I just got home from La Inauguracion de la Biblioteca de Nancy Franke (or, in ingles: The Inauguration of the Nancy Franke Library). This project has been a long time coming, and I’m completely psyched (I can’t even think of a word that emphasizes this enough) that it has been completed. I know that having accepted the naming of this library after me seems self-centered, but I honestly worked my tuccus off to complete this project, so when the library commission (or what’s left of it) suggested this, I enthusiastically accepted. PLUS, this is now the best fun fact that I’ll probably ever have about myself.

As you may realize, I only have a week left here in my barrio. It is INSANE to me. I honestly have no idea how the past two years have flown by so quickly. I leave on the 15th (next Friday), and then will be in Asuncion to swear out/festejar, and then will head on a 6 week trip through Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia with my Peace Corps amiga. Anyway, I have been completely blocking out the fact that time is slipping past and that I’ll be leaving my lovely Villa Madrid so soon. I got choked up about two weeks ago a few times, but ever since have just continued to ignore it. Tonight I gave a speech at our library inauguration in which I talked about how I hoped that the new library would encourage a culture of reading and a renowned unification of the barrio (which is very segregated by section). The people who went were almost all people I have worked with on various projects throughout the past two years, and I got really choked up twice during my speech. I’m not much of a crier—at all—but it just all hit me tonight…unfortunately when I was in front of a crowd (including someone from the municipality). Anyway, the library inauguration was a huge success (despite me having to take two pauses to collect myself). There were a lot of kids and youth, and a lot of people of all ages stayed after to read and admire our wonderful collection of nearly 500 books. I had the pleasure of watching a 45-year-old woman discover the joys and wonders of pop-up books, which was actually a real highlight in my evening.

The library had looked a bit sparse until today, when we decorated it with maps, Paraguayan bicentennial stuff, and photographs taken by 4 neighborhood youth who participated in the Ahecha project. Ahecha (“I see” in Guarani) is a project that gives PCVs 5 cameras to loan to youth for about 6 weeks. The youth then take all sorts of photos, culminating in an exhibit within the neighborhood. They learn all about photography and then the photos are also submitted to the national Ahecha exhibit, in which photos are taken all over Asuncion for a few months. It is a really exciting opportunity for youth, and we had all the photos on display tonight at the library. Though some of the youth didn’t really seem to get the project, I was impressed overall by their work. And their photos added a lot to the library.

Realistically, this is just a really big step for this community library. My follow-up (who is great and meets all of my requirements—Yay!) will continue with projects, hopefully implementing a mobile library project with the schools, several reading/homework/geography clubs, and any other projects you may be able to think of. When I get back to the States (June 3rd—mark your calendars!) I’m hoping to rally a few groups to send down some books. Though we have a lot of children’s books, the books that the typical read-to Norte child grows up reading are IMPOSSIBLE to find in Spanish down here, and I definitely think they’ll be big hits in the library. (I've found that Where the Wild Things Are is truly amazing, regardless of the language it is written in...) That means, I’ll probably be harassing you. So brace yourself to donate to the Nancy Franke Library.

April 1st, 2011.

I went to prison yesterday. If you know me at all, you’ll understand that I was absolutely thrilled to be there, and then was totally blown away by what I saw. I went with another PCV to this small prison in Emboscada, Paraguay, which is about 20 minutes from my house. I’ve been to about 6 prisons in the US, ranging from camps (very low security where there aren’t even fences around the facility) to maximum security prisons—both state and federal. This was the first time I’d ever been to a prison outside of the US. The prison in Emboscada was shut down about two or three years ago, mostly due to the fact that the facilities were really old (constructed in 1903), and that there was a great deal of violence and murders within the prison walls. They reopened just over a year ago and currently only house just over 100 men. We spoke to the warden, a few guards, and one inmate. (Yes, just a single inmate—I found that to be a bit strange.) The warden explained about the variety of classes (educational and vocational) offered at the prison, showed us an extensive library, and a bakery with brand new equipment. There is a great deal of construction going on right now, mostly by the inmates themselves, to build a new housing facility which will hold about 500 new inmates.

OK, I didn’t finish that blog entry. But, I did go back on Tuesday with my follow-up Volunteer. We were able to actually go in and enter the housing units this time. I can’t figure out if we were only allowed to see them the second time because: A) day 1 was a bad day, B) the first guard showing us around thought we were slightly delicate, or C) because they figured we hadn’t been scared off too badly round one. It was confusing, but really interesting to go in. Again, they only have about 100 inmates currently, so the housing was pretty small. The guys sleep three to a room generally, on mattresses that lay on concrete bed structures. They’re able to have tapestries covering the bars to their cells, personal TVs, and all sorts of things (including hot plates!) that would definitely be considered contraband in most US prisons. We were shown all sorts of really interesting artisan work, like hand-stitched leather-covered terere (the tea, which is served with a thermos, cup, and metal filtered straw) equipment, neat little miniature boats complete with all the necessary ropes, jewelry boxes, and all sorts of other handicrafts. It was really interesting, to say the least. Another PCV (the one I went with originally to the prison) is hoping to help artisans at the prison sell their goods to other PCVs. She and my follow-up are both very interested in doing classes at the prison, though neither of them have worked in the field before. Is it weird that I’m slightly jealous? Maybe.

OK, so immediately after posting that last blog entry my power came back on. YES!

So, I did my Close of Service medical stuff a couple of weeks ago, and got a phone call from the medical office a few days later saying that I have giardia, which is a gross, though very common intestinal problem amongst PC Volunteers. According to one website, “outbreaks can occur in communities…where water supplies become contaminated with raw sewage.” So, ew. Anyway, apparently mine is minor and fairly dormant, so I’ll take the pills on my last day of service to make sure my system is healthy before I travel through Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia…

On a very different note, a few days ago I was visiting Mari, one of my favorite ladies in my site. She asked me if I had heard about the 3 day power outage that was going to happen this week “all over the world” because of “that thing that happened in that other country”. I suggested she was talking about Japan, and she agreed. I laughed at the idea of a 3 day worldwide power outage, assuming she was just messing with me. But, alas, my power went out about ten minutes ago, and now I’m nervous that for some reason we’ll be without power for days. Other PC friends also lost power at the same time, so now I’m getting a bit nervous… We shall see, I guess. It looks like I should prep for a few days of candlelit reading…

I’m having a standoff. With a cat. It started yesterday. It started raining, so I went around my house partially closing the windows to make sure the rain didn’t come in more than was absolutely necessary. This is a tricky maneuver because if the wind blows the right (or should I say wrong?) way, it gets in regardless of what I do. This is, of course, thanks to the fact that my landlord never got around to putting new glass in the broken, and in some cases nonexistent, panes. I did what anyone would do—used cardboard and duct tape to patch them myself. It’s generally effective, but after living in my house for a year and a half, some water is inevitable. Anyway, so I shut the window in my room last, and made eye contact with this mangy looking white cat. I registered the look it gave me immediately. The look was that that a teenager gives his parents when they’re about to leave him/her in charge of the house for the weekend. It says, "Of course I won’t have a party", but you know that is exactly what he/she is planning. The look the cat gave me said, “Of course I wouldn’t dream of going through the window into your house—when you’re home.” I hate this cat. This morning I saw it again sitting on a table that I abandoned on my front porch about a year ago in hopes that someone would steal it. I noticed the cat’s ear, which was completely black and looked nearly rotten. But, rather than feel sorry for said cat, I just saw the look in his eyes and knew that he was just waiting for me to move out in a few weeks so he can claim my house for himself. Adding insult to injury, he is completely white. The only reason I mention this is that last October, shortly after moving into my house, I came home to find 3 totally white baby kittens stashed behind my refrigerator. It was disgusting. But not nearly as disgusting as knowing that the next tenant to my lovely home will be this disgusting creature, wreaking havoc but finally catching the loan mouse that keeps scurrying around my kitchen.

So I went to see Shakira last night. As I recently mentioned, I’m not a huge Shakira fan. I simply went because I had to do my medical testing and I could get reimbursed while hanging out in Asuncion with a bunch of my PC friends. There are about 200 PCVs in Paraguay and I’d guess at least 50 were there. While we were waiting in line to get into the “campo” section (the cheapest area), a camera guy approached my group. He wanted to interview some of us. I stepped forward (of course), and answered some questions, briefly described Peace Corps, and then was asked what Shakira song I most wanted to hear. I stalled. As mentioned, I’m not some sort of die hard Shakira fan. I’m not even a quasi-Shakira fan. She sings. Her stuff is EVERYWHERE in Paraguay, frequently being bumped from passing cars and neighborhood stereos. I said the only song that I can easily name—Waka Waka. I’m not sure of this song’s popularity in the States, but here is was a constant reminder that the World Cup was happening. Apparently this was an acceptable answer, and he moved on. No other PCV moved to be interviewed, so I was the only one to represent the US’s presence at Shakira.

We roamed around the “campo” area, or the field, where there was no seating. We danced and hung out all over. My best PCV friend, Barbara, and I wandered amongst PCVs asking if they were hungry…for a sandwich. This is a silly idea, of course. It is a ridiculous move that my sister and I used to employ in high school. You approach a guy and ask if he’s hungry, possibly suggesting that he looks famished. He is usually quite confused, until the person behind him and in front of him begin dancing and you ask if he wants a sandwich. At this point he usually realizes that you’re not trying to give him a BLT or something of the like. It amuses me. Yes, I’m 26. It’s the little things that mean so little.

Just after we satisfied the hunger of a PC friend of ours and took a picture of the three of us, I realized my bag had been unzipped. I saw that a guy and girl were standing right next to us and had been there for a bit. Though there was quite a crowd, it was easy to walk through so anyone passing through had no reason to find a road block. I grabbed the guy’s wrist with my left hand while my right hand fished around in my purse to see if anything was missing. My wallet was still there, but my phone had mysteriously disappeared. I asked the guy, in not the most delicate language, where in the world my phone was. My grip on his wrist was tight. He told me that a girl had stolen my phone and run through the crowd. Still holding tight, I told him to find her, and we rushed through the crowd. His female friend had disappeared at this point. He led me through the crowd quickly, but then led me back out into another group of PCVs. He told me he had lost the girl who had supposedly stolen my phone. I saw my friend Andy aka Sparkles and told him this *#*#(!!! guy had stolen my phone and to hold him. Miraculously, at that very moment the guy told me my phone had been handed to him. I took it in one hand while still holding hard on his wrist. I turned it on to be sure it was actually mine while giving him a lecture about how I only earn as much as Paraguayans and work to improve my community and how he should be ashamed of himself. (Yes, I was on a bit of a pedestal.) It was obvious that it was my phone once it turned on, and I told him to “leave us in peace” (which is much much stronger in Paraguayan Spanish), and then slapped him across the face. I’m sad to say that it was done with my left hand, and therefore possibly not as hard as I’d like. Maybe the slap wasn’t the most peaceful option, but getting my cell back was certainly the highlight of my night—even after hearing Waka Waka.

OK, just to clarify, I do not have dengue. I had some sort of terrible sickness that resembled dengue, but it passed and I survived (clearly). A ton of people have had the same symptoms in my neighborhood the past few weeks, though for some it has turned out to be dengue. I’m hoping that all of these cases of actual dengue (not its terribly uncomfortable and painful doppelganger) will make the municipality of Limpio come out to Villa Madrid to fumigate. Fumigation would help, but actually getting rid of dengue would involve people cleaning up their yards, keeping their homes immaculate, and maybe taking down those oh-so-lovely shards of glass that often line stone walls to keep people from climbing them. I’m not going to hold my breath.

Today I held a meeting to talk about the library and community problems. The head of the bus line 48, which goes in and out of my neighborhood about every 10 minutes, was there too. We had asked Linea 48 to donate some money for our library project, and in return he asked us to hold a community meeting to talk about various assaults that have happened on their buses within my neighborhood. The meeting went well, though started 45 minutes late, as per usual. I’m hoping that a kind of neighborhood watch group will be formed as a result, but I’m leaving in just 6 weeks (!) so I will not take on this project. We shall see. There is always a lot of crime in my neighborhood. As the PCV who lived here before me said, “Villa Madrid is a relatively safe place with some petty theft and the occasional homicide.” I’ve not heard of any homicides since I’ve been here, but I’ve always loved the optimism of that phrase.

Anyway, things are winding down, though I have maybe about 4 free days until the end of March. That being said, this week I will spend 3 days in Asuncion to have my Close of Service medical and dental exams and to go see Shakira. No, I’m not that big of a Shakira fan, but how can you say no to seeing her in concert while in Latin America?? Answer: You cannot. (Or at least I cannot.)

I’m not sure if I’m alone in this or not, nor do I really know where this urge has come from. Maybe it’s from watching Pretty Woman many years ago? I’ve always wanted to sit and drink champagne (and maybe smoke a cigar, though I dislike cigars) as people my same size parade around in various outfits at a store as I decide what I like and dislike. It simply sounds like the best way to shop. Though that did not happen (sigh), on Thursday I may have come as close to that as I’ll ever get. Except it was in a book store. And there was no champagne. As I’ve mentioned, my library committee received the grant from the US that we’ve been waiting for. On Thursday I went with a youth from my neighborhood to pick out books. He had to leave early, so I was sola for quite some time picking out books and shelves for our brand new community library. The book store employees realized just how much I was there to spend (about $2,000) and honestly treated me like royalty. They gave us a HUGE discount and then took our new purchases and me back to my neighborhood. This week we’re going to spend the rest of the money…maybe I’ll just go ahead and buy myself some champagne.

So this week has been a bit crazy. I had been feeling kind of sick last Wednesday, but didn't really have time to be sick, so I pushed through it. Saturday I went to help a fellow PCV plant trees with an environmental camp she was doing in her site. By the time the camp was over and we had eaten lunch, I was just feeling completely exhausted. I had been planning on going to a birthday party for a 15 year old with my favorite family in my barrio, but just wasn't up for it. I did basically nothing on Saturday evening, and when I woke up on Sunday I felt terrible. I realized I had been taking ibuprofen steadily for 5 days, so decided to wait a while until I could figure out if I had a fever. I didn't feel particularly sick--but every muscle and joint in my body hurt, I had a headache, and I was just exhausted. When I finally took my temperature, I had a fever of 103!! I called the medical office, but was basically told to keep taking ibuprofen and toughen up. I said it seemed a lot like the symptoms of dengue (which is a major problem in my barrio), and the doctor agreed with me, but still said there was nothing I could do. Thanks. Anyway, I took two Benadryl and knocked myself out for about 13 hours. Monday I felt a bit better and my fever had gone down to just over 100, so I read in my hammock until my trainee got to my house for a four day visit. (Yes, obviously all I want to do when I have a high fever is host someone I don't know for four days.) The visit was good--I basically just had to show the trainee what life is like for a real live Peace Corps Volunteer. That included explaining that stuff gets cancelled last minute constantly, and that about half of the kids show up for school if there is rain, which there was.

Anyway, I survived the week, and don't think I still have a fever. (Small celebretory dance.) I also got a phone call from the Peace Corps Office yesterday. This year marks the 45 year anniversary for Peace Corps Paraguay, Paraguay's bicentennial, and the Peace Corps 50th anniversary. Obviously the PCO decided to celebrate all those things together. They're making a new Peace Corps Paraguay video, which I assume will be shown to new trainees here, and to promote PC PY in general. They chose me as one of the PCVs to interview! I'm not sure what this will entail, but am feeling pretty...ummm...special. Hopefully things turn around in my barrio in the next few weeks and people stop cancelling nearly every event I'm a part of so I can become slightly more positive before this interview. It has been, to say the least, a really rough week. I'm feeling pretty discouraged and frustrated. Here's hoping things turn around and I don't come off as a total Negative Nancy in this interview.....

Yesterday was full of news! I went to finally have the mayor of Limpio sign the document that will cede the room in the municipal-run community center to the library committee. This means that he or future mayors will not be able to take any books, materials, or furniture from our library. It means that the library will continue to be communal—just for my neighborhood of Villa Madrid. I also got a phone call from the Peace Corps Office, saying that my SPA Grant of $3,000 has arrived for us to buy books and furniture for the new library. If this seems pretty late in the game, considering I have only 2 months left, it’s because it is. My library committee and I have about 4 weeks to spend all the money, so that’ll be a big push and will definitely keep me very busy. I’ll leave a lot of the organization piece to the library commission and my follow-up volunteer (who will be here for 2 years and arrive in my site a few days before I leave).

I was also at the municipality yesterday morning to finalize a truck to go to the water treatment plant in Limpio for 100 trees for a neighbor PCV to take to her town (about 20 minutes away by bus). Though she (the PCV) doesn’t live in Limpio, the mayor agreed to donate the trees since I’m going to be helping her plant them in her environmental camp that is running through Saturday in her neighborhood. Though they didn’t have any municipal trucks available, they sent the mayor’s private chauffer with the mayor’s truck. Yes, I have this kind of pull with the mayor, apparently.

Unfortunately, I also heard some bad news yesterday. As I believe I’ve mentioned, Paraguayans are notorious for their wandering eyes (and I’m not talking about the kind that can be simply solved with an eye patch at a young age, though that is also a problem for some). It is pretty common for couples to cheat on each other, particularly the men. This may come from Paraguay’s history—particularly the War of the Triple Alliance in which Paraguay lost nearly 90% of its male population. Whatever the reason, cheating is a reality in Paraguayan culture. So, supposedly one of the main male contacts with whom I work on the library committee cheated on his wife (another very active member in the library committee) while she was away working in Argentina for the past 2 months to make money. Again, I’m not sure what happened, but they’re talking about separating. They have 5 kids, ages 5 to 20. It is just really sad, and really unfortunate for the kids, obviously. But, on a more selfish note, it puts a big kink in the library process. I’m hoping, for everyone’s sake, that they end things amicably. Both of them are from northern Paraguay, so it would be a huge strain on the kids for one to move back north. We shall see. I think I’m going to talk to the wife today after she talks to a lawyer.

Let's move on from "radio so'o" (which means gossip but is literally translated as "meat radio") to the actual radio... I do the radio show each week with two other PCVs and we talk about various topics. Last week was environmental issues, particularly against littering and how to recycle. Today we talked about healthy relationships, the decision of when to have sex, and the lack of the sex talk between parents and their kids. I’ll spend the afternoon today making banana bread and then going to a youth assembly to hopefully expand the youth group I’ve been working with for the past year and a half. I’m not sure how I got roped into baking for a bunch of teenagers, but I wish I was more surprised to be doing so. Better go bake!

Best. Day. Ever.

OK, so maybe not best day ever, but I’ve had an excellent day. And here’s why: I had a great meeting with the mayor of Limpio. Limpio is a town of 80,000, and I live about 3km outside of it in a neighborhood of 800 houses. It was only brought to my attention by a friend from the states that knowing the mayor of a town of 80,000 is weird, but I don’t find it strange in any way. The current mayor is named Tito, but his brother was the previous mayor. Though the previous mayor was supportive enough in my projects and always donated money when various neighborhood groups I’m involved with asked, I wasn’t the biggest fan. The reason? The traditional greeting between a man and a woman in Paraguay is a double kiss—a cheek-to-cheek on both sides. (Generally your lips don’t make any contact.) The old mayor used to intentionally aim for the corners of my mouth. It made me uncomfortable, and with good reason. Since the woman is generally in control of what kind of greeting it is between a man and a woman (double kiss or handshake), after he pulled this maneuver with me twice I gave him the hard extended hand, signifying that I was only interested in a handshake. That didn’t help him from doing the “killer” move on me. I say Killer, because that’s what we used to call it at the camp where I used to work. Someone is designated as the “killer” and while everyone goes around shaking hands, he/she scratches the palm of the hand of the other person. The other player then shakes hands with a few other people and keels over dead. It is truly a great game, but the former mayor was not playing this game at the time. It is a (super creepy) sexual advance.

Regardless, this new mayor, Tito, is not creepy towards me in any way—he is actually quite professional. I’m very pleased with this fact, to say the very least. Today we had a meeting in which I wanted to talk to him about three things. 1) Peace Corps in general, that I am getting a follow-up volunteer in my site when I leave in April that he should coordinate projects with, and that I’m trying to send an environmental PCV to another section of Limpio to work with the water treatment plant, which has a huge amount of veggie seeds and vegetables and trees that anyone can transplant for free. Essentially, I wanted to show him how great Peace Corps is and how helpful we can be to Limpio. 2) If he wanted to sign a note saying that he’d send 100 saplings to the next town over so I could help another PCV do an environmental camp with kids. This was only tricky in that I was asking for him to send a truck over with the trees so we wouldn’t have to take them on the bus, and it is actually not benefitting Limpio in any way. 3) This is the most important, and what I was buttering him up for, to be perfectly honest. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’m working with a library committee to build and start a library. The problem is, we want to put the library in a municipal building without giving all of the power to the municipality to move the library to wherever they choose. This means asking the mayor to sign a document. I was a bit letrada (this basically means sneaky/tricky in PY) and told him that we were looking for a place where we could put the library, but where it is safe, and has a night guard. He fell for my wonderful trap and suggested the municipal-run community center in my neighborhood. Though we haven’t signed a contract as of yet (that should happen this upcoming week), he is enthused about the project and more than willing to help. This was a huge load off my shoulders. We should be getting the money any day now, and will soon be buying books and the shelves and such to equip the library with all it needs. My library committee and my follow-up will most likely be in charge of organizing it and getting the ball rolling, since I have such little time left here.

On another note, the mayor gave me some other good news. He said that he is donating the money to fix the motor on the water tank that gives me and about 350 other houses water daily. My water situation is unstable to say the least, with water about 5 hours a day, but the motor broke on Friday and we have been without a single drop of water ever since. I ran out of potable water yesterday, which…umm…sucked, but my neighbors gave me a bunch today since they have a different (and more expensive) water source. I have a big barrel of water I fill whenever I can in case of emergencies, but even that is down to about 2 inches of water. Today I bathed at the Peace Corps Office, since I had to go in there briefly to deal with some other things, but otherwise I’ve just been using an absurdly small amount of water to bathe. To be honest, I’ve not been the cleanest person here the past few days…and remember, we’re in the midst of summer. Thankfully it has been rainy and a bit cooler in the past few days or I have no idea how I’d be surviving… I’m hoping that tomorrow the motor on the water tank gets fixed and things return to normal.

So, kids are a huge part of my life here, to say the very least. They come visit me all the time to color, or read, or just play. Sometimes they decide my house is too messy and do my dishes. I’ve shown some the joys of the internet, about a jillion pictures from my life, and how to cook various foods. I made pancakes for one of my favorite families last week. I’ve become so used to just cooking for myself that it was much more of a to-do than I expected. On top of that, the kids kept asking if I thought they’d “know how to eat pancakes”, which is an expression that I love and that has repeatedly gotten me out of eating kidney, liver, intestines, stomach, and other innards. I told the kids that I’m sure they’d have no problem figuring out how to eat pancakes, and I was right, except for one kid, Guillermo age 5, who for some God-forsaken reason apparently doesn’t like pancakes.

A few days ago I was bucket bathing, another part of my life that I had completely forgotten to mention in my last blog about things that’ll be different in the US. Here’s the thing—I like bucket bathing. When it’s cold and I have to heat up water and then jump around to keep myself quasi-warm while bathing is not enjoyable, I must admit. But with the hot weather that we have now (February is the hottest month here), I actually enjoy it. I think of it as jumping into a pool over and over again—it is that refreshing. Anyway, the other day I was bucket bathing at around 6:30pm before heading to a meeting on the other side of my barrio. I heard someone clapping outside of my house, which is the Paraguayan equivalent to ringing the doorbell. “Quien?” I yelled, knowing whoever was at the other side of my door could hear me thanks to the half-wall that makes up my bathroom. It was a few kids who live a few blocks away, wanting to “study”, which really means color/play. I shouted that I had a meeting, so I didn’t have time to study, and they said they’d come back after, at 9pm to play. I said it was too late, but suggested “otro dia” we could play. This is essentially a total brush off. Saying “another day” is a passive way of being sure that no other date is set for play time with them. Here I say it to random people trying to sell things on the street, and we both pretend I’ll find them the next time I’m in town to buy their handicrafts. These particular kids get the brush-off because of the last time they came to visit. They’re nice enough kids, but brought their toddler cousin. The family very simply does not have the money to buy diapers, so they let the toddler urinate and defecate wherever she so pleases. Generally, I have no real problem with this, though I don’t like to be around for it. Last time the kids visited, the kid pissed all over my chair and floor. It wasn’t really a problem, though I had them leave about ten minutes later. My floor is made up of big bricks and is easy to clean. I actually spit on my floor with some frequency—this may be another habit I need to change when I’m stateside again, huh?

On a totally different note, we’re still fundraising for the public library project in site. I adore my library group—it is a small group, but everyone is so dedicated and hard working. Also, they’re hilarious, which makes it a lot more fun to have 3 meetings a week with them. At the moment, they’re obsessed with the idea of putting a huge framed picture of me on the wall of the library. I’m quietly hoping someone suggests again that the library is named after me, but for now I’ll settle for a huge picture of me with glasses on and a finger to my mouth, forever shushing the room.

I talked on Skype with my brother today. He’s in India and is super guapo (that means hard working here, though elsewhere means good looking) and was harassing me about updating my blog, which I somehow haven’t done in a full month. I realized that it isn’t that I don’t have anything going on in Paraguay, it’s just that things here just seem so normal to me. My library committee is trucking along, doing fundraisers for the 25% of the funds needed to build the library. The other 75% is (hopefully) coming in a couple of weeks from a SPA grant. I had originally wanted to do a Peace Corps Partnership for the money, which would have meant asking everyone I know to donate money, but the SPA grant (through USAID) seemed like a better option. All in all, the project will cost $4,000 and will be passed along to my follow-up, who arrives in Paraguay tomorrow. (NUTS!)

We had our Close of Service conference last week, which just meant a load of paperwork and realizing that I’m actually going to be leaving this wonderful and sometimes weird place in about two and a half months. Some of it was nice to think about—traveling after Peace Corps a bit through South America with my best friend from Peace Corps, going back to the US (and family, friends, and delicious foods that are included in that). But other parts made me anxious. I’m applying to grad school right now, which is an incredibly strange process to do from my house in Paraguay. I can’t believe that I will no longer be living in the fantastic community of Villa Madrid that has made me feel like I’m welcome and at home. I’m sad to leave the great Peace Corps relationships I’ve built here. It is just such a mix of emotions.

And then I think of how different I’ve become since joining the Peace Corps. I realize that there are all sorts of things that will be strange not to do while back in the US:

1) Drinking terere (the wonderful Paraguayan tea) all day every day.

2) Grunting at animals.

3) Giving myself a free day because it’s raining, or looks like it might rain.

4) Eating popcorn for dinner. All the time.

5) Making faces at children on the bus.

6) Having inappropriate conversations in English no matter where I am.

7) Siesta.

8) Being stared at everywhere I go. Unabashedly.

9) Considering eating lunch/dinner in a grocery store a delicious meal.

10) Speaking Spanish (and mishimi Guarani) daily.

11) Not flushing toilet paper.

There are so many more, but I just can’t even think of them. The US seems like such a foreign place at this point. It’ll also be sad to realize that that 10 year old kid who has a “This is What a Feminist Looks Like” shirt probably knows what it means. I’ll miss those horrible English grammar errors on clothing… I’ll try to be better in the next few months keeping an eye out for things that no longer faze me but once did. My February resolution is now to be better about this blog. You’re welcome.

PS-Best news I got yesterday is that I don't have scabies! This is what success looks like.

So this is Christmas…

On December 10th I found myself walking from my bus stop in Asuncion to the Peace Corps Office with this song suddenly stuck in my head and I laughed out loud. I had meetings all day in the PCO with other Volunteers, as we do every other month, and I was running late as per usual. It had been horribly hot and muggy when I left my house with my backpack packed for the weekend. I had heard it was supposed to rain, so I grabbed my umbrella, having left my rain coat in my mailbox at the PCO a few weeks before. By the time my hour long bus trip into the office ended, it was pouring. We’re talking buckets of water here. Somehow Paraguay’s capital city has nearly no water drainage, so when I got off on España (the street), it was not that surprising that I was stepping into a river. The dirty city water went nearly to my kneecap and continued to threaten to steal my flip-flops as I fought to wade through it. So I did what anyone would do—took off my shoes and trudged through, crossing two of Asuncion’s major streets completely barefoot. If that doesn’t give me some sort of horrible disease, what will? Of course I had that umbrella, but by the time I got to the PCO I was completely drenched (even down to my underwear!) and, since my backpack was also not covered, had no clothes to change into. Great. So, this is Christmas.

This entire month has flown by, as have the past nearly 23. It is truly incredible. We had some movie nights for the library project, for which the municipality loaned us a projector. Is it weird that I am totally buddy-buddy with the mayor of a town of 80,000? I was told recently that it is. Movie night was a success—everyone ate an absurd amount of popcorn, and many children later reported having nightmares after watching Drag Me to Hell. (I’ll just say that the movie selections were not my call.)

My parents got here on the 18th—we started the trip in Paraguay, then went east to Iguazu Falls, then flew down to Buenos Aires where we spent Christmas week. While in Paraguay I had a little BBQ with some of my closest families in site, introduced my parents to a bunch of my PC friends, and then showed them the comedor. They were amazed by the comedor—the kids were really enthusiastic to see me (this place seriously makes me feel like a super star) and were especially pumped to receive the bouncy ball and pencil that my parents gave each of them for Christmas. (My mom apparently got stopped at the border after they saw the x-ray of her bag containing 90 nearly lacrosse ball sized balls...) We went and saw the carpinchos (capybaras) in Villarrica and met up with my friend Tomas. I also finally saw Tomas’s house for the first time. Anytime I hear anyone complain about any sort of house problem for the rest of my life, I’ll probably think of this house. It can much more accurately be called a shack. There are wooden boards as the walls, but often times these boards are separated by an inch or two of open space. We’re talking about a place that most would decide should be fixed up if it was the shed out back—and Tomas lives there without a word of complaint. Que quapo!

From Villarrica, our driver (yes, we had a wonderful driver named Caballero) took us through Ciudad del Este to go to Iguazu Falls, where we were spending a night. Ciudad del Este (City of the East) is the only major town in Paraguay not named after something Biblical—we have Asuncion, Encarnacion, and Concepcion. It makes sense that the name is such. It is generally considered the biggest and most thorough black market in South America. Name it and you can buy it there, and yes, feel free to use your imagination. So we were stuck in traffic trying to cross the bridge into Brazil for an hour or two. But all around us, things were being brought out to cars and trucks in bulk. Though it was the middle of the afternoon, it was easy to spot a bunch of sex workers wandering throughout the traffic. Motorcycles and motorcycle taxis whizzed by and darted in and out of cars. It was quite a sight to see. We finally made it over the bridge and into Brazil, which we had planned to cut through on our way to Argentina, and weren’t stopped at all at the border. Twenty minutes later, when we were leaving Brazil to enter Argentina, that became a problem. It took some finagling to convince the border patrol not to send us back to the bridge to get stamped, but I’m happy to report that no money changed hands.

Iguazu Falls was amazing. I had heard other PCVs talk about it, but there is truly no way to describe how spectacular the Falls are. We stayed in the park on the Argentina side, so we’d have drinks or dinner while watching and hearing the falls in the distance. The nice thing about what is sometimes called “Niagara on Viagra” is that they allow you to explore the falls so completely—you get to walk out right near La Garganta del Diablo (the main falls), or walk out throughout the upper circuit to the tops of others, or go down through the jungle to be at the bottom level and look up at the falls all while surrounded by birds, lizards, monkeys, armadillos, and some weird rodent thing I don’t know the name of. My mom and I decided to do the boat trip where you get right under the falls. We got totally drenched, and the lifejackets smelled strongly of BO, but it was excellent. If, whoever you are, you have the opportunity to go to the falls, take it, and give yourself two full days of exploring to do it.

Buenos Aires was excellent as well, of course! This was my third time, which seems slightly excessive, and may be, but each time was quite different since I went with different people each time. BA is simply a city I could easily live in for a year or two. We had delicious food and wine, walked around a lot, and just explored. Restaurant highlights were: Don Carlos in La Boca (he just brings out plates and plates of food without asking what you want), Ceviche in Palermo (with hands down the best ceviche any of us had ever had and solid sushi), and Rio Alba in Palermo (with Raul, a great waiter, who would flat out tell us when he thought we shouldn’t get something and then bring some other deliciousness). We had so many delicious meals, but these stand out. We also spent a day in El Tigre, which is a river delta town about an hour north of BA that I adore and that we explored by boat. Another day was spent in Colonia, a historical town in Uruguay that is about an hour’s ferry ride away from BA. It was pleasant, but didn’t knock my socks off.

In South America fireworks are a big part of Jesus’ birth. As are watermelons. This may seem strange to a North American reader, but it’s true. In each nativity scene you see (in Paraguay and Argentina at least) there is a watermelon present. Maybe it has to do with the fact that it is peak watermelon season down here, or maybe North Americans just have it totally wrong to not include the watermelon. I won’t attempt to argue that fireworks actually were present for the birth of Jesus, but maybe there were some sparklers at least? At midnight on Christmas Eve, just after my father and I watched possibly the worst Christmas movie EVER, and after the three of us had read ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, the fireworks began. We stayed in a great apartment in Palermo on the 13th floor, and had views out of three sides of the building. In every direction (well, minus much in the Rio de la Plata direction) there were firework displays. We’re talking about thousands of people setting off fireworks at the exact same time all over the city. I’m not a huge fireworks fan, but it was truly beautiful and impressive that though there was obviously no official coordination, everyone knew to set off the fireworks at midnight.

So I got back to Paraguay yesterday afternoon, to find that my fridge door had opened. I was having some trouble with it right before I left, so I duct-taped it shut. Apparently I didn’t duct tape it well enough, and I came home to find it partially open, the freezer full of ice, and the fridge completely drenched with water from when the ice melted. So I unplugged the fridge, and went to work with a little bit of hot water, and a lot of machete to chip away at the ice. Yes, I know that I could have waited for it to thaw. Yes, I know it isn’t a good idea to hack at something filled with Freon with a machete. But I just wasn’t feeling very patient. That is the really what it came down to. So after a lot of very productive machete-ing, one bad swing resulted in a stream of smelly gas shooting towards me. I went to my neighbors (the same who help me with everything, from the broken water pipe to those grotesque cats behind my fridge) and they called a guy they know. He came last night to start working and is back today to hopefully finish the job. I honestly wish that I had a picture of his face when I told him what had happened. Apparently everybody everywhere knows that taking a machete to your fridge is asking for trouble…

OK, no real time to write, but I figured I should put something up here. Here's hoping you're as amused by underwater cameras as I was over Thanksgiving with my fellow PCVs! We ate traditional food, had a talent show, did an auction to raise money for the Gender and Development Camp, and spent a lot of time poolside. Hope the cold isn't getting you down up north!

Though this is not representative of most of the Chaco, there was an article earlier this week about how an expedition to the Paraguayan Chaco was cancelled so as to not disturb an uncontacted tribe that lives there. Interestingly, it is the only place other than the Amazon in which uncontacted tribes are known to live in South America. (Remember the article a few years ago with the uncontacted tribe in the Amazon shooting arrows at an airplane??) I sent the article to my friend Drew, who commented that his favorite line is:

"Anthropologists and indigenous campaigners fear that accidental contact with the expedition would put the Ayoreo at risk of infectious diseases that could wipe them out, and drastically disrupt their traditional lifestyle."

As Drew said, "yes, I imagine if I was 'wiped out' that would 'drastically disrupt' my lifestyle." Perhaps...

Anyway, I went to a very different part of the Chaco this past week. My closest PC neighbor lives about 5 miles away as the crow flies. The problem is that Rio Paraguay separates us. This is not an especially wide river, but in order to get to my friend's site, I have to go south, then west, then back north. It takes a bit over an hour by bus. BUT, I can go by boat and it takes about 30 minutes with a short walk, quick bus, and very pleasant boat ride. I'll remind you that it is getting to be summer here. It doesn't seem like it has been nearly as hot here, but it makes me want to spend as much time as possible on boats.

I went down to Piquete Cue, which is on Rio Paraguay, but still in Limpio, and started talking to the water police. They had given me a ride across a few months ago and I was hoping for the same free taxi service. I chatted with them for a while as the boat came back and then waited while they went to get gas. They claimed that the river was clean enough to swim in, as long as we didn't go too far down river towards the factories. I finally boarded the row boat with a motor on the back with a guy dressed all in camouflage (despite it being 95 degrees or so) and another guy who seemed to do handy work for the cops. They insisted I wear a lifejacket that looked and felt as though it wouldn't save a small child, even after I explained that I know how to swim. We chatted as we went along; I took the lifejacket off as we approached the shore of Villa Hayes where people were fishing from the beach and an old abandoned boat. I thanked them and said goodbye as I stepped off the boat and knee-deep in mud. I just totally sank. I'm sure I screamed--or at least yelped. I was sitting on the bow of the boat, with my left leg totally plunged in mud, but refused to pull my leg out and lose my flip-flop. (I have huge feet and it is impossible for me to find women's shoes here--these are the leather flip-flops I wear daily.) The man in camo jumped to action, holding my shoulders as I attempted to pull my foot and flip-flop out of the gross mud while cracking up at my luck. Although near Limpio we are upstream from the factories, in Villa Hayes we were not. I finally got it out of the mud, realizing I had quite the crowd. The man in camo took my flip-flop and washed it in the river. There was no way I could get out of the boat at that part of the shore. My flip-flop was clean but I was still covered in mud. Not to worry--the camo-clad man had found a bailer (a cut off jug), and was filling it with water. He told me to hang my leg off the boat and washed my leg--even between my toes--as I balanced there, laughing at what a scene I had created and the fact that my PC friend had shown up on the beach at this moment, looking pretty confused. With my leg and flip-flop mostly cleaned and the boat re-parked in a sandy spot, I departed, still laughing and thanking my camo-clad friend for the pedicure and the mud treatment.

"Eeek!" is honestly the only word I can come up with to explain how I'm feeling at this moment. I have less than 6 months left in Paraguay! That means less than 6 months to get this library project rolling, less than 6 months to hang out with the children, families, and teens that have come to be like family to me. And on top of me wanting to be the best PCV I can be (how cheesey am I?), I also have an online statistics class to do while applying for grad schools for the fall. YIKES! I was gone for a bit this past week working on the Kuat (the PC newspaper) and though I had a blast with the other editors (new and old), I came back in a bit of a panic. I don't really want to leave my barrio for a while. But then I picture a calendar. I'm going to the super fun Thanksgiving fiesta in southern PY the weekend after Thanksgiving. Then there is the sweet concert of Ahendu ("I hear" in Guarani) on the 11th of December that I'm in charge of with some other PCVs. THEN my parents come on the 18th!! I'm stoked for their visit, and have decided to have a little fiesta in site to welcome them to my neighborhood/celebrate the holidays. Then we go to BA (yes, otra vez). But then I'm back in Paraguay like the 28th of December and am down to less than 4 months. How effing nuts is that? And so, EEEK!

But anyway, other than me being crazy and being astonished at how time has flown, things are going really well right now. Well, I've hit some speedbumps--got all my stuff ($$, cards, iPod, camera, sunglasses, purse I use daily, etc.) stolen in BA, then lost my phone last week (and all #s), and it was a total bitch to get my card figured out--but I feel my positive attitude coming back, nice and strong! My annoyances in site have mostly been with random drama that seems to have subsided, thank God. And now my library committee is A.W.E.S.O.M.E! Tomorrow is the municipal election (more on that later) and we're planning on selling hamburgers (hamburgueseada is the word for a hamburger-selling event) all day. We're starting at 9am. This seems gross to me--I have no real interest in eating a hamburger for breakfast--but isn't weird at all here. Anyway, hopefully we sell all 200 hamburgers we have ready. We got everything donated--buns, burgers, lettuce, tomatoes, mayonaise (yeah, I know), eggs, and are now waiting on the ham, cheese, and ketchup. You've gotta love the hamburguesa completa, right? I don't think I'll ever want a burger without an egg on it ever again in life. Anyway, even though I was gone for a good chunk of this week (and without phone), my committee did what they needed to to make sure the donations came through. They're excellent. People are psyched about the library and working hard to fundraise our piece of what we need.

The weather here is getting hot hot hot and I'm loving it! I sweat an absurd amount with this heat but I don't really mind. It just means that bucket bathing is actually really refreshing. It also gives me an excuse to drink an absurd amount of terere (the cold tea drink that I've mentioned a bunch). This time of year also means that no one goes to sleep early and that people are out and about all day (minus the siesta). And so, with everyone doing a lot of porch sitting, the candidates for the municipal race have an easy audience. Cars and trucks go down the main drag of my barrio (aka right in front of my house) with their speakers blasting campaign music and the candidate's names. I love the song Papa Americano which is played CONSTANTLY here, but now there is a candidate who inserts his name into the song every now and then which is slightly obnoxious... I had a really interesting conversation with a 20-year-old from my library committee about elections here vs elections in the US. I thought of Obama in the last presidential election, using all these different electronic forms of spreading the word and rallying people, and then I look outside to the car bumping music while lighting off fireworks in the middle of the day with people sitting in truck beds and hanging out the trunks of cars they're sitting in. One mayoral candidate is the brother of the past two mayors of Limpio. Today I went to Limpio to collect the food for our hamburgueseada and saw that they're painting the road. I like that little last minute push for votes. Also, I talked to that same candidate on the phone today to see if he didn't want to donate just a little bit more to our library event. Of course he did! Did he ask how I got his cell phone number or who I was? No. Anything for those last minute votes! (Not that I vote or get involved with this election in any way...)

So, I’ve been avoiding my blog for the past few weeks mostly because I’m kind of lazy but also because Nessie (or La Baronesa) died a couple of weeks ago. It was a terrible thing to see her die and was obviously quite painful for her at the end. I believe she had hemorrhagic gastroenteritis, which was probably a result of either her eating meat that was thoroughly cooked and then left out or possibly a problem she was born with. The meat hypothesis seems like an obvious one to me—Paraguayans cook their meat for an extremely long time, nearly burning it most of the time. There is never any pink in cooked meat here. Anyway, so I was totally heartbroken over Nessie to say the least. I live alone and it was nice having a distraction from a bunch of drama in my site that was happening in September. (There were two huge rifts in two of the main groups I work with—one ended up with a woman saying “You hit my kid in the face, I’ll hit you in the face” to a woman at the comedor. All this happened literally in front of 40 kids. They wouldn’t listen to me when I told them to take it to a more private place, nor when I reminded them of how immature and what bad examples they were being. Frustrating.) So Nessie had been a very positive distraction for me, and was the cutest thing ever. When she was obviously very sick (it happened pretty suddenly), I walked over to a veterinarian’s house with a neighbor. I don’t trust this vet to begin with since he had told my neighbors that their dog, Mika, was allergic to cats and that’s why her eyes were so red and messed up. It was very obvious that this was not the reason for her eye problem, and no amount of allergy shots helped. But my vet lives 45 minutes away and wouldn’t be able to help until the next morning. So we walk over to Dr. Incompetente’s house. He gave Nessie a few shots. (After looking all this up online it turns out that there was really nothing he could have done to save her at that point.) After giving Nessie the shots and some medicine orally, he asked how she was doing. I choked out that she wasn’t breathing. The vet’s wife in the exact same moment in which I gave the news asked if I wanted a new puppy. Just like that. Tactless.

So I bring this up for a few reasons. The cultural differences between here and the US are quite great on a handful of topics—one being pets and the other being death. It is common for a puppy to die here, so no one thinks anything of it when it happens. Dogs are frequently for protection and normally sleep outside. The US is obviously an extreme—people pick up their dog’s poop after them, sometimes put them in ridiculous clothing, give them medical attention that some humans don’t get, and mourn over their death. I cannot explain how many people have offered to give me a new puppy in the past 10 days or so since Nessie died. It is really sweet of them to offer, but I think I’ll wait a while to have a new puppy until I’m back stateside.

The other much more serious death that has taken place in the past few weeks happened while I was in Buenos Aires. I’ve been teaching in one particular class (11th grade) for a few months now. We’ve done a lot of work on sex ed and HIV/AIDS weekly. Apparently two kids from the class (a brother and sister) were leaving school 2 weeks ago and were both hit by a bus. The boy died instantly and the girl has been in a coma ever since. Victor, a teen I work with in that class and in a lot of other groups, told me about the accident, though I don’t hear much about it since it happened a few neighborhoods over. When I talked to him about how his classmates were coping, he said that some were just not going to school anymore and that others were mourning in various ways. I asked about support for the students and family, but he seemed confused. I asked about social workers, psychologists, anything, but he said there was nothing. This is astounding to me. In the US, we’d have grief counseling or at least a guidance counselor to talk to the students, but here there is nothing. The class is doing a bunch of fundraising to help out the parents of the girl who is still in the hospital, but that is the only kind of support Victor could think of. There are a group of psychologists who come on Tuesdays and Wednesdays to the community center in my neighborhood and I’ve invited them to come to help out with the class this week but they still haven’t given me a solid response. When I asked them, they didn’t even understand at first what kind of services I wanted them to offer to the kids for a day. It is that peculiar. Anyway, unfortunately I don’t have any more news on that subject, but am really hoping they’ll be able to help out this week. Otherwise the kids are going to just continue to bury their feelings or avoid dealing with it for now. I’m hoping that once school ends (exams start in 10 days or so) some of them take advantage of the very cheap individual sessions that the psychologists offer; maybe I can figure out a way to have the group drop the charge for this particular group of students. We’ll see…

This kid, Julian, was just so good with Nessie!

Awww...

Nessie kept biting Julian's ear, which he seemed to love and hate. Hilarious.

So this past Sunday was my 26th Birthday. It has been very surprising to me that I've gotten so old, but Sunday in no way, shape, or form reminded me of a typical 26th birthday party. My youth group, which mainly consists of 15 and 16 year olds, came over, as did a bunch of their younger siblings, and my PCV amiga Barbara. The party consisted of me entertaining kids while Barbara cooked popcorn, hotdogs, and a birthday cake. It felt really much less like my own birthday party and more like I was a parent hosting a party for my 12 year old child. It was definitely an enjoyable event--the kids seemed pleased, Happy Birthday was sung in 3 languages (English, Spanish, and Guarani), and I received some rather odd--but sweet--presents. They consisted of: a very old stuffed animal, three little virginal/angelic figures, a 7 inch lighter (from a PCV friend), broccoli (also from a PCV), a bag of store bought cookies, Heart's Greatest Hits (PCV), a little card about friendship glued to a piece of wood, sparkly hair elastics, and an old Snoopy change purse. The fiesta was quite enjoyable but very exhausting.

The day before I saw carpinchos again, which obviously made me incredibly happy. Here are some pics of both carpinchos and the fiesta.

Yesterday it stormed all day, which meant I did absolutely nothing. It was extremely pleasant. Today I ran some errands and then went down to the comedor to see the kids and talk to some of the ladies in charge. One kid invited me to his house to see the 5 week old puppies they have. The kid, Eduardo (13), is quite nice and very shy. His mother is not very shy, and is actually quite pushy. They'd been trying to talk me into taking a puppy home for quite some time. The more I thought about it, the worse of an idea it seemed. I'm going on a vacation next month for a week, my parents come in December, and I leave in just 8 months. I'm not at home very frequently--I spend a lot of time around the community--and don't really have the time or patience to train a dog. My friend got 2 puppies 2 months ago and is now super annoyed at them all the time. All signs pointed to "Don't Get a Puppy", yet as I write this, there is one laying in my lap, fast asleep. Why did I cave? I don't know. I might as well blame that damned birthday party for making me revisit my 12-year-old self who would absolutely never have turned down a puppy.

On that note, this cute little thang is looking for a name. I'm thinking something in Guarani...not sure but will keep you updated, but am definitely open to suggestions.

Just a quick note: Went to Emboscada, Paraguay, which is a small town about 20 minutes north of where I live. There is a large Afro-Paraguayan community there, which is really uncommon for Paraguay. The story is that the Afro-Paraguayan community would dress up like this (see super sweet photo) and then attack the violent indigenous groups. Anyway, once a year they celebrate. I was lucky enough to attend.

Oh so much to catch you (my many faithful readers) up on! Where to begin? How my language has deteriorated? How I lost my life? How I was called a liar by one of the señoras I’m closest to? How I think I need to do something about my love of karaoke in Paraguay? How God is apparently really technologically advanced? OK, here we go. I’ll try to do this chronologically.

I went in to help teach the trainees how to teach English a few weeks ago. I showed them Monkey-Fire, which is a game I love! You say “monkey” and the kids run in one direction; if you say “fire” they go in the other. In between you say different animals and the kids at them out. I use drawings of animals with the English name of the animal underneath. When the kids get good at remembering animal names in English, you just say the words without the cards. Some of my drawings are much nicer than others, and I explained that I copied some from some temporary tattoos I use for prizes, but the other ones “I draw out of my mind.” I knew immediately that was not said correctly but could simply not think of the right way to say it. My old trainer cracked up…maybe since I still ridicule him for the time he asked, “What do you call bread that has already been sliced?” Umm…sliced bread? (Guess which I copied from a temporary tattoo.)

How I lost my life? I was biking to do a HIV/AIDS talk in a high school. My tote bag (with my phone, 20.000Guaranis ($4), my planner, my house key, my bike key, and a bunch of other stuff inside) was tied to the back rack. I figured out it was gone too late. When I biked back it was gone. I then spent two hours going door to door explaining what had happened, going to the local police station, asking my neighbors to keep an eye on my house. It was annoying. To deal with this annoyance and avoid having to take the locks off my door I went to another PCV’s house for the evening. Luckily my wallet was in my house so I just had a neighbor boy climb through one of my many broken windows to get it. That was quite a production—my teenage neighbor girls tried to climb in, and then tried to get their cousin to climb through. We literally picked up like 3 kids to try to shove them through my window. It was absurd. The next day, my neighbors got the locks off by taking what looked to me like a big crab mallet and bashing them off. They tried sawing the locks off but it was taking too long. I found it fairly disconcerting just how easy it was to break into my house… (Luckily, though, if I’m inside I have what can only be described as dungeon locks that I use. So no one, other than a very small child with an exceptionally small head, could come in undetected while I’m home. I think I could probably take said child.) I waited in the PC office for 6 hours the next day to get a different cell phone. I guess all’s well that ends well. Several things that make me feel better about the situation: 1) my wallet/passport/bank card wasn’t in there; 2) a whole neighborhood now knows who I am and what I do here thanks to my door-to-door visits; 3) whoever found my bag now has an absurd amount of info about HIV/AIDS so hopefully learns something; and 4) I got out of dressing up like a clown for the fourth time in four days.

A clown? Why in the world would you want to stand out more in Paraguay? Answers: Yes and I didn’t. The problem? My old host mom, Mimi (who is phenomenal!) asked me to dress like a clown for the church’s celebration of Día del Niño (Kids’ Day). I was such a hit (obvi) that I was then asked to do repeat performances for 3 other Día del Niño fiestas. For the one at the school I was given a microphone and led songs with the entire elementary school. Ten days have now passed and I’m still being called Payasa (clown). On my walk home from one of these events 5 different people (3 of whom I didn’t know) stopped me to ask if they could take my picture.

I’m a liar…or apparently that is what like 20 people think. I had my one year visit with my PC bosses. We went all over my neighborhood talking to people I work with. One lady told my boss that I’m part of the family, but that I’m a liar. This goes back to the library project. I had originally wanted to do a library/comedor project in the 3rd phase of my neighborhood. Unfortunately I’m not doing it anymore for a few main reasons: 1) I was given BOGUS estimates in which people very clearly (and repeatedly) tried to take advantage of me; 2) the women’s commission has fallen apart nearly completely; 3) there was no support from anyone/any group; and 4) with construction and the lack of enthusiasm, we simply do not have time to build all this in the 8 months I have left in site. Anyway, so in the community center there is a room where we can put a library pretty easily, and without construction costs/timelines. The problem: it is in a different part of my neighborhood and people apparently felt like I’ve abandoned them, taken sides, and think I never actually intended to do the library in the 3rd phase. I’m just happy that this one lady told me. The joys of this passive culture is that I had no idea that this was happening since people were acting the same with me like nothing had happened. Che Dios!

Karaoke? I simply do not have the voice to sing Total Eclipse of the Heart. I need to remember this. It doesn’t help that the kids (and teens) at the comedor constantly ask me to sing the Titanic song and tell me how nice my voice is, when in reality they’re just psyched to hear it in English.

God is technologically advanced? That’s right. You heard it here first. The other day I was at the comedor and started talking to this lady I don’t know well. She is the mother of some of the kids who eat there, but doesn’t really participate in activities normally. Anyway, the other day she was talking to me about heaven and Hell, and asked if I believe in Hell. I said, “Yes, of course!” and she told me that on my judgment day, I couldn’t claim to God that I hadn’t been told about heaven and Hell because she was telling me now, and He videotapes everything. Yes, she repeated, He videotapes everything…and has everything completely computerized up there. I struggled to keep a straight face as I pictured God with a big old video-camera with just VHS tapes.

Sex Ed Questions! So, as always, I’m doing sex-ed classes. My favorite question of last week was a double question: “Who invented sex? For what reason was sex invented?” How do I even begin to answer that??

OK, so as I've mentioned, there is a ton of drama at the comedor within the women's group. It has gotten ridiculous. Tuesday night there was a meeting with the women's group and the neighborhood commission. All of the ladies were complaining about one woman who, of course, wasn't there. They were just plain bitching about her. Petty nonsense. This lady can definitely be a bit crazy at times, but so can a LOT of the other ladies AND she has done a great deal of work on the comedor and with a pharmacy in my neighborhood. Finally, someone asked me what I thought. I had been sitting there silently gawking the entire meeting up to this point. And then I let it go. Paraguay is a very tranquilo, indirect, gossipy culture. I went on a rant about how the problem isn't this one particular lady, but the fact that no one can talk openly and directly to other people in the comedor, that they'd rather gossip than actually try to work together, that they see no problem bitching about or fighting with each other in front of the 60 kids that we serve. I said my biggest frustration was the inability to act like adults and keep the goal (feeding all those kids) in mind. One woman tried to say that I was just saying this because I was on the side of the other woman, completely ignoring my comments. She also said, "You practically have your college degree", and I interrupted, pointing out that I do not "practically" have it--I do. So now this lady is pissed at me. Fine. I think she's a bit crazy and more of the problem than anyone else. But THEN today the first lady who was singled out (and not at this meeting) called me into her pharmacy, began to cry, and asked why I hadn't said anything to defend her. I honestly don't even know how to deal with this situation. Both sides think I'm on the opposite side simply because I refuse to pick sides in their bullshit argument in which both parties are WAY off base. It is driving me insane. In-effing-sane.

Anyway, that is really all I have to report. I've been enjoying my time with kids a great deal this week, doing a bunch of reading projects, playing a lot of Uno, throwing the frisbee around, thinking about getting a puppy, and trying to figure out where to put this library since there is no possible way it'll work out with this women's group or the neighborhood commission in that part of my site. Goodness.

Aug. 4, 2010

Sunday morning I woke up early and went to the grocery store to buy myself a single burner electric stove. After a week without gas, warm baths or coffee and with no end to this gas crisis in site I decided it was time to take action. I went to a Friendship Day lunch at this lady from the comedor’s house where my boxer was. I couldn’t avoid this event, unfortunately, so I spent 3 hours eating sausage, meat, rice, and sopa Paraguaya (the cornbread dish that I love love love). The boxer is super nice but I can’t help but shake the feeling that even if I was a total bitch/psycho/dullard he would still be interested in me just for my blondness/tallness/Americana-ness. He did give me a box of chocolates for Friend Day (which was on Friday), which I appreciated and enjoyed.

But I was ready to get the hell out of Dodge, or, umm, Villa Madrid. For months now, I have been talking with a PC friend who lives on the other side of Rio Paraguay about meeting up on a boat and just floating/anchoring/chilling, but we hadn’t gotten our shit together to make it happen. He lives 5 miles from me as the crow flies but it is an hour plus bus ride to cross the bridge. So I walked to the other main road through Limpio and hopped on a bus down to the river. It had gotten a bit late (and cold) so I figured just getting dropped off, hanging out with my friend, and then getting picked up a few hours later would be best. I asked a few guys with boats but they were uninterested. Finally one suggested I ask the river police. The water cop (I like the sound of that) said I just had to pay for gas for his row boat’s small motor so away we went. I got to Villa Hayes slightly cold and wet, had a few beers, and then called Jorge to come pick me up. I was slightly nervous about how much he would charge me, though Paraguayans tend not to try to rip you off, so I explained that I was really hoping that when it got hot again I could float around on the river regularly with PC amigos.

We got back to the station and he asked if I wanted wine and Coke. Note: If asked, the answer should always be “Yes” to this. I had the most pleasant conversation with this water cop, chatting about his toddler son, Paraguayan and US stereotypes and cultural differences, and the many trips I will be planning on the river. He ended up not charging me for the boat ride (or wine and Coke) and had a younger river cop assistant walk me to my bus stop. It was, in short, the most pleasant day I’ve had in some time. I can’t wait for the weather to heat up so I can have little flotilla fiestas with amigos!

So on Sunday the gas that makes my stove function ran out while I was heating up water to bathe. It wasn’t a huge deal—the water was warmish and I survived. We got paid on Tuesday and I was too poor to buy more gas Monday so I went without coffee Monday and Tuesday but headed off to Limpio (which is 3km away) with two 13-year-old kids from my neighborhood to get some more gas. We went to four different places but had zero luck and returned to my house empty handed. I talked to my neighbors and apparently there is a huge gas shortage in Paraguay. We import gas from Argentina and (as was explained to me repeatedly by various parties) it is so cold in Argentina right now that everyone is using more gas than usual and they feel no need to export any to little ol’ Paraguay. What does this mean for me? It means cold bucket bathing (during our winter), no coffee in the morning (which is KILLING me—Nescafe courses through my veins), or cooking of any kind. Apparently I can maybe find some in the capital, which is just an hour away, so I’ll need to continue my search ASAP.

As I mentioned in the last post, there has been some major drama with the women’s group. One lady called me this morning to ask me to come to her house as soon as I could. I had the eye doctors visiting again, and then realllly wanted to take a nap afterwards, so I told her I couldn’t be there until this evening. She texted me later asking me to come at 5pm and said it was urgent. I assumed it was a meeting for the women’s group but it was only her, her family, and the super muscular boxer she’s been trying to set me up with. Apparently it was just urgent because she wants to speed things up between him and me. He doesn’t live in my neighborhood, but is taller than me, has no children, and doesn’t have a girlfriend or wife. These were her selling points on this guy a month ago when I had a super awkward interaction with him where she forced the two of us to sit in her yard drinking terere (the cold tea) while the rest of the family left us alone. Some of the kids from the comedor were really curious, especially Diosnel (my favorite) who attempted to spy on the entire conversation (though not very stealthily). So now, thanks to the date disguised as a meeting, I’ve had a second date with this dude. Thanks, Lourdes.

07-22-10

So, I went to the US for about 12 days for a wonderful visit in mostly Chautauqua, NY and briefly in NYC. It was excellent. I was thrilled to see friends and family, eat delicious food, and enjoy the heat—the inescapable cold of Paraguayan winter is miserable. (Last week a fellow PCV who came in a year after me reminded me that a group of PCVs asked me what I disliked most about Paraguay and I said the cold weather. They scoffed since at the time we were sweating it out in 100degree heat and didn’t believe me when I explained that cold weather here is much worse than hot. The PCV now completely agrees with me, obviously.) Anyway, the US was fabulous and it was great seeing everyone—especially my family before my brother Rahde takes off for a year of studying open fire cooking techniques in Jamaica, South Africa, India, Turkey, and Austrailia. Check out his blog. www.rahdefranke.com

I got back to Paraguay last week but had a 4 day conference with other PCVs and some community contacts. (I am very pleased to report that both of mine showed up despite the fact that I wasn’t around to remind them! Lovely surprise!) Anyway, then I was back in site for a night before heading back to the capital to work on the Kuatiane’e (Guarani for “Talking Paper”), which is the PC Paraguay publication we put out 3 times a year. I’m one of the editors. When I got back to site Tuesday night I was thrilled to be back home, though not very excited to see that a deep clean of my little house was definitely in order. Yesterday (Wednesday) I cleaned a bit and then went down to the Comedor. Seeing the kids I work with about 4 days a week after not seeing them for 3 weeks was wonderful. There were a lot of hugs, double kisses (which I think is so funny and cute from an 8-year-old), and questions about the states. My favorite kid, Diosnel, acted like he didn’t see me for a while and instead continuously “accidentally” bumped into me repeatedly. He always reacts to me in the exact opposite was as the other kids. I told him (and the other kids) that I missed him and his face lit up…this kid so desperately needs some positive attention. It was fabulous seeing them all again. But I wish I could report that the whole reunion was a joyous one. I also got back to find that there has been an absurd amount of drama between the women who run the free meal program. They have been bickering and asking one another to step down from their positions. One woman apparently almost hit another in the face. Another claimed that she was the “Queen of the Kitchen” and said another woman couldn’t cook there. Within my youth group it seems as though there has been some drama as well, though not in any way as ridiculous as the drama between the women’s group. They’re switching their focus it seems and may not work with the comedor quite as much—instead focusing on building a business to make baked goods. Last night we had a two hour plus meeting in which we planned activities for Friendship Day (July 31st—big deal here), Kids’ Day (August 16th), and Youth Day (September 21st).

I talked to my landlord just as I was leaving my meeting and he asked if he could come over so I could pay rent. We had a bit of a mix-up in which I thought he was trying to charge me an extra month’s rent, but we figured it out. He is really an ideal landlord. I sometimes ask if I can do something to the house (like maybe paint the last room that hasn’t been painted) and he says, “This is your house—do whatever you want.” That being said, he isn’t super ideal in that I still have a bunch of broken windows that my fellow PCVs continuously ridicule me for. He told me last night that that can be the next step—fixing the windows—but I’m not holding my breath. He also asked me what kind of security I have. I told him I have five locks on the door and that seems to be enough. Then he asked me about guns. He knows a random mix of English words and loves to use them as much as possible, so his comments are more like, “Y que tenes para security?” and, “No hay guns en the house?” Sometimes I think he asks me things just to use his English vocab… Anyway, when he asked me if I had a gun, I said that I have a machete. He laughed and said that he could get me a gun. To which I laughed and said I’ve never shot a gun and I don’t know how. I am not sure where this assumption came (Westerns, NRA ads, Mafia movies, action movies, whatever?) but he absolutely did not believe that I had never shot a gun. He kept claiming that he knew I was an expert at shooting and nothing I could say could convince him otherwise. He even showed me a gun tucked into a holster and said he goes nowhere without it, suggesting I do the same. I said that as a PCV I am not allowed to have a gun (which I think is true but really doesn’t matter since buying a gun is the last thing I’d do) but am still kind of convinced that I’ll come home one day soon to find my very own gun and holster waiting.

6-29-10

OK, so I’ve never been that into soccer. I’ll admit it. I stopped playing soccer sometime in middle school to play field hockey, which is a sport that I’d still much rather play than soccer but is somewhat miserable to watch. I’m not that into watching sports. Sure, I love to go to lacrosse, baseball, soccer, football, hockey, fill-in-the-sport games but watching them on TV is really not my favorite past time. I didn’t watch the Super Bowl this year (I was in Paraguay, the announcing was in Spanish, they weren’t going to show the commercials, and I would have had to go to Hooters or TGIFridays in Asuncion to watch) and last year, though it was one of my last days in the US before Peace Corps, I fell asleep during the first quarter.

All that being said, however, this World Cup has been phenomenal! Like every other Latin American country I’ve been to, Paraguay loves its soccer. Everyone plays. Everyone watches. Everyone asks you what your favorite Paraguayan team is (Olympia should be your answer if we’re friends). Being here and watching with families in my neighborhood has been such a treat! The fact that Paraguay has now made it to the Quarter Finals is truly excellent. Today I watched the win in a restaurant in Limpio. When we all ran onto the street to see the fireworks (or just hear them—it was the middle of the day, after all) a guy who had been sitting at the next table pulled out a gun that apparently was tucked into his waistband and started shooting into the air. (I was especially glad we won at that point.) I hope that soccer gets bigger in the US. I think it will grow steadily over the next four years—I have two different friends who have World Cup related activities/blogs. (One followed US Soccer fans all the way to South Africa, and the other has sworn that he will move to whatever country wins the World Cup.) I hope that the next time the US advances more than it did this year. But really I’m just thrilled that I was able to be here, in Paraguay, at such an exciting time when a country the size of California with the population of Manhattan has gotten this far—top 8!! I know the next match will be a tough one. We’re playing Spain. They’re ranked #2 in the world. I’ll be stateside watching the game with my Paraguay jersey and Neil Armstrong-type Paraguay bracelet. All I have to say is FUERZA PARAGUAY!!

OK, so just a quick comment about gutsy drunk Paraguayan men and the middle-aged ladies that are some of my closest friends...

Saturday night was the weird (and wonderful) San Juan Festival here in my neighborhood. There were definitely a bunch of drunk dudes there who were enthusiastically hitting on me. At one point a guy said "Sos de djaklfjda?" ("You're from da;lkfdjal?"--I didn't hear the last word). I asked, "From where?" He said "..de verdad?" or, in English: "for real?" In other words, "Are you real?" Then his buddy said my eyes were the color of the sea. Thanks, drunkies.

Anyway, I thought that was the hit-on highlight of the night, especially since one of my señora friends and her kids were with me...I'll never hear the end of it. BUT then I talked to another señora friend of mine yesterday and she asked if i had seen an especially drunk guy sitting in a chair near her husband all night. I said I had seen him, and that I had been avoiding him since he was looking at me so creepily. Apparently my intuition is right--he said to Mari (my friend), "What do you think I'd have to say to talk that girl into sleeping with me?" (Except "coger" was used which is realllly strong for Paraguay.) Mari, being the lovely lady she is, said, "I don't think you could say anything to do that...plus she knows karate, so you should watch out." Ha! Oh how I love my 40-something amigas! Fin.

06-12-10 When I think of a bunch of young men scrambling up a greased-up pole, I generally think of the Naval Academy. (Hey, I’m from the Annapolis area.) And I usually don’t imagine those young men being in drag. Or wearing wigs. Or masks from the Scream movies. That all changed tonight. The Festival of San Juan is a weird, weird event. Yes, I said it. Yes, that might make me culturally insensitive. But I’ll stand by this statement. It doesn’t help that no one I asked could explain why they do any of the things they did. They only knew the names of various activities that are traditionally done for San Juan in Guarani. It should be mentioned that although San Juan generally consists of activities that include fire and others that do not, here in wonderful Villa Madrid those non-fire related activities were largely ignored. Oh how I love my neighborhood!

So, to be honest, I didn’t especially want to go to San Juan today. I’ve been kind of sick the past few days and really didn’t feel like being at a party where I was going to be standing around awkwardly with a bunch of people who watched a handful of teenagers dance. That is what many parties here look like. What do I usually do? Play with children. Anyway, my assumptions about what I was in for were totally off, thank God. I got there and went over to where some of my youth group was sitting behind a bare tree (actually branch) in a planter that was covered with little balloons. Children would come and pay 1,000Guaranis (20 cents) to pick a balloon. They pop said balloon and a piece of paper either says “San Juan tells you YES” or (you guessed it!) “San Juan tells you NO”. Yes means prize, No means you get nothing. Since it was the only activity for kids at the beginning, it was quite a hit. I was surprised because, to be honest, the prizes sucked. Who wants to win an eraser?? (Later another booth opened up for kids—you got a prize if you shot a can off of a windowsill. If I was ten and had to choose between popping a balloon and shooting a gun I’d probably chose the gun. Note: Not much has changed in the past 15 years, though I’ve never shot a gun…)

Some key male members of the youth group were missing though. Where were they? Prepping to be Cambã—I have no clue what that means, but it looked a lot like this. Have you ever drunkenly put together a Halloween costume? Well, you may well have fit right in at San Juan. When I asked about the theme of the costume, I was told they were all supposed to be ugly and (some thought) feminine, and disguised. The costumes ranged greatly, but each of our Cambã teens definitely had a stick. That threw me at first until I saw them running around dancing and having things thrown at them by children. The Cambã then ran after said children swinging that stick while a band of wind instruments played. It was weird. Luckily these boys are my amigos and gave the ever-valuable backstage pass where we had a little photo shoot.

Then I actually slipped out for a little while to eat fish (fish for the first time EVER in my neighborhood!) at a house nearby with one of my closest 40-something comedor lady friends at a party she invited me to. When we got back to the fiesta, the yvyra suĩ or greased-up pole was in full force. People were stacked on top of one another. Below? Cement, obviously. At the top of the pole were several prizes. There was a rumor that there was 100,000Gs (US$20) up there but it turned out just to be 2,000Gs (US40cents). Oops. What else? Some crackers, a soda, a bottle of caña (the super strong Paraguayan sugar cane booze), some cookies.

Next comes torro candi (or burning bull). In this a guy puts on a costume that you might otherwise see in a Chinese parade (I’m somehow blanking on the words right now), but it is of a bull. His front horns are lit on fire. He runs after people—mostly children—for a while. I don’t have anything really to say about this part except that when that dude did finally take off his costume he seemed quite drunk. It made me curious if there was anyone in particular in charge of these fire activities…

So at this point I’m feeling good—full of fish, sopa Paraguaya, and water (I don’t drink at all in my neighborhood because of a very strong divide between those who drink and those who work)—and so is everyone else. People are drunk. Very drunk. It’s still early enough in the month that people aren’t totally broke yet. The kids are running around, covered in grease from the pole, throwing cans at each other. As I’m talking to this nice couple I look over to see a handful of people crowding around a ball. Only it isn’t just a ball. It is a fireball. A ball of fire. In Guaraní: vacapipopo tatã. Anddddd it starts to get kicked around aimlessly. I’m sorry if I misled you before with the comment about me maybe being interested in shooting a gun but I’m actually a huge wuss. And a ball of fire was coming at me! What the F*%$? Somehow I’m one of the few people who seem at all concerned about the fireball. A kid falls down in a swing-and-a-miss kick. There is just laughter. An especially drunk guy picks it up and throws it—into a crowd! We’re talking about a ball of cloth with some sort of flammable spray helping the flames. I don’t know what else to say about this. It was insane. Check out the video at the bottom of this blog for a quick glimpse...

The finale was the burning of Judas. This was basically a scarecrow tied to another pole. I thought it’d just be burned but apparently it had “fireworks in his belly”, which of course became fireworks that shot sometimes into the air, but more often out into the crowd at random, causing screams of both joy and fear. It was quite an interesting night. Last year I actually went to the same party but went too early and stayed too short a time to see anything interesting. (I remember eating some food and then leaving because it was freezing and I had a ride home.) So I only have myself to blame for not seeing all this ridiculousness last year. The really good thing though? The actual San Juan Festival isn’t until the end of the month and I’m planning on going elsewhere to experience it again. There should be people walking on hot coals at the next festival as well…who knows? Maybe I’ll join them for a quick stroll…

I spent a while last night cat-proofing my house. No, this doesn't mean that I suddenly like cats and have decided to get a nasty little creature of my own. It means that ONCE AGAIN I have had a cat break into my house. Several months ago the cat marked its territory by leaving three kittens behind my fridge. This time it (actually probably a different cat) marked its territory in a more traditional sense. It urinated on a jacket of mine that I left on the big table in my main room. I went to put the jacket on last night to go to English class and smelled something foul. After some investigating, I found a small puddle next to where the jacket was sitting. Why do these cats consider my house to be a barn?? Ugh. I happen to love my casa.

So I spent some time with cardboard, the last of my duct-tape (gasp!), and some packaging tape patching up the front window--one of many my landlord had promised to fix months ago until he decided that they tried to charge us too much once they came to the house to measure and saw that I, a tall Norte, was living here. Since then I've just been waiting. And waiting knowing that nothing will be done about this situation. It doesn't actually really bother me to have some glass missing from the windows other than when rain and the now horribly frigidly cold weather and wind blows through the house, leaving me cold at night even when I wear spandex, sweats, a bathrobe and a winter hat to sleep.

Not all of the windows are blocked now. Unfortunately I've run out of cardboard just when I would be blocking my bedroom window. A few months ago a cat actually leapt through the window and then bolted through the house as I was watching a movie. Mokoi Nambi (the dog Two Ears who lived with me for a few months) didn't even react. I'm just hoping that I don't wake up one day with the cat cuddling up next to me as I sleep...

05-24-2010

Well, it’s raining. Again. And it’s driving me insane. When it rains here, as I’ve written before, things stop. School is cancelled, meetings out the window. Last winter there was a drought so although the weather was cold, the days were pleasant out in the sun. The past week has been wet and dreary. Ugh.

Though the talk here in Paraguay very frequently revolves around the weather, I’m not sure I want my blog to follow suit, so we’ll move on. The past week has been a bit quiet thanks to the rain, but I’ve had two surprising conversations with Paraguayans. Well, OK, I lied. The first was actually with a drunken Argentinean who asked if I was thirty-six! Thirty-effing-six!! I’m twenty-five, jerk. The kicker? He claimed to be thirty when was definitely at least forty. Jerk.

The other surprising interaction happened this past week in my neighborhood. Tomorrow an organization called Fundación Visión is coming. They came last month as well to do cheap/free eye exams and sell cheap eye glasses. Both times I’ve been responsible for putting up fliers to let people know about the visit. So I was putting up propaganda (the word for advertisements in Spanish) in front of local stores. I went into a used clothing store I’d never been in before and asked to put up a flier, explaining who I am and the project. The woman asked me about English classes for her teenage kids and I explained that I do have an English class but it is now too late for new students so I’ll let her know when I start another. She was absolutely thrilled by this and the idea of any and all of the projects I’m doing. We said goodbye and I walked outside to tape a flier outside her store. She followed and stopped me just as I was about to leave, saying I should come over for lunch one day and then spend a whole day together. And then a huge smile spread across her face. You know, she said, last night I had a dream that I was a fisherman…and I caught a huge fish…and I think the dream I had was actually about meeting you—YOU were the big FISH!! I really didn’t know how to respond to that. So I laughed and smiled and promised to come back for lunch some time—what else could I do?

So aside from being asked if I was 36 and being told I appeared in a stranger’s dream as a fish, what’s new in my life? Well, as I mentioned, the eye doctors are coming back again this week and to two other parts of my neighborhood next month. We did the second day of the community census this past Saturday and now have a bit more than 150 of 600 done. The project is going painfully slowly, to be honest, and the teens who were originally enthusiastic about the project have become much less so. Only five of them showed up to help this Saturday and two of those five are actually part of my other youth group and just came to be nice. Three PCVs came to help as well, which was really sweet of them. With the younger youth group we have continued doing activities on Saturday mornings with the kids from the free meal program. This past week I checked out a Mobile Library from the PC library which consists of a bag of 15 kids’ books that I’ll have for the next month. I read aloud to the kids in small groups Saturday and plan on bringing the bag of books around at various times so they can read to themselves or with me. It is absolutely amazing how attentive even the most hyperactive children are when a book comes out. There are almost never opportunities for them to read books at their leisure—the books they see are always textbooks. English class is going well but nothing really new to report there. The sex ed/HIV/AIDS/relationships class is also going well, though it got cancelled a few weeks in a row thanks to soccer tournaments. This past week at the end of class I had the students write down things that they want to talk about/learn about. A few kids wrote that they want to talk about pornography…I don’t really know what that class could possibly look like to be honest. Weird. This week the topic is decision making and we’re doing an activity in which they talk about reasons to have sex now and reasons to wait to have sex. It usually makes for an interesting discussion. I’d better run but will try to get better about blogging. Chaucito.

05-24-2010

Well, it’s raining. Again. And it’s driving me insane. When it rains here, as I’ve written before, things stop. School is cancelled, meetings out the window. Last winter there was a drought so although the weather was cold, the days were pleasant out in the sun. The past week has been wet and dreary. Ugh.

Though the talk here in Paraguay very frequently revolves around the weather, I’m not sure I want my blog to follow suit, so we’ll move on. The past week has been a bit quiet thanks to the rain, but I’ve had two surprising conversations with Paraguayans. Well, OK, I lied. The first was actually with a drunken Argentinean who asked if I was thirty-six! Thirty-effing-six!! I’m twenty-five, jerk. The kicker? He claimed to be thirty when was definitely at least forty. Jerk.

The other surprising interaction happened this past week in my neighborhood. Tomorrow an organization called Fundación Visión is coming. They came last month as well to do cheap/free eye exams and sell cheap eye glasses. Both times I’ve been responsible for putting up fliers to let people know about the visit. So I was putting up propaganda (the word for advertisements in Spanish) in front of local stores. I went into a used clothing store I’d never been in before and asked to put up a flier, explaining who I am and the project. The woman asked me about English classes for her teenage kids and I explained that I do have an English class but it is now too late for new students so I’ll let her know when I start another. She was absolutely thrilled by this and the idea of any and all of the projects I’m doing. We said goodbye and I walked outside to tape a flier outside her store. She followed and stopped me just as I was about to leave, saying I should come over for lunch one day and then spend a whole day together. And then a huge smile spread across her face. You know, she said, last night I had a dream that I was a fisherman…and I caught a huge fish…and I think the dream I had was actually about meeting you—YOU were the big FISH!! I really didn’t know how to respond to that. So I laughed and smiled and promised to come back for lunch some time—what else could I do?

So aside from being asked if I was 36 and being told I appeared in a stranger’s dream as a fish, what’s new in my life? Well, as I mentioned, the eye doctors are coming back again this week and to two other parts of my neighborhood next month. We did the second day of the community census this past Saturday and now have a bit more than 150 of 600 done. The project is going painfully slowly, to be honest, and the teens who were originally enthusiastic about the project have become much less so. Only five of them showed up to help this Saturday and two of those five are actually part of my other youth group and just came to be nice. Three PCVs came to help as well, which was really sweet of them. With the younger youth group we have continued doing activities on Saturday mornings with the kids from the free meal program. This past week I checked out a Mobile Library from the PC library which consists of a bag of 15 kids’ books that I’ll have for the next month. I read aloud to the kids in small groups Saturday and plan on bringing the bag of books around at various times so they can read to themselves or with me. It is absolutely amazing how attentive even the most hyperactive children are when a book comes out. There are almost never opportunities for them to read books at their leisure—the books they see are always textbooks. English class is going well but nothing really new to report there. The sex ed/HIV/AIDS/relationships class is also going well, though it got cancelled a few weeks in a row thanks to soccer tournaments. This past week at the end of class I had the students write down things that they want to talk about/learn about. A few kids wrote that they want to talk about pornography…I don’t really know what that class could possibly look like to be honest. Weird. This week the topic is decision making and we’re doing an activity in which they talk about reasons to have sex now and reasons to wait to have sex. It usually makes for an interesting discussion. I’d better run but will try to get better about blogging. Chaucito.

So my brother’s visit has come and gone. We had a great time running around Paraguay, visiting friends of mine, and reminiscing about the days when I could beat him up. Highlights were definitely the waterfall Salto Cristal, which we went to with a PC friend of mine and some Paraguayan neighbors of his, seeing the capybaras (obviously), and having Rahde convinced that he can market the terrible Paraguayan sugar cane booze in the States. Check out the photos if you’d like. Somehow we didn’t figure out until our farewell at the airport that we won’t see each other until August 2011. (He got a Watson Fellowship and will be traveling to New Zealand, South Africa, India, Turkey, and Jamaica studying open fire cooking techniques. Jealous? Yeah, me too.)

I was ready to get back to work after he left and I got back to site after helping with the PC Paraguay publication but I got back just in time for Holy Week. Holy week in the US (at least for me) just consists of possibly dying Easter eggs and enjoying an early Cadbury Egg or two. Here it consists of eating a ridiculous amount of chipa hard corn-based bread) and doing very little. Oh, wait. That is everywhere else in Paraguay. Here in Villa Madrid there is no shortage of chipa but we also enjoy Pascua mita’i and Pascua Joven (translation: Children’s Easter and Teenager’s Easter). Obviously. The youth at my local church put together three days full of activities. Since I was out of site beforehand I didn’t help plan and was not really involved, but I did attend to play with kids, dance for God, and take pictures of the event. Dance for God? Right, you should question that. There was a great deal of calling out different groups to have them dance for a while in the middle of a circle of 80 kids and a bunch of teenagers. They were all called in groups but me. This is the joy of being the weird Norte here. Anyway, the teenagers did a good job and the kids all had a blast.

I talked to my mother yesterday and she asked me what I did for Easter. I had kind of forgotten it was Easter, since it was also a PC friend’s birthday. Three of us had planned to sit in the food court of a mall in Asuncion playing Banana Grams (obviously) and having some beer until a movie started. The online movie schedule was wrong so the movie wasn’t until 6 hours later. We nixed that idea but figured we’d spend the day Banana Gramming and playing chess anyway. A mall employee interrupted a Banana Gram hand to tell us that the mall food court had a no gaming rule. I still really don’t understand/believe this. He went on to tell us that the food court was for consuming food and drink only, even though we were doing so. Unfortunately we had to move on to actually talking to each other. We were all thoroughly disappointed and decided to move our gaming next door to the grocery store food court. They welcomed us with open arms. So although my Easter did not involve bunnies, eggs, or pastels of any sort, it did involve Brahma beer, Banana Grams, and a grocery store food court. This may be my new tradition.

Since then life has been super busy in site. Last week I started English class. I have been avoiding this for the past year but finally broke down and began it. The class is to run for ten weeks, twice a week for two hours a class. The first day was horribly painful (6 people showed and one girl was mean and snobby which I thought was weird since this is obviously a completely optional course); the second was much better (12 showed up and seemed invested and interested); and the third (last night’s) was even better. 23 people are now in the class, even though I had closed the class to just 20 people. I really have no idea how this happened. Anyway, I have an attendance policy and strict rules as far as what it takes to receive a certificate but the class is pretty relaxed. I’m actually enjoying it much more than I thought I would, which is to say that I am actually enjoying it while I thought I was going to hate it.

Yesterday Fundacion Vision came to my site to do free eye exams for people over the age of 60 and for 10,000Guaranis ($2US) for everyone else. It went much better than I expected as well. I had somehow misunderstood a month or so ago when I invited the group and made 30 fliers for my neighborhood that said it was free for people over 60 and kids under 10. Guess what. Not true at all for kids. I ran around like a crazy person Saturday afternoon changing all my fliers and explaining my incompetence to all the families I had invited. The foundation also sells cheap glasses and offers follow-up surgeries at low prices at a later date. They’re coming back at the end of May and again in June in two locations—the first phase and the fourth phase (which sounds like it should be part of my neighborhood but is actually the same size as my neighborhood and about 2 miles away). Anyway, I’m psyched to be working with them, though I did have to be at the comedor at 6am yesterday to welcome them and then they were obviously an hour late…Oh how I love Hora Paraguaya!

This past weekend at the comedor (free meals program for kids) we began activities and educational chats with the kids. I did a bunch of stuff that focused on dental health, which is really lacking here. There are a lot of kids who have cavities that are actually visible in their front teeth. It is very common for adults to be missing teeth in Paraguay, especially since dentists frequently find it best/easiest/who knows? to just pull teeth to deal with whatever problem. Anyway, we read a story, sang some songs, and practiced tooth brushing on a big set of teeth I got from the Peace Corps office. The kids then had a competition of plays, music, and games for which I was a judge. They tied, thanks for asking. Jovenes Unidos (my youth groups who works with these kids) then did a little chat about the environment and we had a trash pickup competition. Again, it was great, though for whatever reason I had to be there as well at 6:30am. I really hate how early things start in this country. A lot. I can’t stress this enough.

Anyway, that’s what my life has been looking like lately. Work is good and steady. Today I’m going to a high school to talk to the principal about a series of activities/presentations that two students and I want to do there about sex-ed, healthy relationships, and HIV/AIDS. If all goes as planned we’ll be doing this at three different high schools in the area and then have a day of basically the same presentations but also invite a non-profit from Asuncion to come give out free condoms and information. I’m psyched.

03-15-2010

The weirdest thing that has happened to me here in Paraguay to date happened today. That feels like a big claim to make—things get weird here—but its true. This teenage boy, Ricardo, was at my house for one of our informal English chats that we do a couple of times a week. We were chatting in English and Spanish when I saw that there was a puddle forming in my “guest room”. This is much more like storage space than anything else but was definitely originally constructed as another bedroom. Because of the crumbling walls I didn’t paint it and can’t put anything important there because of some leaks in the roof that have supposedly been fixed several times. It is not a very nice room. But I was still surprised to see the puddle. Did I leave the refrigerator door open and did my ice melt? No, I used the fridge a half hour before and it isn’t that hot today… But what is this? And why does it seem to be growing so quickly? And then I found it—the gushing water pouring out of my wall. There was a pipe that is partially exposed about five inches from the ground. It runs along the wall. I’ve never noticed it before, but it was definitely the culprit, and I realize a bunch of stuff is getting soaked. So Ricardo and I start moving some things out of the room—boxes filled with crafts supplies, a radio that has never worked, my friend’s suitcase that she left with me. I guess its worth noting that I’m swearing a lot. Not that I was stressed or worried, but mostly because I know nothing about plumbing, lots of cardboard I was saving to do charlas was getting drenched, and the water was coming steadily. Ricardo was very pleased to hear the words coming out of my mouth—words that before today he had only heard in movies.

I tell Ricardo we should turn off the water but that I have no idea where to turn it off. He glances into the front yard and tells me I don’t have a water shut off valve. (Note: My plumbing lingo/vocab is not impressive in English, Spanish, or Guarani. I may make up words in English, as I did in Spanish when explaining this issue.) Ricardo wants to know if he can borrow a book. I look through my bookshelf and hand him one of short stories to occupy him for the next 10 days while I can’t meet. This is how totally unconcerned he was. He leaves. I call my landlord, trying to explain just how quickly the water is coming into the house. Maybe my powers of persuasion are a little rusty, or maybe it’s the tranquilo lifestyle, but his response was that he would come by sometime tomorrow to take a look at it. Not useful. I literally at this point have what I described as a lake forming in my room. I go next door to talk to Marisa, who is the very same lady who helped me with the cats behind the fridge issue. She comes in, seems appropriately concerned about the water level, and though she finds the water shut off valve, cannot turn it off. She and I rack our brains for plumbers in the neighborhood. She looks for a number unsuccessfully, and then we go a few doors down for more neighborly help. I don’t know this neighbor’s name. This isn’t uncommon—there are simply too many names to remember and no one uses names when they talk to or about people here. We’ll just refer to him as Don Hero for the rest of the story.

Don Hero comes to my house and shuts off the water. End of story. No, just kidding. It doesn’t do anything. He shut off my water but it is still coming—and getting stronger still. (Well, maybe not stronger, but definitely not slowing.) He gets down on his hands and knees in the inch and a half of water that has gathered, cups his hands together, takes up some water, and brings it to his face. For a moment I think he is washing his face with it. Then I think maybe he is drinking it. Apparently he is smelling it. Very luckily for both of us, it apparently isn’t sewage. He asks me for a tool to break the wall open. I don’t actually question this request. He has always been very friendly, and though his children are slightly devilish, he doesn’t strike me as a destructive person. I hand him my machete, which was a gift from our trainer (on which my trainer wrote “Gender” on one side and “Environment” on the other in Spanish in an exercise in which we went around in a circle talking about various PC themes at the close of training). Don Hero seemed surprised by the writing on the machete, but started whacking away at the wall anyway, sending plaster flying in every which way and showing that the gushing water was actually coming from under the wall much further to the right. The water obviously continues gushing out. Marisa comes back to check on us. They speak in Guarani. I have no idea what they’re talking about. I fight back the urge to giggle at the ridiculousness of the situation. Apparently he wants to know if this leak is in the same place where their (Marisa’s) bathroom is, since our houses are side-by-side and share a wall. Don Hero continues hacking away, trying to find the water source while Marisa stands by then goes to get her husband. I make jokes about becoming more popular being the only person in our neighborhood with an indoor pool. There is nothing else I can do but laugh. I have changed into my Crocs (note: this may actually be what Crocs were made for) and the water has gotten so deep that it literally covers them. I chuckle again. The neighbors turn their water off. (Though I only have water 3 times a day, they have another system that makes it so they always have water.) The water coming out of my wall slows to a trickle. I make another joke—I should have known this wasn’t coming from my pipe; I never get that kind of pressure! No wonder they think I’m weird.

So as we survey the damages and move some stuff in my main room to make space for the water that has spilled out into the house, my landlord gets there. (I called him a second time at some point during this and did a better job at stressing the urgency of the situation.) The landlord chats with the men in Guarani. I know what’s going on. It is decided that the neighbors will pay for someone to come over and fix my wall tomorrow morning. We exchange smiles, the landlord asks me random things in broken English as he always seems to do at the weirdest times. My water is turned back on (but has been turned off at the main water tank by this point) and I say goodbye to my landlord and his wife and teenage son. My landlord asks me if my neighbors are treating me ok, which I find almost offensive considering how wonderfully useful they had been for the past hour. We chat, I mention off-hand that I don’t especially want to push all this water out of my house with a squeegee. He tells me that I should just leave it, and that it will soak into the brick floor. Obviously.

Just as I’m about to start cleaning up, the neighbor father and daughter show up with a bucket and several brooms. Cleaning it up with them was so much faster than it would have been by myself. We finished getting the water up and the father obviously wanted to look around, since he had never been in the house while I lived there, and quite possibly had never been inside, though they had lived next to it for 16 years. (In Paraguay if you go to someone’s house, you very frequently just stay on the porch or patio—the house can be considered very private space.) I welcomed him to look around and chatted with his daughter, laughing about how my landlord thought I should just leave the water to dry itself. I keep my shower supplies up high on a board that I can barely reach. He came out of the bathroom grinning, apparently very amused at the arrangement.

I spoke to a friend just after they left, telling him the story, and several things occurred to me. I realize that my reaction to laugh at such a ridiculous situation is maybe a good one and that on a different day I could have reacted quite differently. I have found that having a sense of humor about these sorts of things helps me maintain my sanity, but that also it is impossible to do so. A couple of months ago I had one of those weeks that everything had gone wrong. Some projects weren’t going over well, things just didn’t seem to be going my way, I kept being sick… and then I found out I had head lice. And it was just the absolute last straw. But then today literally half of my house was completely flooded and it is one of the more amusing things I’ve ever seen. And I’m lucky…I’m lucky that I was here in the house when it happened. I cannot imagine getting home at the end of the day or after a few days out of site to a completely water logged house! And I’m lucky that my neighbors are wonderfully curious, open, helpful, and just plain neighborly! What kind of baked good best says “Thanks for busting my wall apart with a machete, finding the huge water leak, and then helping me bail out my living room”?

3-3-2010

Here is a link to see a bunch of photos of a field trip to a park/zoo I took with the comedor kids, and the two camps that I mentioned in the last blog. Take a look if you want. I’ve added some labels to help explain what’s going on and who is in the pictures. Also, there is a single photo of the disgusting kittens I found behind my refrigerator a few months ago so you can see just how hideous they are. (Note: other people claim these wretched animals are cute. I no longer speak to said people who clearly have absolutely no taste, morals, or decency.)

Moving right along, the past few days I had a trainee visiting. I had expected four days filled with awkward silences and mutual dislike but instead found it to be a rather pleasant few days. Perhaps due to the fact that he had never had to bucket bathe before, he seemed not to especially enjoy that part of his visit… We spent a bunch of time with my younger youth group—having lunch, practicing dirty Guarani phrases, doing and participating in some charlas—and playing with kids. And on Sunday we met up with another Volunteer who was hosting a Trainee to go to a Cerro-Olympia game in the capital. These two teams are a favorite conversation piece in Paraguay, second only to the always interesting topic of the weather (aka “Wow, it is hot today.” “Yes, it is.”). Kids here ask which club you’re for, assuming that in the US we too are divided between Cerro and Olympia fans. I’m for Olympia, and if you’re reading this blog, you should be too. Cerro fans are malicious, violent, ugly and stupid. That may sound a bit uncalled for, but studies have shown this to be true time and time again. Why am I an Olympia fan? Oh, let me count the ways! I like black and white better than blue and red. Olympia is a bit of an underdog. Cerro fans are like Yankees fans. (I’m not talking Yankees fans that grew up in New York, blah blah blah. I’m talking the fans who just like the Yankees because they’re a huge institution with a bunch of money and a lot of gear for sale everywhere you go.) But mostly, I lived with a bunch of Olympia fans and one of my favorite language professors during training was an Olympia fan. No, I can’t name a single player on the team. No, I have no clue of their record this year or any other. And no, I really no nothing else about them other than what their uniform looks like, but damnit—I’m a fan. (Also, according to Wikipedia, Olympia is the oldest soccer club in Paraguay.)

What I also know is that they won this past Sunday. I was there, sitting in the hot sun, on the bleacher seats that have those little seats that could double as a kayak seat, with just a line of riot police dressed in what honestly looked like Gladiator uniforms separating us from the Cerro fans. I had never been to an Olympia-Cerro game before but had been to the stadium in October for a Paraguay-Colombia game. The crowd was much more rowdy this time, and I heard more expletives that day than probably in the entire last year of my life. I was later told that a Cerro fan threw a switchblade onto the field during the game. At the end of the game, Cerro fans sulked out of the stadium to the roar of our wonderful (and always tactful) Olympia cheers. We walked down to the street, had a beer, parted ways with the other PCV and trainee, and jumped on a bus to Limpio. At the rather quiet corner where we boarded the bus were two lines of riot police, seemingly randomly placed watching the buses pass. There were no seats left on our bus, but we were some of the only people standing, until about 3 blocks after we got on when about 20 teenagers took over. They piled on through both doors, yelling and hitting each other. Shortly thereafter they were singing Olympia cheers and songs, flipping off anyone outside the bus with Cerro jerseys or colors, while some drank beers and smoked cigarettes in the back. Then, suddenly there was a loud CRACK above the rest of the noise and everyone threw themselves to the floor of the bus. Apparently those dirty, no-good Cerro fans had started throwing rocks, breaking one of the bus windows. The driver sped on, knowing that stopping to investigate would just invite more rocks and the possibility of more injuries. Everyone seemed fine, with the exception of a layer of shattered glass covering the seats, floors, and people. I told the trainee that I had heard of people throwing rocks at buses for no reason (and more frequently after games) but thought it was fairly uncommon. The throng of teenage boys got off shortly thereafter. The bus was much quieter, and we were back to just a few people standing in the aisle. One of these people, however, was donning an Olympia jersey. The rocks started flying again—this time several made contact with the windows, causing a rain of shattered glass to come down on us and the other passengers. I honestly had no idea this was so common! Some teenage girls in the back of the bus pleaded for the middle-aged man with the Olympia jersey to take it off, but he refused. We spent a great bit of time ducked down near the floor, chatting about the usual things—Paraguayan customs, news I’ve missed in the US the past year, the annoyances of training. All told, we got out unscathed—the trainee got hit by one of the rocks on the shin, but luckily the window slowed it down before it hit just hard enough to require a Band-Aid.

The next few weeks should be good, but busy. This weekend we may be doing a sex-ed/HIV/AIDS half day of charlas. I’m bringing some teenagers to a HIV/AIDS conference at the end of next week, then have 7 of the trainees coming to visit for a night of activities in site. And the following week my brother, Rahde, comes to visit for 10 days! I’m not sure exactly what the plan is as of yet, but we should be travelling around Paraguay, visiting other PC amigos’ sites and eating/killing various things. I’m hoping we can both kill chickens while he is here, and perhaps participate in a pig roast. Although I oh-so-dearly-love carpinchos, I’m hoping to eat some of one and perhaps an alligator. On another note, my landlord said he is willing to split the cost of replacing the 20 broken windows in my house and that we can have them fixed at the end of next week! And, to top it all off, he said he’d even take care of the hornets that have invaded my front patio area! I’ll be living like a queen in no time!!

2-24-2010

Alright, so I haven’t written in about 6 weeks, which is a new record for my blog slacking. The summer has finally ended here—school started yesterday all over Paraguay, though I have a friend who lives further south who told me that inexplicably no one showed up for the first day in her neighborhood. I’m pleased the school year is starting again—it means a more structured environment and also that the comedor kids may have a bit less energy to pick fights with one another and generally be rambunctious. That being said, I’m not sure what happened to the summer.

In February I’ve gone to two different camps with teenagers from my community. Both were organized through other Peace Corps Volunteers—one was the Urban Youth Development Camp, which was just for UYD volunteers and their youth (13-18) while the other was Gender and Development Camp which was open to any volunteers to bring youth (15-25). The first was a leadership camp, where the kids did a lot of games, activities, charlas run by other youth, etc. and was held at Jack Norment, near Caacupe. The highlights for the two kids I brought were meeting other teens from all over Paraguay, getting away from home for a few nights, and the pool. They seem really excited to do some of the activities we did there with our youth group here—particularly the one where you have kids dress up one member of their group as a bride using only toilet paper, tape, and random things found in the area. The camp only cost about 10,000 Guaranis for each of my kids (US$2) since we received funds to do it. Each kid had to pay the cost of the bus ride to get to and from the camp, which was more expensive for some than others. It was just really great to see this kind of rare opportunity given to the kids. One of the four kids I brought lives in a one room shack made entirely by found materials with her mom and 12 year old brother. All the kids have already asked me about going back next year.

The other camp I went to, the Gender and Development camp, was at Tati Yupi, a Biological Reserve near Ciudad del Este and the Itaipu Dam. I brought three kids from my neighborhood—one was invited to help run the games at night since she’d done so the year before with the last volunteer who was in my site. The ride was a long one out to Ciudad del Este (about 6 hours by bus) but comfortable. Unfortunately for us (we travelled with my friend Barbara and her teens as well) the driver wasn’t a big fan of our group for whatever reason and started leaving the bus terminal in Ciudad del Este before we got a chance to get off. He then slammed on the breaks suddenly, sending me flying down the stairs with my hands full just to stub my toe, get rug burn on my elbow and slam my head against the wall. It was a nice welcome to the biggest city in Paraguay not using some sort of Christian name (i.e. Concepcion and Encarnacion). This is the city of black markets—a city where Peace Corps Volunteers are actually not allowed to stay overnight. Regardless, we made it out to Tati Yupi and from there had a great 4 days and 3 nights of charlas, activities, a great deal of singing and chanting, tractor rides, and an absurd amount of BananaGrams (among Volunteers). The theme was Service Learning, so we focused on how to train these kids to go back to their communities to be leaders there. On our last night we went out to Itaipu, which has been named as one of the 7 Wonders of the Modern World. We went for a light show. It was honestly one of the most disappointing displays I’ve ever seen. I thought light show meant colored lights, maybe some fireworks, etc. Instead it just meant someone turning on a bunch of light switches (seemingly) to show the dam, then lighting up a 7 floor office building floor by floor. But don’t worry, all this was set to dramatic music, which made up for it. Another great addition was that they took the velvet rope down once the whole thing was lit up, thus allowing us all to go forward to the railing. Regardless, the next day we went back to see the real deal in daylight. It was MUCH more impressive then, especially since the water was flowing. Apparently it has been since November thanks to a bunch of flooding in Brazil. (The dam shares borders with Brazil and Paraguay, providing 20% of all of Brazil’s electricity and 90% of Paraguay’s.) It was amazing to see and really made me want to ride on water rides… I’ll try to put up some photos. I think that all the Volunteers who went to GAD Camp are putting up photos together somewhere, so I’ll post that when I know.

New trainees got here a few weeks ago as well. There are three groups of trainees that arrive in Paraguay each year but the numbers are growing, and this is the first group that has come in as my sister G—meaning they are all part of my project, or the two other projects that come in in February (Rural Health and Sanitation and Early Elementary Education). It is amazing that I’ve now been here for a year, and am now the one going in to trainings to teach other trainees what its like to be a Volunteer. This weekend, in fact, a trainee will come to visit as a kind of day (or weekend) in the life… Bizarre. The timing, too, is off, since school has just begun and Monday is a holiday here. The weekends tend to be slow, but we shall see. My younger youth group wants to do a project, so we’ll see how that goes. Also I’ve been trying to figure out a way to motivate my older youth group to come together to reignite our census project within the neighborhood. Anyway, I’m not sure how it’ll go, but it should be interesting. Thus far I’ve gone in to help with ice breakers and games and also to talk about youth groups. They’ve gone well, and the trainees have all now been taught Gaga, which is obviously the best game ever played.

Funny things keep happening, obviously. I was telling a story to a bunch of other PCVs about how my friend Hugo and I keep track of the mini-telenovelas happening between the pre-teens at the comedor…basically lots of flirting by way of hitting and chasing each other. Hugo and I laugh about bringing popcorn to eat while we watch these little dramas unfold. I mentioned Hugo as “my friend” in the story (in English) and then realized that this is how greatly my life has changed over the past year. Hugo, someone I consider a friend, is actually 9 years old. He is honestly one of my favorite kids. He’s so thoughtful and sweet…the other day, for example, I was walking down the big hill to the comedor but was running late. So naturally he offered me a ride on his bike. As I sat on the seat with him standing on the pedals, my hands reaching under his armpits to grip the middle of the handle bars in fear as he ignored his fully functioning brakes, I realized that my life really is quite different than it was a year ago...

01-11-10

So, I’ve jumped back into my work life as planned. It has been a bit crazy, but very enjoyable. I’ve been spending a great deal of my time at the comedor. Barbara came to visit on Saturday morning after her lovely mother left to head back to the states. On Saturday we ran a bunch of errands. I am now the proud owner of both a blender and a bookshelf! (You have no idea how excited about both of these items.) Then we went down to the comedor for a meeting that obviously was cancelled. It was to be a parents meeting but hardly anyone showed up so it is postponed until further notice. This has been a really frustrating part for the old comedor ladies, new comedor ladies, and me. There are about 50 kids who eat breakfast and lunch there for free every single weekday. This is a service offered for free and run by volunteers who dedicate their time out of the goodness of their hearts. And then they try to call a meeting to try to plan events, improve the comedor, have more people involved, whatever, and none of the parents show up. Infuriating. I don’t know how to fix this—we talked about maybe having a raffle in which your name is only entered if you show up to the meetings, or perhaps offering snacks, but the problem with the snacks is that then all the kids will come and you have 75 mouths to feed. And obviously it’d be unfair to not feed kids because their parents are irresponsible/busy/whatever.

Anyway, Barbara and I went to one Señora’s house because I had to talk to her husband who is in charge of the neighborhood commission. I commented on her wedding picture that was on the wall and the next thing I knew I had a huge wedding album in my hand. After the wedding album came her teenage son’s album. This was all fine and good until I came across the page where she had pinned down his umbilical cord. It was a very surprising addition to the album and my Saturday night. We then went to a 19-year-old’s birthday party briefly. I like the girl but these parties are always so strange. There are so many kids (literally kids—like 10 year olds) grinding and/or dancing extremely provocatively. It just creeps me out. They just dance and the rest of the group sits around and watches.

Sunday included 4 hours on buses to visit training families. It’s so interesting to me to now go back and visit my family from training. I had such a rocky relationship with them at the time but now my visits are so pleasant—and I feel really guilty if I don’t go back and visit. That being said, my visits usually only last for a delicious meal and then I leave. Last time I actually took a nap after lunch, although I was only there for about six hours total. Regardless, Babs and I got back to my site just in time to be the judges for the talent show put on by the comedor. It was so much more enjoyable than I expected it to be! The kids danced, sang, and did really short plays. The singing was rough—a few kids did solos without music or microphones, but to popular pop songs. The dancing was hilarious and at times impressive. There was a lot of gyrating. Today I was actually supposed to be the judge for the comedor Olympics as well, but it just turned into a few of us watching the boys play soccer.

Tomorrow my plan is to bike to the water treatment plant in Limpio, where they have a really impressive and large vegetable garden. They told me that they don’t have any gardening manuals to give out to people in the community who want to transplant in their personal or community gardens so I found a bunch in the Peace Corps Office and am bringing them in tomorrow to see what we want to cut and paste. I’m also hoping that I can help organize this gardening project and help do the charlas about how to have the best garden possible. (I know little about gardening but luckily the manuals are thorough and I’m a fast learner.) And I’m really hoping that I can develop a good relationship with this place so that I can possibly get some free veggies out of it. If I got free veggies weekly for the next 16 months life would be stupendous! (I’m not a vegetarian but I really dislike touching raw meat and so essentially just have a vegetarian kitchen.) We’ll see how that goes.

Anyway, that is basically my life right now. I’m planning on doing a world map project where I paint 2 big world maps on walls in my barrio with kids. I’m also kind of doing a camp at the comedor a couple of times a week but I play with the kids so frequently it doesn’t change too much. On a very different note, thanks to my inability to no and not thinking things through, I am now the (sometimes) proud owner of a dog named (translated from Guarani) Two Ears. I have a love-hate relationship with this dog. I’ve been in charge of her for a little less than a month. The kids love her but are now getting rough, and I’m just waiting for her to bite one of them. Although some of them may deserve to be bitten—this kid Alexander bit me twice today and I think tomorrow will bring bruises. It also makes me feel like a bit of an idiot to be wandering around my neighborhood yelling “Two! Two!” To end, I’ll just say that I don’t hear many new Paraguayan beliefs at this point in my service, though I did hear one today. A girl wanted to take a picture of my dog with her cell phone but one of the mothers stopped her, saying that if you take a picture of any animal it will die three months later. I was given an example—one woman took a photo of her dog and it died three months later when it was hit by a car.

1-06-2010!

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Happy Engagement to a certain favorite couple of mine as well!! This year has certainly been unlike any other holiday season of my life, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. I’ve been slightly reflective the past few days, mostly thanks to the fact that I’ve been sick and spent much of that time laying in bed feeling sorry for myself but happily watching a great deal of Gossip Girl (thanks, Mimi and Matthew) and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (thanks PC amigos). I went to the doctor yesterday after a few nights of rushing to the bathroom nearly hourly, fever, and general ache to find out I have a gastro-intestinal infection which can be cured by antibiotics. (About a month ago a PC friend of mine got sick and was given antibiotics. He looked in Where There is No Doctor, a book all PCVs are given that explains what you should do about just about any sickness or injury if you are stranded in the middle of nowhere. It is some of the best entertainment ever with extremely detailed drawings and descriptions, though I do NOT recommend looking through it when you’re sick or you’ll quickly turn into a hypochondriac. Regardless, in Where There is No Doctor, my friend saw that the prescribed antibiotic treats gonorrhea. I, obviously, ridiculed him to no end for receiving gonorrhea medication. Karma wins again—I was given the same. Please note: I generally don’t think STDs are comical.)

So, going back to my holiday season… I went with some friends to another PCV’s site for Christmas. He lives in basically the middle of Paraguay, in the middle of the campo (read: boonies). The first night (the 23rd) we visited some neighbors and then had some Paraguayans over for some boxed wine and cola. There was yet another Paraguayan woman who told me that you can peel the bellies of 7 frogs to make a stew that cures cancer. I convinced a bunch of teenagers that Barbara (my PCBFF) won American Idol and kisses frogs hoping to turn them into princes. Paraguayans are disgusted by this—they are disgusted by frogs and claim that their urine, if it somehow gets into your eye, will blind you. So, this may sound ridiculous but I really don’t know if this is true or not. Luckily it seems unlikely that I will ever figure this out since I find it difficult to imagine a time in which frog’s urine will be anywhere near my eyes. Once everyone left we made a midnight feast (Babs and I hadn’t eaten all day) that involved about a pound of ground beef, a pound of spaghetti, and random seasonings. Barbara cooked. It tasted exactly like Hamburger Helper. The stars this night were beyond anything I have ever seen in my life—I had no idea that there were that many stars in the sky to be seen.

Fast forward to Christmas Eve, the following day. Another PCV (Little Anne) and her brother from the states arrived. We spent most of the day, as well as the afternoon before in fact, playing BananaGrams, which is possibly the best game ever. Ever. Whoever you are, you should invest in this wonderful game—it is like Scrabble but quicker, more portable and involves less patience. In the evening we went to some neighbor’s houses despite the fact that the electricity had gone out. We arrived caroling in English. They were obviously extremely impressed with our perfectly harmonized angelic voices. We sat around drinking clerico, which is essentially the Paraguayan version of sangria and the typical holiday drink here. (Having trouble imagining yourself sitting by the fire on Christmas Eve sipping sangria? Please remember, it was a super humid 100°. Sitting still we were all glistening with sweat.) The strange thing about the clerico here is that everyone drinks it—including children. The youngest son is 6 and apparently has developed a habit of drinking by himself with some frequency. I honestly can’t begin to imagine the sort of damage that does to a 6 year old brain. Anyway, in sobriety the day before this 6 year old was happily showing off his firework skills for me while we chatted with his parents. He also visited us at our friend’s house, and began openly flirting with me. You know, the usual 6-year-old way…by spitting on and hitting me. Anyway, after apparently having a few glasses of liquid courage, he was getting more direct and his parents (and my friends) thought it hilarious that he was so enamored. The lights still hadn’t come on so we all sat in the moonlight chatting. Finally we went to another neighbor’s house (caroling again) to see their nativity scene, which is more like a bunch of branches with lights, candy, fruit, and miscellaneous objects woven throughout that shelter a small nativity scene blocked by watermelons. At this point the electricity hadn’t been on for hours, though we had been told that all of the state’s electricity is turned off briefly on Christmas Eve every year because Paraguayans use too much power during this time of year. (Originally they said only a half hour though, so…) The lights finally came back on and we headed back to the original house where we danced briefly then sat down for dinner. Unfortunately, once again the lights went out. The oldest son was put in charge of holding the flashlight over the picnic table. I was seated at the head of the table and for some reason the light didn’t stop spotlighting me throughout the meal. Unidentifiable meat, mandioca (Paraguay’s potato) sopa Paraguaya (cornbread-ish stuff), milanesa de pollo (country-fried chicken) were served alongside a fork and the dullest knife imaginable. As I sat in the spotlight attempting to cut the fat-meat from the bone, my new 6-year-old boyfriend sat down the table gnawing on his meat using only his hands while intently staring at me and making incredibly loud “num, num, num” noises. I’ve never had such trouble keeping a straight face at a meal before.

We left a bit before midnight, directly after our extremely late dinner. I assume that if you’re reading this, you know me, and so know of the Christmas Eve tradition that I have and am, admittedly, obsessed with. It is cheesy, I know, but I love it. The tradition is that on Christmas Eve a great deal of my mother’s side of the family (think 20-30 people) sit around, each with their own copy of Twas the Night Before Christmas, and read aloud, verse by verse, the entire book. The same jokes are made each year (i.e. “Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash” is followed by a great deal of vomiting noises) but there are always kids (and plenty of adults) to enjoy them. My parents had sent what was obviously a Twas the Night Before Christmas but I was instructed to open it on Christmas Eve. When we returned home, I did, and found a wonderful book in which various members of my family had recorded all the verses, except those on one page which my PC friends and I recorded. It was honestly the best gift I’ve ever received. And yes, I’ve admitted that this is super nerdy, but I loved it so thanks to everyone involved.

For Christmas itself we woke up to find that there was no running water (and thought this, too, may be a Paraguayan tradition). We lounged, talked about the menu for the day, talked to our respective families on Skype, BananaGrammed, and talked more about the day’s feast. The problem, we found, was that none of us were particularly motivated to cook, possibly because we ate cheese, crackers, pepperoni and brownies early on. In the end we had a Christmas dinner at about 8pm of pepper jelly, two baked chickens, salad, mashed potatoes, and wine-and-soda. And our dinner was actually a picnic, where we sat outside on a blanket under Christmas lights strung between two trees. After dinner more Paraguayans joined us as we dazzled them with our phenomenal Christmas carol skills.

The next day we said our goodbyes and went to wait for the bus on the main road. Our bus time estimates were poor, however, and we all burned severely as the midday sun beat down on our backs and the pavement. Also, the bus was too crowded for each of us to have a seat in the 4 hour stretch back to the capital. Luckily I was in a front seat with enough leg room for Little Anne to sit on the floor in front of me, my knees on her shoulders, bandanas making sure there was no skin-to-skin contact on that crowded, hot, air-conditionless bus. New Years was fun and the company grand but not especially notable otherwise. And there was my holiday season. I hope that yours was half as phenomenal and nowhere near as sweaty!

12-15-09

Like a Virgin

I’ve been sitting at the airport customs office for the past four hours. I wish I was exaggerating this number but am simply not. My lovely parents mailed me a Christmas package via DHL and I was sent here to retrieve it. I paid 115,000 Guaranís ($22) at the DHL office. Now I’m waiting while a woman runs around to gain the right signatures necessary to let me have the package. I’ve seen my box twice—one time to verify that it was the correct box, the second time to open it and pull out a book to claim it was only books inside. This is not true but the woman told me we had to lie to minimize the tax. (I think that it is so we avoid having to bribe both her and her boss…) I’m actually lucky to get it today. A friend had to come back to the airport 4 times (!) to get a box a few months ago. Yikes. I’ll end up paying this woman another 150,000Gs ($30). To put this in perspective, I pay $40 a month in rent. Good God, this process is exhausting, but I’m sure it’ll be a fabulous package! Please note: If you want to send a Peace Corps Paraguay Volunteer a package, claim it is less than $100 to avoid this absurdity.

A week ago I did the holy walk to Caacupe to honor the Virgin of Caacupe. Another PCV, David, called the day before to ask if I was going and see if he could join my community. I had plans to walk with the younger of my two youth groups. David came over as I tried to get a solid timeline as to when we were leaving from my youth gropu. After many calls (including mostly llamada perdidas or missed calls where they call and hang up so I’ll call back and it’s free for them) I still had no solid answer. David and I decided not to wait around any longer. We got on the bus from my neighborhood at 9pm. It was full of teenagers who were prepared to celebrate this holiest of Paraguayan holidays. We were standing with our bags chock full of water bottles and other survival necessities (extra socks, bandaids, towel to sit on, etc.). Then, on this holy bus ride, the kids began to yell and catcall anyone we passed. They heckled each other and even set off fireworks—all while packed on the bus! I was feeling closer to God and the Virgin already.

After the hour and a half bus ride on our feet, we reached Ypacaraii and bid farewell to our new teenage amigos for a quick stop to assure we started the trek off right—with a bathroom break and a beer. We began to walk with the throng. While estimates vary widely, I was told about 50,000 people make the hike each year. The problem with starting so late, I guess, is that the night crowd is rowdy and doesn’t seem as concerned with the Virgin as it does with flirting, heckling, catcalling, and generally being teenagers away from their parents for an entire night. We walked for 5 hours all told—stopping only for a brownie sundae at the best American-type food place in the country and for me to push a big mill thing in order to squeeze the juice from sugar cane. Basically there are two men who push two logs clockwise. The entire machine is made of wood only. I asked if I could try. There are some sweet photos that I’ll link whenever David puts them up. The juice is not very good but the uphill hike seemed much easier after pushing against the mill for a few minutes. We walked most of the way with two Paraguayan guys we met. People were selling chipa (dry cornbread-like traditional food), hotdogs, meat on a stick (always), Virgin memorabilia (including a plastic hat with the Virgin AND a 2010 calendar on it, obviously). Everyone opens their houses up to sell bathroom privileges, food, and ground space to sleep. There were thousands of people sleeping on the sides of the road and all through the main plaza. It was incredible to see. Very luckily, we were able to stay at a PCV friend’s friend’s house so I got about two hours of sleep in a bed and a few more on the bare floor. The next morning while most people went to one of the hourly masses, we bought egg sandwiches and I watched as two other PCVs sang Madonna’s Like a Virgin on the karaoke machine. Nothing says Catholicism like Madonna, right?

I also started a mini-camp at the comedor last week. For much of summer break, on Mondays and Wednesdays I’m teaching English and playing games with the kids. I played a fabulous English-teaching version of Monkey-Fire with the kids which was a definite hit. Then I went to help teach games and icebreakers to the newest group of volunteers on their last day of training. I taught the usual crowd pleasers—Gaga, Monkey Fire, Fire People, Everybody Wins Musical Chairs… OK, I didn’t finish this blog, but did finally get that phenomenal package…

11-11-09

So, I spent some of my Saturday dry heaving, which is actually not how most people would have dealt with what happened. To start from the beginning, I go into my second bedroom, which is much more of a storage room that happens to house my refrigerator than anything else. I go in to grab something from the fridge and see this huge white cat sitting on my backpack, which is on the desk. I scream, because I don’t have any cats and because I hate cats with a bloody passion. I actually convinced myself for most of my life that I was allergic to cats, though in more recent years I’ve realized that is simply not true. I’ve seen this cat before, sitting in my yard and looking up at me through its nasty beady eyes. So regardless, I scream and the cat jumps out of the window without any problem, right through the space where a pane of glass should be. (This is not my only broken window.) I continue doing this and that around my house and go back in there and the same thing happens, and again, I scream. And so as I’m duct taping the cardboard to the window pane, I’m thinking, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice…” and just how entertaining George W. was as a president.

So, my window all repaired, I go into my room and watch an episode of Dexter, which was just loaned to me by another PCV. When the episode was over I decided to go back and continue cleaning my house, but when I go into the main room, which connects both bedrooms, the bathroom and kitchen, I hear this terrible whining or crying sound. It isn’t like a child crying, but certainly some sort of animal. I have no clue what it could be so I arm myself with my Nalgene bottle in one hand and my cell phone in the other, and walk into the second bedroom/storage room/fridge room. The window is still securely duct-taped but the noise is unmistakably coming from inside the room. Suddenly I see something out of the corner of my eye—right behind my refrigerator. I jump (and, to be honest, probably scream again) and see these two disgusting little white creatures looking up at me. They look like rodents, but they’re cats. They’re small. They’re eyes are just barely open and one of them looks like it has severe pink eye. It is at this point when my stomach lurches and I’m nearly sick. I unplug the fridge, thinking of how dead cats may actually be worse than live ones in my house. I call my closest PC friend, who laughs and tells me she doesn’t know what to tell me (she is 7 hours away). I call my old 16 year old host brother who tells me that they just got a dog and I can probably deal with this on my own. So I go next door and explain my predicament to my neighbors. I don’t know these neighbors well. They’re very nice in each interaction I have with them but we usually only exchange the pleasantries. The other time I asked their help was for a leaky faucet, which they told me wasn’t a big enough problem to worry about. I think they think I’m an idiot.

Anyway, I explain my hatred for cats, that I don’t want to touch them—yes, I say, even though they’re kittens—and that they’re behind my fridge. The women exchange a look and one of them gets up, grabs a fruit crate and finds newspaper to line it. As I move my fridge, we see that there are three kittens, not two. She picks each up, saying that it looks like they were born here and that they’ve probably been here for 22 days. My stomach lurches again, but I hide it well. She carries the crate into the back yard, saying the mother will be back for them. I thank her repeatedly as she gives me a smile and leaves. I start to worry that they’ll freeze outside. It is our summer, but Saturday was cold and rainy, and there was probably a reason they were huddled up next to the coils of my fridge so I take an old t-shirt out and put it in the box. Fifteen minutes later, my neighbor is back, saying that there are other neighbors who want the cats as pets. One of the cats has decided to explore a little and has wedged itself between a wall and a chain link fence. She can’t get it out. As she takes the other two, I see that the chain link looks like it may be gagging and/or trapping the cat, so I pull it away slightly (with plenty of room between my hand and the cat). It hisses. I jump and scream, and swear (in English). My neighbor is behind me and smiles politely. She takes the box and the 2 disgusting little conjunctivitis-eyed cat rats. A few minutes later she comes back for the third.

I call my closest PC friend again. She recently got internet and I have her look up some info on Wikipedia about cats. The idea that those nasty little gremlins were in my house for three weeks without my knowledge is more than I can handle. Plus, I have some questions. Why didn’t I hear them before? Where is the cat shit and piss? The mother definitely sheds (my backpack was proof) but that was the first day I saw cat hair. How old are cats when they begin to see? Here is what I’ve learned: cats cannot urinate nor defecate without their mother’s help (?) for the first 2 weeks of life. They usually begin to see after about 7 to 10 days. There was a wild storm on Friday night so it is possible they were born elsewhere and brought to my humble abode after birth. (My mother tells me this is possible, and I whole-heartedly would like to believe this hypothesis.) Or, if not, I may have been out of town when they were born (why do I keep wanting to say hatched like they came from eggs??) since I was out of town for a couple of nights the weekend before for Halloween.

Saturday night I had some trouble falling asleep, just thinking of those disgusting creatures sharing my roof for any amount of time. A week or two before I began thinking about the possibility of actually getting a cat for myself. It sounds absurd, I know, but I thought maybe I could have an outdoor cat that could come in to kill any mice or bugs I may have. The previous volunteer once found two mice cuddling in her bed when she was about to climb in in the middle of the winter. I hope to avoid this at all costs. But it seems that a cat probably isn’t the answer I’m looking for. Now I just keep thinking of how unfortunate it is that a dog didn’t climb in my window and leave cute little puppies behind my fridge. I would have kept one and completely avoided all of Saturday’s queasiness.

11-06-09

OK, so to quickly recap, I live in the first phase of three phases in Villa Madrid, Limpio, Paraguay. The phases (now home to 750 houses) were built a year apart each and I believe started as a squatting community—I know some people had the shacks before they had the houses but I’m not sure of how completely the neighborhood was filled. The first phase, where I live, is the closest to the main road that leads to Limpio and then Asunción. It was built first about 16 years ago with the second phase following a year later and the third a year after that. Although they were really all built around the same time, there is a huge division between the phases. This continues for several reasons. The biggest of which, I believe, is that water is paid for by each phase separately. Each phase has its own tank and the water situation is sometimes completely different for each phase. When I arrived in site six months ago, for example, the third phase had water about 20 hours a day. Now I believe it has it about 3 hours a day like the first phase. I don’t know why else the phases are separated so strongly. Perhaps because if people in the first phase need something they tend to get it in the first phase or go along the main road. Since the second and third phases need to pass through the first in order to leave Villa Madrid I think everyone simply has become familiar with it over time. The church, elementary school, high school, and community center are also all in the first phase. In short, the first phase really has no need to go to the third phase.

A few years ago there was a huge gang problem apparently in Villa Madrid. Apparently many of the problems (and the occasional homicide) happened in the third phase. This too makes sense geographically—it is more secluded with fewer people passing through and generally fewer street lights and more trees. Regardless, the gang problem has since been resolved. I was told that the gangs essentially killed each other off, but who knows? Now it goes like this: I tell a Paraguayan not living in Limpio that I live in Limpio and they mention how dangerous (and dirty) it is. I tell a Paraguayan from Limpio that I live in Villa Madrid and they tell me how dangerous it is. Then, within Villa Madrid I’ll talk about how I’m working a lot in the third phase (that is where the comedor is) and they tell me that that is where it is the most dangerous and where all the drugs are.

I’m explaining all this because I am so frequently so pleased with my interactions in the third phase. Tonight was no exception. There was a meeting at the comedor. Everyone voted for new leaders to run the comedor itself, then, strangely I was asked to say a few things to the group. The vote went exactly as I wanted, which I was obviously pleased about. I think the new group will get along very well and has a great balance of people involved. My new youth group presented itself to the group and talked about a few upcoming projects. Tomorrow they’re doing a drug abuse chat with games and a visitor with a college degree and Sunday we’re having a picnic/dance party all day to raise some money for the comedor. The main kid who was going to start working at the super markets 36 hours a week has decided to cut down to about 20 and will remain the president. (I’m psyched about this because this kid is my hero and such a natural leader!) Then as a group we (Jovenes Unidos or United Youth as they just named themselves) cleaned the huge empty space that hosts the comedor Monday through Friday. Imagine 10 fourteen and fifteen year old kids and a few of their younger siblings (like my favorite 8 year old) and me slipping around on the floor while mopping. I seriously felt ten years younger. These kids are sweet and normal and just seem so into having good clean fun. Then after a quick chat on who is in charge of what this weekend (I’m in charge of playing games with younger kids) they asked me to go with them house to house asking their parents if they could walk with me to my house while they put up fliers about the chat and picnic (spelled “pigni” on their flier). I complied, thinking of all the times I begged my parents to extend my curfew those extra 15 minutes when I was their age. And because they ask me funny questions sometimes—the best (by far) tonight was whether there are 24 hour days in the United States.

11-06-09

Today has been quite pleasant. I was going to wake up and do laundry but it was cloudy so I just bummed around the house until going to the comedor. Since the people in charge have changed it has been much more pleasant there for me, though I think some of it is because in a meeting last week I went on a rant about how ridiculous all the gossip and caddiness is so now the mothers gossip mostly in Guaraní. In other words, nothing has changed but now I just don’t know all that is being said. After several delays, I finally started the dental activities with the kids there, though I’ve actually decided to hold off on doing them until school ends in about two weeks since then I can actually have the whole group do the projects instead of having kids come in and out, depending on when they have school (morning or afternoon). I think it’ll be much more effective that way.

I went to another volunteer’s site earlier this week to help with sex ed/healthy relationship chats among middle school and high school kids. There were six volunteers there to do the activities, many of which went really well. We did one activity that I had totally forgotten about—we learned about it during training. You draw a scale, and then talk to the class about the reasons to have sex in high school and the reasons to wait. After you have gathered all the reasons, you go back through and erase those which the class decides are bad reasons on either side. We also did one part focusing on healthy relationships. We read scenarios and had the class decide if it was a healthy or unhealthy relationship. I’m amazed at how acceptable—and even desirable!—jealous boyfriends are. (We split the groups into girls and guys, so I don’t know how the guys reacted.) Culturally—and realize that I am by no means saying this is always true, but I will say that it is extremely common—guys are able to (and often expected to) have more than one girlfriend. I don’t know if this is somehow connected to the War of the Triple Alliance when something like 2 out of every 3 Paraguayan men died. Maybe this is just a part of that history that carries on. Who knows? Regardless, it is very acceptable. Paraguayan men often cheat and often have several girlfriends, sometimes completely openly. The women, on the other hand, are frequently kept on a fairly short leash. We read one scenario that was something along the lines of, “Every time I go out with my friends, I have to call my boyfriend first—it is almost like I have to ask permission.” Healthy or not? The class was pretty split. It amazes me. Jealousy is frequently seen as part of a loving relationship, like jealousy proves that the person loves you. Again, I want to stress that this is NOT always true, but I’ve been absolutely amazed at how common it is. We also got a few questions about why men are all such womanizers and so machismo. I’ve gotten a few of these in my own sex ed chats as well. On other quick sex-ed news, I accidentally left 6 poster-sized anatomically correct drawings on a bus a few days ago. I should call the bus company but can’t imagine how awkward that conversation would be. I’ll call after siesta today.

It is getting super grossly hot here. Two nights ago I decided to cook a few big dishes that I can eat throughout the week. As I was cutting the vegetables it was so hot that I was dripping with sweat. Mind you, I was only cutting vegetables. This is not a very strenuous activity, and I was dripping onto the floor. Ew. It is only going to get worse too. Yesterday I took a bus into Asunción and passed two signs telling the temperature. Like the rest of the world, Paraguay uses Celsius, so one said 39° and the other said 41°. Because I’m horrible at converting in my head, I was thinking that meant 95° Fahrenheit more or less. But I used my phone converter, and that means it was between 102° and 106° Fahrenheit! And that was at about 3:30, after it had cooled slightly. Needless to say, I headed to the Embassy pool to swim a bit and felt a thousand times better afterwards. I’m planning on taking advantage of my proximity to the pool this summer. It easily gets up to 45° Celsius here—that means 113°F! And sometimes a bit hotter! So, if you’re planning a trip to this lovely little country, maybe you should wait until May or so.

OK, sorry about that weather rant. I can’t help myself. Life is going well for me. Students are in exams right now, so life is a bit slower, but I’m enjoying myself. A Peace Corps friend came over last week and made some shelves for me. I would like to say that I helped, but I did very little other than serve terere. The shelves are beautiful and I’m psyched not to be living out of my suitcases any more. My house is far from being finished but it is coming right along. The next step is to put up a pole to hang some clothes and then make a bookshelf. Afterwards I’ll eventually fix up the other room and make it so that people can actually sleep there if they visit. I’m thinking that is a project for January though. We shall see. Hope things are going wonderfully state side for everyone. I have no idea what is going on in the world, so any news updates or personal updates would be greatly appreciated. (Also, my address is somewhere in this blog, so feel free to send me a little love via snail mail!!)

10-27-09

So, today the thing that I’ve been dreading the past 8 months actually happened. I got pique. That’s right; the little animal that climbs into your foot and lays eggs under your skin—that was my foot, my skin. More specifically, the little bugger was under my left big toe, almost under the nail and another on my pinky toe of the same foot at the base of the nail. I was told that it probably happened a week ago, so I blame my little visit to Guarambaré. Anyway, I’m definitely exaggerating all of this. It wasn’t bad at all. The idea of this happening grossed me out much more than actually having it did. I went into the salon in Limpio and got a nice little pedicure. The only thing that differed from your normal, run of the mill pedicure was the fact that the woman pulled out a needle (that was (surprisingly) threaded and seemed straight out of a sewing kit) in order to dig out the pique from my foot. I am pleased to report that the extraction didn’t hurt one bit! And so, now I am pique free and purple toe nailed.

In other news, I had a really productive and pleasant day on Friday when I went to Asuncion to run some errands. By the end of the morning I had 144 free condoms for sex ed (thanks to an NGO who does AIDS work and awareness), a handful of maps of Paraguay and the world along with some teaching tools (also free, thanks to a Paraguayan newspaper), 72 toothbrushes and 24 tubes of toothpaste (unfortunately not free but cheap!), fishnet stockings (Halloween is coming up), and a wonderful lunch date with a Peace Corps compañera who had just returned from a visit to the states. It was fabulous. The dental charlas will begin tomorrow with the comedor kids. I have a big set of teeth that I’ve borrowed from the Peace Corps office to demonstrate how to brush correctly. They’ve been a big hit among guests just sitting on the table in my main room. I have a meeting this evening with the parents’ group where hopefully we’ll talk about the dental chats and gardening.

The weekend was slow. Highlights include: getting my bike fixed, realizing that I really need to learn Guarani if I have any interest in figuring what is going on at the meetings with the squatting community bordering my neighborhood, meeting with my younger youth group 3 times, and finding a new neighborhood in Limpio that is totally full of lawn sculptures. It was odd. In the squatting community meeting (I dislike this term in English but can’t figure out what else to call it), there was some sort of an argument and trying my damnedest I could not figure out what it was about because it was all in Guarani. It was quite frustrating. There is already trouble in paradise with my new youth group—the president who is exceptionally enthusiastic and a natural leader just found a job working at a grocery store so he is stepping down as president. This is happening after a week of the group being formed. It’s unfortunate. On another strange note, today I saw an ostrich in a fairly small yard of a really fancy house. Don’t they need space to run? And aren’t ostriches notoriously ill-tempered??

10-20-09

I’m on a bus to go to Asuncion for Agro-Shopping and a meeting in the Peace Corps Office. Agro-Shopping, held in the parking garage of a chuchi mall, is where local farmers and vendors have sold fresh produce, dairy, meat and the like every Tuesday for the past 11 years. I love it. I try to go every week but sometimes can’t quite get my schedule to work around it. Tonight I’m going to stay with my training host family in Guarambare so I can help with a sexual harassment session with the new PC trainees. Although I frequently feel like I just got here—even though it has been 8 months—another group swore in a month ago and these trainees have been here for a few weeks. PC is very much like a high school in that trainees seem so long (even if they’re older than me) and people who have been here for a while are basically seniors.

Things are still great in site. Movie night was a hit—lots of kids came and lots of popcorn was eaten. Have a new youth group that began Sunday. Most are 14 or 15 and they want to start a small business making and selling bread and baked goods in order to make money to work on projects with the comedor kids. It is fabulous. The kids are really interested, motivated, and hard working. I’m curious to watch it progress, since I never know what it’ll look like a month from now. I keep having random visitors at my house, which is great but potentially annoying. If I don’t want visitors I just don’t open my front door or front curtains. It has been working thus far.

Sex ed is still chugging along. With one class yesterday we did some labeling of anatomically correct drawings. I’ve been amazed at the mislabeling. A group of 11th graders taped the Clitoris label next to the arrow pointing at the anus! I couldn’t believe it. Some of the anonymous questions I’ve gotten (from 2 different 11th grade classes): Is it necessary to lose your virginity before you turn 18? What is an orgasm? Where is the G-spot? Are there times when the girl asks to have sex? (Meaning when she initiates, I assume.) Does penis size matter? How do I know if a partner has an STD? Is it bad to have sex with your cousin? How many liters of blood does a girl lose when she has sex for the first time? How do you use a condom? What is masturbation? Also, there have been a number of questions about the best age to start having sex. Anyway, to say the least this has been interesting and I’ve been wondering if a group of 11th graders in the US would have the same questions and misconceptions.

10-17-09

Things are going well. Tonight my youth group is showing a double feature at the community center to raise some money for our community census project. I really have no idea how it´ll go. First we´re showing a kids movie (The Incredibles) and afterwards there´ll be another movie for adults but we couldn´t pick a movie last night during our 1.5 hour long meeting. It is pretty impressive how slowly things move in our youth group meetings. There is usually a great deal of texting throughout. (Last night I was actually actively texting, then felt kind of bad about it... But is this just cultural assimilation? Can I at least tell myself that?) Anyway, we´ll be making the popcorn at my house, so I´m interested to see how that goes. My youth group is between 15 and 22, consists of about 6 guys and 3 girls, though sometimes we have almost double that and the girls who show up change slightly depending on who the guys are dating from week to week. It is an interesting bunch and takes FOREVER to decide on the littlest things, but I like them. Tonight marks the third night in a row I´ll be hanging out with them. The past two nights have gone to making the smallest decisions about tonight´s movie. They can be little shits, but they are teenagers, so....

This week has been good. I´m still absolutely loving sex ed. I´ve expanded it to a few other classes, and those are going well. We have a question box for each class so that the kids can ask questions anonymously without being embarassed. The three questions I got this week were: 1) Does it hurt for the girl the first time she has sex?; 2) Does it hurt for the guy his first time?; and 3) Is there love between homosexual couples? The class was so amazingly attentive when I answered these questions. The classes are really living up to my expectations thus far. We´ve begun with myth vs. fact, during which I´ve been pretty amazed at some common misconceptions, and anatomy in which I was surprised by some of the mislabeling during the introductory games. I also went to the Paraguay-Colombia game this week. Paraguay lost 2-0, and it was rainy and kind of gross out, but I enjoyed it. A bunch of volunteers came into the capital for the game, so it was great to see everyone, obviously.

The house is still going well though I´m continuing to live out of my luggage. I just kept trying to buy wood to do construction and they kept being closed. It is a slow process but I´ve been busy enough and I don´t mind too much living out of my bags. Tomorrow should be a crazy day. I´m debating going to church or not (I honestly just go from time to time for my reputation), then I´m going to a meeting in the squatting community, then some middle schoolers are coming over for a meeting about how we can plan activities and games with the comedor, then I have a girls´ group meeting. The crazy thing is that tomorrow is scheduled to be so busy, but if it rains I´m sure the only thing that´ll happen is church. We shall see.

My favorite children are doing better. Their brother got back from the hospital and seems much better so their mom is back now and actually just started working doing daycare in our neighborhood, which is excellent. The kids did end up coming over last week for lunch and coloring/play time, and a few days ago I noticed that my name, spelled incorrectly (Nasi), is now written in red marker on my freshly painted wall. I think it´ll be a while until I have children of my own but in the meantime, I don´t mind these Paraguayan children...

10-7-09

I’m finally living no my own after 8 months of living with very different host families. After a long search in which I was offered one place with AC for way over half my monthly salary and several places in which I would be in charge of a child or two while parents worked elsewhere during the week I found my current house. It is actually where the last volunteer lived for her last 5 months in site. Since she was only living here for a short time she didn’t put much effort into fixing it up. After her, a family of 5 lived here for a bit. The house is about 5 blocks from my old house. It is closer to the highway (about 150 yards away) so I strangely have traffic noises to get used to at night. It is a little house with a big open living room, teeny kitchen not quite big enough for both my stove and fridge, standard bathroom where I’ll be bucket bathing still, and two bedrooms. The paint was a child-ate-peas-puke-green and peeling grossly along with the crumbling walls. The floors are made of big bricks. I have a fair sized backyard with various fruit trees/plants: lemon, grapefruit, banana, orange. I’m thrilled about that. So I’ve spent the week painting the walls with a lime-and-water mixture that I’m sure is great for me and the environment and cleaning a bunch. There is a bed that came with the house but it was grey Thursday so I couldn’t put it out in the sun or beat it so I ended up putting my yoga mat and air mattress on the big table and sleeping there. Other than that first night though, I’ve been in my new-to-me bed. The house is coming along, but I still have no clue where to put clothes and need to figure out a way to make it so the lime doesn’t come off on whatever touches it.

I’ve been thinking the past few days of how happy I am to be in my own house. Throughout September I felt like I was looking for any excuse to get out of site for a night or an afternoon but now I am so content to stay here and do random home improvement tasks. I’ve started sewing my own curtains by hand. I’m planning on making myself a bookshelf and some storage shelves for clothes and (separately) kitchenware. I don’t think I realized that I was in a bit of a funk during September. Obviously my sister’s visit and the fabulous Buenos Aires vacation were excellent but afterwards I was dragging a bit. Anyway, I just feel like I’m finally getting settled and can actually be an adult rather than a teenager (which is how I frequently felt in the house with two teenagers and my host parents).

My work life is going pretty well right now, with a few kinks. I started sex ed with a group of high schoolers yesterday and it went extremely smoothly. There are two girls from the class who have elected to help me out with sex ed for the month. They’ll get certificates at the end, though when I told them that, they said that I should only give them the certificates if they’ve earned them. I love these two girls! They’ve agreed to help me out with sex ed not only with their own class but with other classes, shifts (I don’t know what else to call them—they’re morning, but they’ll help with afternoon and night), and even another high school in the area. I’m really thrilled about this. The class we worked with yesterday was 60 students so if we actually work with all the classes we want to, we would end up training/educating more than 300 students. I was thinking the other day that if I really only teach teenagers about sex ed, parts of the body, HIV/AIDS, STDs, birth control, and how to put a condom on I can feel good about my work.

In the elementary schools, the cardboard project is still going strong, but I’m going into the office today to see if the health office has a set of big teeth available for tooth brushing charlas. I’ve just started star charts with my three favorite children because their dental hygiene is so amazingly poor. They all have visible cavities and some rotten out teeth. With a star chart you can have them mark when they brush their teeth (the goal is obviously twice a day) and then after ten days as long as they’ve been brushing they get a prize. We used these a lot at Rosemont, where I worked with the teenage girls with behavioral and substance abuse problems, and they were frequently very effective. You can change the target behavior to really anything. Those three favorite kids came over yesterday to color and hang out. Their baby brother has been sick in the hospital for the past few weeks and their single mother is with him. The three kids (ages 6, 8, and 9) have been left with their older brother who is 16. A couple of days ago I realized that they are absolutely not eating anything other than what they get at the comedor for breakfast and lunch on weekdays. Weekends they simply aren’t eating. This is obviously a heartbreaking realization for many reasons, and made me think of all of the other things that are happening within the community that I’m totally missing. They’re coming over Sunday to cook lunch and I’m planning on sending some basic foods for dinners.

On the theme of the comedor, I’m increasingly frustrated. The women are so caddy and gossipy and indirect. It kills me. There is the usual drama but now the temporary president is saying that I should pay to eat there whenever I go. I didn’t even hear this from the women. I was told this yesterday by a nine year old girl. This is nonsense since I’m doing projects with the kids and am always suggesting activities I can do with the women. The problem is that I’m refusing to do all of the work for these possible projects. For example, I said that I would go get the free seeds that a place in Asuncion offers but that someone needed to write a letter to ask for them. This letter can be hand written. It only needs to be about 3 sentences long. I gave the women a manual on how to write letters asking for goods, but somehow it still hasn’t been done. And I will also be in charge of planting the garden and probably working it throughout its life so I thought it appropriate that the women write this letter. My written Spanish is really lacking as well. Anyway, I’m really frustrated and, frankly, at my wits end with the women. I just love the comedor kids so I refuse to abandon the project. My plan is to be super guapa (hard working) to remind them of all the shit I do there. I also only eat there once or twice a week, mostly because they serve so much organ meat which still grosses me out.

OK, sorry about that rampage, but the indirectness here is even worse than it was in Portland, Oregon. I don’t think of myself as a super direct person but I have no tolerance for passive aggressiveness. Otherwise life is good. Friday is bird day so I think I’m going to make some bird masks with the comedor kids and the Abrazo kids (kids who would otherwise be working on the street). Monday was Road Day, which I really did not understand, nor did I celebrate, unless using the roads like normal is considered celebrating…

9-16-09

So I spent all of last week in Buenos Aires with my sister, her best friend Liza, and two of my closest Peace Corps friends celebrating my quarter century birthday. It was superb! BA is maybe now my favorite international city, and I spent a great deal of the week fantasizing about what type of work I could do there for a year after my Peace Corps service is done. We basically ate a lot of delicious food (particularly meat) and drank a bunch of wonderful wine. The wine variety was a nice change from the boxed wine and Coke/pineapple soda that is such a Paraguayan staple. One place that really knocked our socks off was in La Boca, in southern BA, where all the houses were painted bright colors. Right by the soccer stadium is a place called Don Carlos, where Don Carlos doesn’t give you options about what you’re having. I believe the only requests were that vegetarian options be provided for my sister and that he brings out chorizo. It was amazing. Francis Ford Coppola randomly recommends it in a New York Times article, claiming it is his favorite restaurant in BA. (Don Carlos brought out the article and the guest book at the very beginning of the meal.) We all walked out wishing we were in elastic-banded pants as I wondered if Don Carlos had a nice son I could marry. Another highlight was Recoleta Cemetery, where a number of rich and famous Argentines are buried, including Eva “Evita” Peron, who is apparently buried 27 feet underground to prevent her body from being stolen again (yes, again). There is also a woman who was buried alive, apparently in a coma. She woke and began screaming but cemetery workers did not get to her in time. Because of this, another man designed a coffin for her that opened from the inside, but when he tested it for the 25th time or so he could not get out and was then himself buried alive. How crazy is that??

My favorite day perhaps was spent going on a train about an hour north of the city to a town called El Tigre. My sister continued to call it La Tigra, which sounds wonderfully cougar like. Porteños (people from BA) ran to El Tigre to escape the yellow fever via the newly constructed railroad in the 1870s. It is an understandable refuge, with 5 rivers converging to create a maze of canals and water ways, framed by beautiful low hanging trees and marshes. We took a two hour tour of some of the islands by boat, but it quickly became evident that most of the people on our boat were locals using it as public transportation. Grocery bags were heaved off at numerous docks, empty water jugs and gas tanks thrown on the top to be filled and returned later. The water ways have everything you would need to live in El Tigre delta, including a school, a health center, and municipality. I expected to see a pretentious BA vacation spot but there was a real mix. I wouldn’t mind going back and perhaps writing a book there…it’s that kind of place.

Anyway, BA was phenomenal to say the very least. The week before Mimi, my sister, came to Paraguay for about 5 days. After some visa issues (read: you need a visa to get into Paraguay), Mimi got in late on Tuesday. I wanted to show her a “typical” day in my life on Wednesday so we went on a walk through my community, went to the comedor (where the kids were absolutely psyched to meet her), then heard some drama/gossip from some of the comedor ladies who just split from the group (that wasn’t planned), then to the internet café to see about free copies for the community census I’m doing with the youth group. We had then planned on going to Abrazo, an organization for kids who would otherwise be working in the streets, to play games and do activities but ran into some kids who said that the organization had a last minute meeting, so it got cancelled. (It is actually appropriate that while trying to show a “typical” day something got cancelled very last minute.) The evening consisted of a youth group meeting during which a 20 year old kid told my 27 year old sister, “If only you weren’t so old and married…” After I translated this, Mimi laughed, pointing out that it was interesting that he didn’t mention the language barrier or the fact that she lives in New York. We then went into Limpio itself and had pizza by candlelight. There was a storm that had apparently knocked out all power in Limpio. The next day found us heading to Villarrica to see (and feed) the carpinchos (capybaras) that I think I’ll have to take every US visitor to go see. (I’m obsessed but so is my entire family.) We had some nice meals with other PCVs, and then headed into the capital for the evening before leaving for BA.

And so, here I am, back in site, diving back into my work. It is getting super hot here. In a charla yesterday the middle school aged kids were worse than ever. I have to really focus on finding my own place to live, hopefully so I can move in on October 1, but we’ll see how that goes. I thought it’d be tough to get back to work but I feel like the projects are still coming at me as fast as ever. I also have tentative plans to start doing sex-ed charlas in October in one local high school. The professor said he had no problem with me teaching kids how to put condoms on mandioca, so I’m psyched for that!

8-27-09 So, last night I went to a water meeting. Even though we have water only three times a day, we don’t have a water commission but there is one guy who was at one time or another voted president of the water issue. He is the one who gathers all of the money from everyone and pays for everyone all at once. We have a big tank for about 250 or 300 houses. He is also in charge of turning it on—roughly at 6am, siesta time, and evening. Those are the times to fill your barrels with water so you can use water throughout the day. The past few days, however, it has not been turned on at all because about 70 families did not pay. The plan had been that families that don’t pay would have their individual water cut off—makes sense—but I was told that this is impossible and so every now and then they turn off the water for everyone for some time (last year it was for more than a month at one point!), they fundraise to get enough money to pay the bill, it goes back on, people don´t pay and the cycle continues. I am a pretty optimistic person but this has been this way for the past 17 years!!! The only thing that was decided at the meeting last night was that they would hook up water for the school for obvious hygene/health purposes. So I guess I´ll just see everybody at the school to fill up buckets instead of at the water tank? Good talk, guys.

8-25-09 So, I’m not sure where to begin since I don’t know where I left off. Last week I went to a PC conference in Asunción with a contact of mine from the environmental school in Limpio about how to begin and develop new projects. It was pretty repetitive for PC Volunteers but was really impressive to see how motivated most of the contacts became by the end of the 2.5 days. I went back to my site and had a meeting with my youth group. We’re working on a census for our barrio. There are 750 houses. Some of them really wanted to census every single house. That seemed impossible to me but it took me longer than expected to convince them. There are also some questions in there that seem problematic; i.e. “Does anyone in your family have a drug problem? How many people?” or “Do you have electricity legally (or do you steal it from us—your neighbors)?” We’ll see how it all turns out. Also, I was told tahat during the national census no one is allowed to leave their house. Does that not scream dictatorship? Anyway, we’ll see how all this turns out… Saturday night I went to a Christmas in August PC party. Have you ever dressed up for a non-costume party and then been really confused (or just disappointed?) that no one else is dressed up? No? Oh, well, than…me neither. All I’ll say is that two friends and I had EXCELLENT Christmas outfits. We also did a gift exchange of gifts bought on busses for less than 10,000 Guaranís (US$2). I brought temporary tattoos that I brought back from the states which were actually a big hit—even with the Paraguayans. I freaked out the Paraguayans very briefly by claiming that the tattoos would come off in two or three months. Ha. When I came back to my house Sunday evening I saw my host sister’s boyfriend’s parents and sister sitting in their car waiting outside the house. This surprises me every time. They do live in Asunción, which is an hour away by bus but I personally struggle to imagine Fred Franke, Anne Franke, and one of my siblings sitting patiently in the car while I go visit my high school boyfriend for several hours. Although, maybe that was why I was sent to boarding school?? The past few days have been good. My milk box recycling charla is being put off for now until the principal talks to the Board of Education to figure out a time to have all teachers attend. (Because of the short four hour school days, teachers usually have to work at several schools that are frequently far from each other and have to travel so cannot stay after school for meetings.) My charla with the women’s comedor group keeps getting pushed back as well, which is annoying. We’re doing teamwork/goal setting—both of which they DESPERATELY need. Last night my host father and I talked about his health issues, AKA why he is the only Paraguayan I know who eats wheat bread and says you should only eat meat one time a week. It turns out to be hemorrhoids. That is a cognate in Spanish. I hope no one ever has to experience the description of hemorrhoids that I received. I will just say that there were a lot of details, pointing, and gestures that made me want to gag and/or giggle. Also, today I was at the comedor talking to the women about when we will reschedule our charla (for the fifth time!!) and a woman told me, “Oh you’re so funny! People here don’t realize that rubias (blondes) are funny; we think they only know how to be conquistadors!” So, at least I’m breaking that cultural barrier. I may never end up doing this damned charla but at least some people now know that blondes do actually have some fun, contrary to popular belief…

08-10-09 So I’ve been horrible about blogging. July passed strangely. During the final week of extended vacation I was essentially bed ridden with a cold. I’m really not good at being sick—especially since I feel like with colds you should still be able to function. Adding to my guilt, because of the vacation there were only a handful of things on my to-do list so cancelling those to stay in bed and read just made me feel like a slacker volunteer. During this week I also had another absurd communication mix-up with my host family. I was asked by both my host mother and my host brother if I had “gripe porcina” but I heard “gripe por cine”, which means cold (as in sickness) for the movies. I didn’t quite understand but for whatever reason decided that they were asking me if I was faking my sickness. So here I am, feeling horrible, kind of wallowing in self-pity, and am being accused by my host family of just pretending to be sick. Days pass, I’m still feeling sick, I’m hating that I have to speak Spanish when I’m functioning on such a low level, and I scoff when my host family tries to be helpful and tell me that I shouldn’t drink hot tea and then immediately drink cold water. I find myself really annoyed at my brother and mother for accusing me of faking this sickness and I tell Barbara, another PCV amiga of mine, about the accusations. She then tells me that they were really asking if I had “gripe porcina”, which means swine flu. I didn’t believe her and actually asked a table full of teenage boys at the café where I was sitting. She was right, obviously, and when I explained all of this to my host family we all had a good laugh. The next week was Reconnect back in Guarambaré (the training community) with the 30 people I trained with. We did language stuff and did a bit of technical training. It was weird being back in such a structured environment after the past 3 months (!) of being a Peace Corps Volunteer on my own. It made me realize that I really need to focus on Guarani, which I’ve essentially been ignoring for the past 6 months. I also realized that I really need to figure out a way to work with smaller groups in schools. I had really wanted some advice on classroom management, since I somehow have zero control of Paraguayan children, but realized that it is just going to take some time until I work well with a group of 60 kids in another language. We shall see. I’ve started working with the elementary school in my neighborhood. I had been really hesitant to work with them because the last volunteer had had some issues with some of the teachers but they seem open thus far. It helps also that I know a bunch of the kids from the comedor so I came in with a solid fan base already in place… There is a program that gives poorer Paraguayan schools milk for each kid every day. This school is one of those schools, so they have like a billion milk cartons. They’re bigger than milk cartons you find at schools in the US. I was asked about ideas for how to reuse them, so I want to do a program with the teachers on how to use them for school materials. If anyone has any ideas, I’d love to hear them. Thus far I have: puppets, wagons (with bottle top wheels), puzzles, fraction teachers, dominoes, board games, gift boxes, building blocks, planters, Bingo cards, dice, name sticks (where you write each kid’s name on a piece then pull them out of a hat to ensure the teachers calls on everyone), bookshelves (may be difficult), instruments if filled with beans, geometric shapes, and purses. I realize that that is already a lot but they have an absurd amount of these milk cartons. Ok, I think that is about all that is new in my life. I’m working in a bunch of different places, there is a TON of drama with the women’s group that I’m trying to avoid as much as possible. I’m trying to figure out how to start a sustainable tooth brushing program. I’m looking for a new place to live. I love my current host family but wouldn’t mind some more personal space. I’ve been riding my bike a bunch lately and simply love it! It is finally getting warmer here, thank God…though I’m sure that I’ll be complaining about the scorching heat in no time.