I was particularly nervous of this border crossing because I had heard many horror stories about crossing into Bolivia. I heard from other Peace Corps volunteers that crossing from Paraguay to Bolivia was particularly tricky, and that I needed to show them 9 different documents from my yellow fever vaccine to a paper saying I have no criminal record in Paraguay. That was actually a big reason why we didn't go right into Bolivia from Paraguay! This border crossing at Quiaca, I heard, could take 6 hours to get through. Was not looking forward to that.

We had a short (for us) 7 hour ride from Salta to Quiaca that left at 12:30am and arrived at 7:30am. Since it was an overnight ride we thought everything would be ok but it was not. The cellphone of the guy across from us kept ringing and no one was waking up but us! Then the people behind me (after kicking my seat many times) woke up at 6 and decided that since they were up, it was ok to talk at high conversation volume. Also, cell phone guy kept his curtain open and the streetlights kept blinding me so I had to wrap my hoodie around my face. I keep thinking about those little eye covers you get on a plane that I left in my dresser in Paraguay.

We get off the bus, hit the bathroom then take a taxi for 7 pesos to the border. It was chilly compared to when we left salta and I felt the difference in altitude right away.

We got in line to stamp out of Argentina thinking we may be at this for awhile but the crossing went really well! We actually had the most wait time getting out of Argentina. There was only one person at the window and she had decided to close the window and disappear for 40 mins out of the hour we were waiting. Got stamped out without a prob, walked across a little bridge and we were in Bolivia! Only took half an hour to get in as well and that was with me buying a visa! I told this guard on the bridge that I was from the States and he took me right into the office and gave me this big white paper to fill out. I'm sure they were happy for me to show up since I was about to give them $135 USD but they were quite nice. I just had to hand over the money and a copy of my passport and that's that. They explained that I had the visa for 5 years and I can only be in Bolivia for 90 days out of each year and only enter 3x per year. When Nick and I were walking out another guard came over to me and explained again that I could only enter 3x per year and had 90 days in country. They reaally wanted to get that point across to me.

We exchanged some money, there are lots of places to, and headed for the terminal and right away jumped on a mini bus to Tupiza for 15 Bolivianos which is like, $2.20 for an hour and 15 min ride.

So far I like Bolivia! I was a little nervous going in because of the border crossing and just thinking about what the border crossing was like going from Argentina to Paraguay but Villazon wasn't bad and Tupiza has it's charm. I love that you can see Bolivian women wearing traditional garb still, something Paraguay doesn't have. They have swishy skirts and high socks, colorful blankets, a bowler cap and usually two braids, it's very quaint. And of course it's great to be back to these prices, still have a budget you know!

The bridge between Argentina and Bolivia

View of mountains surrounding TupizaMe walking across the bridge from our hostel into the center of Tupiza with all my stupid, big, heavy bags

Tim decided to tag along with us up to Bolivia, we decided to break up our trip north with a stop in Salta. We had to take two buses up with a midnight to 2:30 am stopover in Tucuman. The first bus we were on was ok but every movie they put on played 2x!!! That was not so good. The scenery on the way up though was pretty nice with the mountains and desserty-ish land.

Salta is considered a base for touring around this area. Apparently there are amazing things to see like canyons and great horseback riding trips but we just hung in the city. We got into the terminal with no where to go and tried to find a place online before noticing a guy peddling his hostel, 7 Duendes (dwarfs), he told us it was 50 ($12) pesos a night and offered us a free ride so we took it. Since it was still only 8am when we arrived we had to wait to get into a room, when we got in I passed out till 2pm. Once I awoke I took a much needed shower and Nick and I went into the center to look for a place to change money. We failed then went to the terminal to figure out our next move (to the boarder of Bolivia) then went to the anthropology museum where I thought displayed Incan mummy kids but after looking through it and just seeing alot of pots I realized we were wrong and they are in the museum of high altitude. Then we walked back and viewed the big cathedral, very ornately elaborate is what I can say describes it. I was done with walking after that and we came home and made a nice stir fry dinner which was much needed after eating so much white bread for the past 24 hours. We even drank our organic wine we bought in Mendoza so good.

The next day we tried to buy our bus ticket online because we would get a discount. Of course it wasn't working so back down to the terminal we go to buy it full price, off to Quaica to cross the boarder. After, Tim, Nick, me and this Aussi Spencer went on a cable car up to this hilltop to get a view of Salta. We got kinda lost walking back, found a supermarket and bought the makings for a nice Sunday roast dinner prepared by Tim. Twas lovely!

Church

funky tree

main plaza statue

another church

inside the elaborate church

first dinner

the organic wine and olives so good

view from the cable car

Sunday roast

We decided to skip Bariloche and head straight to Mendoza for some winery fun. We convinced Tim, a guy we met in Puerto Natales, to meet us in Mendoza and tour some wineries on bikes with us. He agreed and we booked a hostel. The bus to Mendoza was uneventful, I didn't sleep but we had the front top seats so at least we could stretch our legs. It was another long bus journey, about 17 hours, but this time we got into town at 9am not 12 am! We walked to our hostel, Hostel Lagares, and found Tim who had gotten there the previous night. It was a nice hostel, clean and new looking but unfortunately we had roommate trouble. We were a room of six, Nick and I, a couple from London a Russian and some other guy who we never talked to. The Russian smelled and he lost favor with us when he unplugged the aircon at night and it got SO HOT! I was tossing and turning and sweaty all night! Then the next morning the other guy in our room set his alarm to go off at 6 am and then proceeded to keep pressing snooze FOR OVER AN HOUR!!!! No point trying to sleep so we got up early that day.

We didn't have much time in Mendoza, only three nights since our main goal at the moment is to get out of Argentina because of budget reasons, but we had a good time. The first day we got here we went to the plaza which had a really nice fountain going on and we got some lunch. We also booked our winery tour on bikes for the next day. The wine tour was terrific! We went to three wineries and an olive oil factory, lunch was included plus snacks afterwords at this place with a pool where we hung out for an hour and a half.

The first winery used to be the biggest one in the region and they say the world at one point (not sure about that one) but is now a museum. We got to see all the huge barrels where they kept the wine, and we got to climb up on top of them and walk across them! They all have little doors on them which the people would somehow climb through to clean the barrels, a tight squeeze for sure. Then we saw the huge aging barrels in the basement and a huuuge tank where the white wine was kept, we climbed through this claustrophobia inducing doorway and saw the inside of this 'tank' which held 250,000 liters of white wine. It smelled very musty but it had great acoustics. The climb out of the doorway was like a second birth, but being pulled out by a bald Argentinian named ..baldy. After we tasted some wine and snobbily tried our best to figure out what we were tasting. It mostly consisted of cherries, leather, a roast dinner and bike chains. The next winery was a really chuchi (posh) one with all stainless steel barrels and conveyor belts and whatnot. First we saw where the grapes were mashed and all the tanks and tubes, then the aging barrels made from french oak (the best oak for aging wine apparently) and then the room where they bottle, cork, label and box all the bottles. We were taken into a tasting room for our tastes and then given extra in the buying room. At this point I was feeling a little tipsy. Oh and did I mention this was all on bikes? I had a fun beach cruiser bike that braked by going backwards with the pedal, something I haven't done since I was a kid! Nick wanted that bike but the other one was broken and he had to have a mountain bike and was grumpy about it. After the second winery my sitbones were hurtin since it's been probably 2 years since I was last on a bike!

We went back to our base for a wonderful lunch of empanandas and ate our fill and of course drank more wine. I was ready for a siesta but no time for that, it was on to the olive oil factory. It was a small factory that only goes during may-aug and the rest of the year they do tours and dry fruit. I learned that the color of the olive coincides with the ripeness of the olive with black being the latest and sweetest. It was a quick tour but at the end we got to taste a bunch of olive oils (with garlic, with basil, with oregano) on bread and eat raisins which gave us a little pick up to get to the next tour which was an organic winery. We entered and rode through the grapevines before getting to a barn to start the tour. This vineyard doesnt' use pesticides but instead uses permaculture to keep the pests at bay. They also borrow a mule named Rosita every year to plow the fields. Unlike the other winery they bottle, label and pack all the bottles by hand. Nick and I bought a bottle from here and it was SO GOOD! Tim bought some olives which were also terrific!

The next day in the evening we heard about a free folkloric band that was playing in town so we tagged along with a group going. We didn't realize how chuchi it was going to be though so I was waaay underdressed with a tshirt. We ended up on top of a building with a free glass of merlot listening to the band with a great view of the sunset and the city, it was a great, unexpected event. We got back to the hostel in time for the asado they were cookin on the grill, very good. Next morning we were off to the terminal for our next bus.

Mascot of the first winery/museum. People rub his huevos for good luck.

barrels

Walking ontop

Old corking machine

Special cask

Inside the white wine cask

Industrial winery, stainless steel casks

conveyor belt

old wines

Chuchi

olive press

Olive oil filtering

Olive oil eating

riding through the grape vines to the organic winery

snacks at the end

sunset from the rooftopMe with my free wine, tshirt and band

We finally boarded the bus for El Bolson at 12:30am. After a long day of climbing up a hill and hiking and eating all you can eat pizza I figured we'd be able to pass out right away, except that I was very wrong...

The bus was very cramped so we squeezed ourselves into our seats and the bus pulled out heading north for ruta 40. I just started dozing when suddenly we pulled onto a dirt road which made the bus very, very bumpy and sleep only for the drugged. Ruta 40 was having roadwork done for a many miles so that was fun, and the bus driver kept smoking which was really annoying for those who wanted to breath. He probably had one once every hour, which I'm sure was not within accordance with company policy. Yet 22 hours later we made it to El Bolson, on the way in it was dark and we saw fires on the hillside of El Hoyo (ignition source unknown, probably a camper).

We were in El Bolson because we had a workaway planned for two weeks. Workaway is working in exchange for food and lodging, we would be working six hours a day at Rosie's house. So we got in after midnight and decided to call Rosie, our host, and hope she was up. We got a taxi out to Mallin Ahogado, the house was about 20 mins away from the town and not even minutes into the ride our taxi broke down! We waited another 20 mins for another taxi to show up but we werent' exactly sure where the house was. The taxi driver went to a house that Nick and I were sure wasn't the house and clapped at the door. We were so embarrassed, hiding behind the seat, that he was waking these people up! Like we thought it wasn't Rosie's house so we kept going. Finally we found it and Rosie was waiting outside for us, we arrived about 40 mins after we had called her so we felt pretty bad since it was now after 1am, but she was very nice about it. We paid the taxi driver 40 pesos and brought our stuff inside. Rosie is an English woman who had moved to Argentina when she was in her 20s and has been here ever since. Her and her husband at the time built the house she had, a really cute log cabin on 10 acres of land. Half the land was a pine forest with a river running next to it and the other half had her house, garden, fruit trees, wood shed, more trees and the little camper (caravan) that we would be living in for the next two weeks. Even though the bed was small it was very welcome that night, and I finally got to sleep!

Workaway life:

Eating and working. Rosie fed us very well, we had home made bread and jam every day for breakfast and lunch and dinner was veggies and pasta, or trout or empanadas. Very good food.

Work we did:

Nick- chopping wood, building the woodshed walls, cutting the chopped wood

Lora- whitewashing the walls, staining the woodshed walls, picking raspberries, pitting cherries

Together- picking cherries, picking up horse poo, building a compost, pulling up baby pine trees, cleaning this one spot in the woods where a little house used to be

on our free time we swam in the river, rosie took us for a picnic at a waterfall (catarata escondida) for lunch, one time, we walked to another waterfall after work one day and during the weekend we would go into town and hang out in the plaza (all sorts going on there) and go food shopping. There's a great open air market in the plaza which was great to walk through but we couldn't afford anything (except the food). One day we went to Lago Puelo which is a beautiful lake surrounded by mountains. We had to take a bus there from El Bolson for 6 pesos but what we didn't know was that it was in a national park which we had to pay (the foreigners price..50% more) to get in. Also we didn't know that you could go camping there which would have been nice to do because there were hiking trails and whatnot. We hung out all day and went swimming and watched the people in the water, it was a beautiful day. We hitchhiked back into town with a lovely couple from Buenos Aires who liked to listen to Iron Maiden. When we got back we hung out in the plaza and watched some acrobatic vagabond travellers do a show and then a kumbia band play for a bit. We had to get a taxi back, when we got in the driver wasn't too friendly and we had a feeling we would have a problem with the price, which we should have negotiated before we got in. We were travelling on the exact same day and time as we had the week earlier going to Rosie's house for the first time so we knew it should be 40 pesos but when we got to the house he said 55 pesos. I said, no we came here exactly a week ago on the same day same time and it was $40 pesos and he was like well you were charged wrong and I was like no that is what the dispatcher said when he looked in his book! He ended up giving us 5 pesos back so we paid 50, the next morning Rosie confirmed that that was way to much. Next time I was in town I actually went back to the dispatcher and told him. He didn't know what to say.

Workaway was deff a great experience, two weeks was a good amount of time although. I got used the routine and when it was time to start traveling again I had to get back into it!

cherry pickin'

wood cutting

forest clearing clean up, this used to have a cabin on it

taa daa. finishedour horse poo collectionour house

cherry pitting

Rosie's house, breakfast outside

Nessie made out of bottles

Lago Puelo

acrobatics in the park

Band in the park

Nick's conquered wood pile

La Cascada Escondida

Building woodshed walls

my cherry pie!inside our house

staining wallschainsaw funRosie and her new woodshed walls

El Chalten, a town within a national park.

We decided to head over here before going to El bolson since we diiid come down to Patagonia to do some trekking and so far had only done about 5 hours worth. So after spending a terrific New Years at Erratic Rock Hostel we went back to El Calafate, Argentina and that night took a bus up to Chalten. By the time we got there it was pretty late and we decided to camp instead of staying at a hostel. We found a camp site, El Relincho, which cost 35 pesos per person ($9) and we paid for 2 nights. Finally we got to use the tent and stove!! The next day we just got to know the town, buy food (like always, that's all we do) and learned about the trails in the area. El Chalten is known for it's mountain Fitz Roy, which means fire mountain or something in the native language of the peoples that used to live here. We planned out our week, all depending on weather since a cloudy day can ruin a view and probably ate some more.

On our second full day we walked to Laguna Torre where there was a glacier to see and the mountain Cerro Torre. We did it as a day hike but there was a campsite close by for those who wanted to camp. It was about 2 1/2 - 3 hour hike there and we hung around for an hour then hiked back so a 7 hour day. Very nice out but near the laguna it was sooo windy! There were actually walls made of rocks that you could duck behind when it got really bad. On the way back to town we ran into one of the workers at Erratic Rock Hostel who had come over to hike for 8 days, did not expect to see him on the trail but it was awesome that we did!

Our third day we were going to do a four hour hike to a look out point where you can see the whole valley and surrounding mountains but it was pretty cloudy and not worth it to go out. Instead we moved to a hostel for the night and got our bags ready for an overnight hike we doing the next night. Later we walked an hour to see a waterfall, Chorrillo del Salto, and put our feet in the mountain stream. It was cold.

Our fourth and fifth day were my favourites. We headed out at 10 to hike to Poincenot, a campsite close to Fitz Roy. It was pretty cloudy though so we couldn't see the mountains as we hiked and a little chilly. It was a three hour hike mostly uphill (I'm so out of shape, I was dying) through the forest and then through a valley. It was so pretty. We set up tent at 1pm, ate our sandwiches and I passed out! Since the days are so long here we knew we had much light left still to go exploring so at four we set out to see Glacier Piedras Blancas. It was a really fun hike through the valley and over streams, as we got closer to the glacier we stared to see many more big rocks until all we saw were very big rocks. So big we had to start climbing on, around and over them, even jumping from rock to rock. It was so much fun plus a great workout and a bit of an adrenaline rush at times (like when I thought I would fall and get swept away by the river flowing under the rocks). There was barely anyone out this way and when we got to the lake and glacier we could relax and enjoy it with only 5 others there. The rock jungle gym was in a valley so going back we climbed a bit higher up the valley and had a quicker time getting back. Tortellini for dinner.

Next day we were going to hike up to Laguna de los Tres where we could get a terrific view of Fitz Roy. We woke up and it was a beautiful, not a cloud in the sky, clear day. We then began to berate ourselves for not setting the alarm and wake up for sunrise (which apparently makes old Fitzy look reddish) and set out toward the trail. OMG what a trail. It was up, it was rocky, it was dry, and I was huffuing and puffing like the damn wolf. Plus, there were all these annoying horse fly looking flies that kept landing all over us and buzzing around our face and sometimes biting my spandexed legs! I think between us we killed about 70! But it's all so worth it!! At the top it's just a terrific view that you can never capture on camera. There is a lake, there is a glacier, there are the mountains and since you're up high you get a great view of the area and Laguna Sucia and the waterfall that goes from Laguna de los Tres down to it. We did a good thing by getting up and out because there werent' many people there at all when we got up to the top. In fact, we didn't pass anyone hiking our way up but going down there were many people going up (this was about midday) who kept asking if they were close. We just kept saying yes hehe. We also saw the Erratic Rock guy hiking up too.

Got back to the tent, had lunch, had a siesta, packed up and hiked back to town because that night at 11:50pm we had a bus to take us to El Bolson up Rt. 40. The rest of the evening we had a shower at the hostel that we stored our bags at and went out for all you can eat pizza (which later made my stomach hurt cuz I ate too much). Then we sat at the terminal and waited... and waited...

Walking around El Chalten

To the waterfall

Walking to Laguna TorreA very windy Laguna Torre with glacier

The Waterfall

Walking to Glacier Piedras Blancas, rocks getting bigger!

Piedras Blancas

The rock jungle gym we took to get to it!

Our view from our campsite at Poincenot in the morning

Hiking up to Laguna de los Tres to see Fitz RoyView of Valley

Laguna de los Tres, Fitz Roy and glacier

We arrived at TDP after an hour and a half bus ride to the park lookin at beautiful scenes and local wildlife. Got our entrance tickets ($30) and took the bus to the third and last stop called Administration to start the hike up the Q (so at the bottom of the tail of the Q)I had lost my water bottle under the bus and a girl at the station gave me a plastic one thank goodness. Inside the building they had info about the local flora and fauna of TDP and a bathroom. Outside there were cold and fierce winds blowing us around, not the best weather to start hiking out in but also normal for Patagonian summer. We also learned that a fire had started the night before and Glacier Grey was closed, but since that would be the last part of our trek we might be ok. We figured out which way to start and were told to keep an eye on the smoke and good luck..

Stopped at a rest stop on the way

We saw many guanacos on the way inDon't do it! (sign in bathroom before entering park)

at Administracion about to set out



The start

This day was going to be a long one, the campsite we originally wanted to get to (Italiano) was closed due to a toilet explosion which left poo everywhere so we had 3 other options... there was a campsite 2 hours in (but that would be silly to hike for 2 hours and camp! and would throw us off a day) go to pay campsite and pay a ridiculous amount of money to set up the tent there or push ourselves to a site 2 hours more from Italiano. We said we'd play it by ear. But the wind was so strong and was pushing us head on it was taking longer to walk anywhere! It was especially difficult because we were mostly walking in fields. Thank goodness the scenery was so stunning! Although it was being kind of ruined by the smoke from the fire in the background.

1st campsite we got to 2 hours in

With the wind pushing at us relentlessly we decided to get to the closer, paid campsite because we knew we wouldn't be able to make it to the free, farther away campsite that day. As we got closer we started to climb up and down some hills. We climbed up one and saw an amazing lake, sooo blue, unfortunately the smoke from the fire was hiding half of the mountain in the background.



As we were nearing the campsite an Australian family passed us and the dad told us that they were closing the park and evacuating people out! I kinda had a feeling this would happen...

When we made it to the paid campsite, Paine Grande, we saw how close the fire was. People were lining up to get evacuated by the catamaran.

So we lined up to get out of the park, rumor had it that it was closingGetting closer! soon it would be only 1 Kilometer away

Ash was starting to fall on us and it was getting a bit hard to breath, but not to bad. It was also getting really cold!

This is them closing the gate when the catamaran became full, of course right in front of us.

We had an hour wait for the catamaran to come back and by this time we were really cold since we had stopped hiking and were standing around. So we did the best thing we could do, eat our food.

spraying the area around the hotel in hopes to get the vegetation wet

yeeaah...good luck w those doing much

smoke is really close now! catamaran arrives again

This is how much the smoke advanced by the time we got on the boat. They managed to get everyone on this boatThe hotel staff had to get on our boat as well, this guy stopped before getting on the boat holding the flag of Magallanes and Antartica Chilena Region (or their regional flag) to his face and crying, while the fire destroyed one of the most visited places in ChileView from the boat as we pulled away. That's actually the sun shining, not the fire.Picture I took from the bus as we drove out of the park

So 12 hours after we left the hostel in the morning, thinking we would be back in 9 days, we arrived back and of course had no beds. We ended up in another hostel across the plaza owned by a very nice Chilean who guides at the park. At this point we didn't know how much of the park the fire would hit and thought maybe we could get back in a couple days when it died down. The hostel owner, Shakana, said he would take our entry tickets with him the next day and get them stamped and signed for us so we would be able to enter again without paying again (we weren't sure if they would make us pay again but we figured they would).

The next day we went back to Erratic Rock to see if we could stay on a couch for cheaper since we hadn't budgeted for this thinking we would be camping, at least we had all the camp food though. We were hearing reports that the fire was spreading but the park was still open and the back part was hikeable so we made plans to return for a 4 day hike since we had come all the way down here. Unfortunately the fire had spread more due to the winds and later that night they finally closed the park and were evacuating everyone. I had some PC friends hiking at the time and we were waiting for them to come back, around 12 am they still hadn't and we figured they'd be back the next morning when more buses were going out. We also got to take their beds in the hostel.

One of the guides who works at this hostel actually was near where the fire had started. He saw a group of people camping illegally by a river and later saw the smoke. He went up and tried to do what he could to put it out. He was out there for 4 or 5 hours he said before anyone (park ppl) even showed up. Many of the local people here are saying that it's just as much the Chilean gov fault as the people who started the campfire. They say that they have no orginization or plans for something like this. This is the third big fire to start in that area and still nothing is done to protect the park, no pumps put in or more trained people. The guide was saying that they should be prepared for this because people are stupid and will do stupid things and they have to bet on this happening.

So we've been hanging out here at the hostel just listening to reports and hanging out with everyone. The fire burnt the buildings by the catamaran the night we got evacuated and we heard that it was heading down the tail, the part we had just walked up and had burnt that campsite we passed, carretas. At the moment more than 11,000 hectares have been burnt. Such a shame, the park had a fire in 2005 that was started by a Czech tourist camping in an unauthorized area meant for grazing when his camp stove caught fire and burned over 13,000 hectares of the park. This area in Chile isn't meant to have forest fires and the trees are slow growing so you can still see the effects from this fire (burnt trees).

The buses out are all packed and we're leaving after New Years day to go to El Chalten in Argentina and do some camping finally!

I heard on the news today that they had a confession from one person out of a group they detained. A 23 year old Israeli.

I think it's all an example of the same ol same ol, money taking precedence over everything. I've heard that the park didn't regulate how many people are in there at one time or have proper trained park guards. It was just there as a money maker for the government. I mean, they didn't even close the park right away!! I'm glad I at least got in there to see it. I hope this is a lesson learned for a lot of people.

Back in Puerto Natales, locals protesting about the gov'nts reaction and what will happen now. This is the beginning of the tourist season and they were banking on it for their livelyhood, no they want to know 'now what?.

It took us 51/2 hours to get from Calafate to Puerto Natales, the base camp for doing a Torres del Paine hike. We had to cross the boarder into Chile which took maybe 45 mins to get everyone stamped in and the bags through the x-ray. I had to empty my bag because there was a bottle of olive oil in it (which thank goodness they didn't take away!) and they let me keep the nuts and seeds I had because they were roasted. Another couple from the US threw out all their food just to be safe but accidentally left an apple in the bag and they made her refill out the customs form, claim the apple, throw it away and then wanted to fine her! I'm glad I didn't get all that! After arriving we went to our hostel, Erratic Rock, and went straight to the talk they offer at 3pm everyday to get you ready to hike the trails. Because of the talk we decided we would hike the Q. What people most normally do is hike the trail in a form of a W to see all the good stuff in the middle, it's about a 4 day 3 night hike. Less people choose to do the circuit which is a 8 day hike and the Q is the circuit plus a hike up the 'tail' into the circuit. After the talk we went into town to buy 9 days worth of food and came back to back our bags ready to go for a 7:30 bus ride to the park!

The road downWe left Puerto Madryn the way we came in, on the top front seat of the bus.We were told that we couldn't get a direct bus to El Calafate and we would have to take two buses, one to Rio Gallegos then up to El Calafate, but as it turns out you can take a bus direct! We booked it with with RP Transport and they also offered us a 30% off bus ticket to get to Perrito Moreno which was awesome. It took us 21 hours to get to El Calafate which includes a one hour stop we made outside of Perto Madryn to fix the video player on the bus which they then blasted Fast and Furious 235 out of. They also put on Due Date and when it was finished no one turned it off so it played again and when that was finished no one turned it off and it would have played again if someone hadn't gotten up and told them.

So the biggest thing El Calafate has to offer that is close by is the Perrito Moreno glacier which is one of the only glaciers in the world that is still advancing. After our first night in Hostel Buenos Aires we had tickets to go the next day to the park. Our bus ticket was only 70 pesos instead of 100 pesos because of our discount, the park entrance was 100 pesos because we are foreigners (about $23) and we took a boat ride out to see one side of the glacier up close (70 pesos). The area is sooo pretty and the glacier is really amazing. After the boat ride the bus took us to the part of the park with all these walkway trails that take you to different parts of the glacier. In one area you can see all these little icebergs floating in the water that had fallen from the glacier and if you sit around long enough you will see a part of the ice fall of and crash into the water and make a terrific noise. Very cool. The ice that falls off looks pretty small but it makes such a grand noise. We spent about 5 hours there and most of it was just sitting and looking at the glacier. We didn't even do most of the trails, just started a long one that took you down by the shoreline. We left at 4:15 and I passed out on the way back.

We planned on only staying 2 nights but had to stay one more because the bus was sold out to get to Puerto Natales on the day we wanted to go. It was a nice day so we took a walk down by Lago Argentina and through the town and had some icecream.

roadside view going to the park

view of Perrito Moreno glacier from the roadboat tour

Rupture zone

Path to the coastwalking near lago argentina in el calafate

We spent four days in Puerto Madryn, which is a town founded by Welsh settlers who came over from Britain wanting to preserve their Welshy ways. The town was interesting. When first coming in it's not so nice looking, very cementy, but down more toward the beach and touristy bits it was pretty cute. It took us around 15 hours to get from Buenos Aires to PM and we had the top front seats with the nice view aaand we were told it was a half bed seat but it was really a full bed seat! Not only that but we stopped at a rest stop and were able to get a sit down dinner of raviolis included in the ticket!

Anyway, we pulled into PM and did not have a hostel so spent almost an hour in the bus terminal trying to figure out one to go to. There was a sign up with prices but when calling we found out the prices were higher. We chose one called Don't Worry Be Happy because it was $12 a night but it was very cramped and didn't have a nice vibe to it so immediately we went looking for another hostel to book into the next day and we found one called Hi Patagonia which seemed to have an awesome vibe. Then we walked along the beach to check out a campsite that was another possibility but it turned out to be not so nice for the price they wanted. It was also located in the spot where the Welsh first landed and there were remains of the caves they dug out to live in.

The next day we moved into the new hostel and it was so much better! although $17 a night it was worth it. To be able to see the wildlife in the area you either need to do it through a booked tour or you can go see them in your own car. So if you're a backpacker you pretty much have to use a tour. They have such a monopoly on the whole thing that you can't get a local bus to get to any of the reserves and the tours are expensive!! We thought we could do it cheaper by finding two other people and renting a car, so the second day we were there was a beach day/info gathering day. There is a peninsula there called Valdez which has Southern Right Wales and Orcas and sea lions and little black and white dolphins only found here and guanacos (like llamas) and Magellin Penguins. There is also a place called Punta Tumbo where there is a huge colonies of Magellan Penguins and that's where I wanted to go. After running around like crazy trying to rent a car we realized it was to risky, someone had to put it on their credit card and if something happened it would be alot of money to fix, and things could happen on those stone roads so in the end we did take the tour to see the penguins for $60. Also included was a stop in a town with Welsh tea houses and in another town with a museum about the dinosaurs of the area. We didnt' go into either of those though because we are penny pinching backpackers but the penguins are soo cute!!! The babies had hatched last month so they were about and the parents were taking turns watching them and going to the sea to eat and get fat to feed the babies. We saw one penguin coming back from the sea so fat that he was extra waddling and had to stop to take a break. Our guide told us that Sept is the best month to visit it all because all the animals are out and active. The whales are around and the penguins are fighting for nests and the male elephant seals visit their harems..

Bus ridinGood museum to see

The Beach

Old Welsh cave

Ash in the sky floating over from the volcano in Chile

Penguins!!

hum dee dum, just another tourist

The coloney by the beach, we had to stay behind the rocks

The last two days we were here got pretty chilly. It was funny to think we were on the beach the first two days and then wearing jackets the second two! We spent five days there and don't have too much to show for it but it was a great hostel so it was ok!

After packing what feels like half my house into three bags that I apparently feel I need to lug around South America and saying goodbye to everyone Nick and I were ready to head out of Paraguay.

We bought our tickets a few days before to head out of Carapegua around noon and arrive in Buenos Aires the next day. We took a Rio Parana bus, double decker, semi-cama that I knew I wouldnt sleep too well on but we need to be money concious now. We ended up sitting behind the one seat that was broken, permanently in the all the way down position and across from us was the most attention seeking, loud woman and child pair. I'm mean, the girl was making noises, talking loudly and literally jumping in the isle while the mom blasted music from her cell phone for most of the 22 hour journey. Normally it's not 22 hours but it took 3 hours to cross from Encarn into Posadas plus the bus stopped/broke down? a couple times along the way. But we made it and now we're on our way!!

The hostel is called Pampa Hostel in Belgrano. We picked this hostel because it aws next to a camping store we wanted to buy a camping stove at :p It's aaalll the way at the end of the subte D line! We're only here for 2 days, it's baisically a stop off before we head down to Puerto Madryn, Patagonia. Yesterday we pretty much just got the stove and hung out at the hostel. Today, our second day, we headed down to Avinida Florida so nick could exchange his travelers checks (SUCH A PAIN IN THE ASS ALWAYS!) and to hang out. On the subway 4 guys got on speaking in English and Nick noticed one had a Peace Corps sticker on his water bottle. Turns out they were volunteers from Peru and COS'd in Nov and have been traveling around. It was really amazing that they just happend to come on and stand by us! I would have loved to have gotten to talk to them more about their experience!

It was a really nice day to walk around and take in the BA atmosphere. We saw some good street music, I got some spandex pants, we changed what was left of our Guaranis for $18, saw people in costumes marching and the street was closed because all these commercials were being shot which we watched. Very long process. Tonight I will repack my bags and we're headin out tomorrow early for the bus to Perto Madryn! Not ready to leave feels like we just got here! Oh wait, we did...

Doesn't feel like christmas!

BA!

He can paint with his feet!

Commercial filming. Wonder what he'll be pushing?

more filming

December 9th I officially swore out as a Peace Corps volunteer, and I still don't think it has hit me yet. It was a hectic time gearing up for the 9th and the days thereafter. Instead of doing one big goodbye party I decided to do a bunch of small ones at different houses. I even had a small one at the school with some teachers and gave them all my environmental ed material with hopes that someone will look at it! They've had 6 years of EE volunteers in that school now I think they know what to do!

We (my group) also had a big ol goodbye party at a hotel for 2 nights before swear out which went by too quickly. Funny story, on the day we had to get to the hotel for the party was also the day before a PY holiday, The Virgin of Caacupe day, where many people would be making a pilgrimage to the cathedral in Caacupe to visit the virgin and get a wish or something. Lauren and I left around noon and hoped the buses wouldn't be too packed, the hotel we had to go to was very close to Caacupe. We lucked out and got on a bus while it was empty so we were able to put all the bags and suitcases we had in the back(Lauren had all her stuff with her since she was leaving after the close of service conference friday). Unfortunately the bus got really crowded and they bus helper never told us when to get off so we ended up going to Caacupe! It was a pretty cool scene with everyone walking up and people selling stuff on the side of the road. We took another bus back down the hill to a fork in the road that we should have gotten off at, except we got off the bus too late and actually had to walk with the pilgrimage people and all our bags for a few mins to the fork. I guess I did a mini pilgrimage!? We got to the right bus stop to get to the hotel and it started to rain and no buses were coming because they all decided to make some money and go take people to Caacupe. Thankfully the hotel came and picked us up all wet with all our stuff!!

Anyway, the close of service ceremony was really nice and that night we had our last Ahendu concert where I saw many of my friends for the last time, since a bunch were leaving the country the next day very early. Nick and I went back to site though since I still had more people to say goodbye to aaand pack for our South America trip. It was really sweet to say goodbye to all the PY'an friends I made here, they gave me gifts and told us we had to come back to visit. My almacen lady down the road from my house couldn't even handle the goodbye, I gave her an oven mitt and she started crying and crossing herself and had to walk away. It was really sad to say bye to Meech kitty because she doesn't know that after we leave we're not coming back. Thankfully another volunteer is coming to live in my house and take care of her. It's also a good thing because there is so much stuff in my house that she gets to be in charge of now!

Goodbye Meechi-Moo

I have to say that I am happy with how my service went. I didn't 'save the world' but I think the things I accomplished with my school were very successful, especially my end of the year event and recycling project. I was ready to leave but there will be things I will miss about Py like the friends I made, the tranquiloness and watermelon season. But onwards and upwards, literally, because we're going to the bottom of the continent and working our way to the top!

I can barely even collect my thoughts about end of service because there was SO MUCH going on with the packing and goodbyes and trip planning and memorial service for a fellow volunteer and, as I mentioned, it still hasn't sunk in. But..it was a great experience, and I'm very glad I did it.

What the tetra paks turn into once recycled!

The old taju!

tree hugginWalking out to the wetlands by David's site

Preparing for the event about to take place Caution sad pics!!!

Burning of the wetlands during a carpincho (biggest rodent) hunt. They set a fire to scare them out of the middle so they come on shore.

David's host brothers collected these baby parrots from the woods to sell in the city for ten mil each ($2.50). They know it's wrong to do but...money drives us all. This really was upsetting for me to see.

Rained that night so Lauren and I had to walk back to her house, 2 hours and 20 mins! This is the road we just walked downBarefoot

Big success! My fair

Ignore the date!it was not 2009!

Preschool, kindergarden and 1st grade's set for 'Jaha Jaguata'Lunch

Singing Jaha Jaguata

2nd Grade, where is the water on the earth

Most is in the oceans!3rd Grade, The Giving Tree

4th Grade, Mural presentation

5th Grade, Recycling6th Grade, Skit of a classroom teaching about migratory birds

5th Grade garbage decomposition timeline

Glass never decomposes!Me and Eli, thedirector of my sector

The End

Cutting milk boxes to make ornaments

Cutting bottles to make the tree branches

Federico directing

glueing magazine pieces to the bottlesDecorating the tree

The trees

All the milk boxes we collected since March, about 1,500. Federico will now recycle them into 'wood'

for my PC service.

It has been about four months since I've written in the blog, and that is quite a long time I know. Lots has happened of course and now my service is winding down. Lets see...

August: was all about my idea to have an end of the year assembly for the parents, featuring each grade presenting an environmental theme that we did over the last two years. The vice principal liked the idea so I went home and put together something for each grade.

preschool, kindergarden and first grade: singing a song together called 'jaha jaguata' (let's go walk!) It's like the going on a bear hunt song where you stumble upon things in your journey that you can't possibly go around, so you must (climb, swim, trudge) through.

second grade's theme: Water. They will present where the water is found in our world and how much we can actually use.

third grade's theme: Trees. They will do 'The Giving Tree' as a play.

fourth grade's theme: They will present the mural I painted and explain what is extinction in the form of a tv nature show.

fifth grade's theme: Garbage. They will talk about recycling and the trash decomposition timeline.

sixth grade's theme: Migratory birds in Paraguay. They represent what we learned during our bird festivals.

So August was all about presenting the idea to the teachers and giving them the material for them to work on with the kids. I helped but had to leave them because ...

In September I was way busy!!

First I had my Close of Service conference. My entire G met up again for a three day training on what we need to do before we leave, what to expect when going home and everything in between.

At Iguazu fallsFrom there I went to Asuncion to collect my mother! Yes my mom came to visit me aaaaalllll the way down here in my little country. We spent some time in Asuncion meeting up with friends and going to the botanical garden, and when our lungs couldn't take it anymore we headed down to my town. My neighbors were so excited they came over to see my mom and bring over some samples of typical PY food and to tell me how old and ugly I was compared to my mom. We visited one of my schools so she could see my kindergarden class I worked with and she had her first taste of terere and liked it. All the kids cheered. We visited Lauren out in her site for my mom to get a taste of the countryside, which she loved. She got to see my blanket being made and make chipa and sopa paraguaya in the traditional brick oven (tatakua, was so good) and enjoy the family. Then we headed over to Argentiinaaa to go to Iguazu Falls. The journey there and back was not so premium and Ciudad del Este is just a dirty rip off but the falls, of course, are beautiful. We went on a tour of the Atlantic Forest with a guide and walked about the falls. Perfect day for it. Stayed in town for two nights and on the way back stopped in Villa Rica to visit another friend and see the carpinchos but 1. it was raining and 2. we had about half an hour. Back home she got to meet one of my Paraguayan friends and her family. They were so nice and generous to her, they gave her gifts and cooked us a great lunch. It was really nice. Then just like that it was time for her to go and time for me to get ready fooor....

A trip to Buenos Aires with a group of us girls. We had rented an apartment for the week for all of us, it was a lot of fun. We stayed in Palermo Soho and just toured around, shopped,saw Katy Perry, went on a gay pub crawl, ate alot and shopped some more. It was a great week. And that's pretty much all of Sept.

October: was general site stuff. Checking up with the school to see how it was going for our big day. Getting ready for a recycled art day with someone in Asuncion who turns tetra paks (the milk and juice boxes) into a material like wood. He was going to come to explain his project and do some crafts with the kids using garbage. Each year the school does a pedigogical fair for the parents to show off what the kids have worked on all year long. This year they decided to combine that with my assembly which was awesome news. It meant everyone would be really into it and people from the municipality would come and other schools and hopefully parents. I also met the trainees this month because I went in to do a training day about working in the schools.

November: Recycled art day, fair, more training activity, language exam. The recycled art day and fair were a huge success! Monday we made christmas trees out of plastic bottles and tetra paks, tues was practice for the fair and David's long field training (which I did last year, and David was one of my trainees..now look! full circle) passed through and I took them to see my school, we hung out at the firehouse and saw Rebecca's rabbits.

Wed was the fair! The director of PC came out and my director of the environmental sector as well. It went so well, I was so proud of what each grade did with their subject and how they presented it! The school was freshly painted for the event and the broken steps fixed too, so that was a plus. All the classrooms were decorated with the work they had done over the year and they looked great! After I went out with Lauren to David's site to meet back up with the trainees and help out. In David's site there is something very rare in Paraguay, a huge Taju tree. It's the national tree of PY and the one that was featured in my mural at the school. This tree must be over 450 years old. It's amazing to see a tree with that many years and even more amazing that it's in this country....with it's deforestation rates through the roof.

What else is happening this month... Black Eyed Peas concert! my medical and dentist exam (woohoo), thanksgiving and general preparing to leave.

and that's the update!

Winter is coming to an end down here in my corner of the world, I think. It's almost like someone playing with a light switch: on/off on/off on/off~ hot/cold hot/cold hot/cold. One day can be in the high 80s and sunny and the next cold enough for me to not want to leave my bed. Very curious the weather in this country. Today it reeallly wanted to rain, clouds all dark and ominous, wind slamming my doors and windows like a haunted house, me running back and forth taking inside my just washed laundry...and then nothing. But enough about the weather...

Lets take a look at my garden, specifically my worm compost. I started it about four months ago or maybe five and harvested my first batch last week! It could have been done sooner but i did keep adding rabbit poo and old veggies. This is just in time as I am wanting to get in some more veggies before I have to leave in three and a half months *gasp*. I've just planted all sorts of different cucumbers just because they are delicious and grow very well here. Anyway, in order to harvest the compost I had to get the worms out so they could go to work on the next batch. There are a bunch of ways to do this but I decided to do some worm wrangling. Baisically, I put a bit of compost on a tarp in the sun and put some new compost on the tarp in a shady part. Theoretically the worms should run from the sun part to the shade because they don't want to develop wrinkles or melanoma and should then dive into the new stuff. What really happened was, after I spread out the compost to expose them to the sun they would just squirm around till they found another worm and try to hide under him/her (I'm pretty sure they're all hermaphrodites) till there was a worm ball. Or they would hide under some smaller bits of compost. So really it turned into me picking worms out one by one and putting them into the new stuff. After a couple hours this was no longer fun so i decided on another method of putting a roof tile in the suitcase, putting new stuff on one side and the old stuff on the other and hoping they would all wiggle their way under the tile to the new stuff!! fingers crossed. I'd also like to add that I started with about 14 worms and at the moment there's got to be around 1,000. When they're happy, they're happy.

Garden as of 2 weeks ago

Lil pepper so cute

Worm wranglin! Git to the shade! Gave up wrangling and trying the crossing over method. New stuff on right, composted stuff on left.

Ok. Since those 4 pictures took about 45 mins to upload that is all I can handle for tonight but I will update very soon about other aspects of my life. It's not all about worms ya know!

Once again it's Dia de Arbol, June 19th, and since it falls on a Sunday this year I will be doing stuff in the school Tues & Wed. Last year I think I talked about what I did in the school and Paraguay vs. trees. This year I would like to talk about a very important forest called the Atlantic Forest known in Paraguay as El Bosque Atlántico del Alto Paraná or BAAPA. I apologize that this post will be a bit sad and depressing but what isn't when we're talking about the state of the environment these days.

(Most of this is taken from our 'descovering the Atlantic Forest' book I have that was made by pc volunteers and Wikapedia :p

The Atlantic Forest is a tropical forest found mostly in Brazil and southeast Paraguay and a small part of Argentina. It contains ecosystems not found anywhere else in the world. It has also been being hacked apart since colonial times mostly to make room for sugarcane plantations (thanks sweet tooth), then coffee plantations and urbanization. It's estimated that only 10% of the forest is left and broken up into isolated hilltops and of course hosts a whooole boatload of endangered species, many that are endemic only to this forest.

In Paraguay the Atlantic Forest has been totally devastated by deforestation. It used to spread over most of the lower part of the country but now only 6% remains in small patches.

There are a bunch of different orginizations trying to reforest and teach people about the importance of the BAAPA and sustainable use of it, but I think what would help the most are laws (ok there are laws) but ENFORCED laws to protect it!

some facts from biodiversityhotspots.org

unique and threatened flora and fauna..

plants: The Atlantic Forest has been floristically isolated from other South American tropical forests by the savannas and woodlands of the Cerrado for thousands of years, explaining the region’s remarkably high plant endemism—of 20,000 vascular plant species occurring there, about 8,000 are endemic. Endemism in trees is particularly high, with more than half the species found nowhere else.

Birds

The Atlantic Forest has spectacular bird diversity, with over 930 species, about 15 percent of which are found nowhere else. There are 23 endemic genera. Because most of the region's forests have been cleared during 500 years of exploitation, many species are now threatened, and at least one is extinct in the wild, the Alagoas curassow ( Crax mitu). The species was last sighted in the wild in 1987 and now exists only in a small captive population in Rio de Janeiro.

Mammals

More than 70 mammals, of a total of over 260 species occurring, are endemic to the Atlantic Forest. They include interesting species such as the thin-spined porcupine ( Chaetomys subspinosus, VU) and painted tree rat or cacao rat ( Callistomys pictus), which represent monotypic genera, and the maned sloth ( Bradypus torquatus, EN), a larger relative of the widespread three-toed sloths ( B. tridactylus and B. variegatus). One particularly notable endemic is the Brazilian arboreal mouse ( Rhagomys rufescens, CR), one of the rarest of the South American mammals. Originally described from a single specimen collected in the state of Rio de Janeiro in the 19th century, a second specimen was only recently discovered in Viçosa in Minas Gerais.

The destruction of the BAAPA from 1945 to 2009

It's a sad time to be a tree around this time of year. It's haircut time, aalll of it must go! So I'm no expert at tree pruning but I'm pretty sure it's not good to hack every single branch with leaves on it off with a machete. I've read it can make the tree susceptible to disease when a haphazard whack is used instead of a clean cut with a saw or chainsaw. Also cutting off all the leaves puts the tree into shock, or so I've heard.

The tree in front of my house has gone through it leaving me with less shade for my worm compost and the other tree was just cut down all together. But, the leaves always grow back, and pretty fast. So I guess it works, it's just very ugly looking at a tree w no leaves all hacked up and I'm sure the tree doesn't like it either!!

ok i tried to turn the pic but blogger is not to user friendly when it comes to pics so, hopefully you can get the gist from this!!!!

I've been putting off sitting down and writing a blog for weeeeks now (ok fine, months). But what I have done was keep a list of things I wanted to write about! There seems to be a trend with these PC blogs. In the beginning we keep up with it, adding pictures and funny stories of the new and weird things we witness or are going through. Keeping track of what we've been doing or what we plan to do. But as time goes by the blog updates become fewer and fewer until we're updating once evey 3 months, or give up on it totally. Ok, some people are better than others but I do notice this a lot. For me, it's a feeling of having nothing to report! I've gotten used to my life here and think of nothing as new now. But then I thought, it doesn't have to be about stuff I've been doing... I can write about things I notice about this country, that to me is normal, but back home is very different. I can write about how at the supermarket the cashier will give me candies instead of change or that Dia del maestro (teacher day) is a big deal here. There's lots to write about! So I'm going to keep a list of things I think about throughout the weeks to share.

News in Py.

I was visiting my friend Elvita's house around dinner time/news time. While we were finishing up or tortillas (Milk,flour, egg, py cheese, water- deep fried. not my fav) we were watching the news about this horrible story of a mentally unstable man who had stabbed a 5 year old to death. On the tv there was an angry crowd with one particularly upset woman yelling into the camera about wanting to see justice, wanting to see this man in jail. So what did the news cameras do? Went with the angry woman into the jail to see the guy! They were sticking the camera through the bars asking him if he killed the boy, which he said no. It's just something you would not see on tv in the US. Following a angry, yelling woman into the jail!

Plastic bottles and fishing.

My fishing trip into the campo was nice/tranquilo/fish massacre. I went with my neighbors a couple Sundays ago for some fishing in a cow field. We used bamboo poles and hunks of meet to catch these brown fish w sharp, little teeth. I felt very Huck Finn-y. I was happy with the four I caught, and it took awhile! But my neighbors would just put the line in and pull out a fish just like that. They must have caught in total over 200 little fish! Anyway, at the end of the day they had thrown seven 2L plastic bottles all about plus a few wine boxes. I gathered them up since I had a bad feeling they were going to leave them, and sure enough when it was time to go I was told to leave them there. I said 'noooo, i'm here for environmental education I can't just leave these here!'. My one neighbor, a retired teacher, then said 'oh yes, plastic takes over 500 years to decompose.' !!!!! I was shocked she knew that, and also upset that they know these facts yet don't bother to act on them. I brought the bottles back to the car. After we arrived home and I went to my house I get a call from my neighbor saying I left my bottles and do I want to get them now or tomorrow. .... So not only have I cleaned up after them, but I now inherit their garbage. Oh joy! More bottles to have hangin about in my house.

English Class.

Ok, It's very frustrating coming from the US where we teach free thinking, to PY where it's all about following and being told what to do. It can really bother me sometimes but I have to step back and remind myself that it's not the kids fault.

Two examples: I do a review in the beginning of each class of what we did last class. I write words on the board that we learned last week and that they wrote in their notebook last week. Yet they still ask me if they should copy what i'm writing on the board. Every week! and every week I say 'if you already have this in your notebook you don't need to write it'. Every week! They're just so used to the teacher writing on the board and telling them what to do and not do.

The other example is when i'm writing on the board and i'm in the way of a student who is trying to copy, they'll yell 'PERMISO PERMISO PERMISO' over and over till I move, even though I'm copying stuff for them to copy. Every week! and every week I say, get up and move to a place you can see!! EVERY WEEK!!!! I don't know if it's just the kids at my school or a byproduct of the PY education system, but it is a test of patients!

Worm compost.

Gettin on really well! Those guys have really multiplied and are busy turning the cow poo, rabbit poo and leaves into lovely soil!

That's enough for now!

Before I started, my garden area needed a little work!

Compost pile before

The making of the bamboo rabbit cage

finished!

Worm compost made out of old suitcase

garden after

The bunny arrives! Chisme wants to play

Compost area after

Dia de Agua, had the teacher do it this year!

demonstration of how we contaminate our waterthe contaminated water plus bottles to show how much water is available on earth

I know it's been awhile but not much has really happened since getting back from Uruguay exept:

Having no internet and dealing with the internet company for a month before it was fixed

Teaching an English class to 5 interested students twice a week, went very well

Sitting around doing nothing

Watching Glee, 30 Rock, The Office and Gossip Girl

Doing a major very late spring cleaning of the house

Another trip to the waterfall close by

Hosting a sweet party and

Going to Buenos Aires.

Ok so that is a alot, but no internet + being busy + preparing for trips= no blogs

It was a pretty hot summer but much more raintastic than the last. I remember last summer never having to take my hammock inside because of rain, and this summer it spends more time inside than out. The past two weeks have been overcast, damp and rainy leading to a stinky, moldy, basement smelling house for me. Thank goodness I'm not allergic to mold or I probably wouldn't be able to live here. Today is the first sunny day in a bit so I took advantage and did some laundry, cleaned the patio and opened up the house to air it out.

So now that things are starting to dry out I can make my way over to Lauren's site to get some bamboo. Why? Because I have a new project in mind for this year that needs to get started now

My project idea: **drumroll**

An Urban Garden Project

Living here in the city may sometimes seem like I'm living in the country with all the roosters crowing, turkeys gobbling, pigs squealing and cows walking down the street..but it's still the city. And while it may sound like people are already doing some urban gardening (and some definitely are, my neighbor has cornstalks) there are still some stereotypes that need to be broken.

1. They think you need a lot of land for a garden and have to grow veggies in rows

2. Not enough composting going on! I've been told that burning leaves is like burning money, and we know what they think about leaves!

I'm sure there's more.

So what I would like to do is set up my house as an example of an 'urban garden' complete with compost, lumbricultura (worm composting) rabbit and container gardens. Everything will help everything else! The bunny will poo which the worms will love, the mango tree will produce leaves which I will start to compost and maybe add into the worms, the compost will go into the containers to grow the veggies. the veggies will be eaten and the restos (scraps) will go to the bunny or compost and the cycle continues.

Once I get it up and running I would like to start having workshops here to show interested families that veggies can be grown in many different things, you don't even need to have dirt in your yard (I have all bricks). Teach them that worm compost is the best compost and that burning leaves is burning $$$. That kitchen scraps can decompose and that keeping rabbits for food can be cleaner, healthier and easier than chickens (just no eggs).

*side note*

I will not be eating my rabbit nor doing the teaching part on rabbit farming, that is my fellow site mate Rebecca's project and while I see the benefits of rabbits they are just too cute so I will only use mine for eating weeds and leftovers and for his poo.

I talked to Eli my 'boss' about it and she was really excited for the idea as is Rebecca and I really hope it works out.

As for the school, I will continue to work there but only if the teachers are willing to participate more and for me to be more in the 'background'. Also the 5 students want to continue the English classes.

When I talked to the Directora the other day she said she wanted to paint a mural on the wall with a tree and animals in it, I'm all for murals with animals so I am looking forward to that and will push them to do it.

Should be a good year!

We have returned from our holidays in Uruguay,and the trip back was the opposite of the trip there. It went very smoothly and everyone was very helpful, in Uruguay and Paraguay! Bus from the hotel to the airport was easy to get and empty, at the airport we only had to pay $25 for both our bags, flight was quick, got into Paraguay fine and it cost us $2 and 2 buses to get from the airport all the way to Carapegua!!

So Christmas at the beach... didn't feel like a holiday at all really! There were no trees, no presents, stockings, nada. But it was ok, it was like taking a break from Christmas really. Nick and I went to the beach after a lazy breakfast. We had gone into town the night before, since Christmas Eve is when people really celebrate down here, like in Paraguay with the countdown to midnight and the fireworks. Luna, the dog from the hostel came with us into town but then we lost her when a firework went off by us and she ran away. Thank goodness when we got back that night she had found her way back!! So, beach Christmas day, Luna came with us again. It was almost like with the hostel you get a dog! She was so sweet and slept outside our door and followed us to the beach and stayed with us. It was really nice to have a dog that can be off leash and not run off and everyone knows who she is. The day was pretty uneventful other than Nick getting trapped in the ocean by this huge yellow lab that wanted to attack him. He was totally fixated on Nick and was watching him and wouldn't let him leave, when he tried to the dog would go after him until Nick backpedaled far enough into the water. Really weird. Finally I was gonna go get a stick or rock or something but instead talked to some people who helped lead him away and we found another place far away from the dog to sit. That's one case for leashing dogs I guess.

, Luna, beach dogLa Pedrera beach, guy kite surfingThe rest of our time in La Pedrera was very tranquilo. Hung out on the beach and tried to not get red skin. Did not do much swimming though because the waves were very rough and it's pretty windy at the beach. Very different temps compared with Paraguay.

Zombie Bunker houseAfter four nights in La Pedrera we hopped on a bus to Punta del Diablo. Luna waited with us on the side of the road for the bus, hopping about in the tall grass like a fox, until the bus came and she came up to say goodbye to us. We didn't want to leave her! Once in Punta we didn't know where the house we were renting was! Only the beach it was by and what it looked like. We had to hike about with our huge backpacks up sand dunes to get a vantage point, then we saw it. The zombie bunker. At least that's what it looked like it could be. Such a contrast from our hostel in La Pedrera. This was very modern, concrete and new as opposed to wooden, old and decorated, but it was a cool place. Brian, Ricardo and Elmer were already there and had stocked the fridge and lined the shelf with 14 bottles of wine. Turns out all three of them are really great cooks so Nick and I ate veeeeery well that week!

Brian cookinPunta del Diablo was at one point a small fishing town, now it's very touristy but not built up like Cancun. There are many very unique looking houses just plopped about in random ways. Apparently there are 600 residents in the winter and in the summer it changes to 25,000!!! When we arrived the explosion hadn't happened yet and it was nice to walk around and look at the shops and hang on the beach.

Some houses in Punta del DiabloLighthouse at Cabo PalonioSea LionsThen came New Years Eve. That day the five of us took a day trip to a place called Cabo Polonia, veery cool place. To keep the environment intact you are not allowed to drive anything down there so there is this huge shuttle truck that buses people out every hour. We got to sit on the top part of it and got a great ride out of it. This place was a total hippy town and veeryy tranquilo. There was a small circle where the shuttle dropped us off that served as the main square I guess. One grocery store, some shops and eateries and a bunch of houses. At one part of the point was a lighthouse and a colony of sea lions! It was a really great place to check out. When it was time to leave we found out the bus we needed to take was not coming. We got back home on pure luck that night, arriving at about 10pm! 2 hours till NYE! We got ready and headed down to the beach where many people were waiting, there was no official countdown everyone just guessed, but at what was close to 12am everyone started shooting off fireworks on the beach, it was AMAZING. Better than any controlled fireworks show I'd been to. They were going off everywhere! It was a great vibe. More dangerous? yes. More fun? YES! After we had a great dinner out and then went to bed.

Fireworks on the beach!the next day it was like an explooosion. The tourists started pouring in. Brazilians and Argentinians mostly. So different from when we first got there. On the morning of the 2nd at 4am Nick, Ricardo and I bussed out to Montevideo. Nick and I had 2 nights left and Ricardo left that same day back for Paraguay.

Montevideo at first kinda seemed like Asuncion to me, but then we got to the 'Old City' part and it was amazing! Old colonial architecture, museums, huge monument and mausoleum of General Artigas, the father of Uruguay. After a bumpy start trying to find a place to stay we ended up at an old mansion turned hotel. It was very colonial feeling and very charming, there was a bar right under it but it didn't keep us up at night. We just wandered about the Old City really, looking at the cool stores and the street vendors and old buildings. Went into some museums and at one point walked by someones house or shop, not sure what it was but it was filled with instruments made out of found objects. They guy even showed us how to play a few, such a cool thing to stumble across but we weren't sure if we had just walked into someones living room. We also walked by someone painting in his house and we could see what he was doing from the window, something I have not seen in Py.

Monument/Mausoleum

And then we left. I don't know if I'll ever find myself in Uruguay again but we did learn things we could have done differently if there is a next time. Or if anyone needs advice, we can help. Good times though, good times.

I appologise for any spelling mistakes, this computer is set to spanish so everything i write has a red squiggle line under it!

Decided to journey to Uruguay for Christmas and New Years. Christmas by the beach, ah. It deff doesn´t feel like christmas when all you do is sweat all day. My association of Christmas is cold, New York City, commercialism and lots of decorations, all of which are not found down here. Ok, there aaare decorations but not to the extent that we have!

Anyway, off to Uruguay we go! We decided we would fly down because it would take 1 1/2 hours as opposed to 18 on a bus. Our flight was at 6:40am so we had to stay in Asuncion the night before and take a taxi to the airport because we didn´t think there would be any buses. Turns out there were buses and one was driving by as we pulled up in our taxi that cost us WAY to much and wasn´t really a taxi but just some worker at the hotel and his car. We get to the airport, checked in ok except for that pesky baggage fee no one told us about when we bought the tickets. $60 less we move onto immigrations where nick had to pay an exit fee (not meee cuz i´m a resident of py hehe) and we headed to the waiting area with our wallets much thinner after all our unexpected spendings.

At this point I´m past the tired stage as we board the plan and find out we have the exit seats, good, we think, more leg room! But soon I realized that the seats don´t recline, the arm rests are different from normal and uncomfortable and you can´t close the blind when the sun 7am sun is shining in your face. Thank god it was a quick flight.

There´s an hour time difference so we landed at 9am tired and hungry. The view of Uruguay from the landing was mostly flat pasture land and the airport was really modern and funky lookin. Got in with no probs, immigration didn´t even ask us why we were here, just said hola..stamp..stamp.. adiós. Now what! We had to get to La Pedrera where we would be staying but we weren´t sure exaclty hooow. I went to talk to the information lady but she was just ignoring me and then was on the phone so I walked away. Nick went to talk to the tourism guy who also appeared to hate his job but we figured out the buses we needed to take to get to the terminal in Montevideo.

The city buses were nicer than what we were used to but getting on was another thing. Firstly, we both had our big bags on us which isn´t easy to squeeze on a bus and people continued to be rude. here´s the thing, I don´t expect to arrive somewhere and have everyone bend over backwards to help me but some common decency woudl be nice. Coming from Paraguay where common decency in public settings is as hard to find as brown rice (the way I get cut in line all the time, infuriating)but I was hopeing here it would be different. So far I was not impressed. Then Nick tried to ask a bus driver who had pulled up if he went by the terminal, the bus driver shut the door in his face. Finally, a bus came that we knew we could get on and as i went to get on it this lady selling random stuff was getting on and asked me what I thought was if this bus was going to the terminal. I wasn´t used to the uruguayan accent yet (which is like an Argintinian BA accent) so that´s what I thought she said. So I said I´m not sure. And she came back with well i´m trying to teach you! and did not say it in a nice way. I said we wanted to go to the terminal and she said two different names and I wasn´t sure what she wanted, if she was trying to help or just wanted to be a bitch. She kept yelling that this wasn´t the bus and finally I´d had enough and just said OK JESUS! She glared. thankfully another bus came after that one left with the same number on it and yes, it took us to the terminal. At this point my frist impression of Uruguay was not good, I was tired, hungry and people were being d´s. I was thinking maybe it would have been easier and cheaper to just have taken the 18 hour bus ride. But, after an uncomfortable ride trying to fit on the bus with our bags we got to the terminal and bought bus tickets out.

The bus ride was nice, not like PY where the bus stops and picks people up the whole time. It was nice and empty with comfy seats and i got to sleeep finally! The country side was really nice, kind of like Py but not, and I couldn´t put my finger on why not. We got to La Pedrera 3 hours later and learned that our hostel wasn´t actually in the town and we had to call to get picked up. Here´s where things started to get better with the people.

the only phone we could find was one that you had to put a phone chip in to use, a chip we did not have. the cyber seemed to be closed so we couldn´t go in and use skype and we weren´t sure what to do. We went back out to stare the phones some more and right then a man pulled up who works with the phones. I asked him what to do and he said we could get a chip at a small grocery store, i told him why we needed it and he said hold on, maybe you can use my thing and with a wink he went to his car and came back out with this phone that he attached to the phone booth! He called the number and gave me the phone and we got our ride. He was so nice! We got to our hostel called La Casa de La Luna. It´s very tranquilo surrounded by bushes and from our room you can see and hear the ocean. It´s a small house converted hostel with a hippy, arty vibe and nice wooden floors and a common room w bean bag chairs and brick walls. our room is small but cosy and I´m not sure but I think there are only two other guests here.

We kinda need a car but walking back into town takes only 20 mins so it´s not to bad. there are soo many houses to rent here, which range from chuchi to funky to cute. A great refresher from the PY houses that all kinda look the same more or less.

So here I am on chirstmas eve with the sound of the beach in the background!

With that I will wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays and appoligise for how long this turned out to be! Hopefully there will be more to come, next we travel to a place called Punto del Diablo where we rented a house with some other volunteers who we will be meeting up with and after back to Montevideo!

Right after my birdfest I had to shift gears to help with the training of the newest batch of volunteers. These guys are our sister G, meaning they’re the next Environmental/agriculture volunteers and I was where they are a year ago. Crazy. I was called in by my old trainer to come back to Guarambare to tell of my experiences in doing big event days. That’s what my service has been mostly, so far. I’ve done things for Earth Day, Tree Day, Water Day, and the birdfest was a pretty big event. Guess that’s where my expertise lie eh? Since this group of EE trainees is bigger than we were last year I had to do my talk twice, one for the first group and the next afternoon with the other group.

I already knew some of the aspirantes (trainees) since a few visited Lauren and I the weekend before this training session. They came to see what it was like to be a volunteer and shadow us for 3 days. It was a good time, they got to help us with our last bird fest!

So I did that, hosted a trainee and came in for a training session. The next thing I had to concentrate on was Long Field. Long Field is when a bunch of trainees and a language teacher go to a volunteers site for a week to do planned activities and practice being a volunteer. I was asked to host 6 trainees and a language teacher. It was actually pretty tough thinking of things to do every day for a week that wasn’t doing the same thing every day and finding families for them to stay with, fortunately the school helped me with that. I ended up planning as followed:

The first day we went to Jirca, a model farm down the ruta from Carapegua. It was set up and run by Japan but right now it’s totally run by Paraguayans. They have demonstration plots to show farmers how to better use their land and about composting and worm composting. It’s a pretty cool place, unfortunately when we went there wasn’t really anyone to show us around, but I think they got the general idea. Then they had time for some language and to prepare for a charla I had set up for them at my main school.

Day two was the charlas in the morning. 2 ppl went to the 4th grade, 2 to the 5th and 2 to the 6th. I had asked the teachers ahead of time what topics they would like covered so the aspirantes got to work with topics like air pollution, aquatic ecosystems and biodomes. They all did great! That afternoon they went out on interviews I had set up with some community members and had some language training.

Day three we went out to Lauren’s site for an agroforestry day. I had gotten some root stock for them to learn about tree grafting. That’s when you take the roots from one tree (root stock), cut a branch or bud off another tree, cut a slit on the root stock and a point on the branch and tape them together. And walla! With luck you will now have the tree of what the branches were. For example, one type (and the easiest) of grafting is a mango graft. You take the root stock of a Paraguayan mango tree and graft a Brazilian mango tree to it. This is beneficial because the roots will be hardy and used to Paraguay while the fruit will be the big, yummy Brazilian type mango. The Paraguayan mangos are smaller and are full of fiberus strings that make it hard to eat. The other type of grafting is with citrus fruits, it’s much harder and involves taking a bud from one citrus tree and sticking it into the roots and stalk of another citrus plant. This all needs to be done when they are saplings and the percentage of takage (is that a word?) is pretty low. I think only 20% of grafted trees take, so they are pretty expensive to buy. Hopefully the ones we did will take. We went to one of Lauren’s contacts house who has an awesome garden goin on, he was interested in doing grafting and we gave him the trees when we were done. He also showed us his garden and how he was using methods that we learned at our IST back in June! He had loads in it, very good utilization of space and abono (fertilizer). He pulled up a beet from one seed bed that was fertilized the normal Py way and one fertilized the way we learned in IST, the difference was amazing!! The normal fert beet was so small compared to the goliath IST method beet! Wish I had a picture. We also planted some trees at his house. After lunch we headed to Lauren’s school so they could see the end of the year fair that schools put on showing all the work they’ve done that year.

Day four was another charla day at the smaller school I work at. One group did garbage charlas with the 4th, 5th, and 6th graders and the other did games with the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders. Then we learned about the artisan work that is done here in Carapegua (hammocks, blankets, crochet, etc.) at the artisan center close to that school and after we went shopping! That night was a movie night complete with popcorn, watermelon, ice cream, soda and chips.

Day five we went over to the next town, Paraguarí, to meet up with an urban youth volunteer and see a war museum and of course have a yummy lunch at the Tropicana, a place I wish was in my site. Then everyone got on a bus to go back to Guarambare and I went back to Cpeg. I had to get to the small school I work with because I had to plan a camping trip with the kindergardeners and my contact. Phew. We planned for it to be thurs night into fri but things changed and it was moved to tues all day but things changed and it just turned into me going in on tues afternoon and singing environmental songs, coloring and making frog masks. I think they liked it.

But back to Long Field, it’s supposed to show the aspirantes what a week would look like as a volunteer, I don’t know anyone who does all that in one week and it was pretty exhausting. I slept in that Sat and it was wonderful. I forgot what it was like to be in training :p

Now I’m gearing up for Thanksgiving, I will be going down south to Encarnación for the weekend with most of the other volunteers. Apparently this happens every year, we rent a hotel and cook and swim and have a jolly good time. I’m looking forward to it. I’ve heard talk that there will even be pumpkin pie…

So that’s what’s been going on. I’m happy now because its watermelon season and we have so far eaten seven watermelons (yes we’re counting) since they first arrived in site 3 weeks ago. So good.

Last monday was the last festival de aves, and other then some paperwork to fill out I can officially say it is over. It took 3 months to exicute, 7 volunteers, about 300 kids and around 15 teachers to pull it off. I say it was a success!

I'll do a quick rundown of each school..(Escuela Basica de Nicaragua is in the previous post)

Monseñor Acha: The biggest school. Had four other volunteers come in to help us and we didn't stay at the school we went to a teachers house that could handle that amount of kids and was kinda campo-ish. This included a bus ride that the directora of the school organized!! We went out twice that day, with 90 kids in the morning and 60 in the afternoon. The bus came to the school, we drove out, did our thing and got back in about 3 hours! Since there were so many kids we broke them into four groups. We would have three games and a birdwalk with two volunteers per game and me for the walk, after 20 min the group would rotate. I did many bird walks that day! We also had a bird costume that we busted out for a skit at the end about why you shouldn't use birds as target practice with your slingshot.

here are some pics from that day:

bus ride out

Tringy! a sandpiper like bird that migrates to PY for the winterNoo!! Don't shoot tringy!!Stop shootin me

a ball of bird masksAt this school I had them do some bird drawings to put outso colorful!

The next school was in Ndavaru, about 7 miles outside of the city center, and with only 30 kids it was done in one afternoon and was really nice! Lauren had been working with this school and we stared off the day with a giving out the cups, a presentation of the bird masks and a play they had been working on. Parents were invited to view this part. After we played a game with all of them that Lauren had made up about migration that involved running and tagging and was a good time. Then we split them into two groups and the teachers and I took half on a birdwalk while Lauren and Andrew played games with the other half, we had a break in the middle then we switched. Then Tringy came out for a group picture! It took us the whole afternoon and was a beautiful day outside. Another great success! This school was the best bird walk that I went on because we were out in the camp and I saw so many things, the teachers really knew the plants and birds and were able to point them out much better than I could have! I saw a monkey nest in a tree, a tarantula hole in the ground, snake skin, crazy fruits and rare birds. I was excited. The kids were as well, every time a bird flew by or was spotted they would get really into it!



Presentation of bird masksThe playBird walk led by Profe WillGroup Pic!

The last school was San Vincente, we did a similar model to the school in Ndavaru since it was small (30 kids) with the mask presentation and skit and all. This time though Lauren and I had 3 aspiring volunteer trainees visiting us. Our sister group has arrived driving home that fact that we've been here for more than a year! So they got to witness and experience ..and help.. on our last bird fest!

Bird beak gameSlingshot game, kids have to hit the x's not the birds

concentrate! BirdwalkGroup pic

So now that it's over I can look back and say it was a great success! Will schools continue to do this after I'm gone? I'd have to honestly answer probably not. A festival is a big thing to plan and teachers are already doing other things that they might not think they could handle it. But at least these kids have more conscientiousness about birds and that's something right there.

Things I would have done differently, just done three schools. Or even better just one. The charla's themselves should have been broken up and done at least 2 different times to really drive the points home. The kids didn't really remember anything we taught them in the charla. Good thing we left a copy with the teacher. Lets home they use it!

I thank everyone who helped me and I think all in all it was a success!

score!

Bird fest is going well...mostly. Today we should be doing a double, two schools, two bird fests, one day, but there was a huuge storm last night with mega mpr winds that knocked down my tv antenna and garlic plant and all sorts of stuff throughout the city. The supervisor of the Environmental sector and the president of the organization Guyra were supposed to come out and watch/help/bring binoculars as well today and it aaalll got cancelled. We have another school to do tomorrow so we really needed those binoculars, so what we did was have our supervisor send them encomienda. Thank goodness for this system. Pretty much someone at some location can put stuff on a bus and send it to your location. So she sent the binoculars, a bird costume that some poor soul will wear and some prizes via the bus and we picked them up on the ruta by my house. So we're all ready for tomorrow!

Now this is our day of games, we did our charla day earlier with all the schools to lead up to this day. So far we've done it with one school.

How it went: With this school it was with the 5th graders only and our plan was to get them all together (there are 2 diff 5th grade classes in the morning and afternoon, four in total) do a big game with both classes together then split them back up. One class went with Lauren and I on a bird walk and the other stayed with Andrew to play some games. Then a break and we would reconvene and play a few big group games all together. Then I would give them their stickers and all would be well. Ok so it didn't go exxaactly like that. I was able to do a big group icebreaker game with them, kinda like tag but with an extinction theme. We did one round and then they were done with that.

We then broke up into the groups so Andrew could do his thing and Lauren and I could go bird watching. We had about 14 kids in the first group, 2 binoculars and no teacher, not by choice... he was just busy making fruit salad.... We pretty much just went to the plaza for 15 mins but there were enough birds there to look at. A little population of green parrots live in the plaza and, of course, lots of pigeons. The kids would get really excited when the spotted a bird and really wanted to see them with the binoculars and would always point them out to me and Lauren. It was cute. But then they all ran to the playground to play, and there was no controlling them. We did the same for the next group until they told us they had to go to gym class and then recess. oookkkk. So much for our event, we just waited till they were done to try and have our big games. At this point we were kinda burnt out because these were the most rooouuudiest kids ever! Sooo hard to settle down and we were just yelling over their voices all the time, it was really difficult! We decided to cut our large games down to one and we only played it once, after the kids ran off before I could give them a sticker. The one teacher who was helping us seemed like he was a step away from having a heart attack from yelling at the kids which also helped in our decision to end early. I just gave the stickers to the teachers to hand out later.

We were scared for the afternoon class and decided to try not to make it long but thankfully it went much smoother! Tomorrows school is a big one, we will be working with 102 kids in the morning and 73 in the afternoon..and there will be some friend coming in to help manage it, 6 volunteers in all we will be!!

So that's what's been goin on round here, stay tuned for more...

Many pigeons in the park

bird beak game

Lika and the storm damage

My bird festival has officially begun as of Monday the 13th! What is a bird fest you ask? It is a day (or many days) to heighten awareness of the birdies (aves). And why? Because birds are a terrific indicator species of how healthy a habitat is. Having a diverse bird population demonstrates that there is a diverse ecosystem afoot. Why is biodiversity important? Because daily, we humans use 40,000 plants, animals, fungus and microbes to make our stuff with. Stuff like medicine, food, and combustibles. When we destroy habitats, we destroy the diversity that we need to survive.

Didja like that? I just snuck in part of my charla (lecture)into this blog. Here in Py, October is a big bird month because of migration. Many birds either pass through or come to Paraguay from up north for the summer here. Paraguay has 708 different species of birds in it and 30% (212) of those birds are migratory. So we here at Cuerpo de Paz team up with Guyra Paraguay to help bring about awareness to Paraguayans about the importance of birds, habitat and biodiversity.

Guyra Paraguay (pronounced goorah, means bird in Guarani) is the Paraguayan offshoot of the Birdlife organization that is dedicated to saving birds around the world, in America it's the Audubon society.

So what have I been doing then? A few volunteers ago some money was donated from one of the volunteers friends and family in the states to do a sweet birdfest near Carapegua. With that money the volunteer was able to get some snacks, rent a bus and take school kids out to a reserve nearby that is a known hotspot for migratory birds. There he played games and they went on a birdwalk complete with binoculars lent by Guyra and a guide from the park. There was plenty of money left over so the next volunteer in the area (the person whom I'm following up) was able to use the money to have another bird fest in the same place. And still there was money left over and they were able to do another bird fest in the same place the next year. Now I'm here.. and there is still money left over for me to use. Que suerte! (what luck). Albeit it's only a small sum compared to what was available for the other bird fests but that's ok.

What I plan/have planned to do:

1.Charlas in the school. I was told the other years prep work in the school was very little, to the kids it was a day of fun games but not much lesson behind them. So me and my guapo (hard working) PCV neighbors Lauren and Andrew, who have come on board to help, me all sat down and decided what was the best for the kids to learn. We came up with Biodiversity, Extinction, PY bird facts and Migration. It seems the teachers don't really know much about it either so it's a good opportunity for them as well. To interested teachers I have been giving a copy of our charla so they can use it again.

2. We're getting a lot of support from Guyra. They will provide binoculars and a bird costume for the game day. They have given me books, stickers and bird watching guides as well to use and donate to the school when we're done.

3. Bird masks. I have a book full of bird masks that the kids can color and cut out and wear for our game day.

4. A game day and bird walk day. We're going to stick around the city because I don't have the funds to bring them out to the reserve, but it's fine because they can see the birds that live right in their backyard. We're doing this with 4 different schools.

5. Plays and drawings of birds so we can have an exhibition day.

6. Maaaybe paint a mural on one of the schools walls about biodiversity.

Andrew teachin that biodiversidad!7. I bought reusable plastic cups and I'm going to have stickers printed out to put on them that I will give each kid as a gift and to teach them about reusing.

So far it's gone well, we've completed the charla in one school (the biggest one) with the 4th, 5th and 6th grades (173 students). Thank goodness for Lauren and Andrew's help!

Before wrapping this up I would like to share 2 things that stood out from giving my charlas...

Lauren, Andrew and the 6th grade class pretending to be super aves#1 I taught the morning 4th grade class on my own and then in the afternoon lauren was there to help me, thank goodness because the afternoon class is much more rambunctious than the morning. Afterwords I said to the teacher the difference between the two classes is amazing and she said yes, the biodiversity. Hehe! Yay new word learned!

The kids pretending to be cold during the winter! Gotta fly south!#2 Lauren and I were right at the end about to finish the charla when a man walked into the class, I thought he was there to give something to the teacher...boy did I get a shock when instead of going over to her desk he stood right in front of us and started selling stickers to the kids!!!! Who does that?! Strait up interrupts us, stands in front of us and just starts selling s*%t?! We were so in shock, and the kids ran up to him to buy some so we had to wait till he was done. Absolutely amazing. So RUUUUUDE! And the teachers didn't even do anything! I'll be ready next time.

Anywho, I'll keep updating how it goes!!

chachau

Ñanday Parrot. Prob caught in the wild and they will prob stay in cages this small for the rest of their lives. This is why we need to educate the people!!Cardenal's in the back cage. Different from ours, only the head is red. I was told they aren't many left. Both these birds were for sale at the mercado in asuncionLauren, Andrew and I work space while we were making the charla

April to August. 4 months. That’s how long it has taken to get me a door for my bedroom. My house has many doorways, 8 in total, and 6 doors. One of those doorless doorways is the main door to my bedroom, for awhile I had a sheet hanging for privacy reasons that served it's purpose. But then my kitten started getting bigger and was soon able to jump on my bed to sleep with me. At first it was cute and I didn't mind the cuddle, but she was taken from her mother to young and because of this she has a little problem. Whenever she feels content and purrs, she also starts to nurse..on me. So I would be awoken at very early every morning with a kitten sucking on my shirt or neck, then she would get up and want to play resulting in her jumping on my face. Not a nice way to wake up. I put up with it though because there really wasn't much I could do without a door. Then she got fleas and I could feel them crawling on me. It was time to ask for a door. I started with the owners of the house to see what they would say. I told them I needed it for the cold and I wanted my room to stay warm. I couldn't tell them the real reason was for a cat, they would just tell me to kick her out of the house or hit her or something. She is too Americanized to be kicked to the curb at this point. Then one day...I saw worms coming out her butt!!!!!! NO WAY!!! LAST STRAW!!! NO MORE CATS IN THE BEDROOM!!!

The reason for all of this We took the door that divided my room from the spare room and leaned it up against my doorway like this... The "door" to my room Other side of current "door" to my room So now we have to walk through the storage room to get to my bedroom, there is no direct way out to the kitchen or livingroom. Bear in mind that my bedroom has three doorways, one going into the storage room, one going into the livingroom (now blocked by door barricade)and the third going into the kitchen which I put my dresser in front of and barricaded the bottom from cats. Now I've been waiting for this door for about two months, I keep asking my neighbor and he says oh yes he has one for me but we need to get someone to look at the doorway to make a frame, he'll come tomorrow. This person never shows up, I leave it alone for another week then ask again. Oh yes I have a door frame and a door I'll bring it tomorrow. Never shows. I leave it alone for a bit. it's now been three months. I go over and hang out with the fam and casually ask about it. He's forgotten alll about. Come by tomorrow at 12! He's not there he's having a siesta. come by at 5. He's not there he's at a meeting. I'm starting to doubt he even has a door. It's 4 months now and we're really puttin the pressure on. It may be customary in Paraguay not to follow through but if you say you have something we're gonna hold you to it! Two weeks ago we saw him and I asked if we could get the door now and he said oooh...well..it's made of wood. maybe tomorrow. There is no door is there.... Then last week he brings us over to his shed and shows us the door, and the frame!!! They're reeeaaaallll!!! But we couldn't take them yet he had to clean the shed. Sigh. At least we know it's there. The next day we had a surprise when we came home and saw the doorframe put over our fence and into the patio..we're halfway there!!!! Then, 2 days ago, I saw him out raking his yard and we went over and he tried to tell us he'd bring it over tomorrow but I was like no it's ok we'll get it today that way you can rest tomorrow. And guess what, we finally got a door!! TV The antenna, a bamboo pole and florescent light The florescent tube with cable connecting to TV

My garden class was moving along swimmingly until we hit a pretty big road block. After we made the tablones (raised beds) in the ground at the site for our garden, we had to wait to put up a fence before we could plant any seeds or transfer any of the growing plants out of the seedboxes. It is very necessary to have a fence because of free roaming chickens. A chicken drive by could ruin all the hard work you've put into a garden within minutes!

I was told the teachers would put up a fence and have the kids plant seeds and transplant the other growing plants while I was away visiting the Iguazu falls in Argentina, when I came back they told me they were sorry they didn't do it and they couldn't do it without me! (Idk maybe they need me as a cheerleader or just someone who keeps showing up and pushing them). So they asked if I would come help them during the winter break which is 2 weeks in July, the same 2 weeks I would be in the States. Upon returning from Los Estados Unidos I learned that the government tacked on another week of break due to cold (they wouldn't last a Jersey winter then!). So by the time I got back to the school there was still no fence up and the plantitas (transplant plants) were muerta (dead).

"We must begin again!" they told me. "But this time we shall plant the plants right here in the school in containers, just the plants that will grow in the winter".

This is what I suggested we do in the first place but I suppose they had to get to that conclusion their own way. So we began once again. This time some students brought some wooden crates from fruit stands and some brought abono (fertilized or composted soil) which we put right into the boxes after lining them with plastic garbage bags with drain holes. The teachers told me where they wanted them to be which is in between these two buildings in a kind of alleyway next the sink. This area probably gets about two hours of sunlight a day, I told them this but...many times... but hey, at least it's close to the sink. I told them if they don't start to sprout better move the location.

Last friday I stopped by to talk to the principal of the school with Lauren, a volunteer who lives close by. While there one of my students came into the office and told me that kids had walked all over our garden, Lauren and I went to look. It didn't appear to be stepped on but there was garbage in one, and all of them were without sprouts. Sigh. Bad location and no one taking the initiative to water them even though I told them and the teacher make sure they get water every day!

I asked lauren how much do I hold their hands with these projects? I know they wanted a school garden and I tried twice to help them with that but I can't be the only person trying, they need to take some initiative as well! How many times do I have to repeat simple things like how much sun a day they should get and how they need water every day... to teachers??!!

Well I tried. And my garden is coming along nicely! The next project I'm working on is a big one. We call it the festival de aves (bird festival) and it's to raise awareness of the importance of birds. It's been done in my site since 2007 and I'm happy to carry on the tradition. More to come.

I would like to take the time to point out the differences in produce here and produce back in the States. I do my shopping at the market and supermarket a couple blocks away. Now, I'm not exactly sure where the fruits and veggies are coming from in the supermarket (could be close by, could be Argentina) but usually the fruits and veggies in the stands at the market come from local farms and gardens and there is such a difference in size from what I'm used to back home. I'm sure here there are no growth hormone genes and whatever else is put into our American produce, does this mean these are the fruits and veggies true sizes???

And at some point my garden will be ready! (If the cats don't jump on it first)...

My Wee Garden

Cantalope (Melón)

Pineapple (Piña)

Green Pepper (Locote)

Cucumber (Pepiño)

We are now in the dead of winter down here, sounds funny saying that since it's August and I know back home it's hot hot hot! But down here it can range anywhere from 80F down to 55F and at night it can be in the 40s. I live in a cement block of a house with sun only hitting one side of it and no heat,and I can tell you that 60F is cold in my icebox house!! At this moment I have on slippers, sweatpants, a hoodie and gloves with fingerholes. It's amazing to think that during the summer just the thought of these clothes made me want to jump in a cold shower! Now I wish I had more!

We've actually just come off the winter break down here, it's supposed to be 2 weeks in July but because it was so cold they extended it to be 3 weeks. Last year they extended it to be 3 weeks as well because of swine flu scares. I couldn't imagine the schools in New Jersey trying to extend the break due to cold, it's hard enough to get a snow day! This extended break worked out well for me though since I just got back from a wonderful 13 day trip back home. I needed that extra week to get back into the swing of things.

So July 31st is Dia De Amistad,friendship day, is a big deal down here. When we told them we don't have one in the states they couldn't believe it. It's pretty much a day to acknowledge your friends by sending them texts or giving them little stuffed bears or signs that say something about amistad. I was told that you should especially be nice to your friends who know all your secrets. Seems like a plesant little holiday, unless of course you don't receive a text, call or any presents. Could get a bit depressing then.

Ok I promis to be better and update my blog more, especially now that I have the interwebs in my house. No excuses!

ChauChau 4 now

So I´ve been doing a garden with the 4th graders of one of my schools. I´ve been teaching them in the classroom for about 4 weeks every friday. So the ministery of education here wants every school to have a garden here to teach kids nutrition and gardening and whatnot, it´s a pretty good idea. Some schools just hire ppl to make them for the shcool and some schools make them theirselves (i think it´s best if they do it theirselves and of course let the kids do it).

The school I´m doing it with is a city school with no land to plant a garden on in the school grounds, so when i mentioned the project about doing one they got really excited since they didn´t have one and it´s something they should have. We found a place to do it (behind the principals house) and last week we went out to make the tablones (raised seed beds). That´s all we had time to do, hopefully this week we can plant some stuff and transplant the seeds we planted 3 weeks ago in almacigos (transplant boxes).

yesterday i went to the school and the vice principal told me she, another teacher and a parent were going back to redo the tablones because.... they´re not pretty enough!!! they have this thing in their head that each raised bed needs to be exactly the same hieght and width and of course, has to look lindo (pretty). I wasn´t to shocked because, well it´s something I would expect here, but still disapointed. The kids (kinda) made the garden and i feel that they should be proud of their work, not be told that it´s being redone because it doesn´t look pretty enough. I guess it´s the whole social idea of conformism instead of individualism here in PY, ideas left over from the dictatorship. Everyone and everything should be more or less the same. (That´s why cheating on tests is ok, so long as everyone passes together to the next grade)

But the farther they get away from the dictatorship i´m sure the more that will change.

Here´s some pics!

I know it’s been awhile so here’s an update!

Work:

I’ve been teaching a weekly garden class with the fourth grade of one of my schools. This Friday will be my fourth class and we have yet to even go out to the garden to make it! Last week we did plant some seeds to transplant though, hopefully they’ve been watering them and giving them sunlight… next week we’ll start the garden.

I’ve started working with another school who seem very into all the stuff we do and teach! They’ve had a garden and a compost pile and we’re going to make a hole to burry garbage and make garbage cans. They also want to plan a kindergarden campout as well as a mural on one of the walls. Oh and make a playground out of recycled stuff. I’m looking forward to working with them.

I’ve also started working with a highschool who wants to so a clean up of the stream that runs through the town. Last week I went out with a couple of teachers and we followed the stream all the way to the spring where it comes out of the earth. It runs out through the campo (countryside) right outside of town and is mostly on private property. It is also a dumping ground for garbage coming out of the sugar factory near town. So I will be working with the students and teachers to help clean it up.

I’m planning on starting a radio program with a fellow volunteer as soon as we get out and talk to the guy.

So that’s what’s on the burner for me workwise.

House:

I’ve had a taste of winter last week…lots of rain. What I’m up against…damp cave house and mold!!! It rained for about a week last week and my house is still drying out. I can see on my walls where it’s wet and where it’s still drying! Today I just noticed that all my pants that were in my wardrobe were all moldy!! As well as my hat and a shirt and my kitchen table, my burkenstocks and my hemp role I brought for bracelets. And worst of all, my pillows!! I went out and bought new ones don’t worry. Every thing was just damp that week including my bed, it was not fun. And there’s really nothing I can do about it but dread the rain and put on fans. I just got over a pretty bad cold/sinus infection..wonder where that came from.

In other news container garden is coming along nicely with lots of sprouts from all the rain.

Nick is here visiting me for a bit and he’s done some wonderful fix ups on my house! So far he’s fixed the drippy toilet string flush, put in more lights in the kitchen so I can see when I cook at the stove (important) put in a switch by my bed so I don’t have to get out of my mosquito net and warm bed to turn it off at night and put in a light over my desk so I can see when I do stuff there. He’s gonna put the door up in my room, chop some of the branches off the mango tree to get some sun through my window and build me a bigger garden space, compost space and worm compost space!!

V happy

Pets:

The kitties have been spayed! Their stitches need to come out this Monday and that will be the end of that. No kittens for us! My hand raised kitten is so easy to handle to clean out her wound, but the bigger street cat is not having it. very scary to clean out hers out, it takes gloves and a towel and an enclosed space.

But chisme is proving to be exactly like Sadie, my dog from home. She has to be the center of attention and would rather be squished, as long as she’s sitting on or near me.

Health:

Like I said before I’ve had a pretty bad cold and for some reason my thumbnail is doing something funky. I’ll put a pic down below.

Personal:

I was feeling pretty frustrated because I can’t just guess what people want from me. I can go in and tell them what I can do and ask them what they want but usually I just get the answer “whatever you want to do” which is fine to have free reign but also It’s not just for me I want them to get something lasting out of it. This town seems to have a pretty good consciousness about environmental issues but I felt like I was on the outside of a fence looking in when people don’t tell me things. For example, we had a parade for Carapegua’s birthday and they had a whole section of students marching for the environment with signs and all that jazz. Why hasn’t anyone told me about these kids?!

That’s why I’m glad that the two new schools I started working with know what they want, I can work with that!

I’m heading off to the states soon for my cousins wedding and quite looking forward to it, plus it will be summer there and I can get away from the cold here! No heat in these houses!

The world cup is starting! First match to watch; England vs. U.S.A then Paraguay vs. Italy!

Everyday I try to do one Peace Corps thing, as I call it. Be it going to the school to organize something or visiting a family, it helps keep the guilt away when I feel like I’m not doing anything. It’s like being self employed and having to get yourself out there to get your things done, if that makes sense.

I exercised for a month and now having in a week and a half. Gotta get back on that.

Gonna head down to Argentina to the Iguazu falls for a few days with Nick 

It’s 4:40 AM. The nights have gotten colder so my fan/white noise maker is off, and every dog near my house (at least 20) are barking. Now I don’t know if this happens every morning since my fan is usually on but my God, how can people live like this! Laying in bed I was motivated to write this blog, and why not, I won’t be sleeping anytime soon.

We North Americans are fortunate to live in a world where spaying and neutering is not only accepted, but in some cases mandatory (like when adopting from a shelter). Most people agree with it knowing it keeps the population down and dogs and kitties off the street, away from starvation, disease and wreaking havoc on the native bird population. Here is a different story. From the many talks I’ve had with Paraguayans I have learned that: I have yet to find a word for spaying (I just say ‘cut the equiptment’ and add gestures) people do have a problem with street dogs but don’t care to do anything about it, there is a shot you can give female dogs every six months for $2, they think castrating a male is bad (machismo society here) and/or people don’t care about the lives of dogs and cats. This last one I can understand, if you’re poor and barely have money for your family why should you care about dogs when you’re just trying to get by. But I live in the city, and there are many well off people here yet the story is the same. They have them mostly to guard the house (usually about 2 or 3 big Sheppard like dogs) but there are also pet dogs too; usually the little, hairy kind who are treated much better than their guard dog counterparts, aka allowed in the house, but just the same usually given rice, mandioca and bread as meals.

What it’s like to live in a world without spaying and neutering…

1. Obviously, there are dogs everywhere you go. In the schools, in the plaza, on every corner (this is also true for chickens and cows except maybe not so much in the plaza or schools, here in the city at least. God knows what it’s like in the country). I’m sure there are many cats as well but they are good hiders.

2. Most of the dogs I see are males because no one wants females. They are either cast out in the streets or fields or killed.

3. Giant dog testicles cannot be ignored. It is not enjoyable.

4. This means that there are a bunch of testosterone crazy males runnin about and things can get a little weird. The other day I had to walk past two male dogs humping on the sidewalk, and I don’t mean the kind of humping to show that one is more dominant than the other. This was different.

5. And so when a female in heat is present there are about 49 males around her going nuts.

6. More aggressive males, more likely attacks.

Which brings me to my story.

I was at my friend Lauren’s site for the night with another friend Julia. Lauren inherited a sweet little girl dog named Luna from the volunteer she followed up. She’s a medium sized dog, golden in color, a little overweight and cute half pointy half floppy ears. That night we watched a movie and hung out, Luna enjoying all the company. The next day it was cloudy, grey and cold and we weren’t sure where the bus would be coming since it was Sunday so we decided to play it safe and walk a little ways down the dirt road to a spot it was sure to go by. Luna was so psyched to go out with us, all we had to say was jaha Luna! (let’s go) and she was jumping all around and spinning in circles.

As we set off we weren’t sure if she should be walking with us because of other dogs, we tried to make her go back but she wanted to come and kept following. Mostly, the other dogs just ran up to her and greeted her, body language alert and curious, sometimes playful. The farther away we got though, the less dogs she knew. As we neared the bus spot we came across this one house that had a chain fence around it, and thank goodness to because inside were three very big German Sheppard males barking at us and very angry. Luna stayed on the other side of the road not wanting to get near. The next house had a smaller dog who started barking but was not in a fence, he started to run over and stopped a little in front of us. Suddenly, from an open part of the gate, came the three Sheppards at top speed. Oh @#$%. The first one got there, body language dominant but not overly aggressive and started to sniff Luna, but a second after that began the smaller dog, having become brave with his 3 bigger pals there, attacked.

After that it was four against one. They all went after our poor girl at once. She cowered, trying to be as non threatening as possible but they wanted to kill. I just rememnber seeing her on her back as they pulled at her skin. We were in shock! We obviously were not about to jump into that and couldn’t find any rocks near us to throw at them. After what seemed like a minute but was probably 7 seconds, Julia yelled “Throw your shoe!” and began taker hers off. At that same time I saw a branch with lots of twigs on it, almost like a broom. Julia threw her shoe as I brandished the branch around my head and threw it. This got their attention and they ran off.

Fortunately Luna was more shocked than anything, the worst of her injuries being a bite on her hip which wasn’t bleeding to bad but made her limp. Poor girl was saved by her fat and loose skin, which was all they were really getting a hold of..and us of course. The worst part of it all was that the people in the house didn’t do a thing. I saw one just sitting and looking out from the window and another come out and close the gate after we all passed. It made us pretty infuriated at the time. After that any dog that came up to us we acted as bodyguards throwing rocks and making the noises that makes dogs go away (yes there are noises here dedicated to that purpose, one is a kissy noise and the other is one of the most ugly noises we can make with our vocal cords. If I accidently make it to your dog when I come back to the states I apologize now!)

I’m happy to report that Luna is doing fine now. They brought her back home and gave her a bath and disinfected the wound. She spent the rest of the day sleeping.

Dogs don’t just attack other dogs, these guard dogs are known to attack people walking by, especially when it gets darker out. To fend them off you make the appropriate noises and throw rocks.

This is what life is like, and it makes me wonder at point does a society make the switch from dog as neglected house protector to dog as much more. I write this more about dogs because, well there isn’t a problem really with cats running out into the streets and attacking (unless rabid of course, but I have yet to see that) or barking or night, and you can’t really see their testicles. Also, here it’s more common to have dogs than cats, I’m still baffled by the amount of women I’ve seen shying away from kittens (how is that possible?) and when a cat does have kittens they are usually killed by dogs anyway. Sad but true. I got my kitten because she was a female and no one wanted her, also there was no way I wanted a dog. The cats stay inside and on the patio, the dog would have to go out on the street where all the other dogs roam free, ready to defend their territory. Oh the stress!

But let me leave you with a happier story! Last night my friends Dan, Emm and Thomas slept over for Dan’s birthday. I was in my room, Tom was on the bed in the living room and Dan and Emm were on a big mattress on the floor. The next morning I go out to the living room and sit on the end of the bed. I look down and see this weird black figure on the floor. As I got a closer look I realized it was the carcass of a tarantula, its legs strewn about beside it, and looked to be headin in the direction of Tom’s bed! One of my cats had killed it during the night and thus saved Tom, Dan or Emm the hiivie jeevies from waking up because a tarantula was slowly crawling up their body. Way to go kitties! And yes, they will both be getting spayed…as soon as I can find a vet who doesn’t just work with cows.

here's a pic of the dead tarantula going for the bed and the mighty huntress

***update***

So as I finished this blog everyone sleeping in my house woke up so we could get into Asuncion. As we were getting ready the dogs were still barking, so much so that it made us wonder. Finally Tom looked out the window and there were about 10 male dogs surrounding this poor female in heat, all of them try to get at her. The poor dog’s neck was all bloody from all the males grabbing her by it and she was just trying to get away. Then my two neighbor dogs who live together, one German Sheppard one some pointer mix, were GOING AT IT. They were going to kiiilll each other! They are the same size but the pointer is much younger than the Sheppard (named Oso) Oso was bleeding by the ear and they just kept snarling tearing and blood was everywhere, it was aweful. Of course no one else came out of their house so we ran out and were beating the pointer with a huge plastic tube we put poster paper in, throwing bricks at him point blank. Nothing. He would not stop tearing up Oso, but Oso wasn’t’ leaving either.

A person finally came out of the house that Oso and the pointer belong to and tried hitting them with a stick. Then another neighbor came out and took off his belt and whipped them, that finally made them stop. It’s aweful. Please spay and neuter your animals.

....is what you normally hear coming from the mouths of the chipa sellers on the bus or the street. Chipa is very famous here in PY; as a mid day snack (marienda), or in the morning with some codico or mate. Sometimes it takes the form of a yellow bagel, a mini loaf of bread or, in the event that I’m making it, stars and smiley faces. Now I don’t make it often, in fact I’ve only made it once, and that was this past Wednesday the 31st of March or chipa day. The 31st of march is the day that all of Paraguay is making chipa. Now why would everyone be slaving over a hot tatakua when you can just go out to the street and find someone selling it? Because it’s tradition. It’s like us coloring eggs, it’s done every year for Semana Santa (Easter). The reason is that Friday, the 2nd, no one eats meat, so there must be chipa around to sustain and nourish the body for this day.

I, of course, wanted to get in on the activity of some imposter bagel makin, so I headed across the street to the neighbors house to check things out, laugh, get laughed at and share some semana santa traditions… specifically, chipa making.

We started in the kitchen…like ya do, first my neighbor Maria started with mixin of the chipa mix.

Ingredients: mandioca or some other sort of starch

Eggs

Milk

Butter or fat (Some make chipa w pig fat, you can because when you bite it it squeaks)

Salt

Queso Paraguay (PY has it’s very own cheese… they love it and are v proud of it, I have yet to Share their enthusiasm)

Directions:

Mix and mash and fold it all together until a Paraguayan tells you it feels right (to my untrained hands it felt the same the whole time, like playdough)

Mold it into a traditional bagel shape or mini loaf of bread or if you invite a

Norte (me) over they might make untraditional shapes like hearts and fish.

Next have some lunch

Then a siesta

Then heat up the tatakua (brick oven) by starting a fire in it and letting it get

really hot, while it’s getting hot have some terere and make a broom out of a

long branch and leaves

when the tatakua feels like bowels of hell, spread it about so it’s just hot

coals and sweep them out the side of the tatakua with the long tree broom

Then put in the trays of chipa into the hot tatakua and cover the entrance so they can cook.

Apparently you just know when they done

Next take them out, let them cool, eat some, give some to other people and

and save the rest for fri (the day of no meat, except fish, and chicken, all the meat is eaten thrusday night for the last supper)!!

It’s a very nice tradition involving many family members, also neighbors come as well because some don’t have their own tatakua

Easter Sunday isn´t that big of a deal here as it is up there, i think. It´s called pasqua and everyone is just supposed to be happy that jesus came back from the dead. zombie jesus. and today you are also allowed to hit ppl your age and younger since during the other days of semana santa you couldn´t. So you can get it all out of your system today. Praise the Lord!

well i just published a big ol post for ya'll..then the internet deemed in necesary to erase it. so while i do not feel like writing out a whole other one i will leave you this message to think about until i find it in my heart to redo it all...over..again..

0_o

So i´m swingin in my hammock in my patio, enjoying the tranquilidad, when my across the street neighbor aka my landlady starts to wander out from behind her gate toward my house. uh oh. she doesn´t usually leave her house...

so i say hello and make my usualy comment on the weather (haku! siii hakueterei.) Then she mumbles something about coming to look at the suciedad (dirtyness) in the street. This isn´t the first time she´s commented on the garbage in the street.

The first time I was by her gate getting another garbage bag (rice sack)when she said "look at all the garbage in the street". I looked. I looked a little harder. I saw nothing. Perplexed I went back to my house when I remembered "oh right, leaves are considered garbage here". I went back out and looked at the street in front of my house and realized through here eyes there was a toon of garbage!! Leaves everywhere! So I raked them to the sides of my house and onto these other leaf piles thinking about organic materials and biodegrading and science and let it be.

So back to my tranquilo hammock swinging...she comes out and comments on the dirtyness again!! This time i knew she meant the pile of leaves next to the house, a little later i hear someone outside raking and I knew what would come next... bonfire! I went inside.

This morning when i went out of my house there were two charred marks, one on either side of my house, of burnt leaves. no biodegrading allowed here! It´s interesting because they will leave a field, or street, full of plastic bags and bottles and wrappers..but if there are any loose leaves about..SUCIEDAD!! It´s like a trigger goes off in their heads: leaves leaves! garbage! must rake! must burn! burn burn!!

At Lauren´s site her host mom told her that they have to get up really early to sweep the leaves since they live on the road, people will drive by in the morning and look at their yard and talk about them if it´s full of "garbage".

this is silly, lets all compost these leaves! but what would they think of that, a giant pile of leaves just ready for the burning! And I think "Is it posible to change someones mentality about biodegradable "garbage"?" i sure hope so...

anyway, i gotta get home and sweep up the garbage my mango tree produces! What will the neighbors think!

I have now been formally presented to my site! Now I can work (as the vice director at my one school said). My school really helped me out in organising it, they created a list of who to invite and even wrote and printed AND delivered the invataions! I had it in the morning at 8:30 and almost everyone was on time (except for my APCD -the person in charge of the enironmental sectore-and her helper). But everyone waited patiently and when she arrived we did a little icebreaker and comenced with the presenting.

Teachers from a couple different schools were there as well as a lady from the municipalidad and the library. Eli (my APCD) said she wanted EE to work more with the community and not just the school, she also talked about ideas we could do and just baisically what peace corps is. Afterwards we had some soda and cookies I provided so people could chat. Lauren from a site close to me came to my presentation for support, and I would do the same for her. But first we all went to my house to drop off my bike (!) and my bags from long term storage, yes, more stuff. Where does it all come from? Good thing i have a big house...

then we had some pizza for lunch (paid for by Peace Corps thanks) and went to Lauren´s site.

Her presentation was a big different from mine since she lives out in the campo and the community is much much smaller. She had about 25 people show up and Eli went through the presentation and then the community members had a nice little semi heated discussion about the volunteer before Lauren. One woman said he should have worked more with the community not just the school and everyone else defended him and said he did many things outside the school(he was well liked). She baisically said that he should have went door to door asking what people wanted while another person said no, we had invited him, we should have went to him if we needed help. That´s good thinking and I´m glad they think that way, should be helpful for Lauren. It was a good community discussion though that prob wouldnt have happened otherwise.

I must write about something that I deal with daily, Paraguayans and their love of plastic bags. The more plastic bags you can put around individual things, the better! Every time I go to the supermarket down the road I have a tiny battle, sometimes I win and sometimes I come home with 8 more plastic bags. Today for example, Emm and I went to buy some tomatoes, lettuce, bread, bananas, yogurt and a pineapple and today was a day I lost because I forgot to bring some of the 600 clear plastic bags I have at the house with me. To buy fruit here you have to put each kind in a clear plastic bag, bring it to get weighed and a price sticker goes on it. Apples in a bag, bread in a bag, lettuce in a bag, bananas in a bag, pineapple in a bag..even the yogurt comes in a plastic bag. Then when we get up to the counter we have to battle again. I tell them no, I don’t need a bag I’ll put it in here (my canvas one) they just look at me while they continue to put my stuff in a plastic bag. Sometimes I try to beat the bag guy to it and throw everything in my canvas, other times I just give in. They are getting better, the one cashier knows I don’t want it and will tell the bag guy, she’s a ally in this battle. Others, they just can’t understand why this crazy Norte wouldn’t want lots of plastic bags. Guess what’s going to be included in my trash lessons…..

The schools have started. I’ve been in my house for a month. I still am figuring out what my role will be here. Being a third time follow up volunteer has its advantages and disadvantages. Pretty much we come in three’s, if the first volunteer thinks there is more to do in the site then a follow up is requested, if the second volunteer still has projects going on and thinks more work can be done then a third time volunteer can be requested. Usually it’s only up to three that they will send to one site in one sector, so I’m the 3rd EE volunteer in Carapegua in a row. Unfortunately, I never got to meet the volunteer before me since he left a couple months earlier than normal, but he did leave me a bunch of projects I can continue. This is a perk of being a third time volunteer, having projects right off the bat, also inheriting lots of stuff (i.e. my house and everything in it!) It’s pretty difficult for some people to find houses so I’m lucky. Plus the community already knows what Peace Corps is. What I’m finding as more difficult at the moment jumping into these projects the other volunteer left. People lack motivation or someone has moved jobs and no longer wants to have anything to do with a project they headed before. So, for now, I’m going to start in the schools and branch off from there. Being a third time volunteer, my job technically is to assist the people in continuing EE practices we’ve been showing them but taking a step back to make sure they can do it themselves and it will be sustainable after I go, since I’ll (supposedly) be the last EE volunteer here in the centro for who knows how long.

Last week I went to two schools and handed out little survey papers to find out who wanted to learn from me and work with me in their classrooms. I told them to bring them back to the director’s office when they were finished and I would collect them at the end of the week. When I got there Thursday only one person had handed it in and the directora told me to go around to each classroom and ask for them. People said they lost it or would have it later but I was able to collect 2 more. The directora said this was typical; it’s just the way people are here. Well three is better than nothing. Tomorrow I’ll go to the other school to see what they’ve got for me.

New house news though… I got myself a kitty. Actually 3 but 2 will be moving out soon. The Peace Corps Office in Asuncion had a cat living there and apparently PC offices can’t have pets. She was technically not a pet since she decided to move in there on her own terms and comes and goes as she pleases, but someone found out and said she had to go… so I took her. She’s adjusting now pretty well except for the two 1 month old kittens I brought home yesterday. She hates them and hisses and growls at them, not very motherly of her since she just had her own kitten a month ago (don’t know what happened to it, yes I will be getting her spayed). My friend Emily is staying at my site with me for the moment because her site is being moved and so she’s waiting for it to be ready (idk maybe it has to bake longer). We were walking in the market and came across the two kittens abandoned and hungry so I took them home betting that I could find someone to take them. Eve (what I named the PC cat, short for All Hallows Eve because she looks like Halloween) has made it clear she does not want them here but I have found a taker for the 2 cuties with the leopard print bellies.

So in a matter of 3 days I went from no responsibility volunteer to crazy cat lady collecting sand off the street with a yogurt container. I have always wanted a cat though and now I’ve got the opportunity, many of them. The other day on our walk the cutest little white puppy with silly big pointy ears and very cute eyes bounded over to Emm and I. She was so friendly and happy to see us, then the woman across the street said the dreaded phrase “ella no tiene dueña, puedes lluevarle” meaning “she’s got no one and lives on the street, take her”. OOOooooo. I don’t want to deal with a dog here and Emm doesn’t have a site yet so we had to walk away, but she did think about it (and still does). If I had a 5,000 Guarani every time I’ve been told to take a puppy or kitten ….

Watched the movie 2012 the other night…It was so awful but we still finished it, those long PY nights..

As of a week ago today I now have a place to call my own. A two bedroom, one bath kitchen, livingroom and big patio place to put my stuffs. I got the ok from the bossman to move in early since I’ve been jumping around so much. That was good to help meet new people but also stressful moving my stuff so much and I didn’t want to feel like a burden on anyone.

The pros: I will be able to cook and eat what I want. Freedom. Can spread my stuff all out. Room to work out!! Can focus better on work.

The cons: kinda lonely. Not hearing the language as much. At the moment my fridge is broken!!

What am I doing to remedy these cons, well I’m forcing myself out to talk to and or meet neighbors although today no one was really outside. I bought myself a radio. And all I can do for the fridge is wait for the guy to come look at it. I’m also waiting for the electrician to come and for the sinks to be fixed. It’s ok though because being flexible is a must for being a Peace Corps volunteer, so I’m practicing. I also bought a hammock to put under my mango tree to swing and read in, ahh 

School starts soon. There are about 40 something in my town so I plan to go to the administrative building and talk with them about what schools could use the most help.

Summer so far has been very laid back, a lot of terere drinking and talking about how hot it is. The kids here seem to keep themselves occupied but there really isn’t much for them to do, it’s not like there is a community pool or camps (other than the ones we do of course) so it seems they just hang out a lot together in groups. Yesterday I saw a group of young boys with a bucket of water balloons, not sure who they were gonna throw them at but at least it wasn’t me! The heat here is impressive and it’s hard to do things during the day so most people leave housework for the evenings when it’s nice out. Around this time you’ll see people sweeping up their leaves and washing their clothes.

Here leaves are seen as garbage and are put in bags and sent to the town dump. In my mind they are organic, biodegradable things that are great for compost piles, if my patio wasn’t brick I would have a compost pile! So everyday after I sweep up my leaves I have to sneak around and put them places other than in a bag to the dump! Usually I throw them over the wall since there’s an empty lot on that side of my house. Today I put them in a diff spot closer to the street, hope no one notices! There’s poo and garbage all over the street but god forbid leaves…!!! Such is the life of a homerenter.

Tonight’s dinner will be a peanutbutter and banana sandwich, things that don’t need fridges. The neighbors have been really nice though in giving me ice to make my drinks cold since it’s been reaaallllly hot the past week. We haven’t had rain, usually when that happens it gets hotter and hotter until BAM big rainstorm. Then it starts over again.

Various pictures of my house how it looks now. my bedroom, the sink outside where i wash my clothes. the guest room/strage room/my closet. The last few are a view from my window and a view down the street and the evangelical church right across from me.

ok I have to get out of this cyber because the baby that´s walking around is making the most ungodly screeching noises that really hurt my ears!! ooouch! way to lose buisness!!!

until next time..

spider that i found under my bed

in Paraguay.

***Editor´s note.. after receiving that one comment I kept thinking, no I deffinatly wrote something about Christmas, that’s why I thought I sent an email. Turns out I wrote this blog and never got to post it! so here it is…better late then never. See, good things can come out of anything!***

The hottest Christmas I’ve ever endured! I had to leave my new house I’d just moved into for Christmas because my host family’s daughter was coming with her husband to stay for a couple nights. I was invited to spend Christmas at my contact Paula’s house. I had to pack an overnight bag which was difficult because my stuff was still packed in my other bags, and of course my 2 night overnight bag was 2 bags worth of stuff. I have no idea how I do it but I just manage to always have a lot of stuff!! I blame it on all the toiletries! And the pan dulce and bon bon’s I brought as presents.

I met Paula and her three kids in the plaza and she took my bag and her son on the moto back to her house and I walked back with her two daughters. She lives about a 20 minute walk outside of the centro in a more spaced out area. It was beginning to be a hoooot day and after getting back we just sat in the shade. Her husband was busy building the manger, they make them pretty big here out of sticks and palm leaves. Then we went into the field across the street to cut down a coconut flower. The coconut flower is a symbol of Christmas here and it the weirdest looking flower with an interesting smell, I’m not sure I like the smell actually. They even have a Christmas song about that flower. After we ate lunch and had our siesta (much needed when dealing with three kids who want all of your attention and all talk to you at once)! The rest of the afternoon we sat around outside, the two younger kids wanting my attention, the older one writing Christmas letters, and we sweated. Since I couldn’t read in peace I decided to teach the kids Uno, which they enjoyed.

Paula had gone out to get the food for dinner and when she returned we decorated the manger. No Christmas trees here! We put lights on it and all sortsa stuff on the inside visiting baby Jesus. There was an elephant, fish, santa was there, whinny the pooh and tigger and a native American as well as all the original cast. But they didn’t put baby Jesus in yet. After that we got ready for 9 o clock mass at the church back in the plaza. I walked there with Paula and her oldest daughter while everyone else took the moto. Returned from church and got home around 11pm which is around dinnertime on Christmas eve as per tradition. After eating dinner everyone got really excited, fireworks were going off in the streets and the radio was blasting music. My fav part of dinner was when the Village People came on, Macho Man, nice mood setting music.

We were all waiting for midnight to come around, it felt like New Years Eve! We had sparklers and fireworks on the ready…just like 4th of July! 3 holidays in one! finally the radio announced it was midnight and everyone cheered and hugged and set off fireworks like crazy, then we put the baby Jesus in the manger. The clerico came out after that, it’s a traditional Christmas drink almost like sangria in which it has wine and cut up fruit and also sugar (although ours wasn’t real clerico since it was without one due to the fact that Paula’s husband is following the AA program). I danced some disco with the youngest daughter like ya do on Christmas Eve then called it a night! A looong day!

And that’s Christmas! The next day is just a day of rest, no presents or anything special, maybe a bbq for lunch but mostly it’s just a lot of sitting around (which I am an expert at doing now) and it was HOT. I bet it was around 105 degrees. I wanted to call back home but I figured all the cybers would be shut but Paula knew someone who had a cyber and she let me in and I got to use the internet!

So, no santa here, but don’t worry because presents do come. Just to kids and on three king’s day. I think the kids leave their shoes out at night and when they awake there are presents in them. Other than that I’m now settled in my newest house, unpacked last night. It’s pretty chuchi, the have a microwave, that’s how you know.

Pictures!

cutting down the flor de coco

ooooooooooooone month. feels like threeeeee months!

I have been in this house for two weeks now, the house with the internet and a shower I can´t use (i´ve been using the neighbors). unfortunatly, my busy days have slowed down to a whole lotta nothing. The summer camp Kendal (one of my volunteer neighbors) and I helped do at Liz´s site was very tranquilo, only 3 kids showed up, so we just had some arts and crafts time. I did get to spend a few nights in the countryside though, very pretty, very rustic. complete with cows in the yard, hammock on the patio, basin to collect rain water and a latrine. Very diff to my city girl life! (except i´m used to smelly bathrooms since the shower here has poop water in the bottom of it) it was good to hang with some fellow volunteers and do something though. Other than that i´ve been sitting around this house, the house where I share a room with my host bro and mom and can´t get to sleep till 12:30 because that´s when they sleep and wake up at 10 because that´s when they wake up. then my days consist of reading, some studying, talking on the phone and sitting on the computer..i feel like i´m back at home! i need to get out!!!!!!!!! if i were in my soon to be house think of all i could be doing there! fixing it up, getting new sinks put in, getting the fridge fixed, buying new furniture..but here i sit. sigh. ok enough ranting. yesterday it rained so i took advantage of the cooler air and went for a walk to learn what it´s like on the outskirts of the city...

the main square of the city is very pretty with it´s big trees and benches, lots of commerce in this part and the firehouse and church. A couple blocks down by the main ruta is a market where you can get pretty much whatever you need from brooms to terere plants to a bus to the campo. branching out more from the square are houses mostly connected together, a football "stadium" (small and indoors) some schools, branching out more from that the houses are more separate, the road goes from asphalt to cobblestone (well, more just rocks in the road)and it goes on like this for many blocks until the roads turn to dirt and it gets pretty country. all the time in the distance you can see some hills which is nice. all those houses are behind gates with not much of a yard, everyone is very close to one another but it´s ok because everyone likes to hang out together. I went walking up the road from my house and ended up in some woods! I was alone though and figured i should probably be doing this with some company so i quickly turned around.

what do i have to look forward to this month: making brick ovens at kendal´s site (another campo visit!) and another trip to asunción at the end of the month!! huzaah!

oh summer vacation. first couple months are the hardest of service i was told, one down! but don´t worry...i´m still smiling

guess where i am typing this from? no, not a cyber..and not on my laptop and transfered via pendrive. I´m typing this from my newest PY host fam house, complete with computer and the interwebs! This doesn´t happen alot! and I would know, since it´s my 5th house in 3 weeks! For no fault of my own I keep finding myself having to move! Usually it´s because someone needs the room or whatnot, and I´m usually told that night and pack really fast, shoving everything into bags and moving on. This time I´m at a house with a teacher who lives here with her 11 yr old son. It is not usual to see a woman living sola but props to her. It´s a small house so I have to share a room with them. they have a one month old puppy named sammy who is very cute but taken away from her mom way to early. Now i know why all the dogs here act the way they do, they´re taken away from the mom to young and never get to be taught how to act like a normal dog..then they´re not treated nicely (some, well most) and they grow up and patrol the streets looking to scare and attack me, like last night.

anywho I havn´t been doing to much. first two weeks I read alot and studied every day (so guapa!!) then was christmas and then was new years!! i went into asunción and had a great hotel/on the town party w some of my G (my group, G-31 aka my G) but every since I´ve gotten back from that trip I´ve been to busy to study!! first i had to move my house again to Rebecca´s house (again) then we went one day to Guarambare!! I got to visit the fam and see others as well, Rebecca went to talk about giving a bunny to her old host family. the next day I was in scott´s old house (my soon to be house) repacking all my bags so i didnt´have to bring everythign with me on this next move (so heavy!) then i moved. the next day i went with rebecca to Ndavaru to give a fam we know a bunny. yesterday i studied a little and went to the cyber and met up with brenda for some lomito arabes and today...

today i went to a waterfall! called santo crystal o algo. It was beautiful. we had a crazy hike down this steep rocky slope in the woods to get there, but when we rounded the corner and saw the falls with the pool underneith to swim in, it was worth it! we hung out there all day and had lunch and jumped off the middle of the falls (not me, big chicken) and on our way back up the steep slope it started to rain. once we got back to our ride (in the back of a pickup) it was pouring and my phone got soaked! it´s drying out now. It was a fun trip and i got to meet volunteers from other G´s that i havn´t met before.

so that´s what i´ve been up too. i think i´ll go eat some sandia now. next weekend I will be helping a fellow volunteer down the road with a summer camp at her site. so.. work! Maybe i´ll even do my own summercamp...es posible!

until next time

chau!

So it’s been six days now since I’ve arrived in site, and they go really fast! Without the structure of training and need to be somewhere I now take advantage of the freedom I have to: read, study Spanish, sleep, eat. Repeat. And text and call people on the phone. A lot. Peace Corps gives us phones that we can call other volunteers with for free for the first ten minutes. And the phone just happens to come with a nifty timer that we can set to hang up the call at 9 minutes and 55 seconds. So we’ll be talking having a conversation when one person will say “OH THREE SECONDS” the phone will hang up. The person will call back and continue the convo where we left off. This terrific little cell phone is helping us out through this transition period, having been so used to seeing and talking to each other everyday we can still continue to do so.

The swearing in ceremony was very nice, It was at the American embassy at 10 am. Apparently this embassy is the nicest one in South America with the best grounds, and it was very pretty. Also apparently there is a deer living in the grounds. I saw the crossing sign! While waiting for the ambassador to arrive all sat under this open part of a building (I think the ambassadors house) next to a waterfall that looked like it could be used to take prom pictures next to (which is what we did). Once she came Don, our country director, spoke, followed by the ambassador and then by Charles, one of our very own, who did a terrific 5 min speech! The press was there taking pictures the whole time and apparently the next day we were in the paper, but I didn’t get to see it .

After we had the cake everyone talks about, it was very good, and left the embassy for the PC office. We can come to the embassy anytime to use the pool now that we are volunteers! At the office we waited around to get our cell phones and repack some bags, then headed out to San Bernadino for the goodbye party of G25, the group swearing out. The party was at a really nice hotel with a pool, we were served dinner and then danced the night away. Of course I got sick this weekend with a tiny cold, I’ve only been here for 11 weeks totally fine but when the party weekend comes I get sick. Oy. But it was still fun.

The next day we took the 2 and a half hour bus ride back to Asuncion and to the Chaco hotel where we stayed until Tuesday. On top of the Chaco hotel was a pool and in the distance you could see Argentina, very nice. That weekend was really fun, we needed it as well. A weekend to just hang about, not have to tell any h fams where we were, could come and go as we pleased and had lots of good (expensive) food. Then Tuesday came…a sad day. A few of us had left early that weekend to get to their sites, but most of us waited for the last day. I took the bus to Carapegua at 12 and go there at 2:30 ready to face my moldy bed bug room. Once I got off the bus Rebecca came to help me move my 4 bags (4!) (and yes I still have more at the PC office, I don’t want to talk about it). We brought them to the house I stayed at last time and Rebecca left, I took a shower and quickly went to the internet café (cyber). 2 hours later I got a call from Rebecca saying I couldn’t stay in that house. I was ecstatic! I didn’t want to live there anyway because of the bed bugs and mold, apparently the woman there wasn’t comfortable with a stranger in the house (although she was fine last time I was there) or another story was her son (who lives w his wife and kid down the road) didn’t want anyone using his room. Whatevs. I was happy. 9 pm that night Rebecca and I were throwing my stuff into bags to move out of the house and I went to her house for the night. The next day I moved into a friend of my contacts house, a retired science teacher, with a very nice family. We went to a talk on nutrition (the food here is so much better and nutritious than what I’m used to!!) they took me to their fams house in the country where I got to ride a horse, and they show me around. The husband is older and, while he’s very nice, we have the same convo every day. Yes there’s snow in NJ, did I know there’s a lot of north Americans in the town up the road, all mormons run by Armond Smith, do I know him? It’s actually pretty funny. He loves to talk about NJ and the Christmas lights. He’ll say “en Nueva Jersey (he pronounces it Jersay) there are a lot of Paraguayans. I’m going to go in your suitcase to visit Nueva Jersay” hehe.

Then yesterday she told me that I need to move out…. Her husband is sick and she is overwhelmed. So I will be packing my stuff up and moving once again. We were told to have patience and be flexible, so I take it all with a smile on my face. Of course in my head I’m thinking about when I can move into my own house…and only 3 more days till Christmas eve! Here I’ll be spending it with a fam I just met. How peace corps of me!

pics:

all the stuff i had to pack before swearing in!!

the cake we got to say thanks to our teachers

the saddest moment. tom the hot dog watching us leave him :(

something yummy i ate in asunción

the rooftop pool w view of argentina

horseback riding in the campo

birthday party at my contacts house. that´s her and her fam

one of the kittens that live outside my house now

(a little late this post but better then never!)

Today was awesome. With only 4 days left before we swear in as volunteers the days don’t seem as structured, and today we had the chance to do some ‘independent studying’ i.e. language study, talking to tech trainers, napping or washing underwear. I decided to try my hand at beekeeping. Ever since Nick and I learned about them at the New Jersey State Fair last August I’ve been very interested in bees. They are so amazing once you discover the nuances of hive life, like the fact that all worker bees are females and they can grow males (drones) when they need them to mate with the queen who only mates once in her life (after the drones grow they just hang about eating honey and stumbling around the hive. Men.) Or how they dance to tell the other bees exactly where to go to get the good nectar.

Me and four others not from the beekeeping group stayed late at our training center to help capture a wild hive that had set up residence in an old bee box in the back of the yard. Not exactly the most ‘wild’ of captures since instead of hacking into a tree we were just taking them out of a beebox and into another, but still they were wild none the less! The hive had only been there for about a month and we were not sure what we’d find inside, if they’d be more on the docile side or more upset. The bees here in Paraguay are Africanized bees, meaning they have roots with the African bee aka the killer bee that, in the 90s, made the front page because they were heading into the States to chase you into your house, knock down your door, make fun of your carpet and sting you to death. I remember the hype about them back in elementary school and I remember being terrified! (of them and acid rain). But looking at them today they looked cute with their big black eyes and fuzzy vests. They were brought to Paraguay for beekeeping purposes and, like with all introduced species, escaped, mated with the bees here and made a crossbreed of ornery but hard working lady bees.

The first thing we had to do was get the smoker smoking. The smoker is like a mini fire puffer that people used in the old days to blow oxygen into the fire, with the wood on the outside and the middle that would scrunch and stretch like an accordion. Attached to the mini fire puffer is a tin can that you put hot coals or light paper in to burn, then you add woodchips or dried cow poo. Attached to that is a spout where the smoke will come out once you have your woodchips and poo burnin and close the lid. After a considerable amount of forearm work using the mini fire puffer I finally got my smoker smoking. We needed the smoke to puff on the bees when we opened the box to subdue them, I think it makes them think the hive is on fire which makes them want to stay in and eat a lot of honey. I can lay no judgement for them wanting to stuff their faces in bad times, I understand.

After the smokers were ready we donned our beesuits. A baggy canvasy white shirt (because dark colors make bees angry and want to sting) with a screen on the top where your head is, a whole on the top where we put a straw hat in so bees couldn’t get in and it made the screen stick out away from our faces. Rubber gloves went over our hands and over the sleeves and we tucked the bottom of the shirt into our light colored pants, and the end of our pants into our socks. Beeproofed and invincible! (and we kinda looked like those people at the end of E.T.) Now we’re ready to open the box! Jonathan, the bee group trainer, opened the lid and we quickly puffed smoke into the box. The buzzing sound got really loud and made me think of Amityville Horror when all the flies were in the bathroom. But the bees pretty much stayed in the box with their comb and weren’t very aggressive at all. Then we set to work capturing it.

The main thing in capturing a wild hive is you have to find the queen and put her in your beebox, without the queen, there is no hive. Since this hive decided to reside in an old beebox and use the slides that the beekeepers pull out when they want to get honey, our job was pretty easy. All we had to do was pull out each slide one at a time, cut off any excess comb that was stickin out in a weird direction, and ‘sew’ it onto the slide drawer thing. This is how it works. You take out the slide thing which is a rectangle shaped ‘drawer’ with only the edges, which are wood nailed together. The middle has wire going across so the bees can start a comb on the top wood piece and use the wires to build down on. We pulled each ‘drawer’ out of the old box had a look to see what had been going on with the hive since it moved in. They were pretty hard working! They had some big combs with honey and pupas! We had to cut off any moth larva (pesky moths comin into the hive uninvited) and make sure the comb was centered on the piece of wood. We would take a soft string and tie it to the top wood piece, then wrap it around to the bottom and ‘sew’ the comb in place so the bees would continue building it on that drawer and not mesh it into another one so that there wasn’t room to slide it out of the hive later. We did that with all the drawers in the box, and any excess comb hanging in wrong directions we took off and put it in a pot for later consumption.

Each time we took a drawer out it was cooooovered with bees, and we would have to give it a good shake (after looking for the queen) and dump them into the new box so we could get to work sewing and scraping off moth larva. Soon we got to the last drawer with no sign of the queen. Off on vacation eh!? Actually the queen mates once after she has hatched and spends the rest of her life laying eggs from that one mating with a bunch of worker bees at her side feeding her and cleaning her. If anything happens to the queen the bees have the ability to turn one of the regular pupa into a queen pupa by feeding her royal jelly that they can make with a secret recipe. Finally Jonathan spotted her hiding on the wall of the old bee box. She’s bigger than the rest of the bees and her abdomen is kinda orange. He scooped her into a small hair roller with one side taped and the other side he plugged with wax. Then placed her at the bottom of the new hive where she will sit in her new throne until someone chews her out, and she will reign over her new kingdom of beebox in Guarambare.

Then we just had to scoop up piles of bees that mingled about on the outside of the boxes (a very weird feeling to have a jumble of bees in the palm of your rubber gloved hand) and just like that we have transferred a wild hive in an old beebox to… a new beebox. The only difference for them really is their hive will be better maintained with no moths, oh and we’ll be eating their honey, which we got to do today with the pieces of comb we broke off, bit right into it (watch out there’s no pupas first!) with some peanutbutter and bananas. mmm mmmm. And we didn’t have one sting! Until Dan took off all his beestuff and was standing around watching a toad eat some bees, she got him on the back of the neck. Ah well.

Way cool and super jealous of the work the beekeepers get to do, well we could have bees to in our site if we wanted, except I’m in the city so…. But there is a bee here that is stingless and tiny and they live in a little box so hopefully I will be able to get them for my new house! Me and my stingless little bees hangin out at night singin songs and roasting empanadas over the fire, I can’t wait. But until then I have to pack (stress!) swear in as a volunteer (cool) and figure out my living situation in my new home of Carapegua (ultra stress!). Looking back I should have packed an empty duffle bag or something to put the massive amounts of books and medical stuff that we get during training. Who has extra room for 15 books in their bag! Not me!

P.S tomorrow is a holiday for the day of the Virgin of Caacupe. Thousands of people pilgrimage to Caacupe to pay tribute and listen to mass at the church, a bunch of trainees are going, left earlier today and will walk all night to get there then take a bus back home. I decided a religious pilgrimage, while should be experienced once in everyone’s lifetime, was not in the cards for me this year. Maybe next. But think of all the chaffing! Uh.

I had a whole blog written out and forgot to put it on my pendrive!!!

hm..ok well today is my last day and etry being a trainee! Tomorrow we are getting picked up at 7am and heading off to the bank to get some cash money then to the embassy for swearing in!

Today we had our talent show, each sector plus the trainers did some skits or sang some songs. It was pretty hilarious. We sang a thank you song to Riiichard our trainer to the tune of that graduation song by vitamin C.

I´ll miss training! Everything is familiar and comfortable but it´s time to make the next change and move into my site and do volunteer stuff.

well, next time you hear from me I will be a volunteer!

(and will have posted what i meant to post today)

Jajotopata!

was awesome. We went to the country director, Don´s house. really nice. only my group and the beekeepers went. the other groups stayed in Guarambare and had their own, we were gonna but Don offered us his house and a free bus to his house in asunción and food and a pool. We were convinced!

it was really nice with lots of food and good people!

I better get this started before I get to far behind!

Last week we got our site, which means we now know why we are here. As well as where we’re going to be living, what we’re going to be doing and who is going to be around us. For weeks on end we had been speculating where we would be and what kind of site we would get. Many a language class was used to talk about where we would be, mostly in English. Finally the day dramatically arrived, we all were in Guarambare but wouldn’t find out where we would live until 3:45 pm. Torture! I think we had a language class in the morning and that afternoon we did some Paraguayan polka and listened to some Paraguayan harp and guitar playin. Finally at 3:45 we broke into our respective groups, the environmental sector and the crop sector, meaning environmental ed and agroforestry and beekeeping and agrocultura. We all sat in a circle and Holly our person in charge of finding our sites came in with a bunch of folders in her hand. Without further ado she just jumped right into it, very anticlimactic like after weeks of talking and thinking about it. She picked up a folder and handed it to the person, on the folder it said where your site was, and then Robin, her sidekick, put up a sticky note on a big map of Paraguay that was in the room. My name was called, I was handed a folder, a post it note was stuck on a map, and the next name was called. That was it. I looked down at my folder and…. Carapegua. All right! No clue where that is or anything about it. I soon learned it was the hammock capitol of Paraguay and there are a lot of artisens there. It’s a city with about 15,000 people and actually kinda close to La Colmena, where I went for my volunteer visit (with the Japanese food!). I will be living in the center and will be mainly working in the schools. I will also be directly following up 2 EE volunteers, preeessure! The last volunteer who just left, Scott, was very guapo (hard working) and did lotsa projects, so I have a lot to follow up on! I’m down with that. So the next day we were to meet our contacts who would take us to our new site and present us to the community. They would arrive in our towns and would eat and sleep in our houses. How…awkward. But, as we all know, it’s not PC Paraguay if it’s not awkward.

The next day we were ready to meet our contacts. We were sitting in our CHP and a van pulled up full of Paraguayans, they were probably as nervous as we were. They got out of the van and some of them were taking pictures of everything. They filed in and we formally met our contacts. My contacts name is Paula and she was very…very.. .happy to meet me. She was hugging me and everything, taking pictures, talking, talking…more talking. She’s a talker! She’s also from Argentina but moved here when she was 21, she’s 34 now and is married to a Paraguayan and has 3 kids and teaches at a school in Carapegua. She was very excited to be part of this and was into all the activities we had to do. That night she slept in the other room in my bed and talked to my h mom, and the next morning we left for Carapegua. Oh, and I changed my name to Lola, so as not to be confused with a parrot anymore since lora in Spanish means female parrot.

Carapegua: the main plaza is very pretty. It has a bunch of old trees and a statue in the middle. There are some vines and mosses hanging from the trees that gives it that old time feel. On one side of the plaza is a big church, and close by is the fire house with 2 fire trucks (not the big red ones we’re used too). Branching out from the plaza are streets set up in a typical city block fashion. Looking out into the distance you can see hills and at night a beautiful sunset. Getting further out of the city center the land becomes campo very fast. There are more fields and the houses are spaced further apart so it’s very easy to ride a bike to the outskirts and see some nice views. Very beautiful sunsets too.

Everyone and their mom drives a motorcycle here…and I mean that. No one really has cars unless you’re rich. Motos (as they’re called) are much cheaper and easy to get. I’m not even sure what kind of license you need, I’ve definitely seen a 12 year old riding one. They actually really annoying though, very loud and I’m always getting out of the way for them. Not to mention that we are not allowed to get on one unless we want a quick one way ticket back to the US, it’s a little disheartening walking down the road in 100 degree weather as people zoom by on motos. But not to worry, I’ll have my bike soon (bici).

My week: ok. The first night I spent at Paula’s mom’s house. Very nice woman, yummy food, chuchi bathroom…. and a bedroom that makes me cry thinking I have to go back to it!!! It smells of mold and the floor is cement, the bed and dresser take up most of one part of the room. The mattress was probably 30 years old and an inch thick in the middle. The pillows smelled pretty funky. But this is the Peace Corps right? So I happily took it. The next day I met up with Rebecca, another volunteer who lives in the city with me (it’s not that common to have 2 in one place). She showed me Scott’s house where I will be living in the future and met 2 other guys who were in town at the house (it’s kinda used as a hotel at the moment for volunteers passing by). These guys kinda close, which means they are in my VAT group. The VAT group is all the volunteers close by you, we meet every other month to talk about stuff then one person goes to Asuncion and tells Peace Corps how things are going.

The next day I went to a town near by with those people plus some others. I have 2 people from my group (a beekeeper and an agroforester) in my VAT group, we went to the town where the agroforester is now going to be for a goodbye party for the volunteer who is leaving that town (she’s gonna be taking over his spot). He had been raising a pig for this occasion and the day before he had killed it and today was the eating of it, thank god he killed it yesterday. Not something I want to see. But it was fun and good to meet other volunteers and watch them have a jam session with guitars and a banjo. While at the site I started to get itchy on my stomach, I looked to see where the mosquito bite was and saw two, then three, then four, they were all over my stomach and I realized they weren’t mosquito bites. They were bedbug bites! That damn 30 year old mattress was infested with bedbugs! I guess I didn’t sleep tight since I was bitten everywhere! So uncomfortable (though not as bad as poison ivy).

I didn’t want to go back to that bed the next night so I slept in Scott’s old house (my future house) but knew I had to go back at some point. When I did I told Paula and her mom that I think we should put the mattress in the sun to kill the bugs, they said I was allergic to the dust in the mattress and just put a blanket over the mattress then the sheets. No no no. that’s not gonna keep them away! But I don’t want to be disrespectful! Ugh. So I had to sleep three more nights in the cave room with the bugs. I don’t know what I’ll do when I go back in 2 weeks because I don’t want to disrespect Paula and her mom by moving out of the house but…let’s be honest it’s gotta happen! Very nice people though.

Anyway Paula and Rabecca took me around and I got to meet my other contacts and teachers in other schools I will be working in. But I was really happy to be going home to my nice room that is only plagued by giant spiders and the cat. On a fluffier note Rebecca has a rabbit who just had bunnies and she’s gonna make her have more and I’m gonna get one. Pet bunny for my house. Do you think I can have a kitten and bunny and have them get along? Perhaps we’ll find out.

P.S. Advice for anyone who wants to join the Peace Corps, we’re card playin people so brush up on you’re card games, especially yuker and hearts. And rummy. My VAT group says I better learn how to play hearts in the next two weeks because that’s all they do at meetings. Good thing it’s on my computer!

It’s time we talk about terere. It’s hip, it’s cool and everyone’s doing it. I figure tonight’s a good night for this entry. It was about 41 or 43 degrees Celsius today, not really sure what that is in F but probably somewhere in between 100 and 145,296,238. The radio actually advises you to not go out during the afternoon hours without an umbrella to hide from the sun (or course I didn’t bring one). Ok riddle me this… why, in a country with this heat, do they think it’s a good idea to have hot soup, rice or pasta at lunch every day?!?! I mean HOT soup! What?! Why does this make sense!?? Ugh I can’t even think about it right now.

Anyway, last night I went to bed at ten and at 10:45 I awoke not by a noise, but by a lack of noise, lack of my fan noise to be precise. The power had gone out!!! Oh em gee! My room became a sauna in about 2 minutes. It was awful!

So, girls aren’t supposed to sleep with the window open because it could be perceived as you’re waiting for a guy to jump in your window or as an open invitation to jump in your window. We call this midnight visitor a jakare and it happens more in the campo (country) but it’s still known about here. There have been stories of volunteers who have innocently smiled at a guy every day as she walked to work and innocently slept with the window open not knowing that that guy thought her smiling and open window was something more, and one night he showed up at her window!

Anyway, jakare or not I was opening my window! It was so hot I figured I’d take my chances! Besides, there are bars on my window and I live way off any main roads. Plus, Sadam would here them and bark, maybe. Actually I was more worried about mosquitoes. But there was a nice wind outside and I laid on the other bed I have next to the window as close as I could to the breeze and thought about cold pools. About an hour later the power came back on and I was able to go back to my bed and resume my hot, sweaty sleep. I’ve learned it’s very hard to sleep in the hot hot heat, but when I do fall asleep I seem to have dreams that, if I were to write them down, would actually be a terrific scary movie. I’ve had 3 nights of horrible dreams, the most recent involving zombies.

One thing that’s amazing to do in this heat, cold showers. Absolutely important in my life right now. We’ve been running at night around 7 and I come home and have a cold shower and do not want to leave my bathroom hut. So good! The fun thing is, it’s only spring!! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! So this brings me to my second subject…what can you do as a Paraguayan living in an oven to stay cool for the months of spring and summer??

Well, I’ve been told multiple times by various Paraguayans that without terere, they wouldn’t be able to survive. So what is it? It’s a drink, it’s a conversation, it’s good company, it’s cooling, and, like I said, everyone’s doin it.

Basically, it’s a drink with herbs, kinda like tea. It can be drunk hot (mate..pronounced ma-tay) or cold (terere. It’s also the reason we don’t get a water purifier here like many other volunteers get around the world, but I’ll talk more of that later.

What you need to drink terere:

A termo –thermos

A guampa- special cup usually made out of a cow horn or metal with leather around it or wood. if you don’t have one any cup will do really

A bombilla- straw. Special metal straw, the bottom is shaped like a spoon with holes to let the water through but to strain the herbs out

Water and ice

Yuyos- the herbs

There are many different kinds of yuyos and they can make the terere or mate taste different and have different properties. Like using menta’i makes it taste minty, kapi’i kati helps if you have a fever, cedron kapi’i is lemon grass and koku is for digestion and hangovers.

So as you’re chillin sittin in your circle someone will bust out their termo full of ice water and guampa with dried crushed up yuyos inside. These can be bought or you can find your own and grind them up, it’s like a tea bag but without the bag part and a lot of it, in a cup. One person will act as the server and will pour water into the guampa, the first pour soaks into the herbs and disappears so the first pour is for “Santo Tomas” since it just disappears like someone drank it. Then the server will pour more in until it’s almost to the rim and the server drinks it through the bombilla. Next he’ll pour in more water and pass it to the next person who sips it through the bombilla and hands it back to the server. It goes on like this till everyone participating has had a turn and starts again with the server.

Rules:

When given the guampa don’t say gracias unless you don’t want more after that. Once you say gracias it means you’re done and don’t want to be included in the circle anymore.

Never touch the bombilla while you’re drinking. I don’t know why, just don’t do it.

Pass it back to the server when finished

Remember, it’s not a microphone. Drink it quick and pass it back

Drink all the water in one gulp more or less. It’s not much really. You can take a bunch of sips just don’t take a sip and take your mouth off and then take another sip…nahaniri (no) all at once. Unless it’s mate (when they use hot water not ice water), that can be really hot and you don’t want to burn your tongue.

When finished it’s best to clean the guampa and bombilla right away so it doesn’t harden

Ok that’s it. Cool and refreshing and keeps everyone alive. There are commercials on the tv for different brands of herbs you can buy. And everyone carries around their termo and guampa with them, you will see police walkin around with them, teenagers after school, all our trainers, bus drivers have a helper who pours the water for them to do it while they drive, and today when we went to visit the sugarcane factory there was a sign that said: prohibited to smoke, talk on the cell phone and drink terere, and it had a picture of a guampa and bombilla with a red slash through it! In guaraní there is even a verb for drinking terere: aterere! It is a huuuuge part of the culture and some of us have bought our gear and are ready to go. I still have yet to but I’ll get there soon, then I can be a real Paraguaya!