Peace Corps Paraguay has a newsletter that they send out every time a new group swears in and an old one swears out (so, three times a year). It's called the Kuatia Ñe´e, which is Guaraní for The Paper that Talks. We call it the Kuat, and this is my despedida (going-away) section questionairre:

Name: Angelíc Fink

Sector: Rural Economic Development (that was neither rural

nor very economic, but there was a lot of development going

on)

Site/ What your site is known for: Coronel Oviedo— they tried

to keep it on the down‐low but the word’s out about our

amazing terminal

Nickname in site and/or what you are known for in site:

Angélica, la Alta Americana que siempre anda en bici,

Hermossss‐saaa

Favorite bus line: Any bus I want, I’m sure you’ve heard of our awesome terminal, every bus who’s any bus goes through it

Best piropo given or received: "Ah, vos sos Cuerpo de Paz, eh?

Cúando podés venir a mi casa para un poco intercambio cultural? ("Oh, you´re Peace Corps, huh? When can you come over to my house for a little intercultural exchange?")

Favorite Paraguayan phrase: Haikue!

I never thought I would: There’s not much I never thought I’d do, and I’m proud to say I’ve now done it

What I will miss most: My super calidad Paraguayan peeps

What I am leaving behind: Hopefully, Paul Bunyan sized legends (She was 3 meters tall, and boy could she give a charla!)

Most embarrassing moment in service: Having a 96‐year‐old lady on the street feel up and down my calf, red‐faced bawling,

and saying "Iporá, iporá!" while I stand awkwardly and my friend takes pictures

Best poop story: Well, it’s not a story so much as a rough month where I found out I’d done it way after the fact several

times. Where I come from we call that sharting, but I´ve never asked how to say that in Guarani

Describe your language situation: They tell me I speak Spanish perfectly, but I’d never know it if I don’t

Favorite yerba brand: Kurupí when I need a little extra kick,Teragui naranja when I’m just kickin’ it

Any cool skills learned in Paraguay? Make my own mead, grow my own food, talk around a subject for ten minutes without actually saying what I want

Favorite Brad quote: "Wow! That t‐shirt fits you perfectly!" (as he innocently runs his hands across my tits)

What does Elmer mean? I have no idea! I’m not even sure we’re having the same conversation ... And why is he so angry?

Favorite PC moment: When my favorite English student learned to apply "What a whore you are" correctly in conversation. I tear up just thinking about it, I{m so proud.

Greatest accomplishment: Having a jóven tell me the camp I’d busted my butt over for months was the best 3 days of all his

19 years

What was your 4th goal? Be coordinator, and oh, look!

If PC based their motto on your service, what would it be?

Either, "Peace Corps ‐ there is nothing better for destroying your ego and building your self‐esteem" OR "Peace Corps ‐ no querés desarrollar un poco?" )Don´t you want to develop a little?

Advice for future Gs: Stick it out ‘til the end – you’ll be amazed what you’re capable of

Future plans? Start a sustainable school in South America

What will you use the readjustment allowance for? Traveling! I’m rich, I tell you! And I’m never going back!

First thing I will do and/or eat when I am back in the US: Indian food and hours around the kitchen table, passing the bot‐

tle and catching up, and then leave again in a month

G‐30 says about AngelÍc:  Angelíc said two things at staging that I now know say a whole lot about her. 1. She paid off

crazy amount of loans just to join PC, which says she is extremely hardworking, devoted, disciplined, and determined. 2.When asked how we all were feeling when about to leave for the airport and everyone gave regular responses she says, “I’m

f-ing stoked”, which says she rocks!...a goddess…quite possibly the

coolest girl I’ve ever met…: Allergic to wheat, but I heard she

cured it with some silent treatment…. Good luck as coordinator, you´re a great friend.., Awesome lady! The new CEDers are lucky to have you as their coordinator… high energy, I wanna bottle it and take a hit (every other day, so as to not OD)…tall,enthusiastic, deep, friendly

July, my last month in site, my last month as a regular Peace Corps volunteer, was full of ups and downs.

So first there was the 4th of July party at the Embassy... Look how fun these people are. And I get to be their Coordinator!

By mid-month we´re still going strong and we have the Re-connect camp for the youth that went to the first camp in January (see January blog if you don´t know what I´m talking about). My kids Lucero and Fabio presented the Comedor project (See June blog) in the Project Fair. There were lots of games, of course, and they made plans to start a national youth volunteer and leadership organization.

Then shit gets real and all the sudden it´s the last time that I´m doing everything I´m doing. My last Tuesday, my community center Kavichu´i threw me a going-away party. And the thing about Paraguayans is that they cry at emotional times, and how am I supposed to resist that? So I don´t.

Since I´m on a roll, I go straight from there to my last English class where we bake a cake (in English), give certificates, and I have to say goodbye to my very best Paraguayan friends, the Barandas.

B

B

B

B

B

And the last day of July, when I´m at my family´s house for Sunday lunch for the last time, my Abuela (grandma) starts talking about how much she loves me, and starts crying, and my mamá had heard her from the kitchen and peeks her head out, crying also, and my sister Ninfa sees this and starts crying, too, and then me and my cousin Liliana go down, and we´re all crying together, and laughing about it.

And the next day I move to Asunción. Stay tuned for August.

So, for those of you who aren´t keeping track, my 2 year anniversary here in Paraguay was at the end of May and my normal service is done in August. I´m staying an extra year as a Volunteer Coordinator, which means I´ll be moving to Asunción, the capital, and work in the office. Here´s how I spent the month of June:

It´s amazing what you can get away with putting in the window of an upscale mall when people don´t speak English. Invierno means winter, and in Paraguay, that means no heat and in my case, no hot water. I spent a good chunk of time in the following: 2 pairs of socks, boots, longjohns, jeans, 4-5 shirts, coat, hat, mittens, scarf (and that was just to sleep). But luckily the cold comes and goes, so good stuff happened between those cold snaps.

I turned 31 on the 19th, so I got myself a little tattoo. It´s a delta for Change and an Infinity, so the idea is Always growing, changing, developing, changing lives forever, this too shall pass, impermanence, etc.

And there was a lot of hanging out in general, taking advantage of my last bit of time with Oviedo friends.

And then there were the Couchsurfers coming through that are always fun.

And we all said goodbye to Jenna, who left a little early before heading to Korea.

But in all this fun, I actually did do some work. The group that I will be Coordinating for was in training, so I helped with that...

And my youth and I were finishing up our project to help a Comedor in need (which is like a soup kitchen for street kids). We got them donations of furniture and food.

So that was June. Stay tuned for July!

It is amazing what a difference a year makes! We just finished a campaign, "Basta al Abuso Infantil" (Stop Child Abuse). My contact Juan and I, when we planned this project last year, were completely stressed and exhausted for the weeks leading up to the event. The whole idea of an "Awareness Walk" was just weird to everyone, including us, and we had to make up the rules as we went.

This year, we found an NGO working toward the same goal and teamed up with them to plan simultaneous walks in 4 major Paraguayan cities. It was actually a week-long campaign which included a series of talks - we taught psychology students from a local college to give talks to parents on how to teach children without violence, and the parents all raved about how helpful it was. The week ended with a Walk. 300 kids and adults walked from CCAB, my NGO, down the main road through the city to a plaza downtown where we had a fair with clowns, facepaint, balloon animals, a bouncy castle, art performances and prizes. There were signs and bandanas and music, and we gave out pamphlets about how to prevent and avoid child abuse. We were in newspapers and on TV. It was probably even better than last year´s walk, and it was so easy! Going around to ask for donations, people remembered CCAB, remembered the walk from last year, knew us. Before that, CCAB had been doing good things for 24 years and nobody knew who they were.

Below are some pics and there are more on facebook.

I heard about the Vipassana Meditation Course from another volunteer. It´s great, she said. It´s really hard, you go 10 days without talking, you get up at 4 every morning, they serve only breakfast and lunch, no dinner, and you sit and meditate for 11 hours a day. You should try it. So... I was in. And this is how it went down:

Arrival day- It´s Paraguay, meaning there were poor directions, the cab driver lied about knowing where the place was, we wandered around the campo for an hour following one set of bad directions after another. By the time we arrived, I´d come to the conclusion that this country will never advance if they don´t learn how to make some goddamn signs. We found it pretty much by accident, and got there just in time to watch the bus we´d missed unload. 60 people, everyone from backpacking hippies to campo housewives, 18-70 or so, speaking English, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and German, disembark. They separate the men and women and show us to our rooms. The schedule runs about an hour and a half behind and by the time we start with the first meditation, I´d also decided that this country will never advance until they learn to do things on time. I am extra tired and grumpy. Talking stops for the next 10 days (although we are allowed to talk in whispers to the assistant teachers about physical needs). We are called into the Sala de Meditación and assigned a blue nylon square that is to be our spot for the duration of the course. As we enter, there is an older, white-haired lady sitting crosslegged on a low alter and wrapped from the neck down in fringed, white shawls. Somebody thinks she´s a golden calf, I think sarcastically. Then she hits play on the Ipod beside her, which starts this weird-ass chanting in hindi. What the hell did I get myself into? I wonder. Some of the people had been there before, so when the chanting ended, they knew they were supposed to respond with Sadhu, Sadhu, Sadhu. I refused to agree to something until I knew what it actually meant, but it turns out that he chants the rules of the course (Abstain from killing anything, stealing, sexual activity, lying, and intoxicants) and then says May all beings be happy, to which the response is Well said, we agree. I collapse into bed at 9, but still manage to to oversleep the 4am bell the next day by and hour and a half.

Day 1- The schedule everyday is as follows:

4am – Wake up bell

4:30-6:30 – Meditate in sala or your room

6:30-8 – Breakfast and rest

8-9 – Group meditation in the sala

9-11 – Meditate in sala or your room (based on instructions)

11-1 – Lunch and rest

1-2:30 – Meditation in sala or your room

2:30-3:30 – Group meditation in the sala

3:30-5 – Meditate in sala or your room (based on instructions)

5-6 – Tea break

6-7 – Group meditation in the sala

7-8:15 – CD course

8:15-9 - Group meditation in sala

9-9:30 – Questions or prep for bed

9:30 – Lights out

My legs kill. I can´t concentrate on my breath as instructed (natural breath, not forced, because we must accept things as they are, not how we wish them to be) for more that 30 seconds at a time because I´m busy thinking of all the things I didn´t get done before I left and all the things I need to do when I get back. I´m still overly tired and nap during every break, but can´t get away with napping other times because Vanessa, the women´s helper, goes around and checks our rooms to make sure we don´t cheat. I shift on my cushions and crack every knuckle every 20 minutes or so. I open my eyes and peek occasionally and everyone else seems to be sitting perfectly straight with no problem. Damnit, I suck at this. During the CD course that night, Goenka, the Indian founder of the course, says that the first day is hard for everyone and that it gets better. Whew. 9:00 sharp I´m in bed.

Day 2 – I get up on time and carry all my bedding material to the sala, propping myself on a mountain of pillows, sleeping bag, cushions and jackets, trying to get comfortable. It works a little and I am much less grumpy, but still in pain. Now we are to pay attention to the sensation of the air passing through our noses, and my monkey mind is still swinging from branch to branch, thought to thought. If I had to guess, I think I´m actually keeping my attention for a minute, but who knows as there are no clocks. The day crawls. Goenka understands though, and puts it all in perspective with one anecdotal story after another. It will get better, I tell myself.

Day 3 – By this time, my mind has used up all the normal thoughts, and is reaching DEEP into my subconscious archives to pull out dusty 80s sitcoms. Remember Perfect Strangers? Oh, I do. It´s the one about Balki, the charmingly naive Greek immigrant from the island of Mepos, who comes to live with his ever-so neurotic, all-American cousin Larry. As you may have guessed, laugh-tracked hilarity ensues. Or what about Small Wonder? The one with the normal suburban family whose inventor dad builds them a robot daughter, so life-like in every way that nobody seems to think it´s strange that she talks like a robot or is turned off and put in a broomcloset at night. And just in case you´ve forgotten every word to the theme song, don´t worry! I´ve apparently had it packed in mothballs for 20 years just to bring it out now, running on repeat for 10 straight days. She´s a smaaaallllll wonder, pretty and bright with soft curls. She´s a smaaaallllll wonder, a girl unlike other girls. . . I´ll spare you. Other than that, I´m sitting a little better (not much, but a little), and paying attention to the feel of the air under my nose pretty well, even with the soundtrack. Then they tell us that the next day, we´ll actually start the Vipassana meditation, meaning that all those hours of aching tendons and twisted joints has just been preparation for the real work. Yikes. But at least we´re really getting into something, not sure what.

Day 4 – The Vipassana starts by moving the area of concentration from under the nose to the top of the head and we concentrate on the sensations in a tiny circle, then move it down, inch by inch, over every single part of the body, deeply focusing on whatever we are feeling. It can be anything from numbness, tingling, heat or cold to the sensation of the air or clothes on skins, but whatever is really there, not imagined or desired. We pass down the body in a slow wave and I´m tingling, tingling deeply everywhere, and it´s better than any drug I´ve ever tried (umm...er, imagined, since I´ve never tried drugs, Pop). My legs don´t hurt, and I´m thinking that if that´s what this was all leading up to, it was so worth it. We´re turned loose after 2 hours to have our snack and outside, all the greens are brighter, all the details sharper. I´m savoring every sensation of the orange I´m eating, investigating the tiny juice capsules.

But alasit quickly goes from the very best feeling to the very worst when we start the next session and are told that from now on, at least in the group sessions, we are not allowed to move. We can neither seek pleasurable feelings nor avoid pain. Instead, we must face it, realize that our ego is manifesting emotional pain as physical pain, accept it, work through it to detach from it, and release it. Read that last bit again . . . yeah. Easier said than done. Before, we tried to stay still, but could shift or adjust as necessary. Now, a thousand lifetimes of pain passed each seconds. I once got in a motorcycle accident without a helmet where, after hitting a sign, I was thrown forward, hit the ground with my face, flipped and slid 10 feet along the grass. This. Was. Worse. My thought processes went something like this (may not be appropriate for children):

Oh fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. AAAAHHHHH! What the fuck TIME is it?! Ok, concentrate Fink! (I call myself Fink when I´m giving myself a stern talking to) Concentrate! From the top of the head, down, down- fuck! I can´t do this. God, my legs kill. I can´t feel my foot at all. . .maybe if I just move it an inch, they won´t even notice. Ok, here we go. . .Oh GOD! That´s WORSE! Move it back, move it back! Down the face now, sensations. . .She´s a smaaaallllll wonder, pretty and bright – oh, shut the fuck up! Fuckfuckfuck! What TIME is it?!

The next few days are a little rough.

Day 5 - I spend 2 hours in the morning trying to practice not moving. Did you ever see Siriana when they ripped out George Clooney´s fingernails? It was kind of like that. Then I go to breakfast and my special bowl of rice (my celiac alternative to toast and cereal) is not awaiting me. I find Vanessa to see what happened.

V – I guess they forgot to make it.

Me – Ok, well I´ll go shower while they make it then.

V – (apparently doing a Lumburgh from Office Space impression) yeeeaaaahhhh, we have a class now, so they´re not gonna have time for that. You can have fruit though.

Me- (staring incredulously) You mean I´m just supposed to not eat? Are you kidding me?

V- Tell me something, why can´t you have milk? There´s another celiac here and she let me know, but it´s not a big deal to her at all, and she drinks milk.

I´m staring daggers because she´s now blaming me for their forgetting to make the rice, as though I´ve been doing this just to inconvenience them. My whisper is a hiss as I tell her that there are different levels and some people have problems with milk, eggs, soy, and peanuts because the proteins are similar. I haven´t fully finished when I see that she´s tapping her temple with her first two fingers and giving me a condescending look, smile turned down at the corners in a mix of humor and pity. I stop, waiting to see what the fuck that´s supposed to mean and she whispers that Todo está en la mente, still tapping. It´s all in the mind.

Oh. No. She. Di´int. That bitch did not just tell me I was making up this horrible disease that I´ve suffered with for 3 years, that the medical tests all lied, because they forgot to make some fucking rice. I am furious nearly to the point of tears and stomp off. The entire day, I can´t concentrate enough to meditate because I´m too busy fuming with hatred for Vanessa. I´m exhausted, hungry, my legs are screaming, and I cry when I´m alone. 12 hours pass like that, and then in the CD course that night, Goenka drops the little nugget that most diseases are all in the head. He had mysterious migraines for years before starting Vipassana. Shit. This hits me like a Mack truck. My mind whirrs, wondering if it´s really possible that I can get rid of this, then wondering how I made it up when I didn´t even know what gluten was before the diagnosis. By the time I go to bed, I´ve decided I´m going to cure it.

Days 6 and 7 – The next 2 days pass with hours and hours of mental screaming. I´m wrestling with the celiac´s idea, with the pain (although I´ve taken out the sleeping bag and I can now sit for half an hour before it starts). I´m getting up at 4 with no problem now and eating much less than normal, but don´t feel hungry. I´ve gotten a rhythm where I know when to rest more and when to push it, but it is hard every minute. There is the tiniest glimmer of light at the end of this tunnel, but I have no idea where it leads.

Day 8 – The third straight day of excruciating pain, and in the midst of the mid-afternoon session (always the hardest one), things take a surprising turn. I will preface this by saying that I turn out to not be crazy. I´m in the middle of a mental scream, not unlike those of natural childbirth, when I mentally split in two. One of me is the me with the body, my ego, in horrible pain. I call her AngEgo. The other is like a hollogram version of me standing to the left of my body (picture that Simpson´s episode where Bart sells his soul and then sees everyone else with the hollogram souls playing beside them). She is my true self, calm and tranquila like Buddha, and I call her Angelíc. First, both selves just look at each other for a moment and wonder what just happened (I empathize with everyone with multiple personalities). Then Angelíc grabs AngEgo´s face and kisses her all over, saying I love you, I love you, I love you so much! We can do this, we´re gonna work through this, I love you. So that´s a good start. AngEgo´s leg´s hurt, and each time a new pain comes up, Angelíc asks where that pain is coming from. AngEgo knows everytime, and will blurt out the source. That´s my mom! Then Angelíc goes into calm counselor mode and slowly and logically walks her though all the steps to clear out the pain. What bothers you about that? Why do you think that is? What can you do about that? Etc etc, until AngEgo comes to the natural conclusion that whatever was wrong is over now and it´s time to let it go. Then Angelíc tells her to do just that, Ang, let it go...let it go...come on now, you can do it. And then the pain is just gone and they smile at each other for a moment until the next pain comes along and they again deal with it step by step. I know how this sounds, but they say that deep down we really do know the answers to all our problems, but we feed our egos by not admitting it (not only in the course, but I´ve heard that a million different places in different ways), so this really makes sense. I spend the whole day knocking out one problem after another, one pain after another, and in the last session, encounter one that twists my legs in knots and makes my lower back numb. What´s that one? Asks Angelíc. That´s the celiac´s, winces AngEgo. I can´t get through it and end up moving before the hour is up, exhausted, but I know I´ll be facing it the next day.

Day 9 – I can´t walk you through the hours of conversation that it took to clear out that celiac´s issue, but I can tell you that it was deep, DEEP in there, that I never would have even known it was a fixable problem without this course kicking my ass, that it was tied to mom issues and cries for attention and control issues and identity issues, that I learned I had a pretty unhealthy relationship with food in general and that it was all tied together . . . AND that I cured it. Half-way through the day, Angelíc says Let it go! Let it go. . . and it goes, the pain just floats away, and from that point on, I started sitting in a half-lotus pose with only 1 pillow underneath me for 1-2 hours with no pain at all. I can also tell you that since then, I´ve had cake, milk, cheese, beer, and bread and had no stomach pains or symptoms at all. I can tell you that cake is DELICIOUS and that my entire life will be so different from here on out. I can tell you that if you want to dig out major emotional and physical problems by the roots, go to www.dhamma.org and work for it.

Day 10 – After the morning meditation, we are allowed to talk, and it is like an explosion, with everyone trying to get to know these people they´ve been silently surrounded by for 10 days. Everyone´s experience was totally different, as everyone is on their own path. I tell Vanessa about how I hated her and about how she was right, and she cries and hugs me, tells me it´s such a hard thing to tell a person, but it´s true, so what could she do? They tell us that it´s not about labels and rites and rituals, but that the course stems from a truly enlightened desire for everyone´s happiness, and they teach us a meditation where we eminate love to everyone around us. It´s not easy, it takes work every day, and I´m no Buddha, for sure, but it´s all worth it.

My friend Anita Krishnan is an amazing musician and wrote this song that so aptly sums up all that Paraguay and the volunteer experience is that I had to share it.

It´s even better when she sings it, but technology being what it is here, the lyrics will have to do for now.

THE BEAUTIFUL BLAND OF PARAGUAY

Where no means no and yes means no

And I´ll be back means no return

With awkward parties, awkward silence,

The social scene´s got lots to learn.

They drink their soda like it´s water,

Brush their teeth just once a year.

Though teeth keep falling, they keep smiling,

Igual no mas, to them, it´s clear...

The men, they cheat. The women gossip,

The food is meat, there ain´t no faucet.

And in the heat, the power goes out so many times.

And the bugs they drive me crazy

And it´s so hot, it makes me lazy,

in Paraguay.

Cook on the floor, breathe in the fumes,

It´s really quite a smell and a sight.

They´d be better off using my house,

which heats up by day and cooks me at night.

Hey, long time! Who´ve you fucked lately?

Wouldn´t quite call that question stately.

In a way, us girls are lucky,

Women don´t care with whom we´re fucky.

The chipa´s hard and dry but not my neighbor´s,

Pays her friends in sexual favors...

For the things she wants like food and clothes and beer.

But who am I to judge, I just sit on my porch, thinkin´...

I´m so lucky to live here.

They sweep the dirt yards and water them too,

Latrine´s may splash you back when you poo (ooh...ooh...ooh)

Diarrhea´s so common it´s hardly diseasy

But oh, oh, oh on a long bus ride, it´ll make you SO uneasy,

YEAH!

Niko, tallarin and terere

Asado, mate, ere´erea,

Mandioca, sopa, and chipa up the guazu

Jopara, who needs a bra...

don´t you just LOVE it where we are?

In Paraguay.

We smile and say ADIOS,

And children love me.

The full moon lights the sky above me,

And people take me in as I if I were their own.

And looking back on what I´ve learned, and who I´ve done, and how I´ve changed,

I call Paraguay my home.

The men, they cheat. The women gossip.

The food is meat, there ain´t no faucet.

And in the heat, the power goes out so many times,

But even with so many things wrong,

Here, I feel like I belong...

In the beautiful...

The beautiful land,

The beautiful bland of Paraguay.

It is all this and more.

···

I figured I´d also give the update on my projects:

Summer is finishing up, so camps are done for a while, until July for winter break. The project that my jóvenes decided was to provide tables, benches and food for a comedor (place that feeds meals to street kids), so we´ve combined with my youth group to work on that. I finished a second world map in the community center

Kavichu´i.

We´ve realized that the government cannot be depended upon (who knew?), so the bakery is nixed, but we´ve decided to concentrate on a soap business (detergents, house and body liquid soaps, etc) and I´m starting s series of weekly workshops to teach how to make the products and how to plan and run the business. At my NGO CCAB, we´re planning the 2nd annual awareness walk (you may remember it from last year), but this year is about preventing and stopping child abuse, and we´re combining with other organizations and NGOs to make it national.

English class, english lunches, and the radio program are all still going strong, and I´ve also started teaching spanish to a swedish guy, Emanuel, who is here volunteering with CCAB, as well as a penpal thing with all the spanish classes of a teacher in New Orleans.

And through it all, I´m still squeezing in an amazing amount of social time, parties, Carnaval and Couchsurfers.

Kristen, Anthony, me and Patrik

With my couchsurfers, Patrik and Anthony

Andréa, Liz, Davíd and Charlie

Andréa, Liz and me

Lindsay´s birthday

It started the second Meli, Liz and I got off the plane in Uruguay. It was the complete shock at how awesome the country is and how different it is than Paraguay, which, until then, had been my only experience of South America, and pretty much what I pictured all of South America to be like. I´ve taken the liberty of compiling a numbered list of just some of the things that are awesome about Uruguay.

On the plane, there was an article in the in-flight magazine all about how Uruguay is

(1) one of the world leaders in environmental issues. They are incredibly progressive with alternative power sources and the whole country is

(2)REALLY clean. And there are

(3) trashcans all over the place that were actually used! Then we got on the bus from the airport

(4) in an orderly fashion, meaning not having to elbow out old ladies and stepping over kids to get a seat (survival of the fittest in PY, I make no apologies), and they formed a LINE (!) and the bus was

(5) so clean, quiet, comfortable, and pleasant. Gliding silently over the

(6) shady streets, there was no black smoke spewing out the tailpipe, and there was a

(7) passenger limit that was obeyed (meaning no cramming people in like sardines until you can´t breath and having to be shoved into armpits and crotches whenever anyone needs to get off)! So in this extremely pleasant place, I was questioning the guy next to me about the country. How is Uruguay, I asked.

(8)Tranquilo, he said. And indeed, the entire time we were there, everyone we saw was super tranquilo,

(9) nice, super cool, and helpful. He also said that there was

(10) Public Healthcare and

(11) Free education through college. He said the worst thing was the

(12) weather because it got down to 2 degrees celsius sometimes in the winter (just to clarify, that´s at night, and still above freezing). He explained that it´s so cold like that since they´re

(13) on the ocean. Getting off the bus, we followed the

(14) correct directions to get to the hostel(yeah, they told the truth whether or not they know where something was), and then could explain it clearly in their

(15) correct Spanish with cool accents. We dropped our stuff off at the hostel (since there is

(16) tourism and culture, there are things like hostels), and walked around the city, amongst all the

(17) old architecture and pretty buildings. We passed lots of

(18) artisans selling handmade crafts and crossed streets in

(19) crosswalks, where the drivers waited because

(20) pedestrians have the right of way. (We never got used to this, so we kept hesitating at the curb, thinking they were going to run us down.) We passed lots and LOTS of

(21) hot guys, who

(22) didn´t catcall and yell about what they wanted to do to us, and lots of

(23) dads playing with and taking care of their kids.

Passengers standing Maximum 18

There was a Carnival parade while we were in Montevideo

We did a lot of shopping. The things I bought here are spectacular.

After 2 days of that pleasantness, we decided to go to Punto del Diablo to visit some of the many

(24) beautiful beaches, where the

(25) sun was not too strong to stay out all day, but was still pleasant and warm, the sand was soft, and the cool water was shallow far out into to ocean, working on our

(26) tans (this concept does not exist in Paraguay, the slightest goldening of the skin is considered burnt), and watching people

(27) surfing. We hung out with some of the

(28) booming hippy population and they told us that

(29) pot is neither legal nor illegal in Uruguay, and that although

(30) everything seemed extremely orderly and controlled, the

(31) police were not jerks about stuff.

The houses at the beach had names. This means Armadillo in Guaraní...also vagina.

one of the many beaches

After 4 days of that, I met back up with Liz and Meli (they´d gone to Punta del Este for a day, and I wanted to stay longer) and we went to Colonial, which is really old because apparently some people figured out a long time ago how awesome Uruguay is , and for the entire week that I was there, I marvelled at how well

(32) everything just WORKS. It´s a

(33) population of 3.5 million

(34) diverse people that maintain their tranquility while also

(35) giving a shit, and it shows.

Gate to Colonial

People were really tiny back then

This city was huge on Tile

Meli, Liz and me

We took the last flight possible leaving because none of us wanted to go. Arriving in Asunción at almost 1 am, we took an

-overpriced cab to our hotel, which had

-lost our reservation (never wrote it down), and trudged up to our room where we found

-the electricity didn´t work. I never should have gone on vacation, I said, because now I´m gonna see all the bad things I hadn´t noticed before about Paraguay. Liz started to say something comforting and positive, but then

-the bed she sat down on collapsed. Ahh, Paraguay.

PS- The next day, I was reminded of all the reasons I heart PY, again, and felt better, but to be fair, the charms of this country do no lie in its functioning.

I think it was when they all gathered around me in a parking lot with hundreds of tourists watching, picked me up, and started throwing me 8 feet into the air over and over again, all the while chanting, "Angélica! Angélica! Angélica!" that I decided this might be the best camp ever.

So...back in August, we had a meeting as a sector about planning the 2nd annual leadership and civic education camp for youth 15-25 (from here on out, referred to as jóvenes), and I was voted to head the planning committee. Since then, it has been 5 months of countless hours on the phone, so many emails that my hands may be permanently deformed into claws, and enough antacid and ibuprofen to kill a horse. The Peace Corps people are great, don´t get me wrong - everyone worked their butts off, volunteering for whatever needed done, everyone taking a part, THAT was no problem. Working with PYan organizations can be...a bit tougher. When, in the week before the camp, there were jóvenes dropping out and adding on last minute, facilitators cancelling their talks, grant money not coming in, donations being withheld, plans changing then changing again then changing again, I was feeling a little stressed. And then it was here...

Shavonda, who was in charge of logistics, went a day early with Giancarlo, our program assistant from PC, to Ciudad del Este, where the camp was held in a Biological Reserve called Tati Yupi, to buy all the food and get together all the last minute details. When we got there on the tour buses, the rooms weren´t ready, there were workers cleaning, pounding away on construction on half of the building where we were staying, and buzzing around with weed wackers (the thing about Paraguay, one of the many, is that nothing is ever done until the last possible second), and Shavonda and Giancarlo had already sweated through their t-shirts. But the volunteers all rallied - "Ok, we have to fill the next 45 minutes with games. What do we know?" No problem. All during the camp, behind the scenes, we are running around, writing certificates, cooking meals, planning charlas (talks with activities), planning then changing those plans and starting in with Plan G because A-F hadn´t gone down for one reason or another, participating in the activities, and just doing whatever needed done.

And what this did was make an environment for the jóvenes where they felt totally comfortable,

where they could be themselves,

where participating was the cool thing to do and everyone got more out of each activity because of it,

where they formed their own little culture and subcultures,

where drawn-on tattoos became all the rage,

where there was always a good excuse to jump up and down and yell a chant,

where there was a giant poster with envelopes with everyone´s names on them that were stuffed with positive comments from each other,

where the natural group leaders were 2 gay guys (which would not have happened anywhere else in Paraguay),

where we showed them a video of a flash mob in Brazil as an example of another way to have a voice in society and they decided to start one in the parking lot of Itaipú, the giant dam where we went to see the Ilumination Friday night, and danced to Lady Gaga with all the tourists watching,

where couples and deep friendships were being formed,

where they cheered their heads off after every charla and made the facilitator feel awesome,

where they took everything we taught them and instantly made it their own, from games to disparity of justice in the world,

where realizations about how the world can work, their role in it, and what that means for them personally came to fruition,

where they stayed up half the night huddled around picnic tables or on mattresses, talking and joking and laughing together because nobody wanted to sleep and miss a moment of this amazing thing that was happening,

where my jóven Fiorela kept crying because it was all so crazy and amazing,

where Casey´s jóven told me, "These have been the best 3 days of my life. In all my 19 years, the best 3 days, seriously," and

where we changed lives.

WE CHANGED LIVES.

.

.

.

That´s why I do this. This might be the best thing I´ve done in Peace Corps.

Here´s the link with a bunch of pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/57741449@N07/collections/72157625737390737

I push my bike ahead of me through the 3 foot tall door that´s the entrance to the Baranda´s house when their auto-parts store is closed, and Carlos grabs it from the other side to help. I duck through and their little black poodle Suzi is barking her head off, which is what she does when she´s excited to see people (she also attacks people´s feet if they try to leave), and Daniela yells, "Suzi! I know she smells bad, but it doesn´t matter!" I duck my head to hide my grin, and tell her, "How I´ve missed you!"

Daniela is the mom in my English class family, the Barandas, and quite possibly one of my favorite people. Actually, the whole family is great, and I love all of them, Carlos, Daniela, and their three kids Mauricio, Davíd, and Ivana, all of whom are fairly quiet and serious, except Daniela, who is a smartass of to the nth degree and just says whatever comes into her head at any moment. When she says one of her catch-phrases in English ("My butt is perfect" or "What a whore you are"), I get a little teary and bite my fist. "I taught her that," I whisper proudly. It´s just nice to see how my work makes a difference.

Carlos, the dad, asked me a while back if I´d thought he was crazy the first time we met. He´d run up to me on the street after I´d passed in front of their auto-parts store and breathlessly announced, "You´re Angélica, right? We´ve been wanting to meet you." So I had been running errands, but then Carlos said, "Come meet my family," and I agreed.

Over the past year, I´ve taught them English every Tuesday night, gone to hang out at the store with them every time I have a free moment, introduced them to all the volunteers in the area, and basically adopted them as another Paraguayan family. When I mentioned that I´d like to make a bookcase, they offered for me to use the scrap wood in their backyard. When I went over there to start working on it, I found Carlos and Davíd just putting the finishing touches on a perfect bookcase. When I needed my curtains hung, they trooped in with tools and a stepladder and Carlos hung them.

When we built wormboxes together

Whenever I write something professional in Spanish, Daniela corrects the mistakes. Whenever I don´t have food, or even when I do, they invite me over for lunch. We host English lunches once a month and invite everyone we can think of that speaks English to come and have asado (the best was the goat). They are usually 4 hour long events, where we talk and eat and joke around, supposedly all in English (really more spanglish), and play games. Daniela dives head first into English, whether she knows how to say something or not, and Carlos is more reserved (and knows more than he admits), so he corrects Daniela. It goes something like this:

D: She say

C: says

D: She says..."What a whore you are"

English Lunch

We go on day trips and to social events together and they make what would otherwise be torturously boring events really fun. When I got gluten-free flour in a care package, we went there to make cookies.

Natalie and Daniela

She swears that she and her kitchen are mortal enemies, so this was a huge event

Daniela and I are constantly trading smart-ass comments back and forth, and she keeps me sharp in what would otherwise be 3 straight years of talking about the weather. I´ve introduced them to all the volunteers in the area and now they are always invited to what would otherwise be only Volunteer events.

Meli, Daniela, Kristin, Jenna, and Carlos

Mauri, Daniela, Carlos and me at my birthday party

Me and Daniela

Me and Daniela (this picture is the first thing you see when you walk into their house)

All this giving was hard for me at first (I felt guilty accepting so much for doing nothing). Then, once when I mentioned that I was on my way to buy soap and toothpaste, and instead Daniela insisted on giving me soap and toothpaste, and I was protesting, saying I could just go buy it and I had the money, Carlos just looked at me, dead serious, and said, "Why can´t you just accept a gift?" I did and have ever since.

When their oldest son left to give live in Maine as an exchange student, Daniela asked me, "You're coming with us when we drop off Mauri, right? You and Melissa?"

I hesitated. "Isn't that something just for the family?"

"Exactly." she answered without hesitation, "And you are part of the family, which is why you have to come."

Grandma Sara, Mauri, Davíd, Ivana, Daniela and Carlos at airport

Meli, Mauri, Ivana, Daniela (trying to be tall), me, and Davíd

Saying goodbye to Mauri

The whole family watching as Mauri flies off

Daniela, always the supermodel, and Carlos when the truck broke down

After spending the weekend here for her volunteer visit, Ashley, one of the newbies said, "You know, I had my doubts about being able to be real friends with Paraguayans- if I was going to be able to be myself in front of them and with the language barrier and all, but after seeing you with Daniela, I´m not worried anymore. It´s definitely possible. I want friends like that."

Yeah, I´m very lucky to have them. They make everything about being in Paraguay better.

So if your remember that big pilgrimage from last year, to see the Virgin of Caacupe, I did it again this year...twice. It was...intense.

First, 80k from my site, Coronel Oviedo, on bikes with Melissa, Kristin, and the Barandas. Twice as long as we expected, and when we got there everything was closed. But, it´s the journey, not the destination, blah blah blah. So it was good.

Then, 2 days later, with my Couchsurfer, Alé and 2 other volunteers, Shavonda and Lindsay, walking from 20k away. Everything went well until it was time to leave, and many of the problems with Paraguayan society were suddenly evident. Disorganization, lack of information, misinformation, the inability of anyone to admit when they don´t know something which then leads to lying, treating people like livestock on the buses, etc. It was a clusterf@ck. But, finally made it home at 6:30am and slept all the next day.

Then, it was time again for a new group to swear in, so of course we had a concert.

We had the End of the Year Close Out Celebration for Kavichu´i, my community center, with all of the appropriate adorable kids dancing, singing, a Christmas play, etc.

2 days later, I, with the help of Kristin and Domi, other volunteers close to here, held a Mini-Health Camp, teaching 130 kids how to wash their hands and brush their teeth. It went fairly well, considering the glitter fights, dozens of kids at a time stuck on me like leeches, and then the riot-level havoc that ensued when we tried to give out toothbrushes. Like every other project here, it doesn´t go exactly how you plan it, but goes well, all the same (but we did find blue glitter on Melissa a week later and she wasn´t even there).

And my contact Alicia is getting married, so at my NGO, they made her a toilet paper dress, gave her embarrassing joke gifts, then dumped raw eggs and wet yerba all over her. Good times.

Then another couchsurfer, Jordan, also cool (I have great luck with couchsurfers)

And we´ll end with the random photo collection:

On a bus, note both the "Drugs are bad" sticker and the "Acid" smileyface sticker

Creepiest Memorial Picture ever (found in another volunteer´s amazing borrowed house)

You may have noticed the blogs have been spacing out more, but I´m busy doing the stuff for these pics, sooo...es lo qué es.

Thanksgiving was fun.

I hate to be so stereotypical, but there was a lot of this, music circles, peace corps hippy shit.

I found a new happy place.

I had a Couchsurfing couple stay with me for a few days (Ale from Argentina and Albano from Uruguay) who were really fun.

We continue our monthly English Lunches, always a good time (for those who speak english as a first language and a mild form of torture for those who don´t, made worth it only by the fact that there´s food)

We finished the World Map Project map at the Coop School (only took almost the whole school year) with the 8th graders, and they gave me a big despedidia with traditional dances and songs played on recorders and sung badly. It was awesome!

We spent Halloween at Liz´s site. I was my neighbor, Mariposa (Butterfly) who is quite a character and who I figured deserved to be immortalized in costume.

Meli, Liz and Me on the old train in San Salvadore

So the hectic schedule of getting up when I want, working when and how I want, doing whatever else I want however I want, and going to bed whenever I want can really get to me after a while. I really needed a vacation. So Melissa and I went to Argentina to see Iguazu Falls. Here are some pics from that.

I got this as an email forward from my friend Daniela. It´s funny because it´s true (not true like it happened, but true like everyone here knows it could happen), so I went ahead and translated it.

READ THIS INFORMATION TO BE AWARE OF ANTI-TERRORIST VALUE OF THE POPULATION AND THE ORGANIZATION OF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE INSTITUTIONS OF PARAGUAY ... YOU WILL NOTE THE "EFFICIENCY" OF PARAGUAY IN PREVENTING ATTACKS.

Thanks to its citizens, there was NO attack in Paraguay

ref: declassified documentation 06/06/2010

Documents kept secret by intelligence agencies revealed that Al Qaeda planned attacks for Asunción.

Bin Laden, through two of his most experienced terrorists, ordered the theft of an airplane that would be launched against the United States Embassy to protest the visit of George W. Bush to the Summit of Mar del Plata.

The service records of information (FBI and National Police) note that the two terrorists arrived at Silvio Pettisossi International Airport on Sunday October 30th at 21:45 on a TAM flight from Sao Paulo, having started in Paris.

The mission of Al Qaeda began to have problems since they landed, as their luggage was mistakenly sent to Santiago, Chile. After almost 5 hours of traveling to different offices and not being able to communicate well due to their faulty language skills, the 2 terrorists left the airport. They were advised by airline officials to return the next day accompanied by an interpreter.

The two terrorists took a taxi from the airport and the driver, noticing that they were foreigners, paraded them through the city for three hours before finally abandoning them near Zeballos Cue. This was after a traffic stop at Avenida Artigas, where three accomplices of the taxi driver assaulted them, stealing their belongings.

The Muslims, using a few dollars they´d had hidden in special money belts, convinced a trucker to take them somewhere slightly less bleak.

Monday at 7:30 am, thanks to their guerrilla training in Afghanistan they are able to take a bus and arrive at a hotel near the bus terminal. They then rented a car and headed back to the airport, determined to hijack a plane, as planned, and crash it into the embassy.

But going to the airport, they found the road blocked due to crowds of homeless people, public employees and teachers on strike. This delayed them more than 3 hours, and their rental car suffered broken windows and numerous dents.

At 12:30 they decided to return to downtown Asunción, where they could exchange their few remaining dollars after the robbery. There, they were given counterfeit bills.

At last, after many delays, at 15:10 the terrorists came to the airport to hijack a plane and finally fulfill their mission. But the airline TAM was on strike for more pay and less work. Flight controllers were also on strike (wanting to compare their salary with that of the pilots).

The only aircraft on the tarmac was one of Southern Winds ... but it had no fuel.

Airline employees and passengers were in the lobby of the airport, protesting and shouting slogans against the government. Police arrived and arrested everyone, including the Muslim terrorists.

The Muslims were taken to the Airport Police station, charged with rioting, vandalism and resisting arrest. At 18:10, due to a police oversight (changing of the guard), the terrorists managed to escape and then discussed amongst themselves if it would be possible to destroy the target ...

At 22:20, dirty, beaten and hungry, they decided to eat something in the airport restaurant - Tenderloin sandwiches, fries and soft drinks. Later that night, they awoke with terrible stomach pains caused by rotten meat on the sandwiches they ate in the restaurant.

3 hours after being called, the ambulance arrived to take them to the local hospital. But it was full, so they spent another 3 hours touring various hospitals to find where they could receive care.

On Sunday at 15:30, the Al Qaeda men leave the hospital and get near the Cerro soccer stadium. The hooligan fans confuse them with Olimpia and give them an impressive beating. The leader of the hooligans (an individual nicknamed "Hose") repeatedly raped the Muslims.

At 19:45 they are finally left alone with terrible pains throughout the body, especially in the proctology area. Nearby was a kiosk in the village and they decide to get drunk (though for them it is a sin). They were poisoned again from the plastic containers and had to return to the hospital.

The next day at 22:30, in a panic, the terrorists fled from Asunción toward Ciudad del Este in an electric company´s truck, which near Caaguazú was assaulted by road pirates.

Sore, bruised, hungry, with their asses broken, and unable to walk or sit, they are picked up by the vehicle of an NGO that defends human rights, working in Coronel Oviedo.

In Oviedo, wandering around without knowing what to do, they end up sleeping in the doorway of a shop downtown, where they were detained by police as undocumented vagabonds and notified that foreigners would be deported.

At the end of this odyssey, the Muslims believed that terrorism is not necessary in Paraguay and upon returning, will seek to establish an agreement to conduct specialized training courses in Asunción in social chaos for the staff of Al Qaeda.

I´ve been a total slacker with this blog lately, not to mention my life. Continuing, actually, because this entry is basically going to be just pictures. But if a picture is worth a thousand words, then I guess it might be the most well-thought-out and eloquent entry yet. So this, in picture form, is what I´ve been up to.

G27 left. Their last hoorah was the Ahendu concert.

Julie, me and Shola

Liam and me

Paulette and me

Liz, Meli, Paulette, and Stu

Me and Mateo

We went to Jesse and Lisa´s site to see a Torin, Paraguayan Bullfight, which are really funny because these "bulls" are really just cows that spend every day around people and are domesticated and lazy. They´d chase the cloth for a while, and then just lay down and decide whatever these weird-ass people were doing wasn´t worth the effort. There was also a lot of alcohol involved, so it was lots of fun.

Me and Jenna

Lisa, Meli and Me

Vac meeting that we made into a fondue party/game night/sleepover.

I have been doing a little work. Here are some cute kids from Kavichu´i.

We had our 2nd Fair for Toys Made from Recycled Materials, which went well (it´s weird to be here long enough to do things 2 years in a row)

And then there was Courtney´s Birthday.

Courtney, Joan and me

Courtney, Joan, me and Lindsay

Nikki, Lindsay, Brett, and Stu

If I didn´t already know it was gonna be awesome, from having gone last year, I might have held the extremely offensive advertising against Reggaefest this year.

Blackface? Are you f-ing kidding me?

But we went anyway and it was awesome.

And here are just some random pics.

I thought this was a more positive message than the shirt I saw on an 8yr old the other day that said, "Love is not dead until now."

This is the best salad I´ve ever had because it´s made from lettuce from my very own huerta

Did you know this is how you say hummus in Spanish?

Ok, so I'm a slacker. I've never claimed otherwise. Granted, here I'm called hard working for sweeping my patio or watering my garden, but clearly the standards are lower. So here is another half-assed update of what's been going on in my life in the last month.

The camp we did in January was set up to meet again to reward the projects the kids had been working on. It's a lot of work getting the money to do those things, so the planners worked it out to go to Ayolas, which was free, (and we soon found out why). There was a big compound area where the workers lived while the dam was being built in the 70's.

A good tip for those planning camps in the future is to put your camp in a super-creepy abandoned compound with junked out car graveyards and an abandoned and delapidated kitchen that could be straight out of Saw VI.

It works really well to:

1. Build solidarity (as no one will go out alone), and

2. curb misbehavior (because one glance at the giant broken heating ducts over the still forming lake in the corner, and the rusted industrial sized ovens and boilers lets them know that no one would find the bodies should anyone get out of line.)

The camp went really well! The new G was invited, so the newbies got to see how to do a camp. The jovenes had to do charlas (to show they learned something over the last 6 months) and they were all motivated and happy. Here are some pics, conveniently leaving out the creepy parts.

Clara, me, Marilia, and David

Group

One of the dinamicas

Ayolas is at the very southern tip of Paraguay, right next to 2nd biggest dam, Ycyreta, which big source of Paraguayan money, and a giant altar to the gods of civil and industrial engineering. The last day, we got a tour.

The next week, there was La Expo, which is this huge event outside of Asuncion where every business in Paraguay uses hot girls to demonstrate things (cell phones, I can understand, icecream, I can understand, but banks and sustainable farming NGO's? Really? Yes, In Paraguay, yes). I went with 20 jovenes from Carayao, a feat of bravery in itself.

Tour Bus

This band makes all the Paraguayan girls scream. I don't see it.

Hanging with my jovenes, Lider, Vicki, Diana, and Margarita

This guy really gets me going.

We spent most of the day going from booth to booth so the guys could get pictures next to the hot girls for their Orkut and Facebook pages, but for me the day had two main highlights: 1.

Barack was there.

First we talked about the future of the economy and a bunch of other important stuff, pausing for the photo op...

And then we made out a little

And 2 was the Kamikaze, which is way more fun when the alternative rides are rickety looking ferris wheels are crappy little trains that go in a circle. It's no 6 Flags, but...

Thrilling, nonetheless.

Then I had a group of the Newbies come stay in Oviedo for a week for Long Field, where they followed me around and learned how things are done. (PS - it turns out I know how things are done). It went really well.

Notice how clean and full of hope they look. Ah, newbies.

Lindsay, Mark, Carolina, Mario, Me, Devon, and Andrea

So that's how I spent the last half of July. Whenever there was down time, however, I enjoyed my new hobby of breastfeeding my kittens. It cracks me up - every time I lay down to read or rest, they start suckling the tassles on my blanket. They're super intense about it, kneading their little paws and fighting over the best tassle. Very entertaining.

You know that group. Maybe it was in high school or college or at a job, but everyone knows that group. They're so cool, not in that "popular, football player, cheerleader" sort of way but genuinely, profoundly cool. That perfect mix of not giving a shit what other people think and doing everything so well that people only think good things anyway. They are all witty and funny, and they have this rapport with each other that just makes you wish you were in with anyone like that, and, dare you dream, you could be part of that group. If you're lucky, and skilled at playing it cool, the way you idolize them doesn't come through when you're with them, and they actually like you, too, at least a little, in a pesky, little sister sort of way. Maybe they even invite you places. Maybe you're not too shy to throw in a witty comment of your own every now and again so they don't think you're a complete dud during those witty repartes...if you're lucky.

Allow me to illustrate. The World Cup in Paraguay. There is nothing bigger. This is a country where they closed schools the day after qualifying for South Africa. Where, during every game, firecrackers are set off all over the country when a good block or pass is made, let alone a goal. Where, win or lose, caravans of motos and cars and vans and trucks, decorated in Paraguayan flags, drive all over the city. They honk and yell and smile through their face-paint and wave at the people on the sidewalk, for no other reason than to show their team support. And that's just the regular season.

There were some tense moments in the world cup. That Japan game just about killed me.

So the Saturday of the Spain game, Asuncion was eerily silent everywhere there was not a big screen TV in the vicinity. There were ups...

and downs...

and in the end...well, you know.

But despite all that excitement, my favorite part of the game was half-time. I was outside the bar in a little group talking to Shola, from G-27, who was quickly becoming my new favorite person as we were having a very serious conversation about nymphs. He interrupted himself in the middle of "A nymph and his...What? There's a word, what is it? I won't rest til I know..." when a vendadora passed by selling jewelry, purses and chotchkies.

"We should buy everything she has and make her day. Right now, who's in?"

"I'm in," I said, thrilled.

Between the 5 of us, we bought out of her whole supply, with the stipulation that she had to go home and relax for the rest of the day. She promised, and we suddenly had kilos of hand-made jewelry. Then we got to play santas and go give it all out to our group as gifts.

They were happy, we were happy, the vendadora was happy. This apparently had been something they'd joked about doing for their 2 years here.

After the game (city eerily quiet again), we wandered down to the park to have terere with a terere lady with whom Timmy Charlie is freakishly close friends, and gave out more necklaces and gum to her kids. Then we're wandering toward the river when we make spontaneous friends with a random group of Paraguayans who were sitting in a parking lot.

Shola as nymph

Shola and Tessa, having a moment

With new friends

These Paraguayans were so cool, and then the guy invited us down the block to his roof, which overlooked the city.

Paraguayo, Tessa, Paulette, Liam, and Eric

He told us amazing stories about how the church next to his house used to be a prison where they tortured people and the bodies were buried down below where there are now wooden shacks. Then we started to walk back and got about 20 meters before joining kids in a soccer game in the church courtyard. They of course won, the kids, despite all the dirty American cheating.

And this was just one afternoon with these guys. One of the last, since their service is ending soon. That's the thing about Peace Corps - you're always on rotation. I've been in to training to do charlas with the newbies that are coming in now, and have gotten to hang out with them quite a bit. I see it - the idolism. They look up to me, to my group, the way I looked up to this group, G-27. During their volunteer visit, my newbie Ashley burst out with, "You're just so cool!" which is flattering, of course, but come on - I'm no G-27.

(Dedicated to G-27)

I have been slacking lately, if not necessarily in writing the blogs, at least in putting massive amounts of effort into them. In continuation of this theme (I like to keep consistent), here's another half-assed effort. Plus, I had a bunch of pictures that I haven't posted that work well to fill in all the little moments and catch up (ketchup) everyone on life to this moment.

Kevin, Sasha, and Stu at 4th of July party at embassy (Kevin apparently thought it was a redneck costume party)

No, not the Beverly Hillbillies - this is the normal method of moving in Paraguay (Juan just built a new house)

Meli's inauguration of her pavilion (And last project of her service - don't worry, she's extending)

Kyle came to help me start a huerta (vegetable garden) and now I have tomatoes, carrots, lettuce, peppers, onions, and parsley growing like gangbusters

The Kittens are growing

Making Kabure (chipa on a stick) with English class

Max, Robert, and me (They are exchange students that were here for a year and have sadly returned)

My Abuela is doing much better

(yet another) Parade

Me and Fatima, the librarian for the digital library

Project completed

Official "You can go now" certificate from the Co-op (much to my relief)

Karen's family at Quince

Meli and me at Karen's Quince

I DID have a mouse problem (this created quite a crisis of conscience for a moment since that is a sticky trap and they were still alive. I eventually decided that the way to go about things was to close it and throw it away, ignoring the little squealing screams. Has Peace Corps made me a less sympathetic person? I thought about it, but the life or death of my ketchup and all my plastic containers was a stake, so I say no).

On my actual 30th birthday, I had 2 newbies staying with me for the weekend from the group in training now. Elisa, my boss, and Liz, from my group came early that day to help plant trees. It threatened to rain, but I said we were doing it si o so (yes or yes) and it held off till the next day. I'd arranged with Mario from the Environmental Office in the Muni to help us out. He had the trees, the tools, and the hole-digging labor. His workers went out the day before and dug 100 holes in a plaza near the Colegio Nacional (where my jovenes went to school). We met at 1pm (La hora paraguay, so 2pm) with my jovenes (youth) from the leadership camp and a 7th grade biology class that I'd invited to help. It was fitting that it was Paraguayan Arbor day, because we planted 100 trees.

Liz as tree

Planting

Tree planting group

Then we went back to my house to clean up and prepare for the party. Here are some pics. It was super fun.

Liz and Kristin

Pauli and me

Mauri, Daniela, Carlos, and me

Meli and me

Oscar and Pauli

Liz and me

Ashley, me and Taylor (the newbies)

The following week, I headed into Asuncion because I'd talked to Doug and Lisa, other volunteer geminis and we decided to combine resources and have a(nother) party.

Courtney, me and Hannah

Jesse as Merman

Adam and Nathan

Betsy and Adam

Pauli and me

Caleb, me and Laura (slightly under the influence)

Sasha, me, and Jenna

Natalia, Giselle, and Adam

Lyn, Elmer, and Lauren

Jenna, her tits, and me

Whew - a party for every decade so far. Nowhere else I rather be.

I really liked those Carayao kids from the beginning, back in January when I met them at the Leadership Camp our sector was doing, but over the past few months, it's blossomed into something altogether bigger. We were faced with the challenge of doing a successful community project within 6 months, and it is not often that PC volunteers have to talk down Paraguayans and tell them to think smaller, but these kids...It took a month of weekly meetings to convince them we shouldn't do our first project getting clothes, shoes and food for all of the poor kids in their city. I didn't want them to go through one more experience of big talk and big dreams that never come to fruition. Think tangible, I said, we can always do more later, but we have to start somewhere. So we narrowed it down to coats for the winter, and down to one poor neighborhood. They hit the dirt and spent a Sunday going door to door, explaining their project and forming a list of 80 names and sizes.

We met every Thursday night, in the patio of a church. I'd take the 6pm bus the half hour to their town, we'd meet for about an hour, and then a few of them would sit with me by the ruta while we waited the 2 hours for the next bus to come through at 9:30. While we waited, we talked, we planned, we joked, we played - this was the most important part of the project.

Thursday night meeting - Lider, Mariela, and Oscar

Thursday night meeting - Margarita, Felipe, Vicki, and Jorge

Thursday night - me, Margarita, Jorge, and Vicki (and kitten that I found and gave to some friends)

We decided that we should beg for money on the ruta, since we had no funds to initiate anything bigger and less effective. Because they average 16 yrs old, I said we'd need help from the police so cars wouldn't run us down. We stood out on the ruta from 9-5 one Saturday, and I didn't have my camera, so I will paint this scene: Busy 2 lane road, cars and trucks zooming by all day long. About 5 of us, standing on the dotted middle line, holding decorated shoe boxes with holes cut in the top, a cop on each end. The cops motion the cars to slow down, and they do, rolling down windows to see what they'll have to do to get out of this cop situation. The cop steps to the side and one of us steps forward, wielding a box, and asking for a donation to buy coats for the poor children of Carayao. The driver looks at us, looks at the cop, looks back at us, and pulls out 5 mil or so. We got over 1600000gs (about $300) that day.

The next Saturday, they arranged for a driver and truck, donated by the municipalidad, to take us to the market in Asuncion and buy the coats. As anyone would do, however, the driver decided to run some personal errands along the way, so between stopping for chipa, picking up a TV, dropping off the TV, picking up his wife and taking her to the terminal, visiting Caacupe to pray a little, visiting the driver's family 20k off the ruta, and stopping every 20 minutes to pour water in the radiator, it took 12 hours. But we did get the coats, so it is what it is.

Oscar, Lider, Me, and Mariela

Lider, Oscar, Mariela and Cardboard newspaperman

Watering truck for the millionth time

Detour to Church at Caacupe

The next Saturday was the presentation. The muni donated chairs and we cleaned around the plaza, set up a podium, decorated with Paraguayan flags, and wrote a speech.

Lider, me, Mariela, Margarita, Oscar, Nestor, Vicki, and Jorge

Group

Presentation of coats

Oscar giving

Mariela giving

Getting their coats

Kids with their coats

Since it was a week before my birthday, they threw me a party afterwards to celebrate.

Group

Lunch

In order to prove that 3 gifts of makeup were not a hint, they decided to give me a makeover. It quickly spiralled into a costume party.

Makeover

Jorge and me

Jorge, Diana, y Felipe

Venos and me, brujas

Jorge and Diana

Mariela, me, and Venos

Diana, Mariela, and Jorge

Diana, Jorge, Maggie and Nestor

Me and cake

Nestor got tired as we were carrying back the borrowed chairs

And that's how I spent my first 30th birthday.

I’ve been in Paraguay a year now. It has passed REALLY quickly, and for the last few weeks, as that anniversary was approaching, I’ve been thinking about how different I am now than when I arrived, and how much I’ve learned in the last year. But inevitably, just when I think I’ve got this Paraguayan thing down, something happens that forces me to admit I know next to nothing. Here are a few areas where I’ve noticed the change (or lack thereof).

*Understanding*

In the last year, I’ve learned to speak Spanish - both literally, and with Paraguayan syntax. When they say, “No quieres banarte”, that is not saying “You don’t want to shower” (when in fact I did but after that thought there was some reason I shouldn’t), but instead “Don’t you want to shower?” (as in, hint hint) (actual occurrence my first night). They say Yes or Maybe when they really mean No. They say 1:00 when they really mean 2:00. Everything is dependent on Si Dios Quiere (if God wants it) or Si no hay lluvia (If there’s no rain).

I thought I’d gotten it pretty much down, but the other day (after a YEAR), I had a conversation with Juan that showed me I’ve still got a ways to go. We were working on a project plan, and he typed something I didn’t understand, so I asked, “Why did you put that word there?”, and he immediately erased the sentence. He always does this when I ask why something is, so I told him, “You know, when I ask why something is, it doesn’t mean I don’t like it. It means I really just want to know why it is because I don’t understand.” “Yeah,” he said, “That’s kind of offensive here.” My jaw drops because this means that I’ve been offending people at least 10 times a day for the last year, and I’m surprised they haven’t run me out of town with pitchforks and torches at this point. He goes on to explain that “Why” is Paraguayan code for “That thing is bad” because saying it outright would be fuerte (strong=asshole), which is why he erases whatever I ask about. So I asked about little kids and what people do when they are trying to understand their world and ask Why about everything. “A lot of people are really bothered by little kids because of that,” he tells me. En serio?! That was my whole nanny life for 3 years – I couldn’t imagine not being able to explain why something is to a kid. But that’s how Paraguay is – everything is unspoken, subtle, with innuendos and meaningful looks and code words. It takes about 4 times as many words to ask for anything because you have to soften it with a lot of “if you wouldn’t minds” and “if it would be possible” and the like.

Luckily, I’d taken Juan to a workshop a few weeks ago and he got to talk to one of the PC trainers (a Paraguayan who has worked with American volunteers for 20 years) who explained that the thing about Americans is that when they ask Why, they really just want to know why. So he wasn’t personally offended by my very existence, but since we were on an explaining kick, he explained how that, like seemingly every part of Paraguayan culture, this had its roots in the dictatorship. Anyone who ever publicly questioned anything the government did disappeared, which is strong motivation to keep your mouth shut. This also explains why so often, when I question situations, although they know why something is, they’ve never put words to it and don’t know how to explain it beyond, “We’ve always done it that way.” If there is no reason for something anymore, it continues because no one ever questions. Then I come stomping in asking Why all over the place and they actually start to think about it, and realize they can change it now. This is what I was talking about a few blogs back with the little outside perspective I bring to the table, and how they have everything they need to change something except the spark to start it, and that’s me and my Why (not even knowing I was doing it). So now I know that when I’m not trying to offend people, I should say, “I really like this sentence here, and I like your hair and what you’ve done with the place, and if you wouldn’t mind could you please explain to me what this word means because I’m just a simple American that is only trying to understand your culture because I love Paraguay,” or something along those lines. It takes a while, but it works.

*Rain*

The first time it rains and you realize that whatever you had planned is now cancelled, you are annoyed, and you wonder why these supposedly hard-core Paraguayans are such sissies about a little rain. You might insist on going out and doing stuff anyway since you’re American and a little rain never hurt anyone, only to come home covered in mud splatters from your cheap Peace Corps issued bike without fenders and realize that it’s a whole different ballgame when you have to hand-wash all your clothes. The second time, you stay in, but you’re still slightly peeved. By the third time, you see how Paraguayans have had it down all along, and when you wake up to the rain drumming on the corrugated metal of your roof, you snuggle down deeper under your covers and sleep a little extra, or maybe read in bed. Within a few months, you’ve decided you never ever want to live in a country where stuff gets done in the rain, and you wonder what is wrong with Americans that they don’t use more excuses to relax.

*Jokes*

The humor development process in a foreign country is much more arduous a fraught with disaster than you might think. My dry sense of humor does not translate. I can say completely ridiculous things, but because I’m deadpan, they conclude that I’m telling the truth and that Americans are just really weird. And their jokes are completely lost on me because most of them are wordplay and it is hard enough to remember the direct meanings of verbs, let alone the double entendres. As a result, for the majority of my time here, I’ve been the Peace Corps equivalent of Amelia Bedelia – taking everything completely at face value. If I’m in a group and everyone is laughing, I smile too, but have no idea what is so funny. If I’m with just one other person, they usually crack a joke and wait with that open mouth, expectant smile for the laugh. Then they say the punch line again with more emphasis, and get a wan smile in response (I do know it’s supposed to be funny but can’t quite work up to faking it). Then they throw up their hands, roll their eyes at my foreign ignorance, and change the subject. But over the last few months, this has been changing. Perhaps the transition wasn’t noticeable at first. Leoncio, the “funny guy” at the coop, is not funny when I do understand him, and I don’t like to encourage such low level humor by laughing at it (that just lowers the bar for next time, and I came here to help, after all), so I still just looked at him with no reaction at all to his jokes. But I’ve been evolving, and recently, have gotten jokes and even joked back. You have no idea how huge this is for bonding with Paraguayans. They describe themselves as a funny people. So I’m connecting with people better than ever, and even the few that may have had their doubts about me before are coming around. Then the other day, I was drinking terere with my family and my Papa Felipe says casually, looking at the sky, “What do you think, Angelica, is it going to rain again?” I look up. “Yep, I think so,” I say. “You know, women know better than men when it’s going to rain.” Not seeing what’s coming, I ask, “Really? Why?” He pauses, then, “Porque ellas tienen humedad.” Humid is a double entendre for when a woman is wet. Um…ew. How I long for the Amelia Bedelia days.

*Food*

“So I was frying bananas today…” I said to Paulette. “Oh, God, what happened?” she jumps in, because Paulette thinks that the sign for when you’ve nearly hit rock bottom is when you feel like frying bananas (Full-on rock bottom is frying Twinkies…in your trailer). I disagree, however, because I love fried bananas, and I’ve been known to fry a banana on my best of days. But the banana frying process got me thinking about when I’d first gotten to site and had fried bananas and offered one to Flaquito. He made this face like he’d just vomited a little in his mouth and had to swallow it. “Why would you fry bananas? In what? Is it healthier?” he fired questions at me, trying to understand why anyone would even imagine doing that sort of thing. “They are fried in oil,” I answered, “Of course it’s not healthier. Just try it. It’s delicious.” Of course he didn’t, as Paraguayans are not fond of trying new foods, and especially disgusted by cooked fruit (which explains their reaction to the black bean mango salsa I’d been all excited about because I’d almost managed to follow a recipe). And I was thinking today about how, with a few exceptions including sopa and chipa guazu and mbeju, I would prefer fried bananas over almost every single Paraguayan food. I thought about how they deep fry flour batter and then put it on stale rolls, with a side of 2 more stale rolls and call that lunch, and about how no part of the animal goes uneaten and they will chow down on feet and tails, intestines and faces, and how a salad is really just rice and mayonnaise, with the only green on the whole table being the tiny slivers of green onion in it. I sprinkled cinnamon over my bananas and realized I’m not so very integrated, maybe, but that’s ok.

*Tranquila*

The biggest change though, is the one I’m most thrilled about - I am SO much more tranquila now than when I arrived. I wouldn’t have considered myself an angry person before, but I wouldn’t hesitate to use the word feisty. I’d flare up for a few minutes, and then be over it, but still. Here, I find myself saying things like, “If I ever got angry anymore, I would’ve been, but it is what it is.” That meeting is cancelled? Cool, see you next week, si no hay lluvia. Kitten diarrhea all over the floor? Poor babies; good thing it’s tile. The presidenta at the coop is being difficult? I’m a volunteer – I leave whenever I want. When those Canadians came, I really noticed how much more high strung they were than every Paraguayan, and than me, and I was quietly ecstatic. I’m pretty sure I used to be that intense, but it’s all so hazy to me now. There’s no need to fight life on any front. It all pans out, si Dios quiere, so there’s no need to get riled up about it. Es lo que es.

I can't wait to see what the next year will bring.

I only agreed to do it as a favor to Juan. His wife volunteers with the Canadian version of Operation Christmas Child (the nonprofit that has people pack shoeboxes of kids’ gifts and then sends them en masse to underdeveloped countries, in order to give gifts to kids that might otherwise never receive them). A group of 29 Canadian volunteers were coming to Paraguay to give out thousands of shoeboxes to schools and groups around Coronel Oviedo. They needed translators, and Melissa and I (somewhat reluctantly) agreed. We piled onto the obscenely large tour bus along with the very friendly and enthusiastic Canadians, with their fancy fanny packs and designer water bottles.

Those crazy Paraguayans, always jokesters

The whole family goes to welcome the Canadians at the airport - Evelyn (the nanny), Janina's Dad and the Paraguayan Coordinator for Operation Christmas Child, Janina, Juan with Baby Nehemias, and me

Juan and Nehemias

Janina and Nehemias

They Arrive

The bus

On the ride back from Asuncion, I talked constantly. There was so much to tell about Paraguay, and they were so eager to learn. “How poor is poor?” they asked. “61% of families where we will be live on much less than $300 a month,” I explained. “Is there organized crime here?” they asked. “Just the government,” I answered. “Are you happy here?” they asked, just like all the Paraguayans do, too. “I love it here. Paraguayans are open and giving and loving, and they will share whatever they have when they hardly have anything, and they have been screwed over for their whole history, but you will never meet better people.” They nodded, pleased. They snapped photos right and left. Aw, I thought, I remember when I used to take pictures of cows.

I took this 2 days into Paraguay

That week was a busy one, with 2 distribution sessions a day. Most of the boxes were anonymous, however many of the Canadians had packed their own special shoeboxes that they would personally give to a lucky, chosen child. It was mostly for this 15 minutes of bonding and photo ops that they wanted translators, although it is not easy to organize and give boxes to hundreds of kids at once, so Meli and I were all over the place.

After one distribution session, when we were back on the bus, one lady was tearfully telling the story of the little girl who’d received her gift box. “She said she comes from a very poor family,” she sobbed, “and that’s when I started crying.” This apparently hit her harder than expected because the crying didn’t stop for the next 2 hours. She wasn’t the only one, either. Meli and I rolled our eyes at each other. They ALL come from poor families, we thought. They wouldn’t BE here if they didn’t, as the whole goal of the organization is to give gifts to poor kids.

I kicked this idea around for the next couple days because something about it inherently bothered me. If I were Paraguayan, I thought, and some chuchi Canadian came to visit and then burst into tears at what to me was my completely normal life, would that be considered offensive? For an instant, I felt defensive. Who were they to momentarily fly in to these kids’ lives, with their khaki pants and their racking sobs? I tiptoed around the idea with Yanina, Juan’s wife, to see what she thought. “I think the Canadians are having a good trip,” I said, “But they sure do cry a lot.” “They’ve never seen poverty like this before,” she said, “It can be a shock the first time.”

Then I remembered this conversation I’d had with Paulette months ago, where she’d told me about how her biggest epiphany, the thing that really changed her the most since she’s been here, was realizing that Paraguayans are real people. “I know, I know,” she was quick to add, “I know exactly how bad that sounds, and it seems so obvious, but our whole lives we hear about people in other countries, and we don’t REALLY get it. And I remember when I realized, oh my God, they really are JUST like us. They joke and love and dream and are the same as us, and from there it’s not that big of a leap to see that we are the same all over the world. And we hear on the news about 10,000 people dying somewhere far away, and don’t necessarily think that these people had real lives, with families and friends and goals…but now I do.”

They were already very kind and sweet people when they got here, and they’d put in dozens and hundreds of hours of volunteer work, packing and shipping gift boxes all over the world. However, it is one thing to live a normal first-world life, think about the poor children in other countries, and want to help alleviate the idea of poverty, but it is another thing to see that poverty first-hand. It is another thing to talk to this tiny girl with big brown eyes and long lashes, whose hair is thin and patchy because of a skin fungus, and hear how her mom had abandoned her, but that the nice lady explaining things to your translator is taking care of her. It is another thing to pick a little girl out, at random, from among thousands, and learn that her name is Cinthia, which happens to be your own daughter’s name. What we saw was their epiphany moment of seeing how alike we are, and knowing that they will never look at the news the same way again. I am so grateful to have seen and been a part of that.

“I see why you love it here,” one lady told me after a few days. “Paraguay is wonderful. I’d come back tomorrow if I could.” “Yeah,” I grinned. They got it.

My abuela broke her hip. She fell down the two tall steps leading down to the living room and landed on the concrete floor. Not having vehicles other than motos, they called a cab to carry her over the bumpy stone streets to the hospital. She said the pain was excruciating. The doctor said she’d need surgery, and that, as they didn’t have anesthesiologists there, she’d have to go to Asuncion. For 2 weeks, she stayed on a twin-sized bed in the living room. Word got around. Neighbors came. Friends came. Family came. Everyone gave what they could. 10 mil here, 50 mil there, but it wasn’t going to be enough.

I heard about it from a girl at work, a friend of the family, on a Thursday. That Sunday, I went to visit, cooing and tssking in sympathy. Poor Abuela, I said, as I sat with her, and watched as distant neighbors uncrumpled the bills in their hands. Why did this happen, abuela asked no one in particular, as she started to cry. I love everyone. God knows I don’t have a single enemy. I take care of everyone that I know.

The first time I met my host family, on my future site visit, I was sitting with them in their living room at a bible study session I hadn’t realized I was being invited to. Abuela, who was just another random old lady at the time, kept staring at my appreciatively. At every pause in the conversation, she’d chime in with, !Linda es! !Que Linda sos! (You’re so pretty!), and I liked her immediately. A couple weeks after I’d moved there, she enthusiastically told me, I love you Angelica! I love you all the more because you’re so far from your family. That must be so hard, but I love you so much! That’s so nice, I thought, but it’s not that hard to leave my family. I hadn’t heard from my real mom, mi mama por sangre, as I called her here to keep things straight, in months, despite my attempts. Abuela had been nothing but loving and open with me from the start. How could I not help her now?

First I thought I could swing 50 mil, but kept adjusting that. I hadn’t been to Asuncion that month (I’d been working a lot and hadn’t had time), so I had a little extra in the bank. But I didn’t want them to make a big deal about it. I try to cultivate an image of poverty, and the Peace Corps warns us that we will be taken advantage of if they know we have money. Not only would it be flaunting wealth to donate so much, I also didn’t want it to seem like I was doing it for the recognition.

So, I decided, I’d just slip the 500 mil to them and say nothing. Riding my bike to the bank, I thought about how much I had changed since I’d been here. A year ago, would I have given my money? Yes, I decided, but not as much, and I would have basked in the thank you’s, feeling generous. The point is not the recognition, I realized. It’s giving the money because it’s the right thing to do, not so people think you’re a giving and charitable person. Later that afternoon, when I kissed Abuela on both cheeks, I dropped the money, rolled with a paperclip, next to the change purse on the bed where they were compiling donations.

Part of me knew they would find it and know it was me. When they asked me about it, I’d say, Money? Did it have a metal clip on it? Yes, they’d say. No, it wasn’t me, I’d answer. Que humilde es ella, (how humble she is) they’d say to themselves. I didn’t mention it to anyone.

After that, I was working out of town for a week, and then working in town with my normal busy schedule. I kept meaning to drop in, but never found the extra moment to do so. By the time I went back, two weeks later, it was Mother’s Day. I’d received a one-line email from my real mom in the intervening months that said she was very busy, and I’d decided to give up on that and focus on my family here.

A lot had changed in the 2 weeks. My Papa, who lives an hour away because there are no jobs in town, had sold his car to pay for the surgery and Abuela was recovering well. She was chattering on about the different people that had come to visit every day, and how her dog would come up and rest her head sympathetically on the side of the bed. She didn’t know about the car being sold, and never once mentioned money, but she went on and on about how wonderful her daughter was in taking care of her, and how her mom, who is 96, came by every day just to sit with her, and how people had been very supportive, emotionally.

I listened carefully and bit the inside of my cheeks to keep from crying. I hadn’t gotten it. Even when I really thought I’d come so far and learned so much, I hadn’t understood at all. The money was never the point. It would’ve been so much better to donate 10 mil and visit every chance I had. It would’ve been so much more meaningful to make it a priority to spend time with her instead of working constantly. How had I not seen that when I knew how it felt to have my mom do the same thing to me? How had I not seen how I was also prioritizing work over relationships and how like her I was, while simultaneously being so hurt by her? How had it taken me 9 months of being around this family, whose priorities were so correct, to see what being in a family really meant? I have been so wrong. I held it together all afternoon, sitting with my family, sometimes talking and sometimes comfortably silent, and then I went home and wrote this, crying the whole time.

So I had this idea...seemed like a good enough idea at the time. We were going to do a walk, an annual awareness walk for CCAB, my NGO, and we were going to get the whole city to participate in one way or another. It was going to raise awareness of the situation of poverty in our area (61% of the population is below the poverty line, 35% is in extreme poverty, and entire families are living on less than the minimum wage for one person, the equivalent of $300/mo) and awareness for what CCAB is doing to help that situation (starting and working in 9 community centers in poor barrios, helping 2800 kids with meals and snacks, cultural and value-teaching activities, sports and camps). It was our debut marketing effort into the community, who really had no idea who CCAB is or what they do. It was going to develop feelings of community and communal responsibility, since when there are people in our community suffering, we all suffer, and when someone doesn't have food, we all go hungry. It was going to empower people to show that help did not need to come from other countries, or the government, in order to improve a situation. The theme was The Power of One, showing that when individuals do small helpful things to better a situation, it adds up to something great.

It meant that Juan, my contact and the other half of the "Marketing and Communications Department", and I worked our butts off for months planning it. We conceptualized the entire thing, from beginning to end. The teachers in CCAB went around to stores and businesses to request sponsorship and raised more than our budget of $1200. We made (in Juan's living room) 210 screen-printed t-shirts, got support from the municipalidad and the gobernacion, cookie and milk donations to serve breakfast to the kids (and yes, cookies and milk is a normal breakfast here), had banners made for each community center and a 12ft x 15ft giant banner to hang in the International Crossroads on the south side of Oviedo, the walk's destination. We went to all the community centers to dip the kids' feet in paint and make footprints on the banner (The official name was Caminata Pypore - Footprints Walk). We arranged for police to block of the main Ruta for us. We recruited 20 volunteer youths to help with the little kids. We had a press breakfast to advertise with them and build our future relationship. I did some TV interviews. We talked about it on the radio show.

There were days where I forgot to breathe. There were countless moments of miscommunication and misunderstandings. I (TWICE!) accidentally tripped over the computer cord and deleted the pamphlets we'd spent hours designing (poor Juan). The t-shirts I'd hauled back from Asuncion were all the wrong sizes. The logos I'd ironed on the t-shirts fell off. I'd completely convinced myself that I was more of a hinderance than a help in the whole process. The day before the walk, as we were driving to CCAB with 5 kilos of cookies in the trunk, I was saying that we should do an evaluation of it, the strengths and weaknesses, to help plan for next year. "Will you be around next year?" I ask Juan, because he has dreams of his own graphic design business and had planned to only be here for a year. "I figure I'll stay around as long as you're here," he says, "And then leave when you leave. I couldn't do this without you."

There is nothing like Peace Corps for destroying your ego and building your self-esteem, simultaneously.

Over 500 people came, among them the Mayor, and the Country Director of Peace Corps, Don Clark. It could not have gone more perfectly. We walked 1 kilometer, from CCAB to the Cruce Internacional, where there were some speeches and the huge banner was unfurled. Don Clark nudged me as the banner dropped. "Nice touch" he said. Then I breathed.

Here are some pictures:

***

As far as other news and some cultural explanations, I will use excerpts from the penpal letters I sent to my cousin Delaney's Girl Scout troop (the writing style is slightly different since my audience was 7 yr olds, but you'll get the point):

...Yes, they celebrate Easter here. It's called Pascua, and the week before is called Semana Santa (Saint's week). It's a big deal here because Paraguayans eat a lot of meat and they can't eat meat on good Friday, so they eat Chipa (which is this hard and super yummy kind of bread made with corn meal) all day instead. They call it a Fast. So nobody works Thurs, Fri, Sat and Sun, and on Wednesday or Thursday they spend the whole day making chipa (which is quite a process because they grind the corn by hand and bake it in a brick, wood-burning oven.) When the dough is ready, it's like playdough and they form it into different shapes, but mostly O's. I made a bunch of O's, a star and an A. The boys makes Jakares (Jah-ka-rays) (it means crocodiles or is also a guy that sneaks into girl's rooms at nights, which is a whole other story and I'll wait until you're older to explain it). Then Easter Sunday is spent together with the family and they cook a lot of meat to celebrate having survived one day without it. The American traditions of chocolate and bunnies are slowly coming here, and the kids get some chocolate, but it's not really a big deal here like it is in the US.

I have some sad news. Unfortunately, my street dog Julio has gone to dog heaven. He got in a fight and the cut on his face got infected with these parasites, and it was all down hill from there. He's buried in my neighbor's garden (don't tell). My whole family was really sad, but I was especially sad (since I was his favorite, and all), but it's a very common thing for street dogs, and it's the circle of life.

I do have some good news, though. I just got 2 new kittens. There are some pictures here, attached. The striped one is a girl and her name is Ikatu (Ee-kah-too)- that's Guarani for "Could be" because everything could be, really. We live in a world of possibilities. The black one is a boy named Haikue (High-kway) which is said when someone is surprised, and it's kind of like "Holy Cow!" or "Oh my gosh!" They are super cute (clearly) and lots of fun because they play together all the time. They have developed this nasty little habit of climbing up my legs with their claws out, like I'm their own personal tree. I'm trying to break the habit, so I shake my leg really hard and they go flying. We have a great time together!

So that's what I've been doing lately.

If you were to see scenes of my recent life spliced together, it would look like a tampon commercial, probably something like this:

Me, running and doing yoga - Melissa and I have started running together every

morning (that we don´t have a good enough excuse not to) and, although my yoga class got boring (since it was not really yoga, but just a lot of self-massage, which I can do on my own), I have some yoga podcasts that I love.

Me, horseback riding - Twice I´ve been to visit Nate´s (another volunteer) site, which is quite a trip, but, well...he has this horse. He´s a real charmer, that Nate, but sometimes when he´s going on and on, wooing me I guess, I just hold my hand up and say, "Stop. You had me at caballo" (horse). Her name is Isapy (dew) and she is a racehorse. Somehow she has gotten it into her head that whenever I ride her, she should run (well, ok, I told her) but it goes very quickly (and without warning) from, "This is fun, hair blowing back, waving to the neighbors" sort of riding, to "holding on for dear life, inner thighs cramping, lost my flipflops 2k back, are those rotting boards over that stream really going to hold us" sort of riding. But people in the campo think it is HILARIOUS when city people, especially Americans, don´t know what they are doing, so I gotta play it cool.

"Are you scared?" his host sister yells to me when Isapy comes to a screeching halt in the pasture next to their terere circle.

"Of course not," I yell back, as I slide down like a ragdoll, on the far side so they can´t see my shaking knees.

Me, rockclimbing - Meli and I were a little surprised when the Barandas (my English class family) accepted Elmer´s invitation to go rock climbing. They are not what you´d call the hard-core, outdoorsy types. But we went, last Sunday to the only rockclimbing place in Paraguay (designated and maintained only by Peace Corps people because Paraguayans do not rockclimb), and they all did great. We had a ton of fun, joked around all day, and everybody climbed. At the end, I was talking to Daniela (the mom), and she confessed that they had all thought rockclimbing was hiking over rocks. They had totally played it cool when they saw the ropes and harnesses.

Me, moving and shaking in different work environments - all my projects are going really well. The bakery project is going to receive money from the municipality within a couple months (That´s Paraguayan time, so actually it could be a couple years), and in the meantime, they are going to do a small-scale practice run, just baking for their own community center, to get them used to running a business. This was because every time I said the words "accounting" or "management", they all started looking for escape routes.

We finally (almost) have a librarian at the coop, and she is actually qualified (2 of the 3 final candidates for the DIGITAL librarian had never used a computer, and no one had thought to ask. Ah, Paraguay).

The marketing project for CCAB is awesome. We had a great press breakfast and are planning an Awareness Walk for April 10th.

...All this without a single leak. Then something about "protection you can trust"...and, cut.

Yes, it has been a flood of activities lately - and that´s not even counting the actual flood (I woke up and put my feet on the floor...and they splashed), followed by 5 days of no water (irony? anyone?) because the pumps to the city are submerged.

But there were 2 moments recently, that were really the highlights of the last month:

"Meli, where is your bike seat?" I asked. She, Paulette, and I had just finished our radio show and were deciding what to do for lunch, when we saw that her bike, which had been locked up outside the studio, was seatless. We asked the station owner, Blas, who was sitting with his friends in front of the store next door, if they had seen anything. They ambled over to investigate and suddenly one of them points out this clean-cut guy, acting shady, waiting to cross the ruta half a block away. He has something under his arm that is rather bikeseat-shaped. They call him over and, after a slight hesitation, he comes. Indeed, he had Melissa´s bike seat (still on the post) and her bungee cord in a white plastic bag under his arm. Melissa and I jump in and start interrogating him.

-Did you steal this?

-No, I just bought it.

-Where did you buy it?

-From a guy down the street.

-This is her bike seat. Give it to me.

-I have a receipt. I bought this.

He uncrumples a hand-written receipt that shows that, sure enough, he´d bought it.

-Well, it´s hers, so give it to me.

At this point, I try to take it out of his hands (gently), but when he doesn´t give it up right away, I pry his thieving fingers off of it, insisting, "No ES una pregunta!" (it´s not a question). I was thinking "Sorry you´re such a stupid sucker to buy stolen goods, but it´s hers, so end of story, give it to me.

Melissa is saying, "We should find the guy he bought it from. Where´d you buy this?! This is my seat."

This whole interaction is becoming a real clusterfuck, with the other guys periodically throwing in their 2 cents. I picked up the plastic bag he´d dropped on the ground and read the sticker. "Galletitas de Machetazo. Qué Vola!" (supermarket cookies. What bullshit.), and I disgustedly toss the bag back at him.

We´ve switched to English and Melissa is starting to feel bad that he spent money on this, and I´m telling her, "Who cares, Melissa, it´s YOUR bikeseat," and that´s when I see the camera. It didn´t register immediately, but when everyone started laughing and showing their hidden microphones, it dawns on us that it. is. all. a. fucking. PRANK. That´s right - we got punked in Paraguay. Apparently, there is a local show here that does these sorts of pranks (owned by the Blas, conveniently). Were I not so used to humiliating myself on a daily basis, it might have been more embarrassing, but it was definitely super funny, and we all laughed and played it cool. They said we´d get copies of the DVD, and I´ll post it when I do.

***

You know, Paraguayans are very comfortable with death.

At this point, you yell, "How comfortable are they?"

Well, I´l tell you with a little story.

Melissa invited me to this wake. One of the moms in her community center (with 15 yr old twin boys) had just died of a heart attack. When people die here, the hospital drains their blood, and then they have 24 hours to have the wake and mourn before it´ll start to smell. The family stays up and guards the body, and then they take it to the family tomb. Meli doesn´t know the family that well, and wanted Awkward-situation-backup.

So we greet the family, look at the body, which is laid out in a coffin with a lace handkerchief over her face, and sit. Then this woman comes over, 40´s, hair bleached and teased, stuffed like a sausage into a geometric print dress, and crying. She stands over the body, takes off the lace handkerchief from the face, and, through her tears, is telling the dead body that she´s going to look pretty for her trip. Simultaneously, she is taking the compact out of her purse and starts PUTTING HER OWN MAKEUP ON THE DEAD LADY. A younger woman comes up and takes over when Blondie gets too upset, and the younger one is careful not to drip her tears on the newly made-up face. Then they compare 2 shades of lipstick from their own purses (Which goes better with the pallor of death? Ruby Rose or Blushing Peach?) and finish off the Death-made-over look with their OWN lipstick. They put their makeup away, cry a little more, and then sit down.

The whole time, I´ve been watching this with saucer eyes, all feigned coolness out the window.

"Did you see what just happened?" I hiss to Melissa.

"After 2 years in Paraguay, nothing fazes her anymore. "Yep," she says.

The instant we are outside, I start in, "Are they going to REUSE that makeup?"

"Yep."

"Are they at least going to wipe it OFF?"

"Probably not."

Dios Mio. Everyone always talks about how the Peace Corps changes you, and I can honestly say I will never be the same after that little trauma.

So there you have it. Another month gone by. Asi as la vida. (Life is like that.)

The following are instructions for how best to blend in Paraguay:

Step 1) Be about a foot taller than the average Paraguayan woman and foreign-looking

Step 2) Have a tattoo over your whole back, which is technically considered sacreligious (defacing the temple of the body God gave you) in a country where almost everyone is either strict Roman Catholic or stricter Evangelist

Step 3) Attend a Catholic Mass in an: a) orange, b)satin, c) floor-length d)Strapless (so it shows that tattoo, you heathen) BALLGOWN.

- a side note on this step: it is not a requirement, although it certainly helps, if at that mass, they are initiating several new nuns into the ...nunnery, so that the first 4 rows of pews are filled with nuns, and a monk, and there is a special guest bishop from Argentina giving the mass.

Step 4) Have at your side (so luckily because otherwise you have no one to whisper smart-ass comments with in English) a black guy

Step 5) (only because this is always the final step) Enjoy!

You may be wondering how I came to be in the very situation that would test these instructions. You may be thinking that that doesn`t sound at all like blending and wondering what those 3 months of training on integration were FOR, exactly, if afterwards I go and pull a stunt like this. Allow me to explain.

Feb 11, my niece, Alè, from my training family, turned 15, which means she had her quinceañera. THIS. WAS. HUGE. Quinces in Latin America are, of course, a big deal - and this one pulled out all the stops. Alè`s dad came back from Argentina, there were 150 people all dressed up, a giant pavilion dance floor with formal tables set up, everything decorated in fuschia and cream with a carnival theme, waiters in tuxes, a delicious steak dinner, a life-sized wooden cut-out of Alè, a slide show, videos (this was actaully a little creepy, with her playing on playground equipment, or slow-motion running, and the Paraguayan announcer voice talking about how she been on the brink between childhood and adulthood and today she is officially a woman)- the works. It`s like My Super Sweet 15.

But BEFORE all this, when I get there in the afternoon to find everyone covered face to feet in depiliatory cream, prepping, my mamà tells me that it`s tradition for the good little Catholic girls to go to mass before their quince, and that we should get ready before-hand because we were going straight to the party after the mass. This is not such a big deal for the guys (who just were shirts and ties), or for mamà (who wears reserved black all the time since she`s still in mourning for her mom), or even for Alè, who everyone expects to be in a fancy dress, but that is how I came to be it mass in an orange, strapless ballgown, next to Ronnell, as a few hundred people burned holes with their eyes into the stars on my back for an extremely long 1 1/2 hour mass. A few months ago, because we were so often at a loss to describe common situations in Paraguay, Melissa and I made up a new Spanish word for it. That mass was super awkwardo. It was also pointless since we did end up going back to the house after the mass, but it is what it is (and it is a funny story, so there you go.)

Alè and family posing AND the happiest nun ever

Dressed for worship

The Quince was amazing.

This is more or less the process:

Ale greets everyone at the door where they kiss on both cheeks and give her a gift.

Then they play a slideshow of pictures and that creepy playgound video (Alè talked for like 20 seconds in the video, thanking everyone, and it was literally the most I`ve ever heard her say at one time).

She switches to a long ballgown and dances with her dad, and then all the guys in the party take turns handing her a rose and cutting in for a few minutes to dance with her.

Then she dons a giant, fuschia, mariachi hat and, accompanied by a mariachi band, visits each of the tables for pictures. Then dinner and dessert and like a ZILLION more pictures, and then it`s time to dance. There were still and video camera people recording every moment of all of this. Paulette warned me long ago that if anyone ever asked if I wanted to watch a Quince video, do whatever possible to get out of it because, although the parties are fun, the unedited reliving of the party on video is definitely not.

Alè, cutout of Alè, and Me

Daisy and Belèn

Me and Mamà

After hours of Dancing (still lookin`good)

Perhaps it was feeling so conspicuous in the mass earlier that pushed us over the edge, but neither Ronnell or I felt like trying to blend Paraguayan-style on the dance floor. So we tore it up like Americans, much to the amusement of everyone there, who already know and love us, and so forgive our crazy norte ways. We got a lot of attention dancing OUTSIDE the 2 line formation that all Paraguayans use, and actually following the Beat of the music (I know, right?!), and were a huge hit. It went until 4 in the morning and by the end of it we were soaked with sweat and exhausted but happy.

The next morning, I advised them to put that cutout of Alè in the window as a security measure for when they`re not home, and headed back to site, only to leave the next day for Villa Rica where I went to the Carnival Parade some other volunteers. This is also huge, and everyone has cans of spuma (spray foam) that they`re spraying all over the place as the parades pass. The parade was cool. Lotta bare asses. Lots and lots of bare glittery asses. I`m way into that, of course, so it was fun.

"What you`re doing is so much more important, they tell me, but I don`t do ANYTHING." Jenna and I were sipping juice on a patio in Asunciòn while she was telling me how sad she`d been to miss her dad`s birthday, and how her family just downplayed it to her. We went on to talk about how it seems like no one in the US understands what we do, and maybe don`t want to know, but they still put it on a pedestal as being this wonderful thing. There`s plenty of PC literature that warns us about how when we go back, people will want to hear about our experience for about 10 minutes before their eyes glaze over and they tune it out. Not that they do it maliciously, but of course it`s going to mean a lot more to us than it would to them, and it`s possibly the development-work equivalent of looking at someone`s vacation slides.

I`d recently had a conversation with my dad where, in the midst of showering me with compliments and telling me how proud of me he is (that`s the good part), he was also making in sound like Paraguayans were just these hopeless idiots whom I had to swoop in and save. I defended them, and after a short pause, he logically followed with, "...so what are you doing then?" Good question, and the answer is just complicated enough to write a whole blog entry about...

We`ll have to start a while back to explain. After a several hundred years of crippling and mismanaged wars and corrupt and thieving governments, Stroessner took over in 1954. Try to understand what this time would have been like, and how it would have affected people. This was the book 1984 (without the technology), where Big Brother was watching all the time in the form of all your neighbors and "friends" that could turn you in to the government, and society was completely ruled by fear. Stroessner didn`t have to shove THAT many people out of planes over the Chaco, or kidnap THAT many people in the night (either never to return, or to return emotionally broken and silent about their time away), before the chisme started flying and word spread fast. Dissenting opinions got you killed. If you weren`t a member of the Colorado party, you couldn`t get a job and your family might starve. Critical thinking was an exercise in futility or outright treason, so it was best to sit down and shut up. Crime went way down because stealing a pack of gum could turn you into one of the Disappeared. The curfew was strictly followed and families peered out from behing closed curtains at night and told their children about all the terrible people out there, waiting to get them.

They still do this. 31 years after Stroessner was overthrown, there are bumperstickers on buses that say, "Stroessner- we didn`t know we were happy", because they felt safer then, at least when it came to street crime. A lifetime of dictatorship mentality cannot just be turned off in an instant, even once the dictator has been chased to Brazil.

Paulette told me of this animal study she`d read about with regards to human/animal behavior. They put animals in a small room with a low hurdle and shocked them. All they had to do to get away from the shock was jump over the hurdle, and they all figured it out easily, until they brought in this certain group. This group had been through another experience where they`d been shocked with no escape (we don`t have to explore the whole animal testing issue right now, just go with me on this). These animals, when faced with this new test, instead of jumping over the hurdle, just laid down and took the shock.

People are the same way. Why try if you can`t escape? Why question if it`ll get you killed? Just tow the line and everything will be all right. It is not that Paraguayans are lazy or stupid (although I have heard this COUNTLESS times from Paraguayans, just before they tell me that a big problem with Paraguayans is their low self-esteem). They are not. In fact, they are very together in a lot of ways (some, more so than Americans), and getting better all the time. They are not these poor, lost souls who don`t know how to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and they are NOT, as Christian so eloquently put it during his visit, Fucked. They are exactly where everyone else in the whole world would be, given the same set of circumstances. We are all products of our experiences and our environments.

So what I`m doing here, as I explained to my dad, is just providing a different perspective. I am helping, and I am making a difference, but it is in a much more subtle way than I pictured before arriving here. They have 95% of what they need, and the 5% I bring can make all the difference. So what I do is listen and watch and try to keep up with what`s going on, and then I ask things like, "Why?". Then, as they explain to me, this clueless but lovable foreigner, the logic behind what they do, the light dawns as they think about the Why of it, maybe for the first time. Sometimes there`s no good reason why something is, other than it`s just always been that way, and through the questioning of it, they see it`s ok to change it. They weren`t taught in schools to question. It`s not that I`m so smart and this is some brilliant psychological move on my part, either. I probably just really don`t understand what`s going on. But, just my being here is enough of a catalyst to spark change, as bumbling and poorly spoken as I may be, and there are these wonderful Wizard of Oz moments where they see they`ve had this power the whole time, and start clicking their heels like mad.

The youth, especially, having never lived under a regime, are driven to question and change, and I am so lucky to be here at a time like this, when things happen. I`m working with these jovenes (youth) from the leadership camp we had a few weeks ago, and I watch them just GO, knowing full well that at 16 and 17, I was neither driven or enthusiastic, like they are. They are coming up with all these project ideas and planning and doing, and I stand slightly off to the side and say things like, "Perhaps we should try this on a small scale before we start feeding and clothing every poor person in the country" and they agree, and slightly adjust - so I`m like a rudder.

That`s why the Peace Corps is set up the way it is - why we come here to LIVE as part of the community, not just do a project and leave, because it`s the little things that make all the difference. I say, "Perhaps we don`t need 4 links on the website going to the same place, and we could simplify this," or "If we have all the books in digital form, why do we need to spend the socios money on buying expensive books?" or "Yes, I`m blonde naturally but I think dark hair and dark eyes is so much prettier, like you, so that`s why I dye my hair" and things are just slightly better in a lot of areas.

Our coordinator Betsy told this story about how her host family had come into some extra money, and her dad had wanted to build the future house of his 11 year old daughter, effectively telling her that`s where she`d belong. His wife, though, asked, "How do you know she`ll want to live down the street from us? Maybe she`ll want to travel the world, like Betsy." Just her presence there completely changed that little girl´s life, and she didn`t have to say a word. That`s what we do here.

Michel, Bambi, and Mike all left with the same excuse - they didn`t feel like they were helping enough, but things take longer than a few months to get done in Paraguay, and maybe they just didn`t see what a difference they were making. There`s a reason it`s a 2 year process. Sometimes, especially when we`re missing home and we don`t see the impact right away so we feel like we`ve done nothing, it`s hard to see how those little moments are adding up to something bigger than all of us.

When I was helping Michel pack, her internet wasn`t working and her host mom Digna and I, knowing very little about computers, were staring up at the blinking lights on the modem on a wooden pole outside her room. Digna tssked and then announced, "Este sistema es jodido" (this system is fucked). Nevermind that this is super funny coming from a sweet, old lady, I`m going to extend this metaphor a little. After a moment, the lights came back on. The people and the systems of Paraguay are not jodido either, although it may appear so to someone who doesn`t understand those systems, and in fact, all it takes is a little tweaking, a little questioning, and a little time, and all the lights come on, like on this modem, and everything comes out ok. That`s what I`m doing here - falling ass-backwards into saving the world, one poorly-pronounced Why at a time.

So there´s lots of stories from over the last month that I have yet to tell you about. I know, I know, I´m such a slacker, but all of Paraguay is on vacation for the whole month of January, and even if they don´t leave, they don´t work, and with my new Ameriguayan status (that´s my new favorite word -American with a heavy Paraguayan influence), I can´t do anything either. I´m integrating - that´s my job.

***

So on Christmas, I went to stay with my host family in Guarambare, since they´d secured my visit way back in July. Although the tradition of decorating a 3ft tall plastic pine tree is slowly making it´s way into this corner of south America, with nary a real pine tree in sight and complete with empty gift boxes underneath, what´s more common are nativity scenes - a tradition that has now been bastardized in the name of all things Christmas. The 2.5ft sqare manger with authentic dry grass roof, which sits in the corner of the patio 51 weeks out of the year, the plywood floor warping in the rain, is dragged front and center. The ceramic figures are lovingly dusted off and then set up, not like in the US where Maria and Jose lovingly look on amongst the animals who are oblivious to the new demi-god in the midst and the three kings humbly offer their gifts or are still traveling there. No, no. Here, everyone is in a tight circle, in a ceramic shoving match where each figurine is vying for space within a centimeter of the sweet baby Jesus. It´s impossible to fit them all in the circle and this year it was the camels relegated to the second row, breathing down Jose´s neck and practically stomping on the that poor donkey.

Then, shiny ornaments, their red and gold paint flaking to reveal the white plastic underneath are hung from the grass ceiling in no pattern whatsoever, garlands of every type and color are draped over the roof and wrapped around the poles, the singing net of multicolored lights is draped over the whole thing with a huge orange extension cord crossing the whole yard to accommodate it, and every corner and joist gets an aluminum wreath or tiny fake giftbox.

I watched my niece Belén throughout the whole decorating process, originally with the intention of helping but quickly seeing I was out of my decorating element. When it had gotten as tacky and overdone as I thought was possible, I tried to help by putting the remaining ornaments back in the bag. She gently scolded me, "No, no Aunjelie, I´m going to use all of those."

When it was completed, the whole family gathered around in front of it, in the waning evening light, to admire her handiwork and listen to the lights play muzak versions of songs about snow, in a language they didn´t speak and in a place where they´d never seen it.

I looked at this nativity scene dripping with dazzle, looking not so very unlike what my cats used to throw up after they ate tinsel off the tree, and then at the gorgeous mango tree above it, the ripening mangoes hanging heavy from the branches like so many green and purple ornaments, and thought what I think evey day I´m here- I love Paraguay.

***

Later that night, we ate a midnight dinner and then went over to Abuelo´s house to see the rest of the family, sitting around outside and talking while the kids played, until finally being chased in by a thunderstorm at 4am. In the middle of all this merriment, there came a scream that I cannot possible describe with words, except that it encompassed all the horrible things that had ever happened or would ever happen in all the world, from another house in the complex. The only other time I´d ever heard a scream like that was in 4th grade when my neighbor Julie Speed had fallen onto the handle of her scooter and pushed her eyeball back into her skull. I would´ve sworn a kid had just fallen and knocked out all his teeth. Some of the aunts came out of the kitchen, not knowing what had happened but already crying because whatever it was was bad. Everyone went running and it turned out that one of the nieces, a 23yr old with a young husband and 3 yr old son, who had just found out that her husband had left to go spend Christmas with his girlfriend.

***

"There´s a guy, down by the cruce..." this stranger was earnestly telling me in the radio station lobby. Then he runs both hands back through his hair, blowing out his breath and looking off to the side, like he was both frustrated and unsure how to word what he had to say next. Were we in a different setting, say, a hospital, he would´ve been telling me I had six months to live. As it was, he looked back at me and said, "He...doesn´t speak Spanish. Very little. He says his name is Christian." That was how Christian arrived to surpise me.

It was fortunate that the people at the gas station had been listening to our radio show at the time. He´d taken a bus 16 hours from Florianopolis, Brazil, where he´d arrived 5 days earlier to study Portuguese for three months. We´d planned for him to come the last week of January, but this was better.

Over the next 10 days, I showed him my Paraguay. We went swimming in the Snot River, which we were told is only slightly less beautiful than the Ass juice River (clearly, Paraguayans have a lots of fun naming things in Guarani). We´d been invited by my English Class family, and we drove an hour into the campo to their friend´s house, an awesome family with 8 kids, and took an oxcart to the river, where I taught the little gils how to float on their backs and we rubbed clay mud all over ourselves like war paint. Another day, we walked the 5k with Melissa to Pindoty to visit Erin´s people there. After lunch, Melissa and I got pedicures in the shade and Christian fed some sheep. We visited my host family, my women´s group, and my various jobs where he charmed everyone with his confusion and the 3 guarani words I taught him. We watched a hippy food conspiracy movie with Paulette, had Caipiriñas with Melissa and her boyfriend Victor, saw Avatar in Asuncion, hung out with Maria Eva and her family and friends just before she had to go back to the US, played Scrabble and read from the duffle bag full of books he brought me.

There was one day...

"What was that lady´s deal?" he asked as we passed by my noseless and sore-covered old-lady neighbor on our way to the market.

"Leprosy." He started to freak a little. "Relax. Only 3% of the population is susceptable."

Christian, in his uniquely Christian way, explains that he has always figured he die in some ironic and funny way. Something so that people would say "Really? That´s what got him?". He said that when he´s in situations that would typically be considered dangerous, like hitch-hiking or driving on icy roads, he´s not scared because there´s not enough irony to kill him, but that contracting leprosy in Paraguay would be exactly the type of thing that would do it.

A short time later, we were cooking the food we´d just bought, and he starts messing with the gas hose that runs from the tank to the burners.

"Don´t mess with it," I scold him.

"It´s stretching with the heat and it could come off...forget it," he answers, deciding it´s not worth the argument and going back to his book.

I go to take a shower while he finishes with dinner and when I walk out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, I find Christian sitting on the patio stoop calmly reading his book, while the remains of a chair are burning on the patio bricks. The air is filled with the uniquely acrid smell of burnt polyester and and all that´s left of the chair is the charred metal frame.

"WHAT THE FU-" I start.

"If I had finished my thought before," he interrupts, "I could´ve said I told you so." He goes on to explain that after I got in the shower, the hose popped off the nozzle to the burners, creating a waving flame-thrower, which lit the chair on fire. He reached under the table to turn off the gas, pausing for an instant to reflect that the flame coming down the hose and blowing up the gastank would be exactly the sort of ironic death he´s always felt imminent.

But it didn´t blow up, and the chair was still burning. He´d tried to beat it out with his book, which happened to be David Sedaris´ "When You Are Engulfed In Flames", but it didn´t work. He tried water, but polyester is not known for it´s flame retardant properties and he ended up throwing it out on the patio and smugly awaiting me.

This was, needless to say, hilarious, and it got us started on ironic near deaths: Like the guy who´d broke into a factory a night to rob it´s computers and on his way out decided to huff from a giant barrel of industrial strength glue. He passes out, knocks it over, and the workers find him the next morning glued to the floor. Or, just a few weeks ago, a bolt of lightning split and simultaneously hit another volunteer here and his neighbor. Had it not split, it would´ve killed either of them. The medical office told him to take Tylenol. I´d seen him at the bus terminal recently and asked if there were any residual effects.

"No, no, I mean, I´ll probably get cancer in 10 years, but other than that..."

"OR you´ll live forever because you´re invincible now," I said, "OR you have super powers. Have you tried using any super powers?"

After a pause, he answered, "I like the way you think."

***

This past weekend, we did a leadership camp which went incredibly well. I did a communication charla which went really well (that stuttering bible salesman joke kills them every time) The teenagers are all really excited and as part of the camp, they have to do a service project within the next six months, with the volunteers helping when needed. Unfortunately, Michel, from my group, has decided the Peace Corps isn`t for her (that`s 3 from our group) and I`m also going to be helping her kids with their projects. That`s cool with me because they`re awesome and super motivated, so good things should be continuing around here. I`ll let you know...

"My one friend back home is different. She just has a different perspective on everything. She´s like you." Jenna casually dropped this as we were sitting on my patio with rum and cokes awaiting the New Year. Paraguayans celebrate midnight at home on New Year´s, and then go out and party from about 1am to 8am. She, Elmer, and I were making a midnight dinner and setting off screaming bottle rockets, pre-gaming before the party. So she´d just hit me with 2 bits of info: 1) That I was different than anyone else, and 2) That I was different just like at least one other person.

"Wait, wait," I said, "What exactly do you mean by different?"

"Oh, please," Elmer piped up, "Like you didn´t know."

So not only had everyone else reached a silent concensus, but it should also be obvious to me? I´ll admit, this wasn´t the first time I´d heard this. My ex-roommate Chandra had once told me, "You´re just different. It´s like, there´s EVERYONE else. . . and then there´s you." But then, as now, there was no further explanation into HOW exactly I was different, and it bugged me. ´

It´s not as though I haven´t felt a bit different. I spent my entire adolescence thinking exactly that, but it was more a yearning to fit in and not exactly understanding why I never seemed to be able to do or say the right things. It was always being just outside the circle of people who´d figured out the correct way to be and were real friends, while I was just sort of around. Then at some point around college I realized that everyone felt like they didn´t fit in, and everyone felt different from other people. Alienation is practically a right of passage. If everyone has this feeling of being different, though, it makes us even more alike than we might already appear. It was with this epiphany that I dropped the self-alienating walls I´d put up (read: I don´t want to be part of their stupid group anyway.), and happily moved on. But here I was being told that in fact I WAS different, different in a way that was more odd than everyone else´s different and also painfully obvious.

"But how, specifically?" I asked, trying to get a handle on the whole thing.

"I don´t know," Jenna answered. "You just see things differently. Everything has a twist. It´s like that thing with the ants. . ."

When she and Elmer had arrived earlier that day, I´d shown them to my room to put down their stuff. Jenna noticed the ant super-highway, always in rush hour, running floor to ceiling in the corner by my bed, and the busy ruta being constructed around the edge of the floor on all four walls.

"Looks like you´ve got quite an ant problem," she´d said, after complimenting the general decor.

"I wouldn´t really call it a problem," I answered, nonchalantly, "We live harmoniously."

"If I had ants like that in my room, it would never occur to me not to kill them," she explained that night, "And you live harmoniously with them. Just. . .different. Like that."

I could kind of see what she meant. What actually happens is that I lay in my bed and watch them. Earlier that day I´d noticed that when ants pass each other, they both stop for a second and do this antennae-waving greeting thing before continuing on their way. At first it looks like their very hurried, but then I realized that it could be a casual stroll when you have six legs. That got me thinking about the movie Waking Life, and how there´s this one scene where the main guy is walking down to the subway station and starts to pass this girl, but she stops him and asks to do that again because she doesn´t want to miss an opportunity to really see someone as a person instead of just a meaningless body passed on the street. She says she wants to be fully present and not just rotely living her life, finishing with, "I don´t want to be an ant, you know?"

So I´m watching these ants and seeing that they are nothing if not fully present in the moment, never missing an opportunity to bond with another ant on that super-highway. And I wondered if they talk in ant language about how humans are the examples of how not to be; antennae waving signifying "I want to know you to the fullest extent possible" and saying, "I don´t want to be a human, you know?"

But these sorts of thoughts I considered pretty normal, especially in the Peace Corps, where people have more free time than they´ve had since being toddlers. We do things like learn how to make wine or ginger beer in our kitchens (use a condom to seal the bottle and when it stops filling with air, it´s ready), or perhaps you´ve seen, "Why I joined the Peace Corps" on Youtube (if not, here´s the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CZIVZ1463c ; Worth a watch). This is how we roll.

I let it drop, but a couple days later, as we were painting her house together, Melissa, unprovoked, said the same thing. "You´re. . .different." (always with that dot dot dot). She agreed with Jenna´s different perspective explanation and added that I managed to find the silver lining in everything. "Well that´s good," I said.

So then it got me thinking. If 3 of my close friends in as many days have told me that I´m...different, maybe there´s something to this. So I called Paulette.

"Would you consider me different?" I asked.

"Different? No. Why? You think you´re special?" (and that, in a nutshell, is why I love Paulette).

Then she followed it with, "Well, maybe you´re different in that you don´t suck like most people..." (ok, so another reason to like her) "...but I think you´re different in the same way I am, like there´s less bullshit ego stuff with you."

So then I was thinking that if I was so very different, it was in the same way as Jenna´s friend and Paulette, and that reminded me of another story Jenna had told us about her cousins that categorize everyone they know. For example, there is a type they call an Mmm,yehhss-er, which means an outdated hippy who wears long denim skirts and has a long braid down her back and answers questions with a very nasally "mmm, yehhss". The prototype for this category is their neighbor, and she and her friends are the group. This type of person exists in the world, they insist, and there´s more than one of them, so that justifies a category. Jenna´s dad is an "Oh,yeah-er", which is a dad who is always taking his kids to do fun stuff, like ski trips, and apparently says "Oh, Yeah" a lot.

So maybe my type of person should be a category, I think, and it should be based on some tagline I say all the time. It took me all of 5 seconds to name my new category, as it is a phrase always on the tip of my tongue. I am an "Itiswhatitis-er". Paulette´s going to be vey upset when she finds out this is the category name - she had a bournout ex-boyfriend who said it all the time, too, and it drives her crazy - but oh, well, it is what it is. Since coming to Paraguay, I´ve changed quite a bit, so it´s possible that now I am an "esloquées-ita" ("Es lo qué es" means it is what it is in Spanish), because I technically use that version more often now, but iguál, no más. There was definitely a time in my life when I was a "righton-er", and while that is of course still a factor, I feel I´ve moved on. If we´re naming a whole category of human being her, it´s gotta be "itiswhatitis-er".

I´m not sure what to do now with my new categorization. Do we all trade emails and talk about things that are what they are? Form a club? Should we have a secret handshake? Do we have to invite Paulette´s burnout ex-boyfriend? When it´s all said and done, nothing has actually changed, and I´m not so sure it should be a goal to categorize one´s uniqueness, reducing an especially twisted world view to one line, making myself of caricature of...myself. I mentally fumbled with this for a moment, watching my ants, until I remembered that (now, officially) I don´t have to try to figure it out. There is no solution. It is what it is.

"You know, I think the relationships we develop are really going to be the most important part of our Peace Corps service" Brad told me as we were walking in the dark to our training host families` houses. "It`s the individual people and friendships that are really going to make the difference." This from the kid who during the first weeks of training was asking all the trainers, "What`s the biggest project anyone has ever done in Peace Corps? Cuz I`m going to beat it."

Of course he`s right. 2 of the 3 goals of Peace Corps are about intercultural exchange, and only 1 is the projects themselves. So how does this play out exactly? It is all the difference between your happiness and unhappiness as a volunteer. "Things have been much better since I actually started leaving my house and talking to people," Ronnell told me. "Yeah, I can see why that would be," I said.

I`ve said it before and I`ll say it again. I love these crazy Paraguayans. I love that the first thing they always ask when they meet me is, "Are you happy in Paraguay?" and that every third line in a conversation is "How are you doing?". I love that they are so exceedingly thrilled at every part of their culture that I like and adopt.

For example, I was working on the computer in the coop when Carlos, the Loss-recovery guy bursts into the library because he`d seen me through the window. He makes a bee-line for my tererè equipo.

"Is this yours?" he asks excitedly.

"Of course. It has my name right there."

"You know how to drink tererè?"

"Yeah, I love it. I drink it everyday."

"Did you tell your mom you drink it?"

(a little confused over that one- what does my mom have to do with this?) "Yeah...she knows I drink it."

"And what does she say? She couldn`t believe it, right!?" He is clearly thrilled and gives the termo an affectionate slap before setting it down.

"Uh, well, she figured if I lived in Paraguay I`d drink it..."

"Spectacular, Angelica. I didn`t even know you knew how to drink tererè." He`s walking out the door with a new spring in his step and I`ve clearly climbed a few rungs in his esteem.

This is the general reaction all Paraguayans have when foreigners like anything Paraguayan. They literally cheer EVERY TIME (without fail) I slip a Guarani word into a sentence. They practically fall all over themselves to talk about Erin, who actually speaks Guarani, and will probably be talking about her for decades. If I eat Sopa Paraguaya (basically fancy cornbread), or dance the polka (maybe the simplest dance ever, 1 step forward and 1 step back), they nudge each other grinning, "You know how to do that?!" It`s not that these things are complicated, but wanting to learn them speaks volumes about your attitude. It`s enough for them to let you into their circle, and once you`re in, they will bend over backwards to take care of their own.

My neighbor, Jorge, comes to check on me after not hearing from me one Friday night. We were supposed to go to Karaoke because he wanted me to show his friends how to have fun and be silly with it, like I am when I sing and dance around his office with my guampa microphone during tererè. He is horrified to hear I have a fever and diarrhea (still with the quick smile though cuz I used the Guarani word for diarrhea, chivivi). He runs the block to his house and comes back, arms loaded with medicines, teas, and water jugs. He nurses me and lectures me on bad Paraguayan water (the water is fine) until I tell him I`ll be ok and can sleep. All this is at 1:30 in the morning.

My other friend, Hernàn, has gotten me a deal on an apt in his building, a deal on a new mattress (there are no chiropractors in Paraguay and the foam was just not working), calls me his cousin, brought me into his very generous family, helps me with Spanish and Guaranì, and invited me and my friends to parties at his family`s quinta (this little paradise where they built a pool over a natural spring), and is just a great friend in general. He scolds me harshly when he sees I`ve bought hangers. "Ask me before you buy stuff. I have plenty of those, just use mine."

Paulette, Oscar, Hernàn, me, and Melissa

Carlos, Daniela, Davìd, Marciel, and Ivana, are the family to whom I teach English on Tuesdays. They have never once let me leave unladen with bags of fruit. I`ve tried protesting, but to no avail.

"Why can`t you just accept a gift?" Carlos asks me.

"Well, I just don`t want to use you."

He shrugs, "We want to do it, and we`re using you to learn English."

They are an absolute pleasure to be around and a joy to teach, and they`ve already planned to give me a FREE apartment as of May. I certainly don`t feel used.

Walking through the market with Melissa and Erin with my bike, and the bungee cord gets caught around the axel so the bike locks up. Instantly there are 5 guys around to help. Wrenches appear out of nowhere and in 10 minutes they`ve fixed it. "Thank you so much," I tell them. "Thank you!" they answer. Thank you for your bike breaking down in front of our store so that we have to come out in the hot sun and get all greasy fixing it? But asi es Paraguay. (Paraguay`s like that).

The Peace Corps is definitely not for everyone. Bambi, whom I`ve mentioned before, announced 3 weeks into site that she was leaving.

The night before our big Thanksgiving trip, Miguel (Mike) from my training group, finally exploded from everything he`d apparently been bottling up inside for months. Out of the blue, he punched his best friend, Carlos, in the face and, after they fought it out and broke a lamp, he gives up, crying, and saying, "I just don`t belong here, I just don`t belong here." The next day, Carlos came on the trip with his face swollen and Miguel told the PC office he wanted to go home. None of us saw that coming.

Mike and Carlos (slightly swollen but friends again)

Brad, me and Carlos

Then of course there are the people that go crazy away from home. Like the guy whom the Peace Corps, after months of no contact, found naked in his house in the campo, stapling pancakes to the wall (true story).

But for those of us who are cut out for this, we hopefully end up like Erin, who is leaving in a few days. Like her, we will cry when it`s time for us to leave, having built incredible friendships with the people here. Maybe, like Erin, we will even get a tribute show on TV where they replay her story of when she accidentally peed in her neighbor`s shed, thinking it was the outhouse, and slow-motion her crying, just in case there was any doubt she liked it here.

Erin`s Last Show

Maybe, we will decide before we leave that we will come back to visit, and we will have a Paraguay Day each year where we cook Paraguayan food and look at old pictures, and our future kids will think it`s weird because they can`t yet understand how this experience shaped us and how important it was to who we now are. Maybe we will never know the ripple effects we have had on our towns, but future volunteers here will hear stories of us for the next 20 years, and the people that we`ve known will be better off, not because of the projects we did, but because of how they laugh when they retell the story of when we peed in their shed.

It´s about time for a short break from deep philosophical life theories, so in this episode, we´ll talk about the down and dirty, the nitty-gritty - what I´ve actually been DOING with myself lately. After all, they don´t pay me $300 a month for nothing.

With a bit of negotiation, coupled with a strongly poverty-driven cheapness, I managed to get a really nice apt for the same price as my dirty little rented room, and I moved a month ago. There are 5 roommates and we share the common areas- it´s like the Paraguayan version of my beloved Howard House in Atlanta, and it feels like home.

Thursday Morning Barbeque Party

Right after that was my in-service-training, the point of which I think is just to let us see American again. In the middle of it I got a call from my coop contact, Nimia, and the conversation went something like this.

-Hola Angelica! I was just calling to let you know I´m moving to Switzerland.

-Uh, Switzerland? For how long?

-I´m not sure. I´m going for a surgery.

-Are you coming back? When are you leaving?

-Hmm, yeah, I don´t know about coming back. I´m leaving tomorrow morning.

-Huh. Well good luck. Thanks for telling me.

This sort of thing has been par for the course with the coop. The virtual library has been completely ready for 2 months on my end,the computers are approved, and yet...

You may be wondering, how could this be? Well, thanks to a Community Study the PC requires and the interviews I had to do for it, I have a much deeper understanding of what´s actually going on, and I can tell you exactly how this could be. This is the unofficial part of the PC report I wrote:

After hours and hours of wading through the business double-talk that hangs like a plague on the lips of everyone involved in the coop, I was able to get some definite answers as to what exactly is going on. For the 3 months I`ve been here, I assumed that although many of the activities didn`t make much sense to me, it was only my own lack of insight that made it so. Once I could talk candidly with people, it became clear that everyone is assuming that other people are seeing the big picture, so he or she doesn`t have to. Each person works on their small piece of the puzzle and just hopes (or perhaps it never occurs to hope) that there is a point to it all. In truth, the emperor has no clothes, and rather than working cooperatively, the right hand has no idea what the left hand is doing. And because no one is empowered to make decisions for themselves, the head (la presidenta) is so overworked with daily tasks that she can`t worry about the bigger picture. The socios are frustrated, don`t feel like they can communicate with anyone in the coop, have no system for addressing issues, and only continue to pay for fear that if they need a loan someday (which will be at a rate of 16-26%), and they wouldn`t get it otherwise. The idea behind cooperativism is completely lost, and everyone in the coop talks about nothing except getting more and more socios, and therefore more and more money, and THEN and only THEN, could they start to help people. “Once we buy the property next door, we can expand the building, once when we have a bigger building, well, we`ll really help people. If only we had more money to do it...” There are 2 main problems according to the consejo and management of the coop. The first is morosidad (people not paying their loans), but when lower rates are suggested, they gasp in horror, because that would mean less money, and the idea that it might mean more money when people are able to pay their loans is ridiculous. Higher rates is more money for the cooperative and that is the goal (cooperativism having fallen by the wayside long ago). The other problem is the attitude of the socios – they think of the coop as nothing more than a source of loans and don`t know or don`t appreciate all of the other benefits. What are those other benefits? They work with agricultural production, right? It`s supposed to be the PA in Coopafiol. Well, they help by giving loans to people that want to do production work. That counts, right? What else? Well, they`re doing a lot of environmental work. They had a battery collecting project because thrown away batteries can poison drinking water. But that was last year, and now the containers full of batteries are in the yard where the rain is fastidiously undoing all the good of collecting the batteries in the first place. And they`re doing reforestation and forestation projects...well, not right now. If only someone came up with a plan, they could do it in the future...With a strategic plan they could do so much...if only someone was managing things...But in the meantime, it`s in those pamphlets they hand out every year about the coop`s activities as a current project (they THINK about helping a lot of people). And what do they think about their socios not feeling connected? “We manage enough”. And how do you communicate? “They can come to my house and ask me any time they want. We communicate a lot by phone and with notes, and just word of mouth about what is going on in the coop.”...with 4000 socios. The employees are frustrated with the lack of communication, the beauracracy, and the confusion of roles (read: that`s not my job, someone else will do it). The president is frustrated because she is overworked and if they only had more money they could do so much...and so it goes. But if you asked ANYONE in this system how things function here, “perfectly, very well, or excellent” are all the answers you`ll get. Had I not strapped on my chest-high, rubber waders to crawl through the muck and the bullshit, that might have been all I ever knew, and I might have thought that my frustration with getting things done (or not) was only my own fault. But then again, I might just be passing the buck, like everyone else.

So I´ve mentally released any expectations of accomplishment with the coop and am once again perfectly content, chillin with my tereré.

Right after the training was the big Thanksgiving trip where all the volunteers who can afford it (or who spend their move-in-allowance and decide that not only are ovens over-rated and unnecessary, but it is also possible to live on nothing but apples and peanut butter for 2 weeks) go to a resort and drink for 3 days straight. How do Paraguayan PC volunteers party, you ask? They put mint leaves in the guampa and liquor in their termo and serve mojitos tereré style on the party bus that left at 7:30am. Pics to come.

After that, I was invited to give charlas at a leadership camp by Chris Diaz, another volunteer working with a job training program for supermarket bagboys. He warned me that giving charlas to 100 15-17 yr old Paraguayan inner-city boys might be tough, but truthfully the whole experience was awesome. They were awesome kids, really positive and participatory, although it probably didn´t hurt that they thought I was "muy hermosa" (beautiful). After I was demonstrating to the first group how not to lean on the counter and got an enthusiastic "Haikue!" (holy cow!) when I bent over, I was a little more careful with that sort of thing. The other educators weren´t that amused when the women´s room got a serenade on the last night of camp ("tradition" the boys said, although it was their first time being there), but I thought it was great. Who cares that it was at 3am?

I got back to site just in time for the crippling sinus infection I´d picked up at Thanksgiving to hit me (thanks Brad), so after 3 days in bed, it was off to my first pilgrimage.

I´d been arranging this trip for a couple of months, my campaign slogan something to the effect of "When else are you going to get to go on a religious pilgrimage?" and it was everything I dreamed and more. About the whole pilgrimage thing - every town in Paraguay has a patron saint, a hefty percentage of which are different versions of the Virgin Mary. Caacupé has a gigantic pilgrimage for their virgin on Dec. 8 and thousands upon thousands of people from all over Paraguay travel there to go to mass at the giant Basilica and buy their genuine Virgin of Caacupé souvenir T-shirts. 10 of us (8 volunteers and 2 Paraguayans) left from Ypacaraí (I figured 20k was a good first pilgrimage - no sense going all crazy with it) at 6:30pm. Thousands of people walking up and down the steepest hills in Paraguay along the ruta (some people were actually passing us, which is the fastest I´ve ever seen Paraguayans walk, but most were moving along at a decent shuffle). We got there in time to buy t-shirts before the midnight mass started, which was just a normal mass but with people standing in the plaza with candles, crammed like sardines around the other people sleeping on the ground on mats - Paraguayans can seriously sleep anywhere). That virgin really does work miracles though because we managed to get seats on the bus going back (Praise be.) and I got home about 5am.

The next day was Erin´s despedida (farewell party) in the campo. She rented sound equipment and her pig, which her mormom friend had killed the day before, was served for lunch. This is tradition for campo volunteers, but it was no less funny when someone would compliment the pork and Erin would answer, "Thanks. Her name was Shakira". I discovered I love dancing to reggaeton (never before have I had so many opportunities to do that booty-jiggle move) and we left exhausted and smelling like Shakira had a few days earlier.

Melissa and I used the goodbye ceremony the mayor gave Erin the next day to talk about our projects with him. Melissa´s going to extend a year (hooray!) and the mayor hooked me up with Kavichuí (little bee) which is one of my NGO Betel´s community centers. It´s a women´s group (with 1 guy) trying to start a bakery and the municipality is funding it. The ladies are super guapas (hard-working) and awesome. This is what I was trained for,and just so happens to be exactly the type of project I wanted to do in my service, and I´m super stoked. I´m helping them develop a business plan now and building connections with my NGO and the local government.

That weekend we used our newly developed relationship with the mayor to finagle a minibus. SOme of the people in Erin{s community wanted to surprise her one last time at the bus terminal before she left for good. She had just told Melissa that she really needed a hug when all of her people popped over the balcony above her with a big sign, so that was great. The minibus was equipped with a gigantic soundsystem about an inch in front of my knees and we car-danced to reggaeton for 2 hours, and, amazingly, tlaked. Paraguayans listen to music at eardrum-annihilating decibels, yet still have freakishly good hearing, I don{t know how they do it...and the kids were even sleeping through it.

The following weekend was Ronnell´s birthday and the plan was to go dancing all night and party Paraguayan style (intensely). We started out strong, ready to party, but after pre-gaming in the hotel and then a very late Peruvian food dinner, (which I threw up), we were lame and went back to the hotel at like 2am. The next day, swimming in the embassy pool and a real movie, called Dos Mil Doce (2012) in a real movie theater. Very exciting.

Jenna, Elmer, and Ronnell

Pregaming

At the risk of deep-life-theorizing, I´ve come to the conclusion over the last month that my habit of feeling out a situation before I loosen up and be myself is pointless. I can´t hide my light under a bushel, after all, and I only have 2 years here, and I can´t make friends if I sit quietly off to the side. Can I speak Guarani? No! But does that stop me from butchering it every chance I get? No! Can I digest meat? Not really, but Paraguayans love it, so I eat it anyway. Can I dance to reggaeton? Well, yes, actually, that booty-shake move is a huge hit. The point is that I´m here for the experience, (it´s always all about the experience) so I´ve been living it up and diving into to everything whole hog (that last pun in tribute to Shakira), and thank the holy virgin Mary for that blessed miracle.

My cousin Delaney in the US is doing a project for school with Flat Stanley. For those of you who don`t know, Flat Stanley is a character in a children`s book, and the premise is that he was ironed flat so he could be mailed places and have adventures. The idea is that you take pictures of Flat Stanley doing different things and send them back to the kids. This is the letter I`m sending about what Flat Stanley and I did together.

Dear Delaney and Class,

Flat Stanley was very excited to come to Paraguay, but he didn´t know very much about it. I explained that it was a small country in South America in between Brazil, Argentina, and Bolivia. We were in Asunciòn, which is the capital city, in the Peace Corps Office. Flat Stanley told me he thought people in the Peace Corps were super cool. I immediately liked that kid. Then he wondered why it was so very hot in October, and I explained that since we were south of the Equator, the seasons were opposite, and it was Spring right now. Also, the climate in Paraguay is kind of like Florida, and being in an envelope in a mailbox can be pretty hot anyway. Flat Stanley agreed.

Then we went on a bus to my city, which is 3 hours East of Asunciòn, in the middle of Paraguay, and is called Coronel Oviedo. I explained that in the US, Coronel Oviedo would be a town, but it is a very big city for Paraguay and you can find almost anything you need here. Flat Stanley said that Paraguay was a beautiful country and he really likes how it`s very green and there are a lot of animals everywhere. I agreed.

The next day, Flat Stanley thought it was about time to help the world, so we went to an event that I`d helped organize for the 350 Project. This was when groups of 350 people got together all over the world on the same day to have a walk and show that we should take good care of the Earth. Flat Stanley thought it was very funny when the "Pigeon of Peace" was released at the end of the Walk. It instantly fell to the ground at the same moment that a huge storm started and sent everyone running for shelter. The four of us (My Peace Corps friends Melissa and Erin, Flat Stanley and I) all ran to Melissa`s house where we dried off and watched a movie on her computer. Flat Stanley hogged all the popcorn ("pororo").

The weather had cleared by the next day, which is good because Sunday is Asado Day ("Grilled Meat Day"). Flat Stanley and I visited my host family and we all ate a big meal together. Flat Stanley thought it was rude when everyone wiped their mouths with the tablecloth, but I explained that was normal here. Nobody got mad when Flat Stanley hogged all the asado because Paraguayans are very generous and love to share. They also like to fatten up really skinny people.

Flat Stanley asked me why he couldn`t understand what anyone was saying in this crazy country, so I explained that Paraguayans actually speak two languages - their original language called Guarani, and Spanish. I told him how cool it was that everyone here is bilingual, and then suggested that being flat is no excuse to be narrow-minded. After that, we studied Guarani together with my flashcards and now Flat Stanley knows a few new words. He can say "Op!" which means "Hi", and "Mba`eichapa" which means "How are you?", and "Cheñengua`hy" which means "I`m hungry".

We were very busy that week. Flat Stanley helped me with all of my projects. We went to my Cooperative and he learned all about how the goal of co-ops is that everyone is better off working together than they would be separately, and how they all make decisions together and help each other. Flat Stanley thinks this is a great idea. My project is to help them start a library. Flat Stanley was supposed to be helping, but he loves to read and was literally lost in the pages of a book for hours. Then he met some people that worked there and helped out the security guard for a while.

We went to my other job, called CCAB, which is a group that helps out kids by starting community centers in poor neighborhoods. Being a kid himself, Flat Stanley thinks this is awesome. We helped cook and serve food for a Field Day the kids had. There were games and activities and Flat Stanley had lots of fun. He liked watching soccer the best but he didn`t play because he didn`t know how, and his team would`ve gotten flattened.

On Thursday, he came to the radio show that I do every week with Melissa and Erin called Rojapo Radio (Guarani for "We do Radio"). It`s very popular in Coronel Oviedo. We talk about different helpful topics and play a little American music. Flat Stanley wanted to sing along but his voice was a little flat.

On Friday we went to a formal dinner ("Cena") for my Co-op`s 19th anniversary. Flat Stanley was shocked when stray dogs kept wandering in and out, and when everyone rushed to the buffet in their high heels like a pack of hyenas on a dead zebra. I told him that those were just some of the charms of Paraguay and it`s a great place once you get used to it. Then everyone danced to reggaeton. Flat Stanley really knows how to drop it like it´s hot.

The next night was Halloween and we had a party with other Peace Corps volunteers (Paraguayans don`t really celebrate Halloween because it`s sacreligious). We were all zombie versions of Paraguayans (I was an apple seller ("Manzana vendadora")) except Flat Stanley, who was a wallflower.

Throughout the week, Flat Stanley:

Met lots of new Paraguayan friends,

Had a dance party with some neighbor kids (they had more fun than he did, and his enthusiasm was a little flat),

Went to my yoga classes (he`s a natural yogi and can really fold himself into all sorts of crazy positions),

Helped me teach my English class ("Soy Llano" means "I`m Flat", he taught),

Went to several meetings (I was worried he`d be bored but it turns out he likes things a little flat)

And helped me study in my apartment (predictably, he called this my Flat).

Most importantly though, we spent a lot of time together with Paraguayans drinking tererè. Like everyone else in Paraguay, Flat Stanley LOVES tererè. It´s kind of like iced tea, but it`s yummy crushed herbs ("yerba") in a special cup ("guampa"). You pour ice cold water over it from a thermos ("termo") and drink it through a metal straw/spoon ("bombilla"). The most important thing about Paraguay is that it`s very "tranquilo" (tranquil) and it´s a huge part of the culture to sit around, talk, relax and drink tererè together. Flat Stanley loves to be tranquilo.

By the end of the week, Flat Stanley was starting to wilt in the 110º heat (the

98º nights didn`t help much) and he wanted to get back to the northern hemisphere (although he said he would really miss the tererè). He said that maybe when he grows up (and out) he`d join the Peace Corps, too, since it seems so awesome. He`s quite the flatterer.

I wanted to tell Flat Stanley that he was a great guest and it meant a lot to me having him around, but I just couldn`t. Words fell flat.

Thanks Delaney! I love you!

Your Cousin and Friend,

Angelica

Being crazy kids with a camera, we also took some pictures I will not be sending to the 2nd graders:

The first time my host family met Paulette, we sat around making stilted and awkward conversation for a while, and Miguelangel asked her what she liked to do. "Oh, you read and write a lot?" his eyebrows shot up. "So does Angelica." "Oh, you like to make things...just like...Angelica" The look he was giving me was saying, "Are all Americans exactly like you?" As they´d gotten to know me, they´d been clearly thrilled with everything I did. You read and write for fun? What a unique American treasure they had. Then I bring along this other Norte and now they´re thinking that their little treasure isn´t so special at all. Actually, I´d been thinking the same thing.

I´m not going to lie, like most people, I´ve always thought I was a little special, a little different than other people. As a teenager it had manifested as frustration that no one understood me, but since then it´s been more this feeling of anticipation and excitement to see exactly how I´d turn out to be special. When I temporarily lost my religion a few weeks ago, I got my explanation.

I was reading this book called The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are. It´s about evolutionary psychology, and the fact that not just our physical traits, but our behaviors and mentalities, can completely be explained by evolution. The "goal" (although there´s no actual thought process attached to it) is very simple - to perpetuate our genes. From that point, evolution can explain all facets of human behavior - why we love, why we fight, why we are at times generous and at times selfish, at times manipulative, at times sacrificing, why we gossip, why we think we are here for a higher purpose, why we always think we are right in an argument, why we are attracted to certain behaviors or people, just EVERYTHING. Every single thing we do can be logically and completely justified by evolution. As I was reading this, I was slowly coming to the same conclusion that the book eventually did - God was to explain why things are the way they are, and thus with this explanation it is very possible that there is no God. Darwin was an atheist. And the Golden Rule, Treat Others As You Want To Be Treated, like all other "universal truths" that span religions and cultures, is actually an evolutionary treatise that will help get your genes carried into future generations.

THIS ROCKED MY WORLD. The problem was that I agreed with it, fully and completely. It is extremely clear that evolution is true, but I just couldn´t get it alligned with the other "truth" I know, and have felt to my very core for as long as I can remember; that there is an energy all around us, a general sense of balance in the world, and a PURPOSE for all of this. Even if the results were the same, that we were "good people" and the same behaviors that might have carried our soul to the next life or heaven or wherever were the ones carrying our genes to future generations, the WHY still mattered to me...A LOT.

I wrestled with this idea, mentally and emotionally for about a week, and honestly got a little depressed. I wasn´t here in the Peace Corps because I wanted to DO good things as much as I wanted to LOOK like I was doing good things (another evolutionary idea I had to admit was true). Every decision I made that week, when I followed my most natural urges, was completely justified because it´s only human. How silly and egotistical of me to have thought that the powers that be were conspiring to teach me lessons; that I needed to learn those lessons to better myself as a person, since a person is just a moral animal. But at the same time, I´d seen evidence of those "powers that be" in my own life and in the life of others for YEARS. I´d acted under that assumption of "purpose" and it had always been to my advantage, every single time. Was it all really my own delusion?

Eventually, I visited Paulette, in desperation of needing to talk to someone (in English) about what was going through my head. I threw the book on her couch and pointed at it, accusingly. "This book...this book..." I gasped out before collapsing defeated in a heap on her sofa.

"I rocked your world, didn`t I?" (She`d loaned me the book). She understood. Calmly, she went to her room and brought out another book for me to read - this one, The Power of NOW, by Ekhart Tolle. We worked on Ao po`i and talked about other things. When got back home, I was barely into the first chapter when I could see that this book was true (I felt it inherently, like it spoke to my soul, which had been protesting hard for the last week within me, rallying to proclaim its existence, despite certain evidence to the contrary), but that evolutionary psychology was also true, and they were not mutually exclusive. Here`s the gist, the salve that has since left me with a budding zen-like demeanor. Evolution formed the brain and part of the brain is the ego. The ego is the voice in our heads, our insecurities , our sense of separation, our constant thoughts. This can and does get in the way of our other level, our Being or God or spirituality, which is our connecting force; it is love unconditional. To quote "I Heart Huckabees", it is the Blanket.

I`d been running into that same idea everywhere over the last few years, in different forms; in The Secret, in Yoga, in books on writing, books on development, in meditating, in Life Success. It seemed to be everywhere I turned, like a universal truth...and why wouldn't the two levels of ourselves be connected, at times working together and at times going head to head? It certainly explains a lot. It`s like the Walt Whitman quote, "Do I contradict myself? Ok, I contradict myself. I am vast. I contain multitudes."

It happened that after all this I found an essay I wrote BEFORE all this, called "Igual, No Màs"("equal, no more". Paraguayans use this constantly and I love it.), which I´ll include here since we`re on the subject:

What do I believe? I believe I`m already there and have always been there, even before I realized it. I believe we are all very clearly part of the same thing, the same force, the same existence, the same God. Entonces, somos igual, no màs (Then, we`re equal, no more). I believe we are here to help each other, always, along our paths, for we are all in different stages of realization that we are already there. For me, it`s easy to want the physical comfort and to choose the easy path, even when I want to seem like I`ve taken the hard path and I`m tough. I believe that all the world`s religions are the same, and they`re all just fables to explain what we all want to know, which is "Why are we here?" Entonces, religiònes son igual, no màs. They are not inherently bad, but people can and do make them so. I think that I don`t need to go to a certain place and read a certain book to commune with God, but the truth is I do, it just might be a different place or different book. Sometimes I find my life wandering and need to consciously do things to reset my priorities, just like everyone else. So again, somos igaul, no màs. We`re all just doing the best we can all the time. There is no devil, there is only ourselves and our minds and our egos getting in the way of our inherent connection. The physical us, our needs, our desires and evolved personalities and problems, can get in the way of our us, our spiritual us. Our souls, individually and collectively, are always there, constant, unending love, and this is God.

So now I`ve come full circle and reached exactly the same conclusion I had before this whole religious crisis started, but feeling like I`ve walked across hot coals to get here. Maybe I`m not unique, or just not more unique than anyone else. But I am special...exactly as special as everyone else. Maybe the fact that we all feel different from other people is a uniting factor for us. We are the products of evolution, yes, but we can also work toward our own spiritual evolution and more clearly connect the two truths.

I debated whether or not to include all this in my blog, preachy as it might sound, but this really is what`s going on with me, so es lo que es (It is what it is). Or maybe, to bring us back to the REM theme, "Oh, no, I`ve said too much...I haven`t said enough".

(left to right)La Presidenta, my awesome contact Nimia, my not-so-awesome former contact Mercedes

Interesting name for a neighborhood

Me and Abuelita

Scenes from Parade of the 251st anniversary of the town

Abuelita and Natalia

Fiorella

So who are these crazy characters with whom I´m spending my days? It´s time you knew more about some of my Paraguayans.

"He Not My Baby Daddy"

Cinthia is a successful, state-employed defense attorney who fights for the accused that can´t afford a lawyer. Two years ago, her lawyer friend had a case of child neglect. A withered and weathered campo "midwife" would volunteer to take whatever unwanted babies she had helped deliver...and then try to sell them. Her shack was crawling with dirty, neglected, snot-crusted kids. A neighbor called the authorities after seeing a baby who,in the care of this midwife, was covered in angry red bites from an ant attack. Cinthia, single and in her late 20´s, adopted that baby and now has a beautiful and charming 2 yr old, Fiorella.

Among her dynamic group of friends was a Catholic priest. One of her other friends had a crush on the priest, had made a pass at him, and been rejected outright. About that same time, Cinthia got pregnant. Her friend, seething from rejection started spreading rumors that the priest was the babydaddy. The outrage hit the town like a tidal wave. It was a huge scandal and all anyone talked about over tereré.

My sweet 80 yr old Abuelita, having heard this rumor directly from the jealous friend, made an off-hand remark to Flaquito that Cinthia was a "Ojaka Kumanda", which translates directly as "Woman that sits with her legs open", but when said in Guarani is one of the single most offensive things that can be said about a person...and Cinthia is his sister. Purple with rage, Flaquito was willing to never speak to Abuelita again over it. There was a huge fight and he only stayed because she threatened that if he left, her death would be on his conscience because she would surely have a heart attack that night from all the worry he caused her. He took Valium and slept off the rage before they managed to precariously patch things up.

It was a very difficult time for the family. Cinthia always refused to say who the father was, but 2 months later she got a job in Ciudad del Este and moved, escaping the gossip. The priest went to Rome for "personal reasons". With both of them gone, the tongues have slowed their wagging and things have settled.

Then Cinthia, watermelon round, came back a couple weeks ago to have her mom´s support for the birth. The baby was just born, a little girl names Soffia...and she looks exactly like the priest.

"Why My Host Brother is a Big Fat Idiot"

My brother,Miguelangel, is fat. I have no problem telling you that because my family talks about it without hesitation. It´s pretty obvious. There are different types of fat, not all unhealthy, but his is the type accompanied by high blood pressure and heart problems, and this is why I´m mad at him.

Two years ago, at 24, he collapsed outside his back door. It turned out to be a heart problem, and the doctor told him he´d have to exercise and lose weight, or take medication. He doesn´t want to take medication for the rest of his life, and now, at 26, has low energy, terrible headaches for days on end, and general heart and bloodpressure issues. The only other option is exercise, but the reason he says he can´t is because he is too busy with the church. Remember, he spends 7 nights a week at church or meetings for the church. He can´t walk to those meetings because then he´ll be sweaty, and he can´t walk home because he has his moto with him. I don´t know how he eats that much when he´s so full of excuses.

I don´t have a problem with him going to church, but you can´t tell me that God wants him to die, and this is the effect. Paraguayans are extremists, in general, and he is no exception. He has no balance in his life- work and church. He is choosing God over his health. His big dream is to be a missionary, but I don´t see how he´s ever going to make it at the rate he´s going, and it completely defeats the purpose if the would-be-missionary is dead before he ever gets to save a soul. He doesn´t see it like that. He figures God will carry him through.

But I read this book about a guy in the Peace Corps in the 60´s in Ecuador, and this is what he said about missionaries and development work:

I had helped change the lives of some, had helped bring them

so far along the road out of poverty that their position in

the town was becoming insupportable. I felt like the guy

from AID who had come to visit me. He had formerly been a

missionary in Ecuador, an Evangelista. I took him across

the street and introduced him to Wilfredo, the only

Protestant in town, and later, perhaps out of some necessity

to be unpleasant...I jabbed him a little. "This is what

you´ve done, "I said. "You´ve taken the best man in town,

the hardest working man, the most honest man, and you´ve

separated him from his culture. He lives completely isolated

in this lousy little town, the only Non-Catholic on the beach,

the only True Believer, and he´s a joke to the town. Everyone

thinks he´s crazy."

"Yes," my friend said, "That´s why I left missionary work.

I came to realize that I couldn´t be responsible for wrecking

the lives of people with promises of paradise, making their

whole lives miserable in the certainty of saving their souls.

I came to realize that people had to find happiness with their

own culture." -Living Poor

So that´s Migue´s goal. Let´s hope he lives long enough to accomplish it.

"La Presidenta"

So I can´t tell if my boss hates me, or if she just hates everyone. She has this way, just before and while addressing someone, of closing her eyes for a second as though she´s in great pain and/or this idiot in front of her has just thrown her into a silent rage and she needs a moment to compose herself before addressing the situation. Her jaw seems rusted shut and she speaks very quietly through nearly clenched teeth, the result being that everyone around her has to lean in to hear, and that I, with my still green and growing Spanish, can´t understand a single word.

Despite this, or maybe because of it, people seem to always be scrambling to please her, bending over backwards to kiss her ass. It´s natural for people to want friends in high places, of course, but come on. At every meeting, she´s served her glass of coke with a napkin around it in case it sweats (God forbid), and a special little plate of the hors de´ouvres in tiny, pastel, paper, muffin cups. She is always served the first piece of cake at the many parties. I can´t bring myself to serve her food, but I do find myself beaming when she throws a stiff nod of approval my way, just like everyone else she deigns to compliment.

It´s like when a bride has a bunch of desperate single friends. When she throws the bouquet they all scramble around on the floor in their fancy dresses, pushing, pulling and squealing over a bunch of now wilted and torn flowers. Once the half-smile moment has passed and she´s again behind her fortress of robotic professionalism, I´m left empty-handed, limping on my broken high-heel, holding up my torn dress, and feeling stupid for trying so hard for what I logically know is an empty token, and being reminded all over again that we will never be friends.

I´m secretly thrilled each time she has lipstick on her teeth, or sweat-stains in her armpits, or takes a 3rd cookie in a way where you can tell she´s been eying it for a while and trying to restrain herself.

At times I question why my Peace Corps assignment was to help people like this, but I´m definitely learning form the experience, so maybe that´s why. And at least they have an achievable goal and I´ll get my project done. They´re already extremely together and don´t need much help. It could be worse, like how after FOUR years in his town, The same guy that wrote "Living Poor" realized that:

There was an insane quality to the poverty in the town, some

black secret that lay just outside the mind´s acceptance...

(he goes on to explain how a great percentage of the babies

and kids in the town die, and about how a man had come in

drunk and looking for trouble until he received it in the

form of having his head slashed open with a machete)

...I began to be aware that there was scarcely a moment when

a baby´s crying didn´t fill the air, and there was a

resemblance between the violence of the babies´ furious raging

cries and the violence of machetes slashing through flesh.

Like a revelation, I suddenly realized that these screams

were the screams of human beings learning about poverty.

They were learning about sickness and about hunger; They were

learning in a hard school what they could expect from life,

learning to accept their destiny and the futility of revolting

against it. They were being twisted and maimed. They were

being turned from normal human beings into The Poor.

After the age of 6 they were ready for life, and as far as

being poor, they know all about it; there isn´t a thing they

don´t know. There are no more tears. They play quietly,

gravely in the dirt before their houses, and there is something

terrible in their eyes, a kind of blindness. For years they

will go without weeping, and then a strange thing happens. At

about the age of 19, the boys discover the healing magical

release of alcohol, and until they are about 24 or 25, whenever

they have money, they drink cane alcohol almost as a rite,

seeking out the purging relief in those few minutes just before

unconsciousness when everything concentrates in a flashing,

searing point - all the hopelessness, the misery, the stupid

deprived past and the stupid endless future...

"Oh, puta," they yell in the street. "Oh, la gran puta."

Oh, great whore, they yell in the street. They are screaming

at life in a paroxism of rage, accusing life of cheating them.

The tears gush out of their eyes,they roll on the ground,

beating the ground with their fists, chewing the earth.

"Oh, puta. Oh PUTA. Oh Gran Puta, LA GRAN PUTA!"

After about 26 all the revolt is burned out of them, by that

time they are beginning to get old. They finally accept their

destiny. Or if they can´t, I guess they take up their machetes

and go looking for it.

And this thing about the town that I had been afraid to think,

the town´s black, unspeakable secret? They mentioned it on a

news broadcast one night, sandwiched between the stories of wars

and riots, announcing that 60% of the world´s children were

suffering from protein starvation, and that this deprivation in

the first 5 years of life permanently and irrevocably destroyed

up to 25% of a man´s intelligence.

25%.

If 75 is the IQ in the town, what is the medical word that

describes this poor, doomed people, this wasted resource living

out it´s unproductive destiny in the impregnable prison of a

destroyed mind, in a twilight, idiot world where nothing relaly

makes much sense? -Living Poor

Of course, some of that is true here, just like some of it is true everywhere, but here there is much more hope. Still, it´s an awful lot to be up against, and it´s the same reason why there´s a new kid in our house. Abuelita has "adopted" a 7 yr old, Natalia, who is from a campo family that couldn´t take care of her. I think she weighs like 20 pounds because I can easily lift her over my head; overrun with parasites, Abuelita explained. She also explained that the reason she has her is because with her, Natalia could end up a teacher or professional, while in the campo, nothing would become of her.

I can´t help but see the similarity between all these situations, Cinthia and Abuelita with their adoptions, Migue with his missionary work, me and the Peace Corps in general. Everyone´s intentions start from a good place. How can we not help these poor people? With a little help from me, they can be saved. But how can we know that helping is really helping? Can development come from anywhere other than a perspective of superiority? We clearly bring with us all of our problems and issues, judgments and ideals - who´s to say we´re better? Who´s to say what´s good? Would you want to be "developed"? Would you resent it if you were? The efforts of parents trying to develop their kids are often resented. What about if you´re the presidenta of a successful cooperativa?

Just some thoughts...All I can do is what I can do, and of course I love it here. It´s just that with all the vacations, I´ve had a lot of time to think

The first day of Spring? Why, we should have a cake!

My Balmacedas and me

Flowers?! For Me?! Why Thank you!

Who can sleep in the middle of all this music and excitement? This Guy.

Me, Jenna, Ronnell, and Elmer at Reggaefest

Eric, Matt, Me, and Jenna

Poor quality Pic of the stage. Sorry I couldn´t quite capture the magic

This is part of a series of Fake candid shots where we pretended to not notice that I was actually holding the camera and taking pictures. In this one, Elmer has just told Ronnell and I somethng upsetting and we try to comfort him.

This is the Hippie Market, brought to you by your friends at Nokia and Tigo because they know "Hippie" best

Ronnell, Me, and Jenna

Toys made by Paraguayan kids out of only recycled materials

This is super impressive

I can check off "Make an Old Lady Cry" from my list of things to do today

A light moto trip, Flaquito and Denis carrying only my bici and one bag

Flaquito and Me

Things are still happening right and left - all of them good, depending on your sense of humor. We´ll start with work. Every week, the Education Committee, which I´m part of, meets on Mondays at 4 (technically 3:30, but it´s the Hora Paraguaya). I figured I´d just observe at first, so it took me a while to notice that they were actually completely ignoring my existence. They would talk over me and in front of me and behind me, about me, like I couldn´t understand (which at first I couldn´t, but after about 3 weeks something snapped and I can understand a lot more now) and I would just zone out. This book by another Peace Corps volunteer explains it well..."After listening for hours to a language which is barely understood, the brain goes into a paralysis. It closes the doors and shuts up shop. I would sit there trying to look reasonably intelligent but feeling completely useless, my eyes glazed, my mouth hanging open, slowly drowning in a flood of strange, soft sounds." (-Moritz Thomsen, Living Poor). I would try to set up appts with my contact for the Virtual Library so I could find out exactly what they wanted and she just wouldn´t show up, and whenever I asked straight out what exactly they were trying to do, they´d pretend like they couldn´t understand what I was asking. This is very Paraguayan because Paraguayans, like probably most people, never want to admit when they don´t know something, so they´ll avoid answering or tell you complete bullshit so they don´t look stupid. This is especially dangerous when asking directions because they will answer you with complete confidence about where something is and have no idea. Tip: Always get at least 4 opinions for directions in Paraguay. The truth was that they didn´t know what a Virtual Library was, let alone how to start one and expected me to figure all that out for them. But that´s not how the Peace Corps works because then when I leave they´ll have no idea how to work it, so I need to work WITH someone there and teach them. This was the issue. So after she still hadn´t explained anything and dropped me off across town to shadow at a high school library and then to find my way back without directions or explanation, I was pissed and wrote a letter to the Education Committee about how I couldn´t do anything if they weren´t willing to communicate with me. I was nearly in tears because after I brought up the problem, they still tried to talk about me and not to me, until the President, who I would normally describe as a cross between a Stepford Wife and a Bitch but that day redeemed herself, spoke up and suggested that since I was sitting right there, perhaps I could be addressed directly. From then on it went well and I have a new counterpart now, Nimia, who is awesome and we work together really well and things are really getting done. So that project is moving along swimmingly now.

At Betel, I visited all the different community centers where they work with the kids. I found out that they start centers with a board of parents in that campo neighborhood with the goal of pulling out within 5 years so that the neighborhood will run the center on its own. It´s really impressive and now I´m even more excited to work with them. This month we organized a local expo, as part of a Contest from Canadian Christian Children´s Fund, where the kids make toys out of only recycled materials. They did really amazing, creative, and super impressive things with old bottles and newspapers and all sorts of stuff. The winning toys will go to Asunción for a contest there, and eventually to Canada. Things are awesome with them.

So I´m dating my cousin Flaquito. It´s going really well. We had a serious talk at the beginning about how we´re doing this American Style and how I don´t want a bunch of crappy roses, cheap teddy bears, and 1,000 texts per day. It´s very Un-Paraguayan, but he seems to be handling it well. That´s probably what helped with my language so much - since it´s a foreign tongue and all.

(Ok, that deserves a side note. Dear Pop, You alright! I learned it by watching you! Dear Everyone Else, I´m well aware that puns are quite possibly the lowest form of humor and I would normally consider myself above such groaners such as the one above, but I am my father´s daughter, and I don´t know if it´s genetics or just that my language skills are low in Spanish and probably falling in English (that joke is good in both English and Spanish by the way- it´s "Lengua Extraña" here, and yes, I´ve used it in both languages) but I´ve found myself using more puns and it´s like I can´t even help it. I´m so truly sorry you had to be a part of that.)

I´ve moved. It was not, as I had to explain a million times to my host family, because I was unhappy there, but because the Peace Corps says if you can live with different families it´s better because you build a bigger suppport system and have different experiences. I´m living with Flaquito´s Tia, whom I call Abuelita (Little Grandma), which is great because she rents rooms, so I´m more independent and I get to be a grown-up again, por FIN (finally)! I spend a lot of time with her still, and she´s 80, very sweet and open-minded. Sometimes it´s hard to understand her with that big wad of tobacco in her mouth, but we get by. Flaquito and his friend Denis were nice enough to move all my stuff for me...on a moto. I´m so surprised they made it without wrecking, but Paraguayans carry everything on motos (entire families with pets and newborn babies, huge construction equipment, whatever...everything except helmets, which are apparently too difficult.)

So have you ever made an old lady cry because you´re pretty and have nice legs? Because I can now say that I have. One day, Flaquito and I were walking around visiting and one of his grandmas and an aunt were sitting outside (he seems to be related to like 90% of the town because almost every house we pass has a cousin or aunt in it, which then become my cousins or aunts because that´s just how it´s done). So my new grandma, who is 94, called me over to her chair, and when I got there, she started feeling my calf all over and muttering in Guarani about how pretty I was and about how nice my legs were and the next thing you know, she´s all out bawling. My aunt is explaining how she´s just sensitive and gets emotional with pretty things, but at the same time she and my cousin are starting to mist up because their grandma is so touched.

Now is a good time to interrupt with a vocabulary lesson: Did you know there´s no word in Spanish for "Awkward"? This is extremely ironic because I´d say a good portion of my day is spent in super awkward situations, like this one. But I digress...so I´m just patting her on the back like, "Therethere, therethere, I drive people to tears with my beauty all the time," until she calms down enough for us to tactfully make our escape. Ah, how I love Paraguay.

After a busy couple weeks, it was time to head to Asunción for what I´m now calling "The Best Weekend Ever". I left Friday and got a bunch of stuff done at the Peace Corps office, went to the dentist where he told me I didn´t need a root canal, and then went to Paso de Oro to visit my first Paraguayan family. The news with them is that there is no news and they´re exactly the same. I know it´s only been 5 weeks but I´ve had so much happen, I just figured they would´ve done more. But it was cool. Then Saturday I met up with Jenna, Ronnell, and Elmer and a bunch of other PC people to go to REGGAEFEST. Dios Mio it was fantastic! I´m pretty sure about half of Paraguay was there, and it was so nice to see all different types of people - like a little spoon-full of the States. And everybody was just cool; no fights, no drama, just really awesome reggae (3 south American bands, one of which was a cross between reggae and hardcore, which I wouldn´t have thought possible, but they made it work). And THEN...The Wailers. Shut the F$%k up - I got to see The Wailers live at a huge outdoor concert with a bunch of my friends and cool Paraguayans and perfect weather and a Nokia and Tigo Sponsored Hippie Market (that last one was pretty ironic). YES! Yes I did!

The next day, as if things weren´t already awesome, I found this perfect bouquet of flowers just lying on the ground at the busstop; I felt like a princess. About an hour later, I thrust those now drooping and wilted flowers at Martín, Maria Eva´s brother. I´d gotten off at the wrong busstop and trudged with all my bags in flip flops in the sweltering heat, so I was equally wilted and drooping. A quick shower to recover and I spent Sunday with the Balmacedas, and you know how I feel about them, so it was awesome.

I had some time to write today because it´s a holiday. We have them like once a week for one reason or another. Usually we just have a cake and soda, maybe an awkward party (how have they not just invented a word for those situations??), but today things are closed. In the last 3 weeks, there´s been 2 birthdays, the We Won the Soccer Game So Let´s Close Everything Day, the Dia de Jovenes and Dia de la Primavera (Day of Youths and Spring) and today is a holiday that nobody knows what it is but they´re happy to be off work. Ah, Paraguay.

When one is, say, a Peace Corps Volunteer in Paraguay, her life is so multi-faceted and interesting that it´s difficult to paint a full picture of the experience. I can, however, give you little snippets of life to help give you a general idea...

So I think my stalker has given up. This is good news because it was pretty intense and annoying for a while. See, back when I was green and naive in my first few days here (not seasoned and wise, like now), this guy came up to me at a group coop event and started talking to me. I couldn´t really understand what he was talking about and he just kept mentioning all these Americans he knew. Then he asked for my number and, thinking that he just collected American friends, I gave it to him. He started texting that night - "Where are you? I want to see you? Do you like me? What are your second names?" (names are a big deal here and everyone has 2 or three first names and 2 last names - people always want to know them so they can mentally put you in a box based on who your family is. I don´t understand why this system works because to me it seems like there´s only like 5 last names in all of Paraguay and everyone has some combination of those, so it can´t signify much). I didn´t tell him anything important but when he texted me at 6:52 the next morning to tell me good morning, that was my last straw. I wrote back and told him he was crazy and to never write me again. This was a mistake because it started a torrent of texts and calls, mostly along the lines of "What did I do? Please just talk to me? I don´t understand what I did wrong..." and later, thinking either that he´s clever or I´m stupid, "I have questions for you about coops. I want to ask your advice about marketing."

When I talked about the situation with other Paraguayans, they couldn´t understand why I was upset - "How romantic to tell you good morning! Oh he´s wooing you!" And the worst, "Is he going to be your boyfriend?" What in the US is grounds for a restraining order is normal courting behavior here. After a week of no response, he finally gave up, but I definitely learned not to give out my number.

I´ve been hanging out with my cousin Flaquito (skinny) a lot lately, and through him, a new group of friends my age. We hang out at people´s houses or go out to karaoke bars. He has a friend who speaks English because he used to hang out with a group of British guys. I think they were soccer hooligans, though, because his every other word is Fuck. I´m teaching Flaquito English, but only the cusswords, and I taught him "to fuck" (er, wait, I didn´t mean it like...I meant the verb form...aw, fuck it - take that however you want). There was a little tension because he thought his friend and I were arranging something along those lines, since that´s the only word he understood. I explained that it´s also used for emphasis and his friend is just really intense.

Flaquito is great, though. He´s what we call here a Bromista (jokester). It´s hard enough for me to understand what´s going on in any given situation, let alone when he just makes up random stuff to see if I catch it. I kind of hate it because I always fall for it and then feel gullible, but it´s good because he always keeps me on my toes.

I went to church with my family again because it was my mamá´s baptism (whole body under in a giant tub of yellowing water). Some things to note about the 2.5 hr "culto" (amazingly appropriate name for the mass service) were: The preacher talked about how all the money Michael Jackson had didn´t make him as happy as the light of God made him (the preacher). However, the walls and stage of the church are made of marble, and the dancing girls have a whole closet full of different outfits (that day it was midnight purple and skyblue, satin), and it was a little ridiculous to see these obviously poor campo people in mishapen clothes getting blessed as they handed over the donation envelopes to this preacher in a very expensive suit. I concluded that clearly money doesn´t make him UNhappy. I was just thinking how stupid and what torture the whole thing was when they asked for the people who felt God for the first time that day to come to the front, and my sister-in-law went...another one bites the dust.

Then, this little 6yr old, who I thought was a boy until she said her name was Jessica, became enamored with me. After spotting me, she spent a good part of the service backward in her chair, STARING, and lighting up whenever I smiled at her. I´m pretty sure she thought I was an angel, so I tried to look extra pretty, so as not to disappoint her.

The best part, though, was when my sobrino (nephew) was sticking his tongue through the slats in the back of his chair, while his brother tried to catch his tongue with his feet, the effect being that he licked the bottom of his brother´s shoes over and over again, which they thought was hilarious (their mom didn´t stop them because she was busy being saved).

The reason I like Julio the dog so much, other than how one ear stands up and the tip of the other flops over, is because he´s so smart. Before I came he lived between 3 houses that would regularly feed him table scraps. When I started paying attention to him and giving him a little love, he took that as an invitation to join the family. He used to only stay outside, but every day he moves a little further and further into the house. The day he made it down the hall and set one foot in my doorway, my sister flipped out, and shoed him out, yelling (this incidentally, is the exact same reaction she had when Flaquito set one foot in my room to tell me something - that´s a big no-no here). Still, he´s seen his opening and we find him sleeping in the kitchen all the time now. I don´t want to adopt him because I don´t want him to become dependent on me, but vamos a ver (we´ll see).

So I have this pretty intense fear of being on the radio, and the last time it happened, in Tacuati, I froze up and couldn´t say much of anything. I believe I´ve said before how life very conveniently lines up lessons for me, and of course this is no exception. I was invited to be on TV last week with Melissa and Erin, and refused since that´s even worse than radio, so that´s when karma stepped in. Within hours of each other, Paulette and Melissa called to ask me to be on their radio shows because their partners couldn´t make it. If I didn´t do it now, it was just going to come back and haunt me, so I agreed. Paulette´s show was fun - she´s covering the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and we covered Habit 4 and played regaton music.

Afterwards, though, the bus I was supposed to catch didn´t leave because there was nobody on it at the station (Ay, Paraguay), so...impromptu slumber party! We had a pillow-fight in our panties and there were feathers EVERYWHERE! Just kidding, we´re not the pillow-fight types and all the pillows nad mattresses here are made of this slightly soggy and disintegrating, dark-yellow foam. Actually, we had marshmallows with a little hot chocolate and I read David Sedaris outloud while she made ao poí. The highlight was that I slept in a Snuggy (I took a picture) (Also, I´ve heard rumors of Snuggy parties in the US. Anyone who knows more about it please tell me- it cracks me up).

The radio show with Melissa went really well, too. We talked about sexuality and sex myths in a public service announcement sort of way, and I got to ask her questions like "Meli, is it true that certain yuyos can restore viginity?" (no, and you should NEVER put yuyos in the vagina) and "After anal or oral sex, are you still a virgin?" (well, that´s really a personal and cultural decision)...So, now you know. So when Erin leaves in December, I´m going to do that show with her every week. Oh, my, how I´m growing as a person here.

So, if you haven´t heard by now, Paraguay is going to the World Cup in 2010. I cannot describe how freaking enormous that is, but just to give you a glimpse of it: each time Paraguay wins a futbol game, a spontaneous caravan of cars and motos, everyone wearing jerseys and waving flags, takes to the streets to make a honking, screaming procession through the city...and that´s just a regular game. For the game when they qualified for S. Africa, there were caravans and fireworks and ALL THE SCHOOLS AND BUSINESSES WERE CLOSED THE NEXT DAY. Yep, seriously. I love this place.

It´s not all fun and games, though. I´ve been working at the coop job-shadowing and researching virtual libraries. Turns out they asked for a volunteer because a guy at the coop read an article about virtual libraries, which I can sum up for you right now...[throat clear] "Virtual libraries are great! You should have one!" This encompasses everything they know about them, and they thought I was just going to come in and do it. Actually, they thought all we had to do was scan some books into the computer, buy a couple more computers and Viola! We had a little talk about how my job was actually to teach them how to do things, not do it for them, because that´s not development. We also had to discuss a little thing called copyright laws (the answer to this, I swear, word for word, was, "Copyright laws? Psshhh. Who cares, it´s Paraguay.") So everyhting´s going well, but, you know, baby steps. I´m done job-shadowing at the coop and will spend the next couple weeks job-shadowing at libraries with digital databases (which is actually what they want- a virtual library is just the internet).

I´ve also started developing a marketing plan with a group called CCAB, who run community centers in the area and do lots of projects to help kids. I love it because good stuff is actually getting done.

So, that´s what´s going on with me. And you?

I really love living here, and my first 2 weeks in site have been really eventful. I arrived into the open arms of my new Mamá, Nelly (pronounced Nay-yi). She is so great - all short and round and cheery, calls everyone Mi hija or Mi hijo (my son/daughter), and almost immediately puts a plate of food in front of any new guests. I keep wanting to use the word "dumpling" to describe her- she just seems huggable and warm. My sister, Ninfa, is a year older than me and works 2 nights a week as an obstetrician and spends the rest of her time decorating flip-flops to sell. She´s married but her husband is in Texas, working, and they have a 7yr old, Mateo, mi sobrino. Mateo is a really good kid - I taught him how to do high 5´s and he´s completely fascinated with everything I own. Ninfa is a good mom and it turns out she´s also a big fan of Air Supply (of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" fame (and lots of other 80´s hits I never knew I knew). The first couple nights we did a little kitchen karaoke with spoon microphones. I taught my Mamá all about how to have rockstar stage presence, and Ninfa laughed so hard she spit out her mate. Poor Mateo had to beg me to stop so he could eat his hotdog - 7yr olds hate being serrenaded. They make me show the pictures to everyone that comes over.

I really like my brother, Miguelangel, too, even though he thinks I´m going to burn in hell. He´s a mechanic by day, but really his dream is to be a missionary, and every night he goes to either a church meeting, Bible Study, or church - yes, 7 nights a week. He also manages to turn every conversation into a theological discussion and I think he considers me a savage, but we still get along really well. He´s married but his wife left him after only a few months. He´s cheerful, although it´s clear that it´s absolutely crushing him and he´s desperately trying to comfort himself with the Bible as he awaits it to be God´s will for his wife to return to him. He still wears his ring.

I have another brother who is married with a family (he lives around the corner), and there´s lots of other family, and family of family, who live close by and are always dropping in. There´s also a street dog that always hangs around, so I named him Julio, and Paraguayans think the concept of a dog having a name is hilarious, but now he´s Julio to everyone and he knows his name.

We sit around and drink tereré a lot. I love tereré. Not only the taste, but just the ritual of it. It´s part of every time of day, and people carry around their equipos like security blankets, so it´s always on hand. Although people here are super guapo (hard-working), I love that they know there´s no sense killing themselves, and there are plenty of tranquilo breaks to pour and pass. There´s no language equivalent for the term or concept of "hanging out" because they just ask if you want to tereré. This is also why chisme (gossip) is so prevalent in Paraguay - they´ve gotta talk about SOMETHING. The best part is that it´s a very important part of my job because I´m integrating.

We have a woman, Ña Carmen, who lives next door and comes over to work every morning. She´s super sweet, but only speaks Guarani. All of her front teeth are broken out and she looks around 70 but she´s only 58. It´s clear why, too, because she spends the whole day in the yard scrubbing clothes, cooking a big meal over little carbón burners and wood fires, scrubbing all the black off the pots and pans with buckets of water, and then sweeping the yard and patio (this seems especially futile since it´s a dirt floor). She´s thin and wirey, her face is weathered and her hands are spotted and as strong as vice grips, but she wouldn´t have it any other way.

This is one of the things I love the most about Paraguay and I´m constantly fascinated by it. In this country the size of California with a population just slightly above that of metro Atlanta, there are 2 different climate zones, 2 opposite lifestyles, and 2 separate languages. There is extreme duality here, but instead of colliding, the two worlds just mix together to form a Jopara (mix), which makes Paraguay different than everywhere else in the world. Quality of life rankings (when it comes to health, income, and education), rate rural Paraguay on par with Kenya (somewhere around 140th in the world) and urban Paraguay is similar to Israel (about 22nd). A lot of the indoor kitchens and bathrooms were just installed within the last 20 yrs, so there are many cases, like Ña Carmen, where people have both indoor plumbing and stoves, and outdoor latrines and fires, but prefer to cook or poop outside. There are giant modern superstores and streetside vegetable stands, dirt roads and cobblestones streets and paved rutas, oxcarts and motos, trucks and horsedrawn wagons, the old and the new, the rich and the poor, all mixed together. They can simultaneously be convinced that everyone on the street is a thief, distrusting everyonethey don´t know, and welcome complete strangers into their homes like new family members. I´m constantly amazed by this country.

My co-op is great, too. I have been going everyday to follow a different employee around for a few hours, just to learn exactly how things work around here. I have a counterpart for the virtual library but she´s already flaked on meetings a couple times, so we´ll see how that goes. Everyone is really nice, they always seem happy to see me, and I think I´ll be able to do some good around here.

I´ve been spending a lot of time with the other volunteers as well. I´ve met the rest of my VAC, which are all the volunteers in my area, and they all seem cool. Melissa, my sitemate, and Erin, who is 5k away, and I have also hung out a few times. Last Saturday, Melissa, Truman (another volunteer), and I all went out to Erin´s site in the campo to watch the foot races which have become all the rage in her area. They´ve developed what is, honestly, a pretty bullshit system, where they can psyche each other out with lots of false starts and win by putting their hand out to cross the finish line first. Truman has decided to hang up his racing shoes after losing 4 times in a row. We also played volleyball (Melissa was pretty disappointed in me, but I never said I was good), and Bingo (marking the papers by poking holes with little sticks). We watched this adorable scene where 2 little toddlers were serving and drinking tereré (soon after that there was a not-so-adorable, narrowly averted disaster where the same sweet toddler that served tereré was about to smash a brick over the other one´s head. Eh - it´s always give and take).

I also went to visit Paulette, who works at an ao´poi co-op, and is also super fun because she´s a big smartass. She taught me a little about how to make ao´poi (which is just very complicated and intricate embroidery). I was supposed to watch her do her radio show, but the other volunteer was too broke to take the bus to her site, and then the guy that runs the controls at the radio station decided to disappear that day (Asi es Paraguay). Paulette was almost worried about the 5 very disappointed listeners who might think that "Mbae´laporte, Nortes" (What´s Up, Nortes) was cancelled.

My Spanish is getting better all the time. I still talk like a cavewoman, but, to quote David Sedaris, Me talk pretty one day, and I understand more and more every day. I´m cooking for myself, which I LOVE and really missed. I´ve started running again (I sound like I´m having a severe asthma attack, but since Paraguayans don´t run at all - and try to walk as little as possible, literally taking their moto around the corner- they´re super impressed. I have a comfortable bed and warm showers, so pretty much all I could ever want for true happiness. And I thought this Peace Corps thing would be tough...

My Last Saturday as a trainee, we all gave charlas about different Paraguayan traditional things. I chose Beliefs and Superstitions, and they´re pretty entertaining. Some are clearly old wives tales and everyone I interviewed was sure to tell me that THEY didn´t believe them, but other, less educated people probably did. Others, we come up against constantly in our day-to day lives here. For example, an excuse when you don´t want to drink mate is to say you´ve just eaten a mandarine or drank milk, and they will instantly drop it because they would NEVER mix those. Also, if you mix watermelons with mango, wine, water, or milk, it can kill you. If you swim or bathe after watermelon, it will give you a heart attack. Watermelons are extremely dangerous in Paraguay (I´m not sure why they even grow them, but they do). Any fruit with milk or wine will give you diarrhea, as will drinking while you eat (they drink just after the meal, which somehow is ok).

They have a long list of heavy or hot foods (meats, fats, fried foods (those 3 alone are 90% of the Paraguayan diet), beans, soy, peanuts, melons, bananas, chocolate, and alcohol) that are NEVER to be mixed with light and/or cold foods (vegetables, other fruits, cereals, tereré, and water). That just goes to show you strength of character of my Mamá that she made me fruit salads with both bananas and oranges in them - qué suerte. Vegetables in general are seen as being superfluous, only for animals or for when you´re sick. And that hot/cold mix thing is not just for foods either. If you wash your hands after ironing or cooking, when your hands are hot, you´ll get arthritis. If you take a cold shower after exercising, you just might die.

My favorites are the wives tales for pregnant women including: if a pregnant woman eats eggs, bananas, or peanuts, she´ll have a dry birth. If she eats kidneys, her baby will have a hairlip. If she eats intestines, the umbilical cord will get wrapped around the baby´s neck. If she drinks beer, she´ll have a blonde baby and wine will give her a dark-skinned baby (nobody mentioned fetal alcohol syndrome).

Speaking of beliefs, I have suddenly become a palm-reader. It was at Elmer´s birthday party, which was mostly inside because it was cold and rainy. Through the course of conversation, Elmer brought up the freakish lines on his palm, and I told him one of the only 2 things I know about palms. His host mom saw us looking at our hands and somehow it got around that I know how to read palms, even though I was ADAMANTLY insisting that I didn´t. Before I knew it, 6 of his family members were lined up, waiting to have their palms read. What else could I do? I gave them each a reading. I just guessed at a lot of it and watched their reactions, but they agreed with everything I said, and it really did sound good. I should set up a booth or something. The Americans were laughing at the time, but then when we were out for beers they all wanted their palms read, too, and I was dead-on for a LOT of things. I guess I have my fall-back plan now if this whole Overseas Development thing falls through.

Ronnell and I also visited the Children´s home for the last time to say goodbye. Have you ever been loved so hard you think your skin is going to rip off? If not, visit a children´s home with 200 kids. It´s funny because each time we leave and we´re walking back to the road, we always have the same conversation, that goes something like this:

"whew, that was awesome. I had so much fun today."

"Yeah, me too. It was great. I really liked it when...(fill in the blank - that kid tried to jump over the latrine hole and didn´t make it, I had a kid on each leg and one in each arm and they wanted me to play volleyball, they took turns jumping off the wall so we could catch them, etc etc)"

"yeah, that was great. Well, I´ve gotta go home and take a shower now"

"yep, me too. God knows what I´m covered with at this point.".

We had to say goodbye to the families that had loved and supported us for the last 11 weeks. It seemed to me that, while i got a lot out of living there, I just made a lot of extra work and cost a lot of extra money for my Mamá, but there were lots of tears when I left (she´d always been a crier). I am constantly amazed by how Paraguayans just give and give and give of themselves or whatever they have. I made each of the people in my house glasses out of wine bottles (we learned how in training) and customized them with nail polish. They loved them (except maybe Alé who didn´t seem too thrilled with the picture of a TV on hers, but everyone else thought it was funny).

I´ve written a top ten list of my favorite moments so far, and in no particular order, they are:

1. Finger painting with Camila and Belén

2. Doing yoga poses and stretches on the living room floor with Belén while everyone else sat around and divided their attention between us and the TV

3. Every single "10 minute" (really more like 40 minute) break when we all got to just hang out outside and talk and joke around

4. Kite flying and learning to play Baté with my sobrinas

5. Playing Spanish Scrabble (with Guaraní words allowed) with my family by candlelight when the electricity was out for the 20th time

6. My birthday party

7. The first and last visits to the Children´s home

8. Singing Boom-chicka Boom in chorus with my training group as we huddled around a little carbón-burner to stay warm

9. Opening the car door on that poor moto

10. Being a palm-reader

So it was time to say goodbye to all that, and enough salt in my daily diet to kill a garden-full of slugs, and to waking up each morning to awesome fruit salads, and to everyone in my training group, and to Don Antonio, who waves every day and calls my Barbie, and to speaking English every day...

We headed out Friday morning, all dressed up, to go to the Embassy for our swearing in Ceremony. There were rumors that Presidente Lugo would come, but that weekend was Children´s Day, where they honor all the kids that fought and died during the War of the Triple Alliance (there was a battle with thousands of kids all dressed like grown-ups and with fake mustaches who basically got anihilated), and they just honor kids in general. I think Lugo was too busy visiting all his illegitimate kids. But the Ambassador was there and news crews. We´d voted Ronnell to give a speech, and boy did he ever. Our Director actually forwarded it to DC and every other country and siad it was one of the best PC speeches he´d ever heard. It was all about how our packing list was terrible but that we had everything we really needed inside of us anyway, in our hearts and minds and souls. I was reflecting on that a few days later as I dragged my 100lbs of stuff in 5 bags through Asunción (the big suitcase with wheels that I´d bought on the street kept getting jammed up with leaves and debris and tipping over, pulling me with it), and I thought about just leaving it, but of course I didn´t. We all raised our right hands and swore to uphold the principals of the PC and the US and suddenly we were full-fledged volunteers!

It happened that another group was swearing out simultaneously and there were some other PC events that weekend, so Asunción was crawling with volunteers. We partied long andhard on Friday night and then some of us were walking back to the hotel at 4:30amwhen the police pulled us over, trying to get a bribe. My first night as a volunteer and we had to call the PC security because we didn´t have our original passports and they were threatening jail. This apparently happens all the time, but I´m pretty sure the PC threatened the Embassy because the immediately dropped it.

The next day, Ronnell and I went shopping and to a park with a hippy market all around it that sells artisan crafts (from which all christmas presents will be coming). There was also a little festival going on, the highlight of which was a guy that playedthe guitar with his face, his feet, and his guampa. Saturday night was Ahendu (means "I listen" in Guarani), which was where everyone in the PC who has any sort of musical talent performed.

For me, though, Sunday was the best day because after months of not having enough time to arrange it, I fianlly got to meet Maria Eva´s family. For those who don´t know, Maria Eva is one of my best friends in the US and is from Asunción. We´ve spent the last few years trading placing between Atlanta, Cincinnati, and Paraguay, with occassional overlaps when we actually get to hang out. After seeing a 3 minute video (not understanding a word) of her brothers joking around, taken with her cell phone in the back of a pickup truck, and long before the PC, I knew I wanted to visit Paraguay at some point. It was because of Maria Eva, and her assurance that Paraguay was a whole country full fo people just like her,that it was my first choice for my PC service. Funny how things work out.

So I figured it´d be great to meet her family, but let me just be clear about this: I. Love. This. Family. They are seriously the most incredible, amazing, generous, open, loving group of people I´ve ever met. There are 8 kids total and I met all but 1, who is in the US visiting Maria Eva right now. Her dad, Lalo, completely dotes on his wife ("Maria Carmen is an incredibly talented artist. Never had a class but she can make anything out of anything! And isn´t she beautiful? Just as pretty as the day I met her..."). We went to see some other cousins for lunch and Lalo and Maria Carmen had everyone cracking up with this whole teasing, banter thing they had going on. The whole afternoon was a lot of laughing (they really thought it was funny when I hit my head on the doorway). Everyone in this family really clearly adores eachother. Allthe teasing is good natured and the kids are all voluntarily cuddly with each other, but not in a sappy way. I´m invited to stay every time I´m in Asunción, to soak up some more of that.

Then Monday morning it was off to my site for good...

After weeks of waiting with baited breath (is that really a phrase? That makes no sense), the big day finally arrived. This was the day when [trumpet sound] we finally got our site assignments. Knowing that the name will mean absolutely nothing to everyone exept Maria Eva (this one´s for you, babe), I´ll just cut the drama and tell you. My site is Coronel Oviedo. It´s a city with over 85,000 people at the crossroads of 2 major Paraguayan Routes. It has 2 hospitals, 28 elementary schools, ten high schools, and 7 universities. Everyone has reliable running water and electricity. There are internet cafés, gyms with classes in everything from yoga to taekwondo, a huge outdoor market, and several chain supermarkets. My co-op is an 18yr old, extremely high-functioning, multi-activa co-op with 4000 socios that wants me to help them start a virtual library. I have unlimited free internet access, my own office, and on my first visit I got a engraved leather tereré equipo set with "Angelica - Cuerpo de Paz" on it. They have enough money for any project they want to do and the socios are involved and motivated. I have a really cool sitemate working in urban youth development, so I can work on projects with her to help kids. There are lots of other volunteers in the surrounding areas and lots that travel through, so I can get a little taste of America whenever I want.

You may be thinking, "But, Ang, I thought you were a Rural Economic Development volunteer," and if so, you are right- just ask my friends in training that are doing the whole horse and buggy thing. But Asi es mi vida Paraguaya (So is my Paraguayan life) and don´t think I´m not mentally and emotionally struggling with this, because I am. I kept looking for a reason to hate it, but everyone was just so damn nice. It doesn´t exactly fit with my idea of what the Peace Corps would be like, but as they tell us, I´m not here to suffer, and I´m sure the challenges will soon become apparent...I might just be able to take a yoga class and get re-centered, is all.

So, about the trip: The day after we got our site assignments, a representative from our communities came to meet us and stay with our host families for a night before taking us to the sites the next day. My counterpart, Laura, came with her boyfriend Manu (and still can´t believe I can travel alone) and I just loved them both immediately. They are truly just warm and genuine and great people. Laura at first said I could live with her for the full 2 years if I wanted, but that changed once I actually got to her house. Like I said, she´s great as a person, but she has this adorable little 3 yr old, Mikha, who is a spoiled rotten brat and runs the house. She is forceful and stubborn and they bend over backwards to cater to her when she throws a fit, and she does so often. She was simultaneously obsessed with me and jealous of me, so the first few days were really tense, with a lot of temper tantrums and emergency trips to buy her things. I had to switch bedrooms because she wanted to one I had, and that, coupled with the fact that they live like absolute pigs was a bit much for me. Also, Laura´s mom is incredibly sweet, but I could not even look at her while she ate, she was so disgusting. There´s a scene in one of the Austin Powers sequels where Heather Graham is in bed with Fat Bastard as he´s eating a giant turkey leg and he´s all covered in grease. It was like that. She also thanks God every day, she told me, that she can afford her high blood pressure and diabetes medications, and thus continue her eating habits. These include stuffing her face so full of cookies and/or the nastiest, greasiest meat that I´d hesitate to give a dog, her whole face and her arms up to her elbows shiny with grease, all the while talking so that little flecks of half-chewed meat are showering all the other food on the table. It was after one such lunch, when I´d just decided to try to find another family to live with, that I met the lady across the street. And, oh, she´s absolutely adorable - all short and dimply and happy, and they have an extra room and they eat in a civilized way (in Paraguay this means cutting your food on the table beside your plate and wiping your mouth with the tablecloth, but I´m fine with all that. I´m not a SNOB for christsakes.) So I´ll be working with Laura just at the co-op and living across the street with them to start off, and I´m thrilled.

Another highlight of my visit was what might be my new second favorite holiday (after my birthday) and that is El Dia de Amistad (the day of friendship). I went with Laura to her college that morning and, after listening to a presentation on Universal Human Rights (I know, I know, look who´s chuchi now) there were parties, first for their class and then with the whole school (which is only 40 people). The tradition for Dia de Amistad is like Secret Santa, but it´s a secret friend, and you have a gift for someone and then get up in front of the group and say something along the lines of "My friend is very nice and sweet and pretty, and is really fun and it´s _______!" I love that there´s a holiday just to say something nice about someone. The gifts are just cheap little trinkets but everyone is all happy and excited and it´s great. At the school party there were games, and groups of girls did dances (they are REALLY into choreographed dancing in Paraguay) and it was fun, too.

THEN we went to the co-op for the party there, and it was my first time really meeting everyone. Same type of Secret friend exchange and then the Karaoke contest for cash prizes. Everyone that wanted to signed up and then really tried to do a good job singing, and when the list was finished, some bastard yelled that Angelica should sing, and then everyone joined in, "Yeah, Angelica, Angelica!" Those of you who know me well know that I have only done Karaoke in my drunkest of drunken moments, and that even then, I have to practically be dragged onstage, kicking and screaming. BUT... this. was. clearly. a test. So what else could I do? After a few moments to find a song in English that I knew, I got up there and brought the house down with Total Eclipse of the Heart, complete with rockstar moves for the camera that was brought out for the occasion. They loved it! People had been a little hesitant with me before that, but after my little hazing ceremony, they became super friendly.

Then, the battle for my ever-loving soul started with a misunderstanding. My new family invited me to what I thought was a Catholic mass that evening. Having years of childhood experience tuning out the drone of a Catholic priest, and seeing it as an opportunity to meet people I could later live with, I agreed. It turned out to be a prayer meeting in their house with a "brother" from their church who kept talking about how God has a purpose for everything and there was a reason I was there that night. I had a quick flash of Laura´s mom laughing as bits of food flew everywhere, and agreed that there was indeed a reason I was there. Then they told me that their actual service was on Sunday and that I could come meet this lady who could help me with the virtual library (By the way, I don´t know exactly what a virtual library is, let alone how to make one), and I went to, what turned out to be an Evangelist church. Oh, what a night. It started out well because at first there was a band, not exactly ROCKING OUT in shirts and ties, but there were 6 girls in front doing choreographed dances in matching, wine-colored, silk smocks and tasselled tambourines, so it was at least entertaining. Then after 5 songs in a row, just as things were settling down, the tallest Paraguayan I´ve seen (a 6 footer) appeared on the other sideo f my host mom, giving me The Eye. He was pretty attractive, actually, and i thought for a moment that there might be a possibilty here until he goes and ruins everything. First, I look over and he gives me that horrible, smarmy little Latino airkiss, which is quickly climbing to the top of my list of biggest turnoffs. Then a song starts and he does that Christian, singing, hand up to God thing, and I remember, oh yeah, he´s a F$%&king Evangelist! (I know, I know, I should´ve put that one together sooner). So I spent the rest of the evening carefully avoiding eye contact, not easy since he was staring me down, and this led to the best part of the whole night. As we were getting into the car outside, he passed by on his moto, and because I was looking down to avoid eye contact, I opened my door directly into the path of another moto, which hit the door and went careening sideways, almost hitting a truck that was backing up. No one was hurt, and it totally made my night, but if they think they´re getting my soul (and they do), they have another think coming.

So now I´m back with my Familia Favorita and I have another 2 weeks of training before I swear in and move to Coronel Oviedo for the next two years. I hope that all of you who didn´t want to visit because you pictured bucket baths and no electricity will reconsider now that I´ll be all chuched out, but until then, from Paraguay...

The culture shock hit me like a piano out of a 4 story window. One minute, I´m having my site interview, telling them that my biggest asset is my positive attitude (and believing it), and the next thing I know, I burst into uncontrollable tears in the middle of language class (my profesora is still baffled as to why the subjunctive tense would upset me so). I tried to pull it together, I really did, especially since I didn´t even really know why I was so upset, but I ended up going home from class and crying in my room for the next 17 hours. The rest of the week, I felt brittle and raw, but managed to hold it together. I was sick most of the weekend and slept it away, and then, just as suddenly as it had come on, the crash was over and I was all better, just in time for our longfield visit.

So the thing about my life is that everything seems to work out in just such a way that it´s one lesson after another at exactly the time I would need it most. I feel like I´m in my own version of the Truman Show (The Angelíc Show? All About Angelica?) and it´s all on cue. On this week´s episode, my lesson is: Attitude is Everything.

In Longfield, we go in small groups to visit a volunteer for 5 days. My group of 5 went with Sasha in the clean and pretty little town of Valenzuela. Sasha has a fantastic attitude and is adored by her women´s groups. She´s fluent in Guaraní and, as my Valenzuelan host mother Doris explained, she can eat meat and cheese and bread, which is a huge selling point for her. This was clearly one of the Paraguayan round-about insults to me - she thought I was just being a chuchi bitch with my food limitations. After Sasha and I explained it another twelve times each that it wasn´t a choice, and exactly what foods she could feed me, her initially cold demeanor really warmed up. We ended up getting along swimmingly, although, as with my other host family, they introduce me along with my food issues. "This is Angelica, our American Volunteer with the Peace Corps. She can´t eat milk or wheat or cheese or bread. Nothing. It´s a disease." This is followed by a series of questions. If it´s during dinner, the guest is staring suspiciously at my plate of rice and veggies the whole time, as though it´s something contagious from anything not deep fried. "Can she eat mandioca? Carne? Pollo? Doesn´t she get hungry?" "No, she eats a lot, but´s it´s all healthy. She´s really skinny." I cannot tell you how many times this conversation has happened here. Yesterday I zoned out during it and tuned it 15 minutes later as I was finishing lunch and it was still going on. They say that a lot of times there´s only one thing a town uses to distinguish volunteers years after they´ve gone, "Then there was Anne, she didn´t like kids. Then Joe, he was black..." and I´m pretty sure they will describe me like "Then we had Angelica. She was very tall but very strange because she only ate fruits and vegetables, no bread, no cheese, nothing else. Very strange."

But I digress. It is now crystal clear just how big of a difference fluency in Guaraní will make to Peace Corps service. Yes, everyone can speak Spanish, but speaking Guaraní is the difference between being a well-liked PC volunteer in the area and being everyone´s adopted daughter.

I´m guessing longfield was designed to just drive us into the ground, where by the end I might have happily stayed buried just to get a little rest. Between long days of projects with the group and evenings with host families, where we still had to be on, being friendly and charming in Spanish, throwing in some Guaraní words now and then, which they love, I was definitely exhausted. 4 out of the 5 of us, though, DID IT ANYWAY. Our lesson of what not to do was Bambi. Bambi is in her 50´s and worked nights doing computer repair for 20 years. She has told us from the beginning, in a million different ways, CONSTANTLY, that she does not like to work in groups, can only take other people in very small doses, likes to be alone, and hates training because we are always together. Even during the heart of my crying day, I was not as negative as Bambi is on a normal day. She has a negative comment for EVERY SINGLE activity, and then laughs afterwards to pretend like she is joking, but very clearly is not. Were she not like that all the time, I´d be much more forgiving about this week because she was sick - she had bronchitis and a fever. When she was with us, she was like a black cloud of negativity over everything. She kept telling us her symptoms and coughing on everyone. She ended up missing most of the week while she recovered in bed at her host family´s, which was exactly what she (and we) wanted.

Contrast that with Ronnell, who was sick with what turned out to be a flu, and although he was feeling worse and worse as the week progressed, he never once complained and would only mention it when asked directly how he was feeling. Thursday, we had a misguided adventure when we tried to walk 2k into the campo to go to a socia´s house for some Paraguayan food and conversation. We ended up getting lost and walking about 5k before we found them, and the whole time Ronnell is trying desperately to hold things in from both ends, and keeping up like a champ. When we got there, he threw up massively in their yard, but was still very polite and waited patiently until it was time to walk the 2k back, still without complaint.

It sounds cliché, of course, but especially in the PC, where you are put in places and situations that you would never otherwise be in, attitude REALLY is everything. It will completely make or break you. It´s the difference between Liz, whose group went into the deep campo for their visit, and who "showered" with a bucket of water, standing in a tire in the middle of the kitchen, with no curtain or privacy (with a family who was very sweet but who literally kept their recently miscarried fetus in a jar of formaldahyde in a shrine in their bedroom), and could still laugh about it and say she could live in the campo as long as she had a bathroom, and Bambi, who after a week of more relaxation than any of the rest of us have had in the last 7 weeks, during the conversation where we were summing up the week, learning from the experiences, and getting great advice from Sasha about being volunteers, interrupts TWICE to ask when we are leaving (but laughs afterwards t pretend it´s a joke).

No one is pretending there aren´t bad days and that´s it´s not sometimes hard to be positive (from what the volunteers have said, it´s about half and half good and bad days), but those of us that suck it up and work through it are the ones that really grow from this. I´ll be one of those.

On a more technical note, here are some of the things we´ve done in the last couple weeks. Ronnell and I did our first charla at the children´s home. It was about washing hands - an important topic right now since hospitals are overflowing and flus are sweeping through communities faster than you can say "¿Quieres tomar Maté?" We had a handwashing song and fingerpaint - it went went over really well. Since then, Belén and Camila and I have had a couple of fingerpainting parties. At first, Camila didn´t want to use her fingers and only wanted to copy my pictures, but after a while of me talking about "creatividad" while we painted, she really got into it. She´s slightly obsessed with me now and apparently paced around the house the whole week I was gone, pausing periodically to glance at my door.

Also, we took a field trip to a farm where they recycle the manure of all the animals in order to be more self-sustainable. The rabbit poo went to the worm beds to make good soil and the pig poo was anaerobically decomposed in plastic tubes for the methane, which was then brought on a line to the house for cooking. The food was a big hit.

I now know how to perfectly flip mbeju in a pan, how to make my own detergent, and how to wash my clothes by hand in tubs (although I´m pretty sure that at my site I will be supporting the local economy by paying someone to do it). Mary and I gave a charla about leadership to some kids who didn´t want to be leaders at all, except for one motivated girl who, thank God, actively participated.

I´m in the process of having a bad filling fixed in my tooth. The first step was chipping off the old filling with a drill and no novicaine (this is no A Million Little Pieces - it wasn´t as bad as it sounds).

I´m in the market for some Paraguayan jeans (probably without the rhinestones) since all my clothes are stretched out from the lack of dryers around here. I don´t know how the Paraguayan girls keep their clothes tight enough to give them cameltoe, but the definitely manage it.

Having now traveled with our language teacher, Ramona, we´ve learned that she is super chuchi and refuses to walk in mud, or sometimes just at all. She also won´t put her head in the water when she takes a shower (because she can´t swim, she explained), so had to go to the beauty shop twice during our trip to have her hair washed.

Miguel from the training group had a birthday during longfield - his host family made him a special batch of meat-filled pig leg (with the hair still on it), which he gracefully avoided since he´d learned how the hairs get stuck in your teeth from the last time it was served to him. We threw him a suprise party when we got back. It was great. He was really surprised, it was lots of fun, and then we went over to another house for a dance party until 2 something, which is the latest I´ve stayed up since I´ve been here and it´s good to feel like a grownup sometimes.

That brings us to right now, and things are going well. 8 days and counting until I find out my site, so I´ll let you know.

Another glorious week in Paraguay for me. I´m only just now starting to hear rumbles of complaints among the group, but the only issues I´ve had, I managed to work out with some humor. I was starting to resent being treated like a little kid by my family, but I made a big joke about how they confuse me for a 3 yr old since my Spanish sounds like a 3yr old. We laughed and the next night (very begrudgingly and with bemused smiles the whole time like they were watching a little kid pretending to be a grown-up) let me cook for myself. And my response when my mom literally tried to stir my food for me ("Soy una audulta") is a little joke with us now. Also, I started Guraní classes this week, I reached the necessary level for Spanish, and finally learned how to pronounce that stupid Guaraní Y - make the U sound while smiling). So everything is all good.

On Friday we took a fieldtrip to Asunción and got a tortuously long and boring tour of INCOOP, which is a co-op of co-ops. I was a little shocked at the level of professionalism here, or I should say lack thereof. We were forbidden to wear jeans there because we were told it was extremely professional, one of the chuchiest places in Paraguay. Then while our tourguide was taking us to every single room on all seven floors, a fat guy offered me a volunteer position with him since I´m "muy linda" - in front of his bosses and a tourgroup! (Try that in the US without a lawsuit - I dare you). Luckily I´d tuned out three floors before so I didn´t respond and our trainer backed us all out diplomatically. Also, Ronnell told me that all the female workers were giving me dirty looks when I turned my back. Great. Let´s hope I never have to actually get anything done at INCOOP.

After that, it was off to the embassy for the 4th of July party. We got to meet lots of other volunteers and just hang out in America for a few hours. At one point this guy and girl came up to me all excitedly and said, "We heard you couldn´t have gluten. We can´t either!" We took a picture together. We may start a club.

Actually, the most interesting part of the week was the saturday morning history lesson, which really gave some good insight into the current Paraguayan attitudes and views. I´ll sum it up here a little for you.

Their first president, when Spain granted them independence in 1811, was Dr. Francia (El Supremo), who hated the Spanish and the entire elite class. He killed off a lot of elite, nationalized all the land, controlled all resources, and closed the borders (this is when apio´i started). He was also the Great Señor of the poor because he gave them land, donated his own salary to the national treasury, eliminated private wealth, and created a Paraguay with no hunger, theft, or begging (in Guaraní it´s called mboriau riñguata, which means "poor full"). He also completely eliminated higher education so he could be the smartest person in the country, and some people called him a wizard. (He tried to resign from the original cabinet because they wouldn´t give him enough power but they invited him back because no one else knew how to do anything. He came back and took over as dictator.) So basically he created a system where, on the hierarchy of needs, all physical needs were met and absolutely no mental or spiritual needs - keep everyone dumb and content. He ruled for 29 yrs when they were really just forming their own post-colonial identity.

After that, Paraguay was actually doing really well. By 1864 they had a railroad, ironworks, a Navy, a telegraph, factories, export industries, a big budget and no outside debt. Every Paraguayan I´ve met also said they had tons of gold and ate from golden plates on golden tables, but there´s no proof of that whatsoever. Then Brazil and Uruguay were having a little tiff over a river, Paraguay got involved to protect Uruguay, but then Uruguay´s government was usurped and the new government sided with Brazil. This made General Solano Lopez lead Paraguay in the War of the Triple Alliance against Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina. He was since rewritten in the history books by Stroessner as a hero (Paraguayans will tell you he died clutching the flag, yelling "I die for my country", but the truth is that he led them in an unwinnable war, was certifiably crazy, killed off a lot of his own, already small, army, including his own brothers, on suspicion of treachery, and was shot in the back as he was running away). When the war ended in 1870, Paraguay had lost 300,000 of its population, and had a 1 to 5 man to woman ratio (this was possibly the start of the machismo and why cheating in relationships is so accepted and prevalent here). They also became dependent on foreign capital for the first time in order to pay their war debt. So just as they were getting on their feet as a country, they lost a lot of territory and were pretty crushed as a populace.

A few generations later in 1932, when they were again starting to really get going, along comes Bolivia. Bolivia had just lost its coastline to Chile, so it decided it was going to take the Chaco from Paraguay (oil had recently been discovered there). Paraguay defended itself and would have easily won the war except that it signed a treaty that gave Bolivia rights to part of the Chaco (the oil turned out to be nothing, but since then, natural gas has been discovered there...on the Bolivian side). The Liberals, who were in power at the time, lost a lot of respect (which later set the stage for the 54 yr long Colorado takeover). The 47,000 people that died were another big blow for the country, AGAIN.

This was followed by political chaos for 19 years, including a civil war between the 2 parties, and then along comes Stroessner. See if the description of this reign reminds you of the book 1984 and/or the Bush administration as much as it does me. He promised Peace, Well-Being, and Work. He had rigged elections every 5 years, so really he was President for Life. He declared Martial Law citing a communist threat (and was a US ally until Carter). Over 35% of the budget went to the military. He was Head of State, of the Colorado Party, and of the Military. He controlled all resources and info. His entire presidency was in a declared State of Emergency, so fear controlled everyone. All state jobs were for party members only and everything was done through favors and favoritism. Everything was a personal gift from him, their generous leader. There could be no meeting between 3 or more people without a monitor. There were spies everywhere and citizens were rewarded for turning in others on suspicion of government betrayal. People, including children, would DISAPPEAR AT RANDOM. Sometimes they were tortured and would return home but never speak of it. Sometimes they never returned. Because of this, the crime rate was extremely low. I´ve heard from many people that they felt safer under Stroessner than now. He ruled until 1989, when his son-in-law usurped him and he fled to Brazil.

Since then, the Colorado Party was still in charge, all with direct or indirect ties to Stroessner, and Paraguay was ranked 2nd in the world for corruption. Then the Colorados had some internal disagreements and split up, just as the Liberals were getting together to form an "Allianza Politica" and managed to gain power with the current President, Lugo in 2008. His was the first campaign with an actual political platform (there´s technically no ideological difference at all between the 2 parties). He promised transparency in the government, helping the poor, and fixing the Itaipu situation (Paraguay is getting screwed with royalties from the dam under the deal Stroessner arranged). So far, all I´ve heard about Lugo is about the illegitimate kids he sired while he was an archbishop, but we´ll see if he follows through on his promises.

SO, all this has led to the views that a lot of current Paraguayans seem to have, at least where we live, including that excelling makes one a target, so mediocrity is promoted and creativity is nonexistent. School is just copying stuff directly and regurgitating it so no one learns to think critically or question. People shut their eyes and ignore problems or wait patiently for something outside themselves to fix it. There is a general distrust of everyone outside the family and hesitation to be part of a group.

It´s an exciting time right now because these things are changing. There are farmers protesting land situations and Co-operatives forming all over the place. Anyway, none of those traits are necessarily bad. They´re self-preserving, and anyone else raised in this situation would be the same way. It´s something for us to work through in our work here, and I feel like I definitely have a better understanding of it now. Of course I´m learning more and more all the time...

Well, I felt it coming on and it finally happened. No, not the crash - everything is still awesome. I´m talking about fiending for some kid interaction, since I went from nannying every day to hardly a kid in sight. Of course, I still chase my 7 yr old niece around the yard, but she always wears out after like 2 minutes, and I need more running time than that. The day after my birthday, when we had the class/party for Dia de San Juan, my trainers´ kids, 5 and 7 and adorably trilingual, were my buddies for the day. Then, at my birthday party, I was of course, playing with all the kids. This included a game where a group holds hands and walks in a circle taunting a kid that is curled in a ball in the middle of the circle, presumably crying or self-preserving, until they lash out and attack someone to be next in the circle. Ah, Paraguay. A few days later, we had a workshop on cooking with soy at another aspirante´s house and I played with her 6 yr old twin nieces and their overloved to the point of tortured kitten.

But it STILL wasn´t enough until I finally got my fix last Thurseday, during our second Dia de Practica. The Dias de Practica are when we have to go out into the community to talk with people about their work or projects in the hope of giving a talk or lesson on the 4th or 5th Dia. My 1st day was started with me talking to my mamá and sister about the sewing co-op they want to start, and my sister trying to explain deep Paraguayan societal concepts about cooperatives, all in Spanish. About halfway through my brain shut down, I couldn´t understand a single word, got frustrated nad went to the ciber (internet cafe) to escape. But for the 2nd Dia, Ronnell invited me to work with him on a project at the children´s home that I didn´t even know was right across the street from my house. They have 200 kids from all different situations - orphans, disabled, parents working out of the country, homeless, etc, and every age from baby to adult. The older ones take care of the younger ones and everyone old enough has chores. They are nondenominational Christian and get money from the government. I loved it from the moment I got there and a little girl ran up to hold my hand up the steps. After a brief talk with the manager, we went out to play in the yard. Ronnell parked himself on a wall and let the kids come to him, but I went right out into what turned out to be a very complicated game of house, with Papá working in Argentina and calling home on the broken piece of pottery cell phone, dinner of sand and rocks served on giant flower petal plates, and trips to Brazil on a bench airplane with la policia after us. We played for 2 1/2 hours, I had a dozen kids crawling all over me, and I loved every muinute of it. They were so grateful for the attention and fought over who got to climb on my back and kiss my cheek with dirty faces. I´ve decided to definitely work with kids in the development work I want to do after the PC. It was really funny when a 2yr old with thick yellow snot from his nose to his chin ran up to hug Ronnell´s knees. Ronnell is super chuchi and doesn´t like to be dirty, ever. He really nicely asked his name and age, then looked at me and, in English so they couldn´t understand, and through a gritted smile so his lips didn´t move, said "Is this your kid? You want to get him off of me right now, please?" "Veni, Arturo" (come, Arturo) I said, and picked him up so we could rejoin the game, but I thought it was hilarious.

So I´d gotten my fix, but it wasn´t over yet because the next day we had an overnight field trip to Villarica to visit a volunteer there. Villarica is in this section of the country that was not as beaten down by Stroessner´s rule (Paraguay had the longest running violent dictatorship in the history of the America´s (2nd longest in the world), which just ended in the 80´s and which made people afraid to do anything lest they end up pushed out of an airplane over the Chaco. Another reason for the seeming lack of motivation and poor economy). But Villarica is thriving with lots of jobs and a strong economy. It has paved streets, parks, pools, and businesses in fancy buildings with landscaping all around. Super chuchi, and the volunteer, Brennan´s, house is legendarily chuchi by PC standards. We learned about his financial co-op in the morning, which is successful and an obvious contrast to Mary´s co-op that I visited a few weeks ago.

I was really scared for the afternoon, though, because we were split into pairs to give charlas to elementary school classes. Charlas are literally "chats" but are facilitated group discussions with lots of activities to illustrate the points. Ronnell and I had first read little books to preschool kids for a half hour (a long time to think of conversation in Spanish when a book is only 10 pages long), then charlas to a second grade class and then a 5th grade class. We had to talk about deforestation and the importance of planting trees. I was scared to facilitate a discussion in Spanish, but actually we did really well and I totally seemed like I knew what was going on. Then we all went out back to plant baby trees and build little bamboo fences around them to protect them. It went really well and Ronnell ended the afternoon by starting a dance circle with his Robot (always a hit with the kids).

Afterwards, we went to see a herd of carpinchos (the giant guinea pigs) and then out for icecream (I just had chocolate). We all had host families for the evening and Carlos, another aspirante, and I stayed with Diego for the night. Diego is 24, works at the co-op, and is super nice. His friends came over and we drank wine with coke and watched Biker Boyz (which is a terrible movie in any language, but they loved it). We spoke in Spanish the whole time, and that night I dreamed in Spanish (which means it´s getting into my subconscious and is extra exciting because I have felt progressively dumber in Spanish since I´ve been here).

The next morning we all met back up to head to a co-op that makes apio´i, which is traditional Paraguayan clothing, started in the 1800´s when another crappy dictator closed the borders and Paraguayans had to make everything from only the materials the had. It´s a slightly rough, but very light and thin material, perfect for this climate, with embroidered designs on it. I ordered 2 custom made shirts that I´m really excited about.

Then it was piling back into the van for the 3 hrs home. I slept hard for the afternoon (I sleep and eat more here than I ever thought I would need. It´s such hard work thinking in Spanish). Then Diana, Carlos (my sister and brother-in-law) and I went to a real San Juan Party, with all the traditional games I thought I´d missed out on. This is a holiday designed for muchachos, and there was a good group of them running around with cloth masked stretched over their faces. There are many things lit on fire for San Juan, including: a soccer ball, dummies hung from trees, and the horns on a giant bull costume that then tries to gorge people. But the project that really took over the evening was the Palo Alto, which is the greased pole with prizes on top. They spent hours stacking themselves on each others´ shoulders and then falling, over and over again. before finally bringing out the extendible ladder at the end of the night.

So clearly it´s been a busy week, but everything´s great and I love Paraguay more every day.

Paraguayans seriously know how to party! My birthday weekend was super fun. The day of my birthday, Friday, was our first Dia de Practica, where we have to practice what we´re going to do once we have our sites and talk to people about their businesses or co-ops. Then a little bit of class and we finished the huerta we built as a group (it´s awesome).

Then there was a little miscommunication with my family and I was thinking Belén had a dance program that night, and wanted to go watch it. So I´m walking with all these little giggling, whispering 12 yr olds, not understanding a single word and sad that that´s what I´m doing on my birthday, when I look up and see Elmer from my group walking by, so I beg him to please come with me and speak English. He does, of course, and then it turns out that it´s not a program, it´s a practice, and nobody is allowed to watch, so we have an hour to kill. We see a few other people from our group and go to this San Juan festival they´re having at the school.

The Dia de San Juan, which is another one of those holidays that´s a mix of Catholicism and Paganism, is June 23, so this weekend there were parties for it. The festivities normally include playing soccer with a flaming soccerball (pantyhose on it lit on fire so that if it touches someone´s leg they have melted nylon permanently engrained in their skin), and a greased flagpole with money at the top. Kids try to climb it and fall all over each other, and I guess it´s pretty much a guarantee that someone gets a knee in the eye or something. Unfortunately, we didn´t get to see any of those particular festivities, and this festival was just about a hundred little kids in traditional dance costumes (frilly dresses on girls, fake mustachiod boys) coming out in turn and dancing for the audience. Pretty boring, but fun to just hang out with my friends.

On the way home, I´m walking with Alé and Belén and they are huddled together behind me whispering to each other (this is pretty common, so I just ignore it). Then Alé comes flying up beside me (Belén pushed her) and she asks me again what Elmer and I did while we were gone. I told her again about the San Juan festival and she just laughs. "po que?" I ask. "Because she´s jealous!" Belén pipes up. We´d just had a whole lesson about this in training a few days before and it hadn´t even occurred to me to be an issue until right then, but in Paraguay, guys and girls aren´t supposed to be alone without supervision, so a girl is always supposed to have a kid or another girl with her when she´s with a guy. So they thought we were off making out. The whole dating situation here is muy complicado. There´s that whole supervison thing, or the fact that if a woman happens to be in the same room alone with a man, it´s because she wants to have sex with him. The story we heard was when a volunteer was trying to have electricity put into her house, and was telling the town electrician where she wanted the lights hung, when he grabbed her and kissed her. He thought she was inviting him to. She was a little upset. Then there´s the whole phenomenon of the Jakare. A jakare is a crocodile in Guaraní, and it´s a guy who goes outside of a woman´s window at night and claps to get her attention so she can let him in to have sex. Sleeping with your window open is an invitation for someone to come in and have sex with you. Bars will be on my windows. This is all wanted by the woman (except in the example that my trainer gave when some guy came up and tried to come in her window because she´d smiled at him earlier in the day at the well (she´s a very smiley person and meant nothing by it) but normally that would be all it would take to arrange a rendezvous). I´m now terrified to look at anyone because a prolonged look can be an invitation,; also a smile, if you dance more than a couple songs together, or about a hundred other really subtle things. This is all just for sexual invitations because dating is done very formally and a guy visits a girl on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and the weekend when he wants to really date her. MWF, then, is left for the sombrero. A sombrero is the other guy that´s having sex with a girl but not dating her. This means that any meeting scheduled on certain days might be telling someone you either want to date them or just want to fuck them. No wonder everything takes so much longer to get done around here.

But I digress. So the next day, we were learning about the festivities for the Dia de San Juan and were split into partners and had to go talk to our families about a traditional game or food. Elmer happened to be assigned as my partner. We went ot my house and talked to my mamá about this game (Like a piñata but with clay pots),and she fed us and we sat down to talk, and he was all charming and fluent in Spanish. Then they took a picture of us at the end. I´m pretty sure they think Elmer is courting me now. Great. So we had a fun morning of a psuedo-party for school, and then the real partying began.

It´s Paraguayan tradition that the person having the birthday pays for whatever festivities occur, but we all agreed that that was a terrible idea and we were going to do this up American style. Brad, from my training group, talked to his mom, who has a reputation for being especially fun (my mamá warned me about her, even though they´re cousins, because I guess there is chisme of parties with lots of people making out in their respective dark corners of the yard...so of course I had to have it there) and she agreed to throw the party. We sent around a sign-up list to all of our training group so everyone brought something. The Paraguayans went all out and it was huge- like 50 people, all partying outside, I got lots of great presents, there was a cake but I had chocolate bars, and lots of beer and wine with coke. Everyone brought food I could eat, people standing around talking and laughing, kids running all over the place, jsut lots of fun. First this little 6 year old taught me all her dance moves, and then her 17yr old cousin taught me way sluttier dance moves, os that was fun. We partied for like 6 hours and then I spent the night at my friend Mary´s house so I wouldn´t have to walk home in the dark. It was great. I´ll post pictures as soon as I get a chance.

Things have still been awesome, and the last couple weeks have been very informative. I have learned, however, to take everything the PC says with a grain of salt. My 1st clue was when my Mamá told me that everyone on Paraguay wears shorts all summer long. This is exactly the opposite of what the PC had said (that no Paraguayan would be caught dead outside the house in shorts), and I have been really worried about the 100 degree temps in pants. I also bought a ton of skirts and brought no shorts with me. My next clue was when we did our Tapeapovo, which is a day when we´re assigned a partner and places to go in Asunción, the capital, and then have to figure out how to get where we´re going, how to ask professional questions about how businesses work, in Spanish, and then how to make it to PC headquarters by 12:45. I foolishly believed them when they said to dress nicely and ended up with blisters the size of quarters since we walked about 10kms. We were late getting back but got there just in time fo the powerpoint presentation about common PC myths. These included jewels such as: my Paraguayan counterpart will want to help and will know what he or she is doing, I will have a job description or at least an idea of what is expected, and, my personal favorite, the people in my site will want me there. Not scared yet.

After learning cool things like how to make a huerta (vegetable garden) complete with split bamboo fence, how to use a machete (know where your other limbs are at all times), and how to make a compost pile (it helps to pee in it but don´t use the poop of carnivores or omnivores. This means that if I keep vegetarian I could use my OWN poo and THAT, my friends, would truly be the circle of life), it was off to visit a volunteer.

I got really lucky because my buddy Ronnell and I had volunteers that lived 3 blocks from each other, really far from just about anything else, so we got to go together. Saturday morning we woke up at 2am and the cab picked us up at 2:45 to drive to the bus terminal in Asunción, because the only bus to our town left at 4:15 in the morning. My volunteer, Mary, met us at the terminal and we all rode the 9 hours together. Mary is a self-professed nerd (her justification being that she reads terrible sci-fi like ¨Cat Women from Outer Space¨), but is extremely nice, generous, and smart. On the way up, we passed through a Mennonite community where all the dirt roads were smooth and even, all the yards well-groomed, all the houses and buildings well-made and sturdy, and all the businesses looked well-managed. There was a clear contrast to every other place in Paraguay. There´s no reason in the world all Paraguayans couldn´t live like that, she explained, other than cultural morés and lack of education.

Then we arrived in her town, which is supposedly a small city, but is all wooden shacks and dirt roads. Some of the roads were supposed to be cobblestoned 3 different times, and 3 different times the money was stolen by someone in charge, before they could do it. All Municipalities get a good bit of money every year as commissions from the dams on their borders that bring electricity to a huge chunk of South America, and yet nothing ever seems to get done. Paraguay was declared #2 in the world for the worst government corruption, but it´s said they were only #2 because they paid off the #1 country to take their place. So there wasn´t much going on in that town. The biggest news being that last October, two guys who were out fishing in the river killed a 20 foot anaconda by bashing its head in, then strapped it to a boat trailer and paraded it through town so everyone could see. There was a huge bulge in the middle and rumors it was a little boy that had disappeared, so they skinned it (the skin is now on a living room wall) and cut it open. It turned out to be a carpincho, which is the world´s largest rodent (think the ROUS´s from the Princess Bride) and looks like a giant guinea pig but gets up to 400lbs. We saw pictures of the whole gruesome process and heard the story from everyone we met. Paraguayans never get sick of the same stories and jokes over and over again (We learned in training that a joke here is, if you walked somewhere, to say you took Linea Once, which is Line 11 in English because the two 1´s are like legs. It´s not even funny, but I tried it on my family and the crack up EVERY time. It never gets old.)

So Mary showed her house to us, which is super chuchi (fancy or snobby) for the PC since she has realiable water and electricity (although she does have to take the bus 2 hours for a bank or internet), and then we went with Ronnell´s volunteer, Liam, to see his place. It wasn´t nearly as big, but he had an awesome huerta in back with, as of yet, nothing planted. When we chased out the group of piglets that had come into his yard, they ran straight into the chicken wire, smashing their little faces over and over, so that was pretty funny. Liam is muy muy tranquilo (in fact he says tranqui all the time because I guess he´s too tranquilo to say the lo) and kids LOVE him, and follow him around like he´s the Pied Piper, calling ¨Gigante, Gigante¨(he´s 6´8"). He showed us what he did ¨like 10 hours a day¨ when he picked up this 4 yr old, swung him around by the arms, threw him in the air then caught him upside-down by one leg, then flipped him and set him down. The kid, of course, is all bright-eyed and breathless a totally loves him. Another time he had bottle rockets and a dozen or more kids were all around him. Boys here are prety much left to their own devices starting at age 7 because their dads are off working and everything in the house is woman´s work. Liam, carefully explaining why they can´t shoot off bottle rockets from their hands, was a positive male influence and they just crave it.

Also, it just so happened that a former volunteer from three years ago, Ryan (Rihanna) was back with her mom to visit, so we also got to hang out with them and her former host family. We went to visit and they fed us this awesome meal and made fun of Ryan because she spent the first two weeks in her site just crying, but it was all in fun and they love her. She was an education volunteer and the kids loved her, too. It was VERY important, they told us over and over, to get along with kids if you want to integrate into the community. I´m pretty sure I can handle that. Ryan´s muy tranquilo, too, and gave us all sorts of good advice.

As far as the work, Liam has had pretty good success with his municipalidad. He definitely has the rapport, and he told us this story how the other day a bunch of guys were sitting around in the office with him and thought it´d be funny to give themselves boners inside their jeans, then sat around with hard-ons laughing like it was the funniest thing in the world. He chose not to join, but it is the general concensus that campo guys have the maturity of 12 yr olds. Another illustration of this is when 3 policemen getting food at Ryan´s family´s dispensa, gave the two 3yr olds their guns so they could take pictures, much to the absolute horror of Ryan´s mom. Ah, those crazy Paraguayans. So funny. So Liam is working on a few projects, the biggest one being teaching people why they shouldn´t burn their trash (it was ok back in the day but now they´re burning plastic and aerosol cans and God knows what other chemicals they´re putting into the air. They do have to burn toilet paper though, because otherwise the pigs and dogs roaming the streets get into it).

Mary, on the other hand, has not had such luck with her project. About 2 weeks after she got to her site, her co-op, which is a financial co-op and gives loans, was almost completely out of money. After some investigation, she found out that the secretary had embezzled all of it. Even though the members paid dues and it was their money stolen and they knew who did it, they didn´t want to do anything about it and the secretary is still in the community with no problems. After so many years of government corruption, it seems Paraguayans have just come to expect that they will get fucked over in one way or another and are ok with it. ¨There goes our life savings. Tranquilo. What´s for dinner?¨ So Mary managed to bring the co-op back from the brink of death, but in these 2 years has not managed to find anyone motivated enough to take care of the co-op when she leaves in 2 months (actually the co-op building hasn´t had electricity for 3 months after someone´s truck ran into the pole, despite many promises to fix it, so she can´t find anyone motivated while she´s here, either), and she knows it will fail as soon as she leaves. We saw a meeting with the president of the co-op, a jolly fat man who laughed constantly at his own jokes and who told me, in Spanish, "If you want to marry a Paraguayan, you don´t need to ask for permission. I can´t give you permission, but that´s ok, because you don´t need it." He cracked up, and we laughed too, since that´s just what you do, but none of us got it. Then he postponed again the thing he was supposed to arrange the last 3 times and drove off on his moto. Pobrecita Mary. She´s spending her last few months writing a manual on how to run the co-op, but she´s pretty sure no one will read it. She definitely made some mistakes. She´s not strongly integrated and is supposed to be more of a consultant while other people do the work, so they´re committed, but Liam gave a good metaphor for it. In training, they use the example of "If you give a man a fish he eats for a day and if you teach a man to fish he eats for a lifetime." But that doesn´t take into account if the man is even motivated to learn how to fish, if he has a fishing pole or line, if there´s a river nearby, if the river isn´t polluted, or if he knows how to cook it once he catches it, and ALL that is what happens in the service part of PC.

I can sum up the rest of the weekend pretty easily. We went for lots of walks all over town, ate lots of great food (Mary is an awesome cook), got lots of advice about how to be a successful volunteer, heard lots of PC chisme (gossip), por ejemplo our doctor, Dr. Luis, was Mr. Paraguay 2 years running, drank lots of wine with coke (it sounds gross but it´s HUGE in Paraguay and actually really good, better than both wine and coke individually), played cards (I lost) and Scrabble (I won and inherited the board), sat around camp fires and talked every night, learned that chickens sleep in trees at night (I had no idea), talked to some super cool Paraguayans, and learned that the terrible caveman Spanish we speak now will improve (Liam couldn´t understand a thing when he got to sight a year ago (gave a lot of cow looks- that blank stare), and now he can roll like a pro).

We caught the bus out at 5:30 Tuesday morning, both Ronnell and I exhausted but very happy and optomistic about being volunteers. The only other incident was on the bus ride home. I got motion sick and told Ronnell I thought I was going to throw up. He whips this big ziplock bag out of nowhere, just in time, and I threw up in the bag and then threw it out the window. Normally I´m not a litterbug, but there´s a time and a place for everything and a bag full of vomit justifies a lot of things. Tranquilo.

So the honeymoon phase is still going strong and I am absolutely enchanted. The PC training, being as tight and well-managed as it is knows exactly how we will be feeling at what times (they´ve been doing this a while) and they were kind enough to give a chart on a timeline mapping our ups and downs. I should be crashing hard around this wed. or thur. so I wanted to write before that happened.

Mi familia: My family is so great and I love them more and more each day. Everyone else in my training group is jealous because I get fruits and vegetables because of my dietary restrictions, while they get more traditional Paraguayan food: no vegetables, even though they´re all over the place, and lots and lots of bread and carbs and meats. My brother-in-law Carlos´s favorite food is a popular favorite: Milanesa, which as far as I can tell is beef covered in batter and deep fried in oil, so there you go. They don´t really eat breakfast or dinner, but have cafè con leche or matè con leche with these hard little bread things they call cookies (galletas), but that aren´t sweet, broken up into it. I, on the other hand, have an awesome fruit salad for breakfast and my mid-morning snack, loving packed by my mamà, a salad with some sort of delicious warm meal when I walk home from school for lunch, and an equally delicious dinner as we sit around in the evenings and speak Spanish. I´m understanding more all the time and so I can tell you that the reason that my mamá takes bloodpressure medication (besides the milanesa) is because a few years ago, her granddaughter Kamila had an accident where she hurt her eye really badly, and in the process of rushing to her, her papá Hugo (mamá`s son, my brother) was in a horrible accident where 3 people died and he was hurt really badly but pulled through ok. Shortly after that, Hugo´s other daughter Evelyn (1) who up to that point had been a normal, happy baby, got "something in her brain" (tumor?). They took her back and forth to Argentina, which has socialized healthcare, but were never able to figure out or fix the problem. Now, at 4, Evelyn can´t walk or talk, her limbs are slightly curled, and she is happy as long as someone is holding and rocking her constantly. Her parents look exhausted. She has a tube going through her nose and own her throat and she coughs and cries each time they give her milk through that tube, which is the only thing she can eat. She always has a handtowel for sucking on and catching the drool. Also around that time, Mamá`s daughter, my sister Diana, found out that she has hormonal issues and can`t have kids. So between all this, with Papá working construction in Argentina for the last 20 years because the economy is too poor here for him to have work, and only coming home very rarely, my poop Mamá`s bloodpressure went through the roof and has never fully recovered. So it´s definitely now all gumdrops and rainbows here in Paraguay. Life is hard but everyone is friendly (although we just learned all about how when we´re on the bus someone might cut our bags with razorblades to steal our wallets, and that if we have a nice necklace they´ll push us down while ripping it off our necks) and I really love it here.

I´ll walk through a typical day: I get up at 7 and get ready, eat my fruit salad, and walk the ten minutes up the road to school. There´s still quite a lot of mud in parts, and the trucks and buses that pass cut new water-routes each time, so it´s never the same road twice. I walk very carefully, keeping my feet flat so I don´t get dirty because everyone in Paraguay is always clean and pressed, right down to their shoes, no matter how poor they are. I pass a lot of cows, say hola to everyone, and wave to the old guy who´s always sitting outside the delapidated gas station on my way to pick up my friend Ronnell, who lives on the way to the school. We arrive and tlak for a few minutes before carefully ducking through the 5`7" doorway (I had to learn this the hard way and my teacher hung up a caution sign with red and green scribbles after the 2nd time I nearly knocked myself out) into the school at 7:45. We break into groups of 3-4 with different teachers and I learn spanish all morning (with 2 breaks for more socializing). At 11:30 I walk back home and have lunch with my family, let it settle for a bit, maybe a little maté, and then it´s back to school at 1. We spend the afternoons learning more technical stuff (in English) about what we need to know for our jobs. Wednesdays are different because I walk 2 kms, then take the bus to town where both the MUNi (municipal development) and RED (rural economic development) groups join up for practical training, usually followed by hanging out for beers afterwards (we do a lot of hanging out and socializing, but don´t let that fool you- the training is intense and we need all the breaks we can get). In the evenings I go home and hang out with my family. Kamila (after watching me from around corners for a week finally warmed up to me after I chased her around the yard tickling her (kids love that shit) and I are best friends now, and Belén and I are thick as thieves. Alé is still being a bit timido, but I found out that her parents are divorced, her dad is in Argentina working and she never sees him, and her mom is in Spain working (but she´s also a flake and chooses her boyfriends over her daughters, and so will not visit while she has one) and she´s 14 and having a bit of a hard time of it, so that´s ok, and we´ll be friends after a while.

Also, I found out that my sister Diana´s dream is to start a sewing co-op in the campo (countryside) which happens to be exactly the type of thing PC would do, so maybe I´ll be able to facilitate something to help her with that. I´m slightly upset with her right now, though, and I´ll tell you why. I mentioned earlier that there´s a whole cuture around maté: people carry around their own termos (thermos) of hot water, which they pour by the cup into a guampa (wooden or cow-horn cup) filled with yuyos (medicinal herbs). One person, usually the youngest starting with teenagers, serves it out in turn and everyone drinks from the same metal straw/spoon (bombilla). There is also the most fantastic drink ever called maté dulce (sweet maté) and i don´t even mind digging in cow shit to make it. Maté dulce is made with, instead of yuyos, ground up tiny little coconuts that grow here (and usually milk but it´s awesome with just water). The issue is that straight from the tree they´re too hard to crack open, but cows eat them, digest the outside, and poop out the inner-shelled part. Then you did them out, crack them open, and mmmmmm....maté dulce. So the other night we were passing around the maté dulce (turns out you can also get it in little packets at the tienda around the corner) and after passing it back and forth for a good half hour, my sister mantions offhandedly that she won´t have any more because she has a little cold! Our trainers told us that people feel a personal responsibility and will refuse maté if they`re sick, but clearly that`s only theoretical, and i do understand that it would be hard to turn down maté dulce. So 2 days later, I was sick (to be fair, I´m sure there´s a stress factor and i´ve been stabbed with several vaccinations recently, but still.)

I really like the people in my training group, too. One of the, Michel, is 64 and was in the PC in 1970-71 in Brazil. It´s a good story: she´d been there almost a year and it was Christmas time. One of the men that worked on the plantation with her was a really good artist, but was colorblind so he only did ink sketches. He gave her a picture as a thank you for helping him learn to read. She thought is was a lovely picture of an Arab gorilla and hung it in her dining room. Her reading classes continued and a group of men would meet around the dining room table twice a week to learn. The she got picked up by the secret police and charged with "instigating the peasants to riot" because it turned out the picture was of Che Guevara and the classes looked like socialist meetings. The police eventually let her go but said she had to leave her site. So the PC moved her to another one, but 3 months later came after her again because they´d meant for her to leave that whole section of the country. She ended up going home then, but is now giving PC another shot, hopefully to finish her service this time.

Last night, we went to see the big Paraguay vs. Chile fútbol game. Paraguay is number 1 in South America right now. It was huge. One of the other volunteers, Elmer, is in a family with connections and got us tickets, so his 2 brothers and 5 volunteers went. We were right behond one of the goals so had a perfect view of when the missed goal after goal and lost 2-0, but the crowd we still singing and yelling and being good fans. There were lots of different songs, one in the tune of Karma Chameleon and one that said "By the balls, by the balls, by the balls we have to win!" (that´s not soccer balls, either, that´s huevos), so it was lots of fun. We also saw a big group of other Peace Corps people there and introduced ourselves. One girl pinched our cheeks and said, "oh, look how clean they are!", but they all seemed happy and like their spirits were still in tact, so that bodes well for us. Also, last week a former volunteer showed us a slide show with a picture of the bathroom she had built in her house on site, and she said that if we save our money now, we can have a bathroom built, too, if we need it. That´s great news because a good bathroom could totally make or break a situation.

So that´s been my life this week. Oh, and if anyone wants to send something, the chocolate here is very rare and not all that good. The address is on the right side of the blog website. Just a thought. Tranquilo.

The Peace Corps is awesome. I´ll tell you all about it. The morning I was supposed to leave I woke up all excited at 6:30 and held it together perfectly until Laura started getting all emotional and then I completely lost it for the 3 hours going to the airport and boarding the plane, where I seriously questioned what the hell I was thinking, (my Grandma asked me if everyone reacted like that, and I can now tell you that, yes, everyone I talked to did the same thing at some point)but then I was on the plane and felt better. I flew to Miami for staging, which is the little pre-pre-training time so the Peace Corps can get all the paperwork together and give us a tiny bit of information before we go. They´re definitely doing everything on pretty much a need-to-know basis, and it´s all very organized and planned, so that´s comforting.

So the first person I met was on the way to the hotel in the shuttle and he actually recognized me from this blog- I didn´t even know other people read it, so that was cool. There are 18 people in my training group; 10 with me in rural economic development and 8 in Municipal development, which I think is the same thing but for cities and towns. So we had the evening to get settled and the next morning had a sort of class thing where we did activities and they gave us a bunch of info, and then we headed to the airport and took the 8 pm flight to Sao Paolo, Brazil. It went overnight and we were supposed to sleep but I didn´t and was exhausted. Then we took another flight to Asunción and got there at 10 am to be greeted by a group of masked men and women who turned out to be with the Peace Corps (and still taking swine flu precautions). Everyone was SO excited and smiley and happy to see us and a few volunteers remarked how the whole application process was so strict, like they really didn´t want you, but once you start, they´re thrilled. I guess they just don´t want you unless you´re serious, so that makes sense. We took an hour van ride to Guarambaré to the trianing center, and they just started in right away with pre-training stuff and activities. We were tired (and I was starving since I´d barely had any food since breakfast the day before because it was all bread in all the airports, planes, and the training center) and really wanted to just rest, but having done this before, the PC knew that and had to get it all in while we were still standing.

That evening, we were introduced to our host families. I love my family. My dad Porfidio is in Argentina working in construction, so I haven´t met him yet, but my mom Celia is so sweet. When we met she said she knew I was her daughter as soon as she saw me and cried and hugged me so hard. I have a sister Diana who is my age and a brother-in-law, Carlos. My 2 nieces, Alé and Belen live with us too, and are 14 and 12. The first night we sat and talked and some of Celia´s friends came to meet me, and then I went to bed at 8. The next day a van picked us up and it was back to the training center for more stuff and we started language training. Mbà'echapa - get a load of that. It means How are you? in Guarani and I will be learning a lot more of it. It seems like it´s really logical for a language but the y´s are pronounced like you have syrup in your throat and sound like you have just a little down´s syndrome. So another full day of training and then an evening with the family again. On the map the PC gave us, it looked like a pretty short distance up the Paso de Oro, so we decided to walk, and I came home just after dark to my mom crying because she thought I´d be home earlier, poor thing. That night I got my niece Belen, who is in dance classes to teach me the Bottle Dance that is a tradional Paraguayan dance with a wine bottle on your head (I learned with a ceramic vase), and as soon as I can I´ll post those pictures. I also got her to get in both her Bottle Dance costume and her Hip-hop dance costume and show me that dance, which is pretty awesome since the first night neither of the girls would come near me and their grandma said they were so shy. I told her than that they were going ot be my friends whether they liked it or not, and it´s true. I can´t understand 90% of what the girls say, but I can understand a lot of what everyone else says when they speak slowly. It´s easy for them, too, because they can talk about me right in front of me in Guaraní and I can´t understand anything. Also, Carlos knows a little English and sometimes he can help translate. I´m going to help him with English while he helps me with Guaraní and we´re excited about that. Then saturday was a half-day at the training center on our street (a realy long muddy and cobblestone street called the Paso de Oro (Gold Step) where all the Rural Economic Development (RED) group lives) and we learned all about Maté (yerba tea), which is a huge part of the culture and there's a whole system around designed around how it´s served and drunk. Saturday afternoon a few of us, hosted by another volunteer, Brad´s, brother Augusto, went into the city to pick up a few things, which took a lot longer than we thought it would (another reminder about the whole Paraguayan Time thing, and that´s how it´ll always be, which is fine as long as I remember about it). Also, Paraguayans are not as short as I originally thought and there were actually a lot of tall people in the city. Paraguayans also think nothing of greeting people with really obvious statements of their physical characteristics, like -Oh hello! Have you gained weight because you seem really fat!; but if they´re talking about my height it´s in Guarani because the only thing I´ve understood is Pretty when they greet me, so that´s nice. It´s very sociable here, and we sit around and talk and hang out and drink maté A LOT. The whole time we´ve been here, it´s been raining and cold; not too terribly cold, but the line between inside and outside around here is a lot blurrier than in the US and there´s no heat or anything, so it seems a lot colder. Also, all of our training stuff is in this building that´s just sort of open, so we´ve had to bundle up and it´s not that bad once you just accept that´s how it´ll be. So the streets are super muddy but they won´t always be, and it has been cold, but today was warmer already and the winters aren´t consistent, so at least I´ll get breaks from the cold. This street is kind of suburban rural and although we don´t have any animals (except a dog, Rocky, who stays outside and is supposed to be a guard dog but is so sweet and cute and we aren´t allowed to pet him because he gets people all dirty), but there are all sorts of oxen and cows and pigs and chickens and goats on the street and the milk in the fridge is from the cow down the road.

Everyone caters to me ridiculously and they just drink maté in the morning and at night, so each time I´m eating they just sit and watch me. They won´t let me do anything to clean up or help in any way, which is a little awkward, but it´s new and hopefully that´ll change. I asked, in spanish, -I´m not a guest right? I´m part of the family? -Oh yes, of course you´re part of the family. -Good, then let me help. -Oh, no! haha, don´t be ridiculous. Then they swept away my dishes and that was that.

I really love being here (I´m told that this is the honeymoon phase and the Culture shock phase is next, so I´ll let you know. But for now, my diarrhea is subsiding and I love everyone in my PC group as well as the trainers, and adore my family. I slept late this morning (Sunday) to recover from the big week, and came outside to see the whole family doing laundry by hand to hang on the line because it´s the first sunny day. They fed me peaches and got me a chair, and then the girls walked me here, so I´ll keep you all updated as best I can. Real training starts on Monday.

So I'm back in the US for just a short time, saying goodbye to everyone before I take that metaphorical bungee leap into oblivion. Coming home was a LONG process with flight delays and layovers which all added up to mean 24 hours on planes or in airports. It was a harsh reminder of the cultural difference when I tried to get something to eat and it was all breads in the airport (Donde estas, mi gallo pinto?) (Where are you, my rice and beans?). It's ok though, I'm slowly reacclimating, although I do feel decadent and wasteful each time I throw toilet paper in the toilet, which is crazy, because it's wasted no matter what, but still. I did think of a couple things about Central America that I forgot to mention before. One is that they have these places called Auto Hotels, where they can pull their car into this hotel and there are curtains between all the parking spaces so no one can see your car there. They pay through a double-sided cubby in the wall so they have complete privacy for cheating on their spouses, so that's nice.

Another story was that the last time in San Jose, we went to this open market that's every Sunday, which was in a gigantic blacktop area and had little booths with eveything from shampoo and soap and clothes to used electronic equipment and car parts. One booth where a man was sitting on the ground had junky wires in a pile and 2 prosthetic legs displays nicely right on top. I should explain that these legs both had on a matching sock and shoe, but were 2 distinctly different sizes, with one taller and thinner than the other. That is amusing enough in itself, and Christian started to take a picture of it when we realized that the man on the ground HAD NO LEGS. Some logical questions arise from this situation - why are they 2 different sizes? Are they his? Doesn't he need them? But alas, like many of the world's greatest mysteries, I'm afraid we'll never know. We must be satisfied with the quick picture Christian took when we walked by the second time, after we had to walk away and just breathe for a minute (I'll post it ASAP).

Also, one of the very forst people we met, way back in Montezuma had really interesting stories. This was Aaron, the older guy, married with 3 kids that traveled all over the world. He first met his wife in a kabutz in Israel, and they knew each other for a few months before she left and went to Thailand. A few months later, he decided he couldn't live without her and he'd have to find her, so he went to Thailand with nothing but her name and actually FOUND HER. Do you know how many people there are in Thailand? A LOT. So then they got married a few months later and when she was eight months pregnant decided to explore Mexico in a van. Shortly after their first kid was born, they came across this town where a family circus was visiting. They stayed after and met the family and then traveled with them for a while. Each family member had an act, and there was a little girl about ten who had been trained since she was a toddler to be lifted up by her hair. Her act was to be pulled up to the top of the tent where she would do acrobatic flips and stunts, all only attached by her hair. He said the skin on her head was really thick and tough.

We heard some other stories from those surfers about a trip they took to Taiwan where they visited a fine facility with what is called a Ping-Pong Show, where talented women do amazing things with their crotches. I won't go into ALL the details but some of their props included: A live goldfish in a bowl, ping-pong balls, a coke bottle, dollar bills, cigarettes, and magic scarves. Just think about all that for a second...yeah.

So after sleeping about 18 hours when I first got back to Ohio, I worked for my mom painting their house, which was fine until the rain washed it off TWICE just as I finished painting it. After that I was over the whole painting thing. It was nice to hang out with the family and say goodbye to everyone. So I spent 12 days there and then to Atlanta (after a brief night in DC and 36 hours on a Greyhound), where I spent a busy week of really intense hanging out with people and doing all the things I'm not allowed to do in the Peace Corps.

So I was with my 2 favorite people and we were in tourist mode. The night before we were up all night, and I think there was a meteor shower going on that night because I saw a ton of shooting stars, which was awesome, and I´m pretty much set for wishes for the next decade. As a side note, you can see the constellations of both the southern and northern hemispheres here, and there´s not a lot of light pollution and just trillions of stars, so just picture that. So we rode the ferry and the bus to Playa Carmen, which is one of the many great places to surf in Costa Rica. There was a ton of tan, blonde people (I could almost be one of them at this point since I haven´t been able to dye my hair in so long and my roots are as blonde as can be) from all over the world there. There are not a whole lot of specific stories to write about the week since each day was pretty much the same. I´ll just sum it up. In the mornings, the surfers would wake up at 5:30 to go surf and we´d sleep for hours and hours after that and then leisurely wake up and go swimming in the ocean for a few hours. Then we´d eat at a soda for lunch. The afternoons had more variety. Sometimes we´d lay in a hammock for a while and then go swimming, and sometimes we´d go swimming and then lay in a hammock. Sometimes it was tough to decide so we´d have to discuss it from the hammocks. Each evening, a bunch of people from the hostel would all head down to the beach together to watch the sunset, and then the evening we filled with sitting around and talking and laughing and playing cards. It´s like we´re living in a Jack Johnson song. The panty-rippers (coconut rum and pineapple juice) were prevalent during each stage of the day, along with smoking carrots and other social fun. There is definitely something to be said for that lifestyle. The last night was one of the guys´ birthdays, and Laura (being an avid baker and much nicer person than I would ever be) made him a "cake" of pancakes with mango sauce in between (there was no oven) and there was an extra-fun evening around that. That night was also some sort of jungle crab migration because there were these orange and purple crabs EVERYWHERE and little crabby, claw-scratchy sounds everywhere once the lights were out. Ugh.

The next day, we had to head back to San Jose for Laura to fly out (which was actually good because although the surfer kids were cool the whole time we were there and it was really great while it lasted, Laura had gotten pretty upset with these meatheads that were abusing the crabs and it was just time to go.)

Traveling day came, and I was feeling sick, and it only got worse from there. I was sick as a dog for 3 days, and I'm not talking one of the well-fed American dogs with a warm nose. I'm talking a mangey, flea-bitten, bag-of-bones, Nicaraguan street dog kind of sick, and it hurt to move, so I mostly didn't. We stayed at Galileo, our favorite place in San Jose, after dropping off Laura to fly back home.

When I was up for moving again on Sunday, we headed for the Carribean side of Costa Rica (which as you may know, is so exotic that the rice and beans has coconut milk in it) to Puerto Viejo. The first day we mostly just hung out and tried to go swimming toward the end of the day but every beach we saw had coral reefs in it, so we sat in this little tidepool area and watched the sunset.

The next day, we almost died. We had rented bikes and were having a lovely little ride through a mangrove forest next to the beach. We decided we'd just stop at the first place the beach didn't have coral, and when we did, it was beautiful. Unfortunately, we stopped about 200 meters short and, not having come from the road but from a path, we missed all the signs that warned about rip tides. We hadn't even started to fully panic yet, since we didn't fully realize what was happening. The lifeguard, however, did, so he rescued us, and it's a very good thing, because we were really getting nowhere closer to shore before he showed up. So that was an experience. The last morning in Puerto Viejo, we went snorkeling at the coral reef, and it was pretty cool, but not as bright or colorful as the ones on TV. We also kept being pulled hard out ot sea by the current and after yesterday were pretty freaked out by that, so we stopped after only an hour or so.

The best part about Puerto Viejo, aside from the general vibe of the place, was that there was this guy at the hotel that did chiropractic adjustments and massages for really cheap. I'd apparently done quite a bit of damage, both emotional and physical with that bungee jump (I knew it!), so I got that all worked out. Then on the bus I met a guy that is helping locals sell their handicrafts to raise money for their villages, for bridges or other stuff, so we're keeping in touch because that will apply to my rural economic development. So that's good!

Alas, this is my last night in Central America, and after a wonderful and adventurous sojourn, I guess I'm going to have to say goodbye. The tentative plan is now a couple weeks in Ohio, a few days in Virginia, and a few days in Atlanta before the Peace Corps! My phone will work in May, so call me and see me before I go...seriously! I'll probably be coming back a whole different person so get a load of the me I am now while you can!

I know, I know...it´s been a while since my last post, but sometimes I have to actually be doing the things so I can then tell stories about them; and sometimes the free internet at the hotel is slower than turtles making babies (which is incredibly slow and this conversation topic has actually come up several times in the last few days. I happen to be a wealth of information about it because one time at the zoo Grace and I saw it happening - my friend Danielle actually has a picture of it- (ask me if interested)). Anyway, the point is that it´s really slow so now is the first time I could write.

Here´s a bit of information that will GREATLY help you if you ever come across this situation: The equatorial sun at noon can burn right through abundantly applied SPF 45 sunblock. So Christian and I got burnt to a crisp our last day in Bluefields because we went out to Rama Cay, which is this little island just a short panga ride from Bluefields that looks like a scene out of Mad Max. We walked across the island from the panga on this weedy, overgrown road, to get to the beach. There were people along the side of the road under these little thatch-roofed, bamboo lean-tos who were breaking up rocks into gravel. Yes, it´s true. Don´t ask me why, by apparently a job there is to break up medium-sized rocks into small rocks. So then we went to the beach and swam in this really warm, perfect Carribean ocean for a few hours to celebrate our last day in Bluefields. We´d had to move out of the BlueEnergy house that morning because it was filling back up with the people that are supposed to be staying there (fair enough). We spent a rough night in the nastiest hotel we´ve stayed in yet (it´s one of those situations where you have to be there to see how nasty it is), and Christian had a little run-in with a prostitute, but we escaped with our lives and belongings and got the boat the next morning at 5:30am. We were supposed to make it back to San Jose in 1 day, but ended up staying the night in Managua because of buses not running. The place was like paradise! I took a shower with (cold) water coming from a real pipe over my head! No more bucket baths for us, guys! We´re high on the hog these days! Also there was this restaurant that had whole meals without either rice or beans! That is the first one the whole trip! So after a luxurious night with 2 fans and tv in English with Spanish subtitles, we had recovered our sensibilities and headed to San Jose. It is amazing how much healthier everything is here compared to Nicaragua. The people, the animals, the landscape, everything. It´s just very obvious how much more money this economy has than apparently the rest of Central America.

After a cushy busride in a giant tourbus where our knees actually fit behind the seats and a rude reminder that we weren´t in Nicaragua anyomre when we tried to get a lunch and it was $8 each, which is appalling, we arrived in San Jose. We stayed at the Hostel Galileo. Everyone working there was awesome (although I´m not afraid to say they had some of the worst cases of hostel feet I´ve seen on our trip...hostel feet are feet so completely filthy on the bottom you can´t really see the skin. It´s from walking around barefoot at a hostel, and around there it might be a badge of honor) and we had many fascinating conversations including internet look-ups to support theories (did you know there is a guy who used silver cadmium to cure a skin condition and now all the skin on his whole body is blue for the rest of his life? It´s true. There are also wolfmen with hair over their entire bodies and a woman with 6, 050 piercings over her whole body). We also learned about the application of the whole "Pura Vida" philosophy which is the motto of Costa Rica. You might think it means Pure Life or something equally as inspiring, but from the point of view of a business owner (specifically the 24yr old American couple that owns the hostel where we stayed), it means that when you have a plumbing issue the plumber will come 12 hours late and then make the problem worse by busting a pipe, thus dumping shitty water between your first and second floors, but "oh well, pura vida". It´s a fantastic place, though, when you´re not tring to get anything done. Now it´s like a joke to them and every time someone begs for money they apparently scream Pura Vida! at them.

But I digress. We came back to Costa Rica to get Laura, who is visiting for a week and is without a doubt one of my favorite people in the world. We agreed to give up our Viajero (traveler) status for a week and become tourists with her. We picked her up from the airport on Friday and, not having a plan from there, we set about waiting for a great plan to inspire us about where we should go. We didn´t have to wait long because there were 2 people, Matt and Dilia, stopping through the hotel who were renting a car the next day to go to a "rave" in Puntarenas the next night. Puntarenas, you may recall from an earlier post, is the little port town that smells like pee and has the ferry to the Nicoya Penninsula. We also realized that the days of raves are long over, but maybe they were still big in Central America, right? Anyway, what else were we going to do?

After a 6 hour delay (Pura Vida, right?), we were off like a herd of turtles to a "rave". So on the way to Puntarenas, Matt was saying how there was bungee jumping that we were going to pass right by. He´d taken Dilia the day before, and we could go if we wanted. We debated for about 2 seconds and decided that of course we wanted to jump off a 265ft bridge (apparently the biggest in Central America) into a canyon with a rock-filled river at the bottom. So Christian went first and gracefully just fell into oblivion with no problems. I was supposed to go next but after looking down, and crying, I decided Laura should go next. She held the guy´s hands and fell backwards, and of course loved it. I´m getting progressively more scared the whole time, and I will not even pretend I was tough because the whole scene is probably on the DVD that they gave me. I cried the whole time: I cried before I went, I cried on the platform, I held the guy´s hands and fell backwards into nothing with only a rubber rope tied to my feet and crying the whole way. I cried when they were pulling me back up, and I cried quietly in the car for at least the next hour, not talking to anyone. I do not like bungee jumping. I do not like it, not one little bit. Í am apparently the only one anyone has ever met that doesn´t, but I make no apologies.

So by the time we got to Puntarenas I had recovered my mood and senses and we ended up going swimming in this wonderful, warm pool, then went to this party where we were the only gringos, but everyone was cool and we had a great time. We ended the night by skinny dipping in the ocean and then went to bed right at dawn. After breakfast the next morning we said tearful goodbyes to Matt and Dilia, and Christian, Laura and I went on our way.

I´ve thought of some other things about Bluefields that I wanted to add:

Some other things about the culture of Bluefields you might be interested in include: There is a strong presence of Obeah (like Voodoo) around here, different versions for the Muskito, Carribean, and Rama cultures. The guard that is now posted at the house 24 hrs a day, Raul, is a Mestizo and his Granny was a healer. We´ve learned quite a bit.

Gentlemen! Worried about the size of your little buddy. Do you wish it was bigger? Well worry no more! Simply cut it and let the blood run onto a casava, then bury the casava under a full moon. As the casava grows, so will your penis. But make sure to dig it up once it gets to your desired size; let´s not go overboard with it! And ladies! Can´t get that perfect man to pay attention to you? No problem at all! Simply offer to cook for him and include in the recipe some of your most recent panty water (that´s menstrual blood for you gringoes) and he´ll be your forever!

Other advice: if you hire a prostitute, be careful because when you go to the bathroom she´ll probably steal all your money. Also, fights here are pretty common, oftentimes drunken and with machetes. We haven´t seen all that many missing limbs but everyone has crazy scars from one thing or another.

Raul, by the way, while bored and standing guard (in a hammock) out front, shot a little banana bird (blue, and about the size of a parakeet) with a slingshot he´d made from a forked stick with condom ties. He said he was going to eat it and nobody really believed him until he had completely skinned in in about 2 seconds, and then indeed he fried it up and ate it. A lot of people play cards around here and we´ve been playing with Raul quite a bit. They call clubs puppy feet and spades blackhearts and the jack, queen and king are 11,12, and 13. We taught them how to play Bullshit and they LOVE it, so if I come back in ten years I bet it will be everywhere.

We see a lot about the general population at the park. The teenage girls are slim and pretty but at about 18 they start really gaining weight. There is lots of sugar or salt in EVERYTHING here. Christian is convinced he would never ever want to be single here because it´s pretty slim-pickins once you´re out of high school. Our host, Casey, picked up a girl the other night and described the experience. "You know how when you go to Christmas at your relatives´ house, and you´re excited to go because you know you´re going to get...something. And then you unwrap it, and it´s not what you really expected or wanted, but you have to pretend that you like it...because you can´t take it back? That was last night." That may be the best metaphor ever.

Christian never really got to watch kids before and has been totally enchanted by all the cute little kids running around - kids are old news to me so it´s not all that exciting. Country music, oddly enough, is really popular here. It apparently came with baseball in the 50´s and has been big ever since. So the music here is a mix of reggae, latino pop, reggaeton, country, and rap. Other pictures from the park: A lot of people carry around umbrellas during the hottest part of the day to block the sun. They don´t have icecream trucks but men walk around pushing carts that have icecream or slushies and ringing a bell. Kids walk up to (white) people and hold up their first finger and that means ¨Give me 1 Cordoba¨(about 5 cents).

It is the style in all of Nicaragua to have your front teeth lined in gold or silver (it´s also possible that people have teeth that bad, but I think it´s a bit of both), so almost everyone in the country has at least one, but usually more gold or silver teeth.

We´ve met a few other characters in our time in Bluefields. One is Donovan, who is this 24 year old who came up to us when we were at the porch at Doña Coco´s wanting to interview us for this "tourism project" he´s working on. This meant writing down our information in a school notebook (asking how to spell every word, like "name" and "age" - I have my doubts about the educational system in Bluefields). He was very nice and friendly and wasn´t asking for any money, which was a nice change of pace, but he spoke the strongest Creole we´d ever heard and we literally could not understand a word he was saying. It was a lot of frozen smiles and nodding on our part, and at a couple points I even tried switching to Spanish because I thought that might be easier to understand, but he got mad and said very clearly, "naw, man, I speak English!" which was the only part we understood. We saw him in the park a couple days later and he sat with us for an hour and then walked with us for a while, talking the whole time. I wish I could tell you Donovan´s story, but the only part that I understood out of the total of 2 hours that we talked to him was that he has a daughter that doesn´t live with him and he´s been to Norway and someday wants to go back, but it´s really cold there.

Another guy we met, this time at this club called 4 Brothers, which is this dirty, little, dark, reggae club and by far the coolest place in town, was Preston. Preston´s story: He´d been selling drugs since he was 16 and he used to work on a cruise ship and smuggle drugs on it until he got caught and sent to prison for a year and a half after his lawyer (who was also at the club) couldn´t convince the judge that he had all 20 lbs for his personal use. While he was in jail, he paid off a female guard by promising her another 3000 cordobas a month (which is 150 dollars and doubles her monthly salary), and between that guard and the prostitute that came for conjugal visits with drugs stuffed in a condom in her vagina, and the prisoner that cleaned the conjugal visit room who removed that condom from the trash and put it in a different condom up his butt, he managed to sneak in massive amounts of drugs to the prison. Once he had it, he would hide it in his room by very carefully unwrapping the roll of toilet paper and rewrapping it perfectly lined up with the drugs inside and regluing it. The prison chief knew he was up to something but was never able to prove it. He had a good thing going and then he realized that he could get out. He would smoke a little weed (he hadn´t been using anything this whole time, just selling it) and then his lawyer requested a drug test. When it came up positive, the lawyer told the judge that it was proof he was a drug user but there was never proof he´d sold it, and they let him out. Since then, he´s been living clean, working on a fishing boat (sometimes pirating when the fishing gets tough) that is out at sea for 45 days at a time and only comes in for one day and one night, and we just happened to catch him on that night. This story is a little sketchy for a couple reasons, but even if it is a lie, it´s quite a character study, nonetheless.

We went to the casino one night, which isn´t as sad as most casinos just because it´s no little old ladies spending their life savings one nickel at a time in the slot machines. All the people in there looked to have enough money to spend. We were high rolling with a 5 dollar each limit, but we got free drinks the whole time (i´m not sure why because that´s not actually a policy here, but we didn´t argue)so it was well worth it. I´ve been downing Flor de Caña Rum and Rojita (another spanish term that would be offensive in English- there´s a little indian girl with braids on the front and Rojita means Little Red Girl. Still, I find it less offensive than the La Negrita scrubber sponges that are all over the place here) which is kind of like cream soda. We´ve kept it pretty low key around here, with long lazy days of reading and lots of very interesting (to say the least) conversations. The beach is tomorrow and then more traveling...

Man, I love this place! I´ll have to start at the beginning because it´s been a long week. We were staying in the little Hospedaje run by Doña Coco, this lady that seems like she´d be really except that she yells everything (which may be because she thinks it´ll help us understand the Spanish, but comes across as abrasive) for the first few days we were here. We have spent almost every afternoon in the park here, which is beautiful and a center of activity when it´s not siesta time, and a good shady place to sit and read when it is siesta time because the whole town is shut down. Our Couchsurfing host, Casey, arrived back home and we met him Monday for lunch and then moved in. His house is actually a group living situation for all the volunteers in the area working with Blue Energy Group, which is working in the area setting up wind turbines and water purifiers. There are normally a lot of people here, but most are gone for semana santa, so we have our own room and bed. These kids are really cool, from America, France, Australia, and England, and each night we sit around talking, joking and drinking after dinner. They normally have Kitchen Mamas who cook and clean for all of them, but they´re gone this week (one of them had her 2 brothers kidnapped by the Sandinistas and so joined the Contras and lived in the bush for 4 years), and we´ve been cooking for ourselves. On Tuesday we were awakened by Casey knocking on the door because the 2 safes they keep in the office (and nothing else, including all the computer equipment) were stolen by someone who knew about them and had a key. There was big drama because cops were swarming all over the place (if this had happened in Atlanta we´d get one bored looking cop and a ´we´ll let you know´) and we all gave fingerprints and statements and there´s now black fingerprint dust all over the office. It doesn´t look that hopeful that they´ll be found, but the thieves also will probably not be able to open the safes, so at least nobody wins.

Everyone at Blue Energy is doing their own thing during the day, and that´s when we head for the park. Within minutes of getting to Bluefields, we were greeted by Charlie, the local Rastafarian welcome wagon/drug dealer, and since then we have seen him and/or hung out with him every day. Charlie´s story: he fled to Costa Rica as a refugee when the war was going on so he would not have to fight (he was 13 at the time), was told that if he came back and cleared 1 sq Km of land and defended it with the help of the supplies the American planes were dropping including food and AK47s, he could keep it. It was attacked by the Sandinistas and he ended up fighting for the Contras, fled back to Costa Rica and since then has lived the charmed life of traveling all over Central America and Europe, several times funded by pounds of drugs he found washed up on the shore, fathered 2 children in Europe, and has girlfriends now all over the world. He may have his problems, but all in all, a good guy and we like him.

One day when we were in the park we saw this guy playing with the largest 2 year old on the planet (Christian thought he was like 5 and maybe retarded) and we started talking to him. His name is Franklin and we have hung out with him every day. Franklin´s story: He was kidnapped as a child by the Sandinistas (which we have found out was a very common practice here) and sent to Cuba where they taught him how to fly fighter jets, but when he found out his sister was pregnant back home he decided to escape, and made it to Bluefields but the Sandinistas were after him so he swam like 30 miles north up the coast to join the Contras, and spent the next few years in the jungle (or the Bush, as they say around here), and at one point had infections in his feet and an infected bullet wound in his upper thigh and couldn´t take another step, but said that if there was a God, then please save him. He woke up in a hospital and had had a dream of walking through the jungle but no way of knowing how he got there, and ever since has been very strongly Christian but anti religion (he says the Pope is the Anti Christ). After the war he was back in Bluefields and had a girlfriend for 5 years who was the love of his life and who died when the bus she was in went over a cliff on the way to Managua (having been in those buses, it´s true), and hasn´t dated since. Then he worked on a cruise ship and went literally all over the world for years, and then was back in Bluefields a few years, and while he was in the hospital one day a Ukranian lady was there who had given birth 2 months early and needed blood. He donated his blood to her and they became friends after that. A year later, she had an emergency back in the Ukraine and had to leave her 2 sons here for a year, and that is JoJo (now 7) and Joseph (the giant 2 year old). Franklin has been taking care of them for a year, with the help of his father and the income from their cockfighting business) and she´ll be back next week to get them. Also, he helps with a ´gym´ that contains only a boxing ring and couple punching bags in the pee stained cement shell of an old movie theater, and where he meets about 12 teenage boys every morning from 4 to 6am to work out and show them that there is more to life than drugs (even more tempting in an economy where the only really lucrative businesses are cruise ships and drug dealing). Franklin is an amazing guy. He has taken us to see Pool Rock, which is this gigantic rock perched on top of a smaller rock on a huge hill overlooking Bluefields and all the islands around it, and which has a hole underneath that they say goes to the center of the earth but that´s been filled in by dirt because they also say there´s pirate treasure in there and people were coming to dig for it (if you saw how precarious this rock looked you´d see why they filled it in rather than have people digging out the support around it). He also took us to a lagoon near the airport where Christian and I went swimming today and he and Charlie just watched (they were told as kids that if you swam on Good Friday you turned into a fish and if you climbed a tree you became a monkey, but I think they just didn´t want to get wet). There were a bunch of kids swimming and a few couples, one of which was adorably in love and very affectionate, and it turned out that all of the 10 boys swimming were theirs, so they are clearly doing something right. It´s really great to really get into a place like this and see how the culture and the history affects the people. I don´t know how often that happens because everyone we meet assumes that we´re going to the Corn islands or El Bluff (which are the local tourist attractions and about the last place we want to be during Semana Santa). I love it here.