing. There are rainbows everywhere in the mist, with bird looping through.

That day we went for the boat ride. You go through the jungle down to the boats, then ride through the canyon of the river until the falls become visible in the distance. Then they loop you through the mist, which feels like someone spraying you from a fire hydrant.

That night we went to dinner at this really nice place, but we were so beat we almost fell over in our asado.

DAY 2

We got up early to go on a forest adventure. The first part was rappeling. I had to tell Oscar the story of how I tried to go on a rock climbing trip then remembered I'm dizzily afraid of heights. There were these five little girls who went like brave campers before me. Then I went screaming all the way. I finally tried to look up and jump like the pros, and right when I did that, I came swinging in and landed on my shin bone.

(OK, we're headed out for day 3. I'll write more later and put up pics!...)

The story is that I got a horse for 1,900,000 Guaranies, a decent price. I’m learning to ride it well. I go out in the countryside to let the tension in my body release, to remember that there are tadpoles and wildflowers and the whole world isn’t ao po’i and irregular verbs.

The story is that I got a horse for 2,500,000 Guaranies, that I got totally ripped off. The story is I was thrown from the horse. And the latest story is that I go out in the countryside to meet men, that people have seen me out there with them.

That’s the story, and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it. As soon as a hear it, my helplessness spread from my chest all through my body, fight or flight. Gossip is a ghost that has a life of its own, so I can’t just punch it. And to fly away from everywhere that people whispered is to never stop fleeing. So I sit here with it. My little nature walks, perhaps the thing in which I am most innocent, turned into something so seedy.

Oscar gave me one of his talks, where he says, “Let me tell you how it is.” He said that any little spark, a girl stopping on the corner to talk to her classmate, for example, could light the chisme fire. The next day, the corner is his bed and talking is another verb.

A widow who goes out in the countryside to collect branches to make brooms is said to go out there to meet men. When someone gets new shoes, people say he stole to something else. When Oscar was younger, people said he was a drug addict. Though he’d never even smoked a cigarette, his mom beat him anyway.

Any woman walking alone can be a target. Hadn’t I ever noticed that his sister never went out alone? I hadn’t. It’s sad, really, he said, to be a woman here.

At what level now do I give in? Another volunteer suggested I bring a little kid with me every time I go. That seems silly. I like to be alone.

I guess I have my people who know me, and the rest will talk. Though it makes me crazy to think how those groups might overlap. Providing something to talk about in terere circles, my service to the community.

Hello there one and all. This is your niece/daughter/sister/friend/stranger, Paulita. Today I´d love to show you this beautiful craft of Ao Po´í, and guilt you into buying some for Christmas.

Ha ha, just kidding. But seriously. I thought I´d take some photos and see if anyone was interested in getting a tablecloth, placemat set, or some nice bathroom towels you can yell at your children for using.

These make the perfect gift for a crafty wife or mistress, older people who remember a time when everything was made by hand and they liked it that way, or perhaps as a gift to yourself to have a reason to mention your niece/daughter/sister/friend that´s in the Peace Corps, of whom you are burstingly proud. All tablecloths come with matching Ao Po´í napkins:

They come in whatever color, with matching or contrasting stitching, in square, rectangular or round. We also accept custom orders!

Here we have some designs:

All items are finished in crochet, with a variety of styles available.

Here are some more items and designs.Tablerunner

Bath towels

Very Christmasy indeed!

As for prices, they depend on the size of tablecloth or number of items, but here are a few just to give you an idea: Tablecloth, 6 feet, with 6 napkins included: $60 Table runner, 3 feet: $10Bath towel: $6 eachPlacemats: $5 each Shipping extra. In the past I´ve shipped a shirt and it was $7. I´d guess the most would be $20 for a big tablecloth.

Have I told you lately that I love you? Any questions just email me at guaranime@gmail.com. Thanks!

Today I had my one-year visit from my boss, Elisa, and Betsy, a former-volunteer-turned coordinator. I had been using this date as a deadline to get our SPA Grant proposal ready. SPA grants can be up to $5,000, and can increase that amount that Paraguayans give a crap about your presence up to 5,000%.

Auxi and I wrote up our proposal for a prize package to get the co-op online. New computer, internet service, web design, digital camera. More than $2,000. Yipes.

We presented the proposal today and it went well. Also, I presented certificates in basic computer skills to Mariela, Auxi and Rossana. The presentation was a little sentimental. They told my bosses I was doing a great job and I was really involved. I said I was proud of them and that they are all my students and my teachers. It was almost as if I wasn't laying across Oscar's chest a few weeks ago, sobbing about how no one cares that I'm there or wants to work with me.

My boss had to ask Auxi all these questions about me, which was weird because I was there. For that reason or because she really meant it, she said I had a good rapport with my students and I was really helping. Then she asked what they needed to do if they wanted me to stay longer. That's nice.

But when the empanadas are all eaten, the coke has been drank and the meeting's over, will they actually form the committee, show up, not text? It's my job to keep hoping, and to hold out a $2,000 carrot.

PICS TO COME

I read this book that’s technically about Evolutionary Psychology, but in the end I think it also has everything to do with the business of World Saving.

It’s about how all our little funny quirks, all the seemingly different cultures of the world, are really just a product of the process that promoted those habits that made us more likely to have babies who had babies. It’s about how natural selection set the rules for the human brain to be played out on an entirely different board. “We live in cities and suburbs and watch TV and drink beer,” says the author, Robert Wright. “All the while being pushed and pulled by feelings designed to propagate our genes in a small hunter-gatherer population.”

These habits are from back when, for example, any rise in power could mean more influence in dividing up meat after a big kill. More for your kin = they survive longer = your genes get passed on. Hence those who had more drive for power had more babies, and now we are all their decedents, feeling some mysterious need to be the one holding the remote.

You can see how this might cause problems.

When politicians rise to power, they tend to have lots of sex with young, attractive women. This still surprises us. But when the rules were set in our brains, the entire point of having power was to convince as many young women as possible that you have the means to take care of their offspring if they wouldn't mind just letting you get some action. These women, on the other hand, evolved to swoon at men with power, as “emotions are just evolutions executioners.” That's true because if we’d never developed birth control, more sex would equal more babies and more genes. But we’re still surprised with every politician caught, even though, as Henry Kissinger said "Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac."

What efforts can we put forth to thwart the errands of evolution that clash with our current morality? I thought of how we do it in Paraguay, of all the problems we’re sent here to fix.

There’s something we now call corruption. When resources were tight and there’s just not enough for everyone, our genes drove us to find a way to provide for our own family (who carry our genes) and our friends (people who seem to have the same genes). Taking a bit more for your own, sounds like corruption to me. But remember how we all decided we were going to be fair and call it democracy? Unfortunately, we never evolved an off switch for this desire to help our own. We continue beyond helping our own survive to helping our own take vacations to Tahiti with government funds. Come to the rescue, anti-corruption slide presentation!

How about hypocrisy as well? We’ve all heard leaders stand up and say, “I do so much for the community,” while knowing that they take money in one way or another. Why shouldn’t they, really, use both the rise in status from their bragging and eat their money too, if they can get away with it? Now, investigative journalists!

There’s also the matter of gossip, which, as it turns out, not only exists wherever you go in the world, but follows the same outline. Says the author, “Knowing who is sleeping with whom, who is angry at whom, who cheated whom, and so on, can inform social maneuvering for sex and other vital resources. Indeed, the sorts of gossip that people in all cultures have an apparently inherent thirst for... match up well with the sorts of information conducive to fitness [to reproduce]. Trading gossip is one of the main things friends do, and it may be one of the main reasons friendships exist.” Go, team work seminars!

What we’re really doing is wrestling this animal, trying to figure how to cage something that’s inside of us. But I have another idea. This evolved animal has striking similarities to Eckhart Tolle’s ego, which strives to be special and have power and be rich, is never really satisfied, as Wright says, “We are designed to believe the next goal will bring bliss, and the bliss is designed to disintegrate shortly after we get there.” And if we just take a step back and look at that, we can see how silly it is, how silly we are to be obsessed by it.

If someone thinks they want to save the world, do they really mean to create more wealth and productivity, or do they really mean peace and happiness? Because, unfortunately, our joy was not factored into evolution: “Our happiness was never high among natural selection’s priorities, and even if it had been, happiness wouldn’t naturally arise in an environment so different from the context of our evolution.”

If saving the world means finding peace and happiness, then here the science and spirituality climb both sides of the problem to reach the same conclusion: The only way for us, the puppets, to free ourselves, is to look up and see the strings. After that, they’re quite easy to clip.

The answer, to me then, is not one more anti-this committee or anti-that seminar. It’s education on the fact that we are animals competing with each other to feed not our bodies, now, but our egos. And others are starving so that our egos may live large. It’s so animalistic. And, I think now, only after we see the animal in us can we find the human.