I can’t tell you when it happened or how, but it happened through a string of events that took place over the last 26 months. Paraguay became my home. There were many phases: I was enamored with the place and the people, I hated everyone and everything, and finally I came to appreciate the country and the people for what they were, good and bad. Here I am with only 3 weeks left in country, trying to figure out how to pack up and say goodbye to what has been my life for the last two years. Even as I write this, I struggle with what to say and what to leave out because there is so much to tell, so much that has happened, so many events that have made me who I am today. I have already started packing and cleaning out my house, sorting out what things to give away to other volunteers, what to give to my family, and what to leave for my follow-up. I have few material possessions that mean a lot to me, but I am leaving behind the things that mean the most and have been vital to my survival here.

When I started my women’s commission, it was painful dragging them through the meetings and making them participate, but at my last meeting, they conducted the entire meeting and made all the decisions, including when and where my pig would be killed for my despedida. Many of those women have overinflated ideas of what I am capable of, but I appreciate their faith in me nonetheless. I can not imagine a job more fulfilling than watching their progress these last two years. I will soon be trading these commission meetings on tajy benches under my mango tree for classes at Columbia’s School of Social Work in New York City. I don’t think I can speak full sentences in English without reverting to Spanish and Guarani phrases, much less write papers at a masters level. Rather than passing around a terere guampa with señoras, I will be passing around notes and ideas with my classmates.

Upon arrival in Paraguay, I got teased because I complained about the food more than everyone and would refuse to eat the greasy tortillas and dry mandioca. Now if I eat with Paraguayans, I prefer to eat with mandioca and my family makes fun of me when we make chipa guazu because I will eat as much of it as I can get my hands on. If we make tortillas, I ask to put cheese in it because they are absolutely delicious that way. I buy chipa all the time when I’m on the bus and there are very few days that go by without me drinking mate at least once. Terere is a must. I realize I am returning to the land of coffee shops, endless peanut butter, a variety of vegetables, good hummus, pickles, and cheddar cheese, but I will never again be able to gobble down half an asadera of chipa guazu, eating until my stomach hurts. Nor will Claudia ever send me home again with more chipa that I could possibly eat in a week. Also, the idea of having the amount of choices offered in grocery stores just plain intimidates me.

I have come to love and appreciate the outdoors in a way I never knew. I rarely eat inside and want fresh air if I am indoors for more than a couple of hours. I can name all the trees in my backyard and tell you which ones are used for remedios in mate and terere and will sometimes pick plants from the street to smash up later for my terere. I love listening to the rain and the thunder and am fairly good at predicting whether it will rain or not depending on the clouds and the air. I can also usually tell you about what time it is by looking at the placement of the sun in the sky. I am leaving a tropical environment full of trees for the semi-desert of California and the skyscrapers of New York. How I have missed the ocean! But I can’t begin to put into words the aching of my heart for the red dirt and the trees and the indescribable sunrises and sunsets of this place. I wonder how I can give up my wooden house for an apartment and trade my trees for taxis.

I remember the awkward feeling I used to have sometimes just walking down the street, or sitting with people because life here was not normal yet. I don’t know if the awkwardness is still there or if I just don’t notice it anymore because people look at me as one of their own. People have told me that I am an important member of the community, someone that is like family to everyone, and a Paraguayita. While visiting my friends and families, strangers who pass by will ask if I am a daughter, a cousin, etc. because I talk and act like them. My friend Aquilina has referred to me as a granddaughter, my friend Claudia has called me her daughter, and my closest and dearest host family always tells me that I am another member of their family. Even though I live by myself, I will often spend the entire day with my family, showing up for breakfast and leaving at bedtime. I sometimes spend the night and have shared beds with all of my siblings. My sister tells me her secrets and my little brother likes to see how much he can tease me before I yell at him. How do I even begin to say goodbye to that?

It’s not that I don’t miss my family in the states and it’s not that I don’t want to see them, it’s just that I still don’t know how to leave behind this life I have built for myself and transition into another. I will live within easier access to my family, with cheaper phone calls, and better internet, but I will live across the country and a three hour time difference, the same time difference there is currently between California and Paraguay. I am not “coming home” in the way that many people think I am. I am leaving a home I have created here and am going to create another one. It’s not even truly fair to say I am trading this life in Paraguay for one in New York because I will always keep a little bit of Paraguay in my heart just like I will always have roots in Southern California where I grew up and the sun always shines. I will perhaps one day allow the New York skyscrapers to take a place in my heart next to the Californian ocean and the Paraguayan trees.

check out recent photos of my trip to uruguay, my commission and their fogons, and other stuff around my community.

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Just the other day I was eating lunch with a friend and her Paraguayan friend. I told a story of how I had to go through Caacupe (the religious capitol of Paraguay) on December 8, the national holiday when everyone sojourns to Caacupe. I don’t know how many people are there, but I could barely walk through the tiny streets without knocking into people. I happened to arrive just about the hour when everyone there wanted to catch a bus and head back home and I wanted as well to catch another bus. As bus after bus passed me packed like sardines with people leaning out of doorways and extra limbs hanging out windows and doors, I realized it might be a challenge to find a spot on a bus. After an hour of walking around in the hot sun, I saw a bus that was going where I needed to go and had just enough room for one person in the doorway. I hopped on and grabbed onto the door. Mom and Tess, don’t read this next sentence. That was how I rode down the highway, clutching onto the door, backpack hanging outside, slightly leaning against the man standing behind me. When I came to this part of the story, the friends both asked me what everyone who has heard this story asked. “Did you pay for the bus?” I chuckled. “No. I’m not even sure they saw me get on the bus and I couldn’t have reached the driver to give him the money anyway.”

“Paraguay has corrupted you”, the guy laughed.

I laughed too. “Yes, I guess it has,” I say, smiling. “I was not like this before.” I continued, “I figure not paying partly makes up for the times that I have been overcharged for riding on busses.” We all laughed again at the idea that Paraguay has corrupted us and I thought about how I have changed and adapted to survive here. There are so many things, like me hanging out the doorway of a bus, riding down the highway and not paying for a bus ride that seem so normal to me now. “Only in Paraguay,” I think. Only in Paraguay.

It is this same corrupted Alison that find these following situations completely normal and part of everyday life here:

I got a ride to Asuncion from a man that I didn’t really know, but he is a cousin to one of my señora friends, so I figure he is safe, if a slightly odd person. During the ride, he pointed out a piece of land by the highway and said that he owned it. Later on, he turned to me, touched my shoulder and said that I should stay here in Paraguay and build my house on his piece of land. “Of course,” I think. “It would be totally normal for someone who has known me for an hour to be so generous and expect me to accept such an offer.” When he dropped me off, he asked for my number. Seeing no way out of it, I gave it to him and as soon as he text me, I blocked his number so that he can text me but I won’t ever receive his texts. Totally normal.

Two days ago, I was helping the president of a new committee complete paperwork to get recognition from the local government. This required getting a specific piece of paper signed by every member of the committee, so after writing down names and ID numbers, I sent him off on his moto to get the signatures. He came back a couple of hours later and said, “I have everyone’s signatures except for Chopeta. Come here and sign for her.” I promptly got up and forged her signature then looked over the paper and noticed we were missing a signature of someone who is currently in Argentina. I turned to my brother and said, “You sign that. That is too difficult for me to forge.” He did it without argument. I used to be wary of doing things like that, but after doing loads of paperwork and walking hours and hours to get signatures from people who aren’t home, I became far less anxious about false signatures. I even turned in paperwork to a bank once for my commission and I know the teller was fully aware that I had just signed for my president but didn’t say anything because he knew it was important that I complete the paperwork. I even had someone at the Ministry de Hacienda forge something for me so that I didn’t have to make a 3 hour trip home and back to Caacupe to finish turning in paperwork.

Yesterday I was on a bus and when we stopped to pick up more passengers, a moto hit us from behind. I’m fairly sure the man was slightly inebriated. It was barely 8 o’clock in the morning, he had no helmet, was wearing flip-flops, and had a 10-year old looking child with him in shorts and flip-flops who fell off with him. My fellow bus riders got up from their seats and crowded around the windows to watch the slightly drunk man get back on his feet, pick up his moto and parts of his moto that had fallen off. No one was hurt, although I believe the man slightly scraped his leg and tore his pants. The bus driver got out of the bus and told the guy he would have to pay for the broken taillight on the bus and asked for his phone number. Although the motorist could have given a false number, I’m sure he gave the driver the correct number but no other security, no more information. Paraguayans don’t typically think to lie about those kinds of things. Meanwhile, I sat there laughing at the whole situation and the reactions of those riding the bus with me. Don’t get me wrong, it is in no way funny to see drunk driving or the problems that come of it. But there was something that felt so familiar, so normal about this situation, that I laughed at it. After a couple minutes of staring out the window and realizing nothing more exciting was going to happen, passengers began to get bored. “Jaha. Ahechama,” (Let’s go. I’ve seen it already,) someone said. Someone agreed, “Ipukuma” (It’s long already).

Again, I laughed. “Only here,” I thought, “would I witness this.” Rohayhu, Paraguay (I love you, Paraguay).

Maybe the only people that will actually understand this blog will be my fellow volunteers. If so, that’s perfectly ok with me. If you choose to think us corrupt and horribly changed due to our time in Paraguay, so be it. But please don’t think badly of this country. In spite of all its’ faults, I love it and enjoy it the same. In fact, I believe it is because these circumstances that I used to struggle with and find strange that make me love this place even more.

There is no place like you. Rohayhu Paraguay. Rohayhu.

My mother, being the wonderful person that she is, asked me what I wanted for christmas this year a few months ahead of time so that she could send me a package that would arrive before december 25. I directed her to my blog page where I had put a little blub on the the side saying that I didn't want anything more for me because of my limited time, but if people felt so inclined, they should send me books. She went out right away and bought me a stack of books in Spanish and got my grandma in on the project. Within a couple of months, I had a box of wonderful books sitting in my house here in Paraguay. A couple of days later, my neighbors came over to play with my camera and I asked them if they liked to read. I got a resounding "yes!" from each one of them. I dragged out my box of brand new books and they went at it, grabbing books left and right, claiming their favorite ones.

I had to explain several times that these books were not for giving away but for starting a library at the school. But because I had them at my house and it is currently summer, they were more than welcome to come over every day to read. Despite the fact that I was running on 3 hours of sleep, had just got home, and all I wanted was to eat something and sleep, we stayed on my porch for about an hour reading. They even called in another kid walking down the street and demanded that she join in the fun. Araceli and Elias took me quite literally when I said they could come over every day to read and not only showed up the following morning, then waited for me all day and came back at 8pm that same night. Araceli has claimed "Donde Estara Spot?" as her own and says that we have to read it every day. I brought out my construction paper and pencils and they have started copying pictures out of Curious George. I could not be more happy about the immediate success of this project and am excited to pass off an already functioning project to the next volunteer.

I also, as I said in that little blub on the side, would appreciate any donations. Books are difficult to get and expensive here in Paraguay. I have high goals of furnishing the school library with children's stories, maps, technical resources, encyclopedias, etc., before I leave. I am turning in grants in Asuncion to organizations that donate books but am still looking for extra help from the United States. If you would like to help out a rural Paraguayan school and it's children, help children learn to read and develop a love for books, I would love it if you could help me. You can send me books through snail mail or you can send me a money order through Western Union and I can buy books here that are printed in Argentina and Spain that are unavailable in the United States. Words cannot express the gratitude I have for my mom and grandma who have already helped me. If you would like to see pictures of my neighbors reading or other pictures of me in my community, please check out my previous blog post and look at my pictures on photobucket. Please contact me if you are interested or want more information.

For those of you who are interested in looking for books, here is a list of books that I already have. I will accept books that I already have but would prefer to have more variety.

Courduroy

¿Dónde está Spot?

Jorge el Curioso

La Mariquita Lara

Escalofríos- El Fantasma Aullador

Bizcocho

Alexander y el Dia Terrible, Horrible, Espantoso, Horroroso

Cocodrilos del Nilo

Crees que conoces a los hipopótamos

Crees que conoces a las cebras

Harold y el Lápiz Color Morado

Jackie Robinson

El Cuento de Ferdinando

Las Aventuras del Capitán Calzoncillos

El Ratoncito de la Moto

Ramona Empieza el Curso

Esteban El Plano

Cómo Nació el Arco Iris

Mi Diario de Aquí Hasta Allá

Quiero un Perro

Tengo Todo Esto

Quiero Aquí a mi Chico

Voy a Dormir

¿Por qué Me Sigue?

¡No es Tuyo!

Ese Perro

La Feria Musical de Matemáticas

¡Ya Era Hora, Max!

La Limonada de Lulú

James y el Melocotón Gigante

La Telaraña de Carlota

Arroz con Frijoles... y unos amables ratones

Donde Viven Los Montruos

Esos Desagredables Detestables Sucios Completamente Asquerosos pero... Invisibles Gérmenes

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updated photos. i changed the photo site to photobucket.

Maybe I like her because she slightly reminds me of myself when I was her age, hair flying in the wind and dirt all over my clothes. Or maybe it’s the freedom with which she lives without regard to societal rules or the complaining voices of her older cousins. Araceli tends to make people turn their heads in wonderment at this small, beautiful child that almost never stops running and only wears matching, clean clothes when her cousins or grandma make her change. Her nickname, Ara, means sky and it fits her personality perfectly. We became friends when she would pass my house and yell out “Aleesohn” and I would yell back, “Aracelliii!” This somehow became a habit, and she will often shout out my name while speeding by my house on her way to the almacen and I will call back from inside my house even though I can’t see her.

One day I was walking home with Araceli and her two cousins Ofelia and Ana and Araceli was particularly being a pest which I found hilarious and absolutely approved of. She had taken a small silver decoration from a cake and stuck it on her nose with frosting and then showed me that she had a nose ring like me. She went running through the chakra, skipping and yelling, daring to dirty her clothes. I laughed and might have encouraged her behavior. Ofe and Ana on the other hand were tired of their small cousins’ offenses and continually yelled at her to be careful, to stay clean, and to just act like a normal human being. Ana looked at me with a long face and said, “Ali, do you want a child? I will give you Araceli. You take her home with you.” I of course accepted willingly. “Jaha Araceli,” I said, “Eketa che rogape.” (Let’s go, you will sleep at my house.) We continued the joke and began to say, “Araceli ohota chendive estadosunidospe. Ohota che maletape ha oikota chendive.” (Araceli will go with me to the United States. She’ll go in my suitcase and live with me.) Ofe and Ana were thrilled with the idea but the more we joked, the further Ara ran from me. “Che ndahamoai,” she retorted (I’m not going) and skipped out of reach. The next several times she saw me in public, Araceli would run up to me and tease, “Ali! Che ndahamoai nendive” (Ali, I’m not going with you) and then run away. I believe there was a time when this 5 year old actually thought we were serious about packing her off to another country and began to run closer to her abuela (grandma) when I came around. Now she no longer fears me and we all keep the joke going, which keeps her running back and forth out of my reach, laughing the whole time. Sometimes I tell her, "Nde che membyma. Eju, jaha" (You're my child now. Come, lets go.), and I reach for her as if to grab her and take her home with me.

The other day we all went to the school graduation to watch the 6th graders and preschoolers receive their folders, passing on to a new and more advanced realm. Then, like any good Paraguayan event, we ate food, drank soda, and ate cake. Poor Araceli had to dress nicely in her school skirt and button up shirt and it was transparently clear that she was uncomfortable. She sat at the preschool table straddling her chair and wrapping her ankles around the legs of the chair, looking wide-eyed at the cake at the center of the table. Unlike her other classmates, she didn’t play around with the napkins and silverware in front of her, or reach precariously over the carefully decorated cake. It certainly was not for lack of energy; I believe she was using an enormous amount of restraint at that moment. I felt her pain and remembered what it was like when I was 5 years old and had to sit still and look pretty. Actually, I didn’t have to look back even that far. I’m 23 and I still have a hard time sitting still and have to use a large amount of restraint in situations like that. I don’t throw fits when my mom tells me to put on a dress for church, but I argue with my friends when they tell me to dress up.

The graduation finally ended and we all began the walk home together. Araceli, finally free, made a big sigh, looked at her abuela, said “Opa. Avya.” (It’s over. I’m happy), took off her button up shirt and tied it around her stomach. She of course was prepared and not only had a shirt underneath the button-up, but shorts underneath her skirt. She began to run ahead and make dramatic scenes in front of us as if she was tired, waiting for us to catch up with her. She skipped ahead and then fell on the ground. She ran, swinging one leg around in circles and then leaned over pretending to pant. She turned around and walked backwards uphill giggling until her abuela told her to turn around and walk normally. All of this caused the button-up shirt to fall from her stomach and it eventually got passed off to abuela so that it wouldn’t get dirty and wrinkled. She stopped for a moment and farted and everyone burst out into laughter. Ana and Ofe rolled their eyes at me but laughed at the same time. Again, Ana offered to give me her younger cousin again and again, I accepted. How could I turn down this lovely child?

Every death is tragic, but somehow the ending of a life of a young, talented person, trying to make a difference in the world, seems far more horrific. For those of you who don want be sad, stop reading and close this page because this will I believe be the saddest blog I have ever written. To the rest of you, hopefully I will communicate some sort of meaning and perhaps and encouragement through the memory of a life.

Emily Balog died in a car accident this last Sunday morning. She was a Community Economic Development Peace Corps Volunteer here in Paraguay. She was in her mid-twenties and had about nine more months left in her service. I did not know her well so I don’t believe it correct of me to speak of her life, who she was, and what she did. I nonetheless am in mourning along with the rest of Peace Corps Paraguay. It may seem strange that I mourn the loss of a so-called “acquaintance,” someone I barely knew, but she was far more than just that. Without knowing the details of her life, I can tell you that she and I had much in common. Both of us willingly gave up 27 months of our lives to move to a foreign country to try to improve the lives of those less fortunate. We both struggled to adapt and integrate into this culture and learn the language and customs. No matter the difference in our sectors or our projects, I know we had similar struggles and similar victories. We both lived with Paraguayan families and learned to make deep relationships with people so different from us, eat their food, share their customs, and learn a mutual respect. I believe that she, like me had learned to love this county and the people in, despite our mountainous troubles here. The list of commonalties is long but comes down to this: she was a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer in my country at the same time. I don’t believe this bond can be well described or understood unless you are a PCV. The ties of this relationship run deep and volunteers become a sort of family as soon as they swear in to their service. We may not all know each other, but there is a sense of duty we have to each other, very frequently more pressing or fundamental than other duties we might have in our sites or to other Paraguayans. This was apparent I think at Emily’s memorial service. Volunteers traveled from all over the country on very short notice just to be here. In fact, there were more people present that night than when the Director of Peace Corps came from Washington D.C. to Asuncion to celebrate the bicentennial. I assume as well that though not as impactful, Peace Corps Volunteers and Returned Peace Corps Volunteers all over the world who have heard about this unimaginable event are deeply saddened at the loss of one of their own.

And I know her death is being mourned by far more than just Peace Corps. The news of Emily’s death was breaking news here and though I was already informed, I had people calling me and showing up at my house to make sure I knew that a friend passed away, the minute the morning news was on. Even still, every person I run into in site asks about her, mentions her family and looks at me with sad and understanding eyes. Paraguayans have a fairly good grasp on death and the cycle of life because life moves so much slower and people often die so much earlier than they should. This death though affected them differently. As one volunteer said, in a country where family is so integral, most Paraguayans can not comprehend why and how we would leave our families in the United States for such a long time. Without having to explain anything, they all know that regardless of how close I was to Emily, I am still mourning her death because she is, in my host mom’s words, “de la misma sangre” (of the same blood). The Paraguayans who know other volunteers mourn for us because even if they can’t understand it, they know it is a tragic loss for all of us. They she was far away from her family and they mourn for the family members because they can not fathom having a child or sibling so far away from them. Truly, all of Paraguay is mourning the loss of Emily.

It is impossible for me to imagine the feeling of senseless loss felt by her friends and family back home, would I presume describe it. But I also have friends and family in the United States and I know how deeply they care about me. Though I would never pretend to understand the feelings of Emily’s family right now, I know it is safe to assume that her death is being mourned by all Peace Corps Volunteer parents, siblings, and friends alike, for they too know someone far away in a distant land and are eagerly awaiting their return.

How do you sum up a life, especially one that ended all too soon and was so full and meaningful? I don’t know how they did it, but those closest to Emily prepared a memorial service in two days. It was a beautiful as it was sad but I think it honored and celebrated Emily’s life incredibly well. They shared how she was a beautiful person inside and out, how she loved well and was loved well, how she had meaningful work in site, how she had a sense of humor, and how difficult this present time and future months will be for them. I don’t believe she will ever be forgotten by Peace Corps Paraguay.

I love baking bread. I love the smell of active yeast and of the dough rising. I love using my muscles to knead the bread and then the feeling of clean hands after I wash all the sticky dough off of them. I love watching it rise as though some miracle took place and the satisfaction of punching it back down. But best of all I like the end result: the smell of fresh bread wafting out my door and the wonderful taste of warm, soft bread. I remember as a girl watching my mom make bread and I held a kind of respect and awe for her and those like her ho knew the art and mysteries of bread. It seemed about the most complicated thing one could make in the kitchen. Whenever I tried to help her, I felt I was always doing something wrong. When I was kneading, I always put too much or too little flour and my miniature hands didn’t knead forcefully enough. I always anticipated punching down the dough wanting to do it long before it was ready and she always had to remind me not to push it down too hard. When we made rolls for Thanksgiving, I played with the dough too much and no matter how long I teased and shifted it, my rolls never came out perfectly smooth like hers. If I ever commented on her astounding ability to make rolls, she denied any talent and said it was Aunt Karen, Grandma, or Great Grandma who really could make rolls, not her.

Here in Paraguay, I bake and cook a lot. It started out with a lot of cakes but it eventually progressed to the more difficult art of bread and I’ve discovered that I like making rolls instead of full loaves. (Though I don’t dare boast equal ability to the masters of bread in my family.) In fact, making bread of any shape or form now seems a simple task because I have never worked harder for my food than in this country.

I have been able to experiment with many things here that I never would have thought of trying in the States because I have so much time on my hands. I regularly make granola, bread and yogurt for myself. I have made cool things like peach jam, blackberry jam, dulce de leche, hummus, sun dried tomatoes, sesame crackers, and sesame candies. Once I made enchiladas with homemade sauce and homemade tortillas and it took the better part of my morning. I have made so many cakes that I rarely look at a recipe anymore for instructions and I have all but perfected my potato soup and Spanish rice. One of my better experiments was spaghetti sauce with eggplant, raw peanuts and curry. Some discoveries have been accidental because I have been missing one or two ingredients and have no other options. Plus I don’t actually own any measuring cups or spoons, so everything is a bit of a guessing game.

If I am eating with Paraguayans, sometimes I have to help search for firewood and chop it with a machete just to have cooking power. If we make chipa guazu, we have to go to the chakra, pick off enough cobs off the stalks to fill a large back, shuck all the corn, cut the kernels off with a knife, and grind the corn by hand. The actual mixing the ground up corn with oil, salt, cheese, milk whey, and a little more oil is the easy part. Once I made chipa kandoi (peanut chipa) with my friend and at least half the ingredients came from her fields. The peanuts her family had grown and shucked and we toasted, peeled, and ground them and ground the corn they had grown and dried into flour. The mandioca flour she had made by digging up buckets and buckets of mandioca, peeling and cleaning it all, loading it onto an ox cart to take down the street to grind it by machine, spending hours sifting with water through thin material and then leaving the remaining flour out the in sun for a few days to dry. My contribution of sugar, anis and coco seemed a measly comparison to her work. We then spend a good four hours making fire, mixing the ingredients and forming the chipa, and waiting for it to cook. At the end of the afternoon I was hot and sweaty and had ground peanuts, flour, and soot all over my clothes and body. And yet, there is a certain satisfaction I get after working so hard for all my food. Unless you are cooking something delicate, it always tastes better if you cook it by fire. And there is always the feeling that the food is well earned calories after you have been slaving away for hours.

The Paraguayans will remind you that the food is better when it’s fresh and natural and I can’t say I can argue that. As unpleasant as it might be to watch a pig or chicken be slaughtered, at least I know where it came from and for the most part, what it ate as well. The juice we make includes only fruit, sugar and water. No additives or preservatives are necessary. Most of the vegetables I get in site come from someone’s garden or chackra and I have fresh oregano, mint, basil, and rosemary in my yard. I buy milk from my neighbor who has a cow and I cook, back, and make my yogurt with it. Almost everything I eat, I can trace to it’s original source and there is something about that which makes me feel safe.

I am still slightly in awe at the fantastic change that comes upon dough when it rises and I still get the same satisfaction today as when I was a girl watching it sink down as I gleefully punch the air out. If possible, maybe I love it just a little bit more. The thing is, living here and spending so many hours of my day working for a meal has made me appreciate food in a fuller way. (No pun intended.) I have come to take pleasure in chopping up vegetables, mixing recipes, coming up with new ideas and just being a part of the process of my meal. Perhaps that sounds cheesy, but I feel so much more fulfilled after preparing my meal than letting a microwave do the work for me. Food and eating are a central part of our lives and I believe that it should be that way. When people meet, they often eat and families gather around the table to share food. The United States has an entire holiday (incidentally my favorite) that is devoted to food and eating. Every country has food and dishes specific to them and customs that often revolve around that. Eating becomes as much of a social activity as it is something we do to sustain ourselves.

I don't think my neighbors realize just how amazing it is that the land they live on is capable of producing well over 75 percent of their food. Nor do I think people in the United States realize how insane it is to have a dozen supermarkets at their disposal, full of more food than they could possibly consume, most of which comes with very little preparation and far too much packaging. People in Paraguay work all day to get a meal on the table and people in the US work all day to afford to buy prepared food to put on the table. Somehow I can’t make sense of that, but I won’t go on a rant about the United States right now. I’ll just say I like to be a part of the food preparation and feel it in my hands. And I like to watch the dough rise.

When I was 5, I was a proud owner of a pair of pink, sparkly jellies. I don't remember them being comfortable but they were very fashionable shoes. Then the early 90's ended and the fashions changed and more than just my feet outgrew the jellies. I upgraded myself to normal tennis shoes and then moved on to an absurdly overpriced pair of skater shoes. Also pink, by the way. I don't ever remember being that cool growing up, nor do I remember having an attachment to the color pink, which I have since then sworn off, but at least my feet were in style.

Coming to Paraguay was like entering some sort of weird time warp. I saw people using wells as water sources and plowing their fields with oxen, which I thought fit in my great-grandmothers day, but those same people rode on motorcycles, watched TV’s and texted me with their cell phones. Though they had no clue how to use a computer, at least part of their culture seemed to slightly fit into my generation. I found they listened to American 70’s music and thought it was cool, along with Lady Gaga, Black Eyed Peas, and some awful style of music called reggatone that I could only describe as loud an obnoxious. None of this seemed to fit together. On top of that, I saw people wearing the jellies of my childhood along with spandex. Who knew that 80’s fashion would be popular here in Paraguay?

I moved to Cariy Potrero determined to blend in… well at least as much as a white girl with red hair who has a mastery of 3 Guarani phrases possibly can blend in. Ok, so blending in was admittedly impossible, but I wanted to become as Paraguayan as I possibly could, thinking that maybe they would overlook the red hair and ignorance of Guarani. I adapted myself into the environment. I learned to cook with fire, wash my clothes my hand, use a machete, make foods with pig fat, pluck feathers off a dead chicken, make grunting noises to shoo away animals, and I even faked my Guarani well enough to make people think that I actually spoke it well. I was however still resistant to Paraguayan music and clothing, thinking that my sense of style and my musical interests were far superior.

Several months into my service, one of my good friends showed up in Asuncion with a pair of spandex and I realized that the idea of wearing them had grown on me but I was too chicken to actually try it. She convinced me of their comfortableness and usefulness and I broke down and bought a pair which then sat in my dresser for 2 weeks. When I finally found the guts to put them on in public, I called my friend. “It’s slightly freeing,” I told her. “But I’m still very self conscious about it. I’m worried that everyone is going to make comments about it at my commission meeting.” She admitted, “it’s weird at first. But don’t worry. Spandex are so normal here they won’t say anything. They almost expect you to wear them.” I was still incredibly aware of every angle that my calves, thighs, and butt that were somehow being more pronounced in these amazing pair of new spandex, but my friend was right. No one said a thing about my new style. And Paraguayans make comments about everything new. I had forgotten that they spandex were new to me but not to them. The more comfortable I got showing off my legs in spandex, the more I liked them. They were comfortable, stretchy, lightweight, didn’t stick to you like jeans and could be considered “semi-formal” wear for the campo.

Then my attitude began changing toward that “loud and obnoxious” music called reggatone as well. Even if it wasn’t the best style of music, many songs reminded me of certain people, places or events in Paraguay. And besides, most songs had a really good beat. I bought a couple of cd’s and took them with me on my visit to the states to help me reminisce. I made my friends and family listen to it and being the awesome people that they are they went along with it. My sisters and cousins got so into it that they blasted it on the computer speakers and danced to it in the family room. I almost wished I could take them with me to a Paraguayan fiesta. I started listening to reggatone when I went running and I was actually able to sing along to many of the songs. I even admittedly like the song, “Me enamore de ti por facebook mi amor” (I fell in love with you through facebook my love), not so much because it’s a good song but mostly because it makes me laugh and very few people listen well enough to actually know what he’s saying. I began to feel that Paraguay was influencing me for the better.

I had been eyeing people’s plastic sandals and jellies for a few months, thinking how great they would look on my feet. If I could be confident in spandex, I could be confident in the same shoes I wore when I was 5. Just without sparkles. My friend and I confessed to each other our need for restocking in spandex and interest in new Paraguayan footwear and we went on a shopping spree. The jellies I found were neither pink nor sparkly, but they also have the plus side of being comfortable, unlike my first pair. They are also absolutely and completely awesome. I also might or might not have bought spandex knee shorts and a highlighter yellow striped tank top. I won’t tell you what color the spandex shorts are… or if I really bought them.

I think I’ve achieved integration about as much as I possibly can, minus the mastery of Guarani which I am doubtful would ever happen. I’m not dying my hair black and my skin will never tan darker than the nice dark-white that it achieves in the summer time. Short of that, I believe that my spandex wearing, jellies shoes wearing, and other previously mentioned acquired skills along with my recent addiction to reggatone will make me about as Paraguayan as a white girl can get.

Many PCVs, myself included, join Peace Corps thinking that they are capable of changing the world, that entire villages will lead better lives because of our influence, and after a few months in country we begin hoping, wishing, that we will change something other than ourselves. We second guess ourselves and compare ourselves to other volunteers thinking that we aren’t doing enough. We wonder why we are here and if anyone cares and yet we stay, day after day, visiting families, trying to convince those children to put on their shoes and brush their teeth and trying to convince government officials to give us support for our commissions. The weeks and months pass and we dream that perhaps one child will brush their teeth daily, beg their mom for vegetables, or stop throwing trash in their front yard because of our influence. Just one child? Please.

The task that I felt so capable of two years ago of improving people’s lives appears an impossible task to me. When I tell some friends and families of my woes, they timidly ask me if I’m sure I want to finish and I know they secretly hope that I will come home and end this self imposed torture. I begin doubting myself and wondering what in the world I am doing in Paraguay and why I’m here. “Will I ever see the fruits of my labor?” I wonder to myself, assuming the answer is no. When my life consistently feels impossible, the smallest things feel like huge successes. I called a friend to tell her that one teacher told me in a very indirect way that I could essentially come whenever I wanted and teach whatever I wanted. I called someone after working all day in the school garden and seeing two of the teachers take charge and get involved. I would write in my journal when I had a good conversation in Guarani and I told several people that my host dad cried when he realized how little time I had left in the country. These seemingly “small” things were the motivations to keep me in this country and what made my work worthwhile.

For almost the entirety of my time in site (now a year and 5 months), I have been working with a women’s commission to raise money to build fogons (brick ovens) for 27 women. I invited every house in the community and blundered my way through the first meeting when they elected officials for the commission. From the get go, I made it clear to them that this was their commission and I was just the helper; they had to make and enforce rules and decisions, not me. For months, my “helping” duties consisted in all of the work for the commission. I walked in the sun to collect everyone’s identity cards to make copies, I typed up copies of our rules, I walked around to get signatures, I called and organized meetings, carted back soap kits from Asuncion to raise funds, and then I made the journey to the local municipality every week for three months to check on our recognition. After I had argued my way into getting that paper, I brought necessary documents to the department capital and waited a month for their recognition. I then spent another couple of months getting more useless but necessary documents for the commission, exhausting myself through weekly trips to the Caacupe (the department capital) and running around to make copies, get things signed, notarized, and occasionally having arguments with government officials. I saw no end in sight and began to just hope that I would complete the paperwork side of the job so that my follow up volunteer could construct the fogons. Meanwhile, most of the women in my commission were losing faith and it took everything I had to rally their spirits, although I’m not sure I did a very good job.

Finally I had all the necessary documentation and was able to write a grant, petitioning the government for financial support to build the fogons. By this time, a few women were starting to visit the capital with me and were beginning to see that this was no piece of cake. They waited for hours with me to speak with the governor and they listened to me argue with someone who said that they were unable to support a fogon project. They were with me when I was told that we would receive half of the support and when we got back home after that, they began with a new vigor. I watched as these ladies began to speak their mind and insist that rules be enforced; I saw them planning fundraising activities without my help or advice; I listened while they defended and supported the work I had done for the last year and a half as if I were the most amazing person on the planet; and they conducted three-quarters of the meeting without me saying a word. I even had to ask for clarification after the meeting was over because they had made decisions without me understanding everything that was going on. I could not have been more proud of them.

About a month later, I was stuck in Asuncion for medical reasons, unable to return to site and I received a call from my contact in Caacupe. “The items for your fogons are coming in tomorrow,” he told me. “You need to come pick them up with your President and Treasurer.” I had previously talked with my commission and they knew that when we got the support, the President and Treasurer would have to go in with me. The only problem was that I was stuck in Asuncion and didn’t know when I would be home. I called the President and explained the situation to her. Without hesitation, she agreed to go without me and said she would contact the Treasurer to see what day was good for both of them. Ten minutes later, my contact in Caacupe informed me that he talked to “my people” and they would be there when the materials arrived. The following day I got a call from my host dad to congratulate me and let me know that everything arrived well, that the President and Treasurer made the journey and the materials were safely stored in their house. I was now overwhelmed with pride for these women.

At the same time, I felt like someone had chopped off my hand or taken away my baby. While I was overflowing with pride, there was also an empty feeling in my gut. I had worked for a year and a half to make this happen, cried, sweated, lost sleep, made myself sick, and argued over it, and I was not there to see the biggest part of it to date come into fulfillment. There was a secret part of me that wanted to shed a tear with my beaming smile. I had wanted this so badly but I knew that what I wanted more was to make myself and my job useless. This work is difficult, but it is even more difficult to make it self-sustainable. My commission getting fogon materials was a huge success, but me having the contacts and relationships to simply make phone calls so that my women could do the work without me was an even bigger success.

Through this chain of events, I was not only able to see how long it takes for change to come about, but for the first time I began to think about how hard it would be for me to leave this commission in the following months. It was an awfully bittersweet thought. I don't know that any one child is brushing their teeth more frequently or wearing their shoes more frequently because of my influence (although my reports sent to DC records supposed success in that area) and I know that my commission is not at all self-sustainable yet, nor will they be self-sustainable before I leave. But they just made a huge step in that direction. And whether you believe me or not and whether you think I am crazy or not, I think that it was all worth it.

Yesterday was unusual. It was almost perfect actually. It’s not so much that I always have bad days Days like that don’t happen very often, so it means so much more when I actually have a day like that. Those days don’t really have anything to do with my projects going well (or otherwise) or me feeling like I am making a huge difference in the community. It really has more to do with me being able to appreciate where I am at and fully enjoy that moment, knowing what it took me to get there.

My early morning was semi-leisurely. I woke up around 6 and lazed around in my bed for a while, petting my dog until I fully woke up. I swept the house, did some stretching and some crunches, made my bed, and drank half a thermos of mate while reading Jane Austen’s “Mansfield Park.” The last cold spell of the winter was just ending so it was comfortable walking around my house in my long underwear and sweatpants as opposed to the intolerable cold during the previous week. Every morning previously, I would want to cry when I got out of bed and it felt like torture to do simple tasks

I was out of the house by 8:30 and made the 15 minute walk with Pulgita to the school. One of the teachers was making tortillas over a fire and I sat down and chatted with her until recess. Then I sat around with the teachers for half an hour, going back and forth from awkward silence to uncomfortable conversation. I pretended that I didn’t understand a crass comment one of the teachers made to me and I stayed comfortable in the semi-awkwardness that somehow seems to be present in most social situations. I planned to do a charla and activity with the classes in a couple of weeks and I left. No matter how strange my relationships with the teachers at the school might be, I have finally gained their respect and they pretty much give me free reign when I have ideas and activities to do.

On my walk home, my mom called from the states. She generally calls every other week, but we haven’t had a good conversation in a while and somehow a phone call in the middle of the week seems like an extra treat. We caught up, I vented, and pleaded my case against the injustices I feel I am fighting against. I hung up with her as my neighbor came over to tell me that my dog killed her chicken this morning. It was a small chicken and she was just playing with it with her paws, but my neighbor just wanted me to know.

I felt terrible and mulled over what I should do while I kneaded out dough for bread. As it was rising and baking, I picked and squeezed tangerines for a fresh pitcher of juice. I don’t care how crappy or how great my day is, fresh baked bread and fresh squeezed tangerine juice will always make it that much better. I took some of the rolls, still piping hot, to my neighbor as a good-will token, hoping to stay on good terms with her.

Then I headed down the street for a quince (15 year old birthday party celebrated for girls) for my host cousin. According to Paraguayan custom, parties don’t start until close to bed time, so I spent a few hours at my families house before heading over to the party. I chatted with my mom while shelling peas and then made a fire in her fogon to heat up water. My sister came home from high school and we ate tangerines while she told me about how disappointed she was with her quince 2 years ago. I had a light bulb moment and realized that she was confiding in me, telling me her secrets, and that we had become good enough friends for her to be able to do that. She consulted me on the gift she was giving her cousin and our mom rushed us next door to the party, which was still falta an hour to start.

We sat mostly in silence for about an hour listening to reggaeton music blasting and watched the other guests arrive and quietly take their seats. I can’t say that Paraguayan events are ever not awkward, but the awkward becomes normal and expected. I have found my place with the children at social events and made friends with boys and girls between the ages of 8 and 17. When there were enough guests and the hour was deemed late enough, the food was served around two long tables shoved together. We downed it with soda and then took group pictures around the cake. My host sister then coerced uncles and cousins to dance a waltz with the quinciñera and as more people joined in, I somehow got shoved into the group and waltzed for a few minutes with my neighbor. The party ended and I walked home with my neighbors, finally going to bed a couple hours after my normal bedtime.

I know that reading over the details of my day nothing sounds very spectacular, but that is only on the very surface. I remember joining Peace Corps and having absurdly high hopes of changing the world, only to arrive in Paraguay and be slapped in the face with reality, trying to hope for change in something, anything other than myself. It has not been easy and it has often not been fun, so out of context, this day has almost no meaning. I have said before that I can’t write about the bad days whether it be too offensive, too angry and bitter, too resentful, or what have you. I still can’t give you all the details of the bad days, but I can tell you why this day was so good and the struggles that I went through to make it that way.

My early morning goes with little explanation. It is not every morning that I get to relax for a couple of hours and not rush off somewhere and the fact that that I didn’t wake up with frost on my lawn only made it better.

When I go to the school now, I get no special treatment, no awkward welcomes, no interruptions in classes and while I will never fully be “one of them,” I am accepted into their group. The teachers respect me, the children love me and while they think I have weird and crazy ideas, I have good ideas. It has taken me many awkward charlas, uncomfortable conversations, and persistent visits for me to get to that point. I can now show up to school and the teachers get excited to work with me as well as the children. It has taken me a year and a half to get there.

I will often go weeks without talking to anyone from the United States. Any day that I get a phone call from home is a good day. Period.

The bread that I made was soft and chewy and the tangerine juice tart and sweet. I have probably spent more time collectively during my time in Peace Corps cooking than I have in all the previous years in my life. I have learned how to make a lot of really cool things, but there were definitely many days when things happened like the bread burned, the cake didn’t rise, the jelly wouldn’t jell, I forgot a cup of flour, or it tasted so bad that my dog got a really big dinner and even she wouldn’t finish it. I know my way around the kitchen but it has come with its fair share of mistakes. Anything that comes out well makes me feel good no matter how many times I’ve made it.

As for my dog, well, like everything else, she is a daily challenge. She is too playful for her own good and I need to keep a better eye on her. As strange as it may be, she has helped me change people’s opinions and helped them grow. At the quince, I saw people pet her. They didn’t pet her because they were trying to suck up to me or because they were pretending to like her. They were petting her for their sheer enjoyment. It has taken me countless awkward conversations and embarrassing situations for those few moments. I appreciate those people petting her so much because on a daily basis, she receives the opposite. She has had rocks thrown at her, sticks thrown at her, multiple dogs attack her because she trespassed, she has been hit, yelled at, and kicked. I am a crazy person because I love my dog; I put her on a leash, I feed her dog food, I give her vaccinations on time, and I put her on a bus and took her to Asuncion to take her to the vet to get spayed. But while most people can’t understand it, they see a difference. They see that she follows me all over and she listens to me and she loves me. Because of all of that, seeing people pet her repeatedly in public and tell her to sit in Guarani gives me untold joy. I don’t know that they treat their own dogs any differently than before, but at least it’s a start.

I feel badly about the chicken, but I don’t think my neighbor is mad at me or my dog. I won’t tell you the things that this neighbor said about me when I first moved in, but I will say they were extremely hurtful and that made it infinitely harder to visit her. I don’t know when the relationship changed, but somehow it did. Maybe it was when I spent an entire day with her and her husband in the hospital, waiting to see a doctor so I could translate for them. Whenever it was, she began to like me and when I left for the states to visit, she cried and said she didn’t want to say goodbye. I was astonished at the woman, but finally came to realize that I can cry and whine over wanting to be treated like an American but she is trying as hard as she can and loving me the way that she knows how. There were a few months when I was so unhappy with my neighbors that I seriously considered moving back with my host family. While it might not be an optimal relationship right now, it is what it is and I am happy to say that I am comfortable going over just to chat with them ever now and then. And as much as it drives me crazy that they literally stare at my house all day, I know they take care of it when I’m gone and will be the first to know if anything unusual goes on. We have both come a long way.

My first few months here especially, I felt like I was continually surprised at events and it took me a long time to understand Paraguayan “etiquette.” I never knew what to expect and wasn’t exactly sure how I was supposed to behave or dress. I feel like I finally know what to expect from any kind of social event. I know the traditions, the customs and my place in that and I find a huge comfort in that.

I went through many months complaining to my friends back in the states and to my mom that I was “all alone” here. It was hard to break through language and cultural barriers and feel like I could make any kind of meaningful connection with anyone. I can’t say that I am replacing any of my friends back in the states and I can’t say that it is in any way the same, but I do feel like I finally have friends. I will never be able to tell my host sister the same things that I tell my mom over the phone, but I can still share things with her, confide in her, and listen to her and that counts for a lot. During most of the quince, Ana, my 10 year old neighbor was sitting next to me and talking to me. She has recently become one of my better friends and will often come up to me for a much needed hug. She held my hand on our walk home that night. It is people like Leti and Ana, the teachers at the school and my neighbor that have taught me more about love and respect than any English speaking person has ever taught me. When I have good days like this one, Leti and Ana only make it better. But even when I have those bad days, they bring a smile to my face with very little effort. They are the reason I stay here and they remind me that even when things completely suck, I have come a long way.

This month marks me living in my house for a full year, the longest I have lived in one place since I moved out of my mom’s house when I was 17. From then on, I was packing up and moving ever few months always with different people. The longest I settled down I think was in an apartment for nine months. Except for one summer when I moved to my mom’s house and shared a room with my sister, I had a total of 11 roommates, five housemates, and a few more suite-mates. I can't really explain why I was always moving and changing everything, it was just that way. I had a brief month of solitude with my own room at my mom’s house before I left for Peace Corps. Over the next seven months, I lived with four different families and shared a room with a host sister (sometimes host brothers and occasionally a grandma) at the last house. I was months past being ready to live by myself. The day finally came when I had a place I could call my own.

Since then, I have gotten various reactions at the site of my house. “You live HERE?” “It’s so… cute!” “How much did you pay for the terciada on your roof? Will you give me your oven when you leave?” “Why is your shower in your kitchen?” My mom said when she came to visit me, she figured she was going on an expensive camping trip and I guess she was right. In fact, if you consider an RV camping, then camping is nicer than my house.

When I first moved in my roof leaked. I have no sink, so I use a palingana (large shallow bucket) or the ground. The water pressure often doesn’t work so the shower literally drips or just doesn’t emit any water at all. The electricity that heats my sometimes dripping showerhead will fluctuate quickly, so that the water will go from a comfortable scalding hot to a shocking freezing cold without warning. There are many places that I can see outside by peeking through my wood paneling and in fact, you could easily get a peep show if while I took a shower if you stood on my porch and peeked through the crack by my window. The corrugated metal roofing makes my house an oven in the summer and a refrigerator in the winter; it will literally be cooler outside in the sun on a summer day or warmer in the shade on a winter day than in my house. The metal roof also makes for very loud rainstorms and hailstorms sound like my house is being torn apart. I’m not sure if it’s because of the constantly fluctuating electricity or just because my refrigerator is old, but it functions like the weather. In the summer it hardly stays cold enough to freeze ice and in the winter if freezes everything including my eggs. I don’t own a modern toilet and instead have my pozo ciego (latrine) about 20 meters behind my house. At night, it gets too dark to see inside the latrine so I have to use a flashlight. If I have to pee in the middle of the night, I just pee on my lawn. I seem to have constant ant invasion problems as if my entire foundation became a giant ant next. I also have more spiders living in my house than I care to count but I assume it’s in the three digits. I generally have electricity and running water, but it will go out sometimes (mostly when there is a storm but sometimes for no reason at all) and it will be out for an hour or a few hours, a day or a few days. I love my house.

Maybe it’s because it’s all my own and after having an absurd amount of roommates in a four year span, I finally have my own space with peace and quiet. And maybe it’s because outside of my precious shack I have over 100 trees on my property, tons of cool fruit trees, beautiful flowers, strange plants I have come to love, and fresh oregano, basil, and mint. But I think I love it mostly because of the amount of sweat, and tears, and blisters, and sadly blood and stitches into this house. If it’s a shack now then it was a weed-overgrown, trash pile of rubble before. Yes, I will curse when my feet touch the cement floor on winter days, wonder why God hates me when the electricity is out for three days and I can’t cook, and pray I don’t have heat stroke when I am in my house in the middle of the afternoon in the summer, but I still love every drafty, cobwebby, musty inch of this house.

I now only have eight more months left here. I guess one year and eight months, one house and zero roommates (other than the dog) is a good stab at permanence for me.

It’s winter again in Paraguay. I know this comes as a surprise to many of your northern-hemisphere-ers, but summer up there equals winter down here. Winter in Paraguay means four things: cold, tangerines, tajy flowers, and sugar cane. Ok, so winter means a whole lot more than that, but these are four unique things to this season that stand out to me.

It is cold here, close to freezing actually. I was told that this morning bottomed out at two degrees celcius and I saw frosted grass as I battled my way through the cold to the ruta this morning. I find it extremely difficult not to feel sorry for myself on mornings like this when I have to drag myself out of bed. Showers become optional… or actually, I’ll admit it, they become almost non-existent. My house is wood with several see-through cracks which allow the wind to enter one side and exit the other. My roof is metal which means my house acts like a large refrigerator. Paraguayans go to bed earlier when it is this cold, get up later, and cram people into the same bed in the same way they manage to cram people onto the same motorcycle. I have seen four siblings, ages ranging five to eighteen sharing one full-sized bed. I however, bundle up in as many layers as I can, get in my sleeping bag, and spoon my dog. I think my record for clothing worn durning the day is three pairs of pants, and five layers of shirts/jackets, not including socks, shoes, scarf, and beanie/hood. No really, that is no joke. It hasn’t been as consistently cold this year as it was last year, but still, it’s cold.

One positive thing to the winter is the tangerines. The tangerine season actually starts in fall and ends in spring, but I still think of it as a winter fruit. It is I believe my favorite fruit and my dog Pulgita’s favorite fruit as well. I have been known to eat seven tangerines in a sitting multiple times a day. When I walk to my tangerine trees, Pulgita comes bounding after me, knowing that she gets a treat too. For every couple slices that I eat, she gets one. She chews quickly with her mouth open, tail wagging, and then looks at me expectantly for another one. My new favorite thing this year is tangerine juice. It takes about 35 tangerines and 45 minutes to make two liters of juice. Since I’m a Peace Corps Volunteer with ample time on my hands, this has been happening every couple days and carefully rationed so that it lasts longer than one day.

About the same time that the tangerines are ripe, the sugar cane is ready to cut down as well. My site is a big exporter of sugar cane, so every couple of fields is full of the tall, thick, green, itchy, grass-like, caña dulce (sugar cane) waving in the wind. As the field is cut, the tall green landscape changes into a flat tan one and camionetas (large trucks) precariously stacked with caña dulce pass by my house at all hours of the day and night. I often wonder that they have not taken out the electricity with their caña dulce while passing under the dangerously low electricity lines. Miel de caña (sugar cane honey or molasses becomes available and people go door to door on their motos selling the miel de caña in reused two liter soda bottles. And the other thing sugar cane season means is large groups of men working together in the fields and this is something I don’t enjoy at all. Some of them know me and some of them don’t, but for whatever reason, these boys who call themselves men feel that in addition to machete-ing the caña dulce, it is also thier job to whistle and yell at me as I pass. My walks and runs Turing this time of year almost always are slightly less enjoyable.

And here is my final thing about winter. One of Paraguay’s national flowers is the tajy flower, which comes from the tajy (lapacho) tree. This is a hard wood tree indigenous to Paraguay and in danger of extinction. In the winter after all the leaves have fallen off, hundreds and hundreds of flowers bloom on each tajy in either pink, yellow, or white. You can easily spot a tajy tree in bloom from the air because among all the green, there is a tree bursting with color, impossible to miss. During this time of year, the green countryside is spotted with pink, yellow, and the occasional white; the rest of the normally gorgeous scenery pales in comparison. I wish I had the words, the poetry, to describe the beauty and majesty of these trees., but like many things, neither words nor pictures will do justice. It is something you need to see for yourself. There is a reason it is one of Paraguay’s national flowers and there is a reason that it is special, perhaps spoken of with more respect than the other trees by Paraguayans.

Maybe I find this changing of seasons special because I come from Southern California where there are seasons but they are not dramatic, leading people to claim that Southern California has no seasons. True, LA has no snow, but neither is it 75 degrees every day of the year. Or the changing seasons could be a novelty to me because not only are the changes of seasons so extreme here, but there is little protection from the elements, making both mid-summer and mid-winter miserable. But I think what I like most about the changing seasons is the way that it forces people to connect more with nature. There are different fruits, flowers, and crops for every season and any Paraguayan can list all of them for you. Peoples habits change out of necessity due to the changes in temperature. So while I am miserable in this freezing cold, I know it will warm up and come mid-summer when I am immobile because of the intense heat and humidity I will begin to curse the heat and wish for winter back… well, almost. The bright orange tangerines decorating the trees will disappear but other fruits will be in season even if they aren’t quite as good. The ca;a dulce will all be cut down, other crops planted, the molasses will be replaced with bee honey and my walks will become more peaceful. And sadly, the tajy flowers will fall, painting the ground with color, the last remnant of their beauty for this season.

During my first three months of training, I had a couple of dreams that stuck out to me and made me laugh. I was still going through huge adjustments, like learning to wash my clothes by hand. It was so tiring and time consuming to my and my hands ached for hours afterwards. I couldn’t help but feel awkward as I laboriously scrubbed every inch of my jeans while sitting next to my host mom who busted out three pieces of clothing to my one. I was also still figuring out how and where to buy things I needed. There wasn’t any “normal” grocery store, nor was there a “find-it-all-in-one-place” store. Milk and yogurt came in plastic bags and they sold food by the kilo. In many stores you had to ask for the exact quantity of food that you wanted rather than picking it out yourself and stores seemed to have a rather sad assortment of options. In response to my struggles, I dreamed of using a washing machine and the beautiful ease with which I could use it. I also dreamed that I shopped at Target, a glorious place that offered almost anything I could ask for.

Now, a year-and-a-half into my stay in Paraguay, my dreams and my opinions have changed a bit. I just got back to Paraguay from a three week visit to the States and I was shocked and surprisingly please by a variety of things. I’m sure those watching my reactions were quite entertained. As I flew into Los Angeles, I was conscious of my jaw hanging open at the shock of the enormity of the city. It seemed there was no end to the buildings! My first night in the states, I took off my shoes and started giggling at the feeling of carpet squishing between my toes. My first morning, I opened up the refrigerator and stood there staring for about five full seconds at the incomprehensible amount of food piled in front of me. I went to the beach with my cousins and before my sunscreen was fully soaked in, I went running like a child into the waves, giggling with excitement. I had almost forgotten how good the ocean water felt.

To put this into a little more perspective you need to remember that I live in a very rural area of a almost completely rural country. There are 300 people living in about 100 houses, stretched out between two different streets and about 12 kilometers in my site. This is now normal to me instead of the two dozen houses you would find on one half-kilometer street in the United States. I grew up in the suburbs of LA, thinking that the 60,000 residents of my town seemed few. Now when I go into Asuncion, the capitol and largest city of Paraguay, which boasts of one million people (suburbs included), I get stressed out and overwhelmed.

So here are my experiences with washing machines and Target aver a year-and-a-half of their absence.

I was so excited when I did my first load of laundry that I went skipping out of the laundry room yelling, “Mom! It’s so easy! You just throw your clothes in, pour some soap in, and push a button. You don’t even have to work for it! And it doesn’t even matter when it’s raining. And when it’s done, you just put it in the dryer and it dries it for you!” It felt like a revelation to me, too good to be true. There is, I will admit, a small satisfaction I get from hand washing and air-drying my clothes, but I can’t say that scrubbing red dirt (and with it the color) out of my jeans is something I will ever miss.

My visits to Target and other large stores in general however, was quite a different experience. Even after several visits to those stores in the 3 weeks I was home, I felt somehow traumatized upon leaving. As soon as I walked in, my senses were assaulted with large sale signs, items stacked in front of and in between aisles for maximum advertisement, mood music, people talking over the music, smells of plastic and food and far too buttery popcorn, bright and flashy packages, and lights that made everything look shiny. I distinctly remember trailing behind my friend during my first excursion to Target and I literally stopped when I saw the cheese aisle. Cheese is a luxury for me in Paraguay. Unless I buy farmer cheese in site, I only get a couple chunks of mozzarella if I splurge when I go into Asuncion. I could not comprehend the rows of grated cheese, shredded cheese, jack cheese, cheddar cheese, mild cheddar cheese, sharp cheddar cheese, extra-sharp cheddar cheese, pepper jack cheese, swiss cheese, mozzarella cheese, Mexican blend shredded cheese, and I don’t even know what other kinds of cheese, all packaged brightly by several different brands in various sizes for convenience. Then I passed the cereal and bread aisle. There was an entire aisle for bread and an entire aisle for cereal. I could hardly comprehend why the amount of bread and cereal was necessary and even possible.

I mostly spend my time trailing after people in these stores, not really knowing what to do with myself. My heartbeat always quickened and I was easily and very quickly confused, loosing track of every task at hand. My second visit to a large grocery store almost made me cry and my first visit to Target almost sent me into panic. And the mere thought of Costco… well, we won’t go there… I’m fairly sure that most people though I was just exaggerating, but whether anyone but other volunteers believe me, I promise I was not exaggerating.

When I got back to site, I went down the street to the almacen to do some “Paraguayan campo” shopping. I was very warmly greeted after my long absence and invited to sit down and drink mate. She got my needed food items off her shelves and asked me how my trip was. Granted, I had far less food options (she had run out of tomatoes, one of the three vegetables she stocks), but this time, I wasn’t bothered at all.

After all of that, here are my conclusions: washing machines are absolutely worth dreaming about. Target, on the other hand is definitely not. In fact, I don’t believe I will be sorry if life never permits me to enter another Target again.

"Do it Ali! Cross! Go! But if you are scared you shouldn't do it. Cross!" My heart was pounding as I heard all of them yelling at me, and I was slightly fearful but trying to calm myself. Diego grabbed ahold of my hand and pulled me slightly forward, looking intensly into my face. He had just done it twice and the utter calmness of his face only reminded me of how uncalm I was. "Are you ready?" he asked. I nodded my head, took a deep breath, looked at the 2 meters of live coals spread out in front of me and started walking forward.

No, I was not dreaming. I was at San Juan festival. I don't know how San Juan got started, but my best guess is that several Guarani men got very drunk one night and began playing with fire and had so much fun that they decided to make it a tradition. At some point it became a national fire festival celebrated every June 24 with extra celebrations in the weeks prior and folliwing the actual date. It is, I think, my personal favorite tribute to any and all saints. It is also perhaps the only time and place when playing with fire is not only sanctioned by parents, but encouraged, organized, supervized, and funded as well. Every school has a festival as well as many churches and families. In addition to the traditional dance and food normally available, there are games and activities devoted to fire.

A group of men or children dress up as "kamba" in mismatched clothing, masks, capes, antyhing to make them look scary, ridiculous, and protect their true identity. Often the object of the kamba is just to run around and scare people, but sometimes they "capture" people and take them to a "jail" where they must pay a fee to be released. A greasy pole is set up and the kamba must climb the pole in order to shake down the treats on top. There are often small fair-like games set up for the kids to play, but the best games are the ones with the fire. One of my favorites is pelota tata (fire ball) when they set fire to several "soccer balls" and kick them around the field or at each other as if they were passing a real soccer ball. Children are given bundles of kapi'i (long, dried grass), and they set fire to them, running around like children in the United States run around with sparklers on the 4th of July, chasing each other, playing swards, and screaming from sheer joy. They stuff a mans pants and shirt to make a type of scarecrow, tie him up to a soccer post and set fire to him. And as if the element of fire wasn't enough, they often put small explosives in his clothes just for kicks.

In some places, such as the school where my host mom teaches, they still do the jahasa tatapyi ari (we pass over the coals) which is said to only be possible on the eve of San Juan between the hours of 10 and 12 at night. If you do it any other day or any other time, you will be burned. This year I went with my host family to the school, curious about this whole coal walking thing they had been telling me about since last year. At about 8:30, a couple of teachers began setting up a large fire to burn down to coals in preparation for the big event. Every 20 minutes or so, they would put on a couple more logs, keeping the bonfire going. This became another game and the boys started taking running starts to jump over the flames. It was only after two boys, coming from different directions ran into each other and fell, that I heard parents and teachers reprimand for reckless behavior. And it was only after the flames jumped higher than the boys' heads that they took a rest at the game.

At 11:30, the firewood was gone and what was left was a large pile of glowing coals. As couple of teachers began raking out the coals to make a 2 meter walkway, people started asking me, "are you going to do it?" My brother Hugo told me that if I did if first, he would follow and then he took off his shoes and socks in preparation for my crossing. Diego was a tall skinny kid, who did the jahasa tatapyi ari every year and I watched him prepare himself, cool as a cucumber. Wanting to take advantage of the opportunity, but still highly doubtful about the success of the event, I began grilling Diego. "Really, you do it every year? Does it hurt? Does it feel hot? Really, dos it not hurt at all? I don't think I believe you. Seriously, you don't get burned... at all? And you just walk normally?" He patiently explained that no, it didn't hurt and no, you didn't get burned, and yes, you just walk normally. He said that if you are scared you will be burned, but there is no danger. Then he said he would walk across with me and hold my hand. I wasn't convinced and watched in disbelief as he calmly walked across the coals by himself. Others then followed his leand and one show-off danced his way through, upsetting the evenly raked coals.

By this time, the pressure was really on. "Come on Ali! Do it!" My host brother and mom were telling me. "Are you gonna do it?" I asked my host mom. "No!" She shook her head violently. "I'm too scared." Strangers heard the discussion and began to encourage me and then Diego (at least I think that's his name... I forgot the introduction in the excitement of it all) came over to grab my hand and pull me in front of the coals.

I still can't really believe it did it; it seems so insane. Nelly didn't even get a picture because she didn't snap it fast enough. It was quite an adrenaline rush and I will admit my hands were shaking afterwards. And my feet? They have 2 very small and extremely minor burns. Apparently I was still scared when I started walking.

The last few months I have been absent from my blog for a variety of reasons which are too many and too complicated to explain here and now. But my most recent excuse is that I was on vacation. After staying put for over a year, I finally got the opportunity to go on vacation with my aunt and uncle. We visited both Brasil and Argentina before doing a very brief tour of Paraguay.

In Brasil we stayed one night in Sao Paulo and four nights in the Pantanal, the largest wetlands of the world. Of course you can`t see much of a city in one night and you could spend a lifetime in the Pantanal and still not see everything. I felt like our time was far too short to see everything that I wanted to see. It was an incredible and fantastic place... except they didn´t speak Spanish or Guarani and they didn`t drink any terere. I felt slightly displaced. After seeing an abundance of animals in the Pantanal, we headed to Iguazu falls in Argentina to see an abundance of water. It was at this point in the trip, my uncle informed me later, that I stoppped speaking English. I don`t think I was fully aware of what I was doing because it came so naturally, but I was told that if there was another person present, I spoke only in Spanish, even when that other person could speak in English. I completely forgot that my aunt and uncle couldn`t follow the conversation and sometimes turned to them as if they would jump in and add a comment but was quickly reminded by the looks on their faces that I would first have to translate. I would translate and then without noticing it, slip back into Spanish.

I didn't fully realize that I missed Pagaguay until we were getting ready to come back and I defnitely hadn't expected to miss it in the week and a half that I was gone. I thought I was sick of Paraguay and sick of the people, yet I found myself longing for both. It wasn't just the language that I was craving, although that was a key part of it. I was aching to sit around and drink terere and joke in Guarani. I wanted to stain my feet again with the red dirt on my street and greet every person I passed. There was something about the land that I missed, as if it had become a part of me.

On the day we left for Paraguay from Argentina, we were picked up by a driver and guide to escort us across teh Argentina border into Brasil and across the Brasilian border into Paraguay and finally drop us off at the airport. It just so happened that both the driver and guide were born and raised in paraguay and before I knew it, the guide and I were talking about Paraguay and its culture. I think we were mostly talking in Spanish, but t be honest, I couldn't tell you which parts of the conversation were in which language. Being from Paraguay, the guide also spoke Guarani and was shocked to hear that I did too. We made a few jokes and I finally heard the sounds coming from my mouth that had been absent for the last week and a half. It felt so good, yet strange after the time off, as if my mouth was scared to speak it again.

Eventually we came to the bridge that connects Brasil and Paraguay and I eagerly leaned forward in my seat, as if that would help us cross faster. As we crossed over onto Paraguayan soil, our guide turned to my aunt and uncle and said, "Welcome to Paraguay! And to you," he turned to me. "Welcome back."

Recently a friend asked me in an email what my favorite part of the day was and I couldn't think of a specific thing that I do every day because every day is different. I began writing different things that I enjoy about my days here and as I continued writing, I kept thinking of more and more things to add to the list. I only wrote down a few things but I wanted to give myself a more complete list to remind myself of why I love this place because I have too many days when I only remind myself of why I don't like this place. There are some things on this list that while I love, I hate at the same time. Though not everything on the list is necessarily unique to Paraguay, some are, and ever one of them is something I will miss dearly when I leave. So Hannah, here is a complete list of "my favorite parts of the day," and Louis, these are the things that make me happy.

I love that:

...the air always smells fresh in the morning.

...people will still give up their sesat on a bus for elderly people and pregnant women.

...the Paraguayan soil and rains are fertil. I can almost literally watch my plants grow.

...I can go to the dispensa to buy and egg and stay for 2 hours drinking terere

...when kids pass my house to and from school, they should out "Ahleesohn!" repeatedly as they pass.

...in the summer my boss asked me if I had a hammack and then told me to enjoy my extra free time.

...I can wake up and drink coffee and watch the sunrise

...I have an open invitation to eat lunch, use the shower, spend the night, or stay forever 10 minutes down the road in either direction.

...when I meet a Paraguayan for the first time, I can expect with very few exceptions the same range of about 15 questions no matter who they are, including but not excluded to: Do you have a boyfriend? Do you have a boyfriend in the States? If you find a boyfriend can you bring him back with you? Do you know how to drink terere? do you know how to eat Paraguayan food? Do you know how to speak Guarani? Do you miss your family?

...you can pick leaves off of almost ay tree for a yuyo to put in your terere.

...you can search in the lawn for certain roots to use in terere.

...Paraguayans have a plant remedy for almost any ailment or medical problem you could think of, and a few extra for ones that you would probably never think of.

...they use "hape" at the end of any kind of event from a fiesta to shucking corn, or a dog in heat.

...a rainy day is a perfectly acceptable excuse to stay in bed and read all day.

...my host dad will walk into the middle of a meeting of women and walk around to greet and shake hands with everyone while they are still talking. Asi es la cultura.

...half of my women's commission is related to each other.

...within the limits of a few degrees and with very few exceptions, my entire community is related to each other. No joke.

...when people great each other they say, "nde guapa/a" (you are hard working) and the response is, "hee, che guapa/o" (yes, I am hard working).

...almost anything I do from baking a cake to walking half an hour to the ruta, to knowing a store in Asuncion that sells soap materials, to saying 3 words in Guarani makes me either guapa or vale (inteligent).

...I have time to do cool things like make homemade bread, read, plant flowers, write blogs, or just sit and talk with people.

...I have easily over 100 trees on my property.

...where I live right now is the most beautiful place I have ever lived in.

...I never have to worry about being late because everything here functions on la hora Paraguaya.

...almost all of my food products are far fresher than I ever got in the United States.

And maybe the thing that I love most about this country is that terere is univeral. The buisnessman, polititian, teacher, and feild worker all drink it and will invite you to share with them.

I have been putting off writing this blog for a while and I'm not really sure why. Maybe it is because of laziness, or maybe it is because I wasn't sure how to describe the relationship that I have with my 70-something year old neighbor. I guess Akilina and her husband Aurelio would be the closest thing I have to Paraguayan grandparents. They live about 2 minutes away from my house and I visit them often because she owns an almacen (small store). I often walk over there to buy a few things and will sit down to drink terere first and chat.

She has an old balance which she uses to measure the weight by kilo of the food she sells like flour, tomatoes, noodles, sugar, or onions. She first puts the weights on one side of the balance and then slowly pours out the flour or sugar with her measuring cup or changes around the tomatoes until both sides are even. Then without fail she will look up at me, widen her eyes, smile with her toothless gums, and sometimes add a little "hee hee," as if to say, "good for me." When I buy bananas from her, Aurelio always tells her to pick out the best ones for me and even though I am already getting them for a ridiculously low price, she usually gives me a couple extra for free.

One day I showed up and all of her mercaderia had recently been delivered and was sitting on her table. "You ordered milk this time," I said while rifling through the food items. "Yes. And you are going to help me put it all away," she told me. So I carried in all of the heavy items and then helped her figure out how much she needed to sell milk in order to make a profit.

Another day I was sitting with her drinking terere on her patio and watching her husband and son put long dried grass called kapi'i on the roof of thier patio extension. "Do you use that in your country for roofs?" she asked me, pointing at the kapi'i.

I considered saying while I don't remember it specifically, I was sure we had long grass in my country, though I don't have a feild full of it in my backyard. But according to California fire codes, said grass would not be used for roofing. I decided that would be too complicated an answer and said, "No we don't have that. It is actually not legal becasue it catches fire easily."

"But you don't have it?" she asked.

I hesitated. "No we don't."

"Oh, well that would be difficult then," she concluded. And that was that.

I think that is what I appreciate about her. The simpleness. She wasn't looking for an elaborate explanation of what my house is like in the United States, which is what some people ask me. She was just trying to imagine my house in another country with what she already knew. Instead of thinking that I am better than her because I am a rubia or thinking I am rich becasue I am from the United States, she just sees me as another person and that is what allows us to be friends.

I kept procrastinating writing this blog because I kept on trying to think of an elaborate way to describe our friendship, or a better way to tell the details. But the thing is, my point wasn't to tell you that she is in my women's commission or that we made peach jam together, or that I was invited to Aurelio's 80th birthday party or that they give me free bananas. I just wanted to tell you that though she is over 50 years older than me, she is my friend. It is simple, but that's why I like it.

"Then you mix it all in the... wait, Jake, how do you say balde in English?" I heard a chuckle and then, "bucket." "Oh ya, bucket!" I laughed and continued my explanation. I was doing a volunteer led training session with the new group of health trainees and as they had only been in country for about 2 weeks, they had not yet adopted the usual set of vocabulary words in Spanish and Guarani that most volunteers end up filtering into their everyday vocabulary. I was having trouble with a few words specifically and sometimes made no distinction between the languages. I thought I was speaking in English, but caught myself several times inserting a Spanish word for an English one. I think the trainees got a kick out of it and found it amusing that I stumbled so much over my words and the trainer too, laughed when he had to translate my mistakes.

Other than the phone calls I get from my mom every other week and the couple that I have gottne from friends, I have not spoken English with anyone who is not Peace Corps related since October when my mom came to visit me. By then it had only been 8 months since I had had a face to face conversation in English with someone who was not in Peace Corps. My mom said she did´t notice it that much, but I felt a huge delay in my English conversations. I found that I made more pauses in the middle of my sentences and had to stop to think of certain words. It was only by the end of the week that I felt like I was speaking English normally again, without pauses and blanks in my thoughts.

I have in the last few months found that Guarani is slowly infiltrating my Spanish the same way that Spanish infiltrated my English. There are certain words and phrases in Guarani that find their way into my mouth fast than Spanish ones. I was speaking to someone in Spanish about buying milk from my neighbors cow and I said, "Pero ella ...okamby muy tarde" (but she milks her cow very late). Then I laughed, "how do you say that in Spanish?"

I remember during training our trainer told us, "I came here speaking one language and I will leave here not being able to speak three." Even if people came here already speaking Spanish, they still had to learn Guarani. When you learn a language, you have to learn to think in that language and I suppose that is why we have adopted the Spanish or Guarani version of many words or phrases. Because the bucket is in Paraguay, it is not a bucket but a balde. In the same way, my school is my escuela, my high school is my colegio, and the field is the chakra. It seems that between volunteers there is a new language created, a strange hybrid mix of an English base, strongly seasoned with Spanish and Guarani. I have even sent and recieved text messages with other volunteers that are half in Spanish and half in English. Apparently, Spanish and Guarani have become such a part of my life that I dont even remember what language I am speaking in anymore.

On my entering the office in the department of agriculture, a slightly overweight man standing in front of the secretary's desk turned around. "An angel just walked in behind me to guard me," he all but yelled out. Both of the office ladies froze to stare at me, the man took a step towards me, and the Paraguayan lady that was with me stepped further back, hiding behind me and the doorframe. Once again, I became the spotlight, a highly undesireable position for me. "Every day I have an angel to guard me and today I look up and there you are. You are my angel," the man continued.

"Yep, I'm your angel for the day," I joked. Then I turned to my friend, hoping to direct some of the attention off of me, "Or does he mean you?"

"No, He's talking about you," she said and quietly hid again in the shadows.

The secretaries had gone back to writing but were still listening and giving me frequent glances. The man advanced. "You speak Spanish, English?" he asked me in English with a heavy accent.

"English," I say.

"Are you German?" he continues in Spanish.

"No, I´m from the United States."

"Oh yah, you guys come over here already speaking our language and you speak Guarani. You study before you get here," he continues. As he lists American grouips he has come in contact with such as Jehovah's Witness and Mormans, I try and get in a side word by suggesting Peace Corps. "Oh, Peace Corps," he says. "But they are worse. They come over here with their military. Are you one of them?" I barely have time to tell him that yes I am a Peace Corps Volunteer but I'm not military before he continues. "Yah, you guys are all military. I've seen your office on Chaco Boreal, almost Mariscal Lopez. They have five guys out there with guns and they check everyone that goes in there," he tells me as hi mimicks frisking himself. I open my mouth to say that they just have to keep the office safe so they have Paraguayan police officers keep security, but this guy is on a role and is not about to stop to hear what I have to say. "You guys are all military and intelligence for your goverment. You come over here and you live all over and you know what we do and you tell your country. Do you have to write reports up?" he asks, his eyes boring into mine.

I am now feeling slightly uncomfortable, my friend has all but disappeared, the secretary is winking at me as if to tell me she's sorry, and the man is now about a foot away from me and looking larger than he did before. I start stuttering, trying to think of a non-implicating answer, although I know it will help my case very little at this point. The secretary calls him over to give him his papers and send him to the waiting room. He exits carefully, fully facing me and backing out of the doorway while telling me that my goverment knows what people in every pueblo eat. I find this particularly amusing as Paraguayans all accross the country differ very little in their eating habits.

Within less than three minutes I was called an angel, German, US military, and CIA. While my job description seems ever elusive to me, being a guardian angel, and handling weapons and high level security is definitely not part of it. And the only German word I know is "nein." While this was a particularly strange and more intense encounter, I have been called all of those things before and I'm sure I will hear them again. One lady in my site has I think asked me on five seperate occasions if I speak German and if I am from Germany. Just the other day I walked up to her house and she was talking to her daughter on the phone and told her that the German (me) had come to visit her. I have given her up as a lost case and didn't correct her. If people don't think I am military or intelligence, they usually thing I am a misisonary or studying in an exchange program. As if I wasn't already confused enough about who I am here and what I'm doing here, I have a lot of people trying to convince me that I am here for reasons that I'm not. Even after I explain what I am doing here, some people (including myself) still don't understand my job or why I would be crazy enough to give two years of my life with essentially no pay to "help people."

I used to be semi-insulted by claims like these but I have learned to take it as part of the deal and remember that one of the three goals of Peace Corps is to educate the host country about the United States. Unfortunately that doesn't go well when people try to tell me that I am in fact from Germany. So until I learn to speak German, sprout wings on my back, join the military, or am employed by the CIA, I will continue to refute all of those claims. Well, actually, even if the CIA does employ me, I´ll still deny it.

"Buenas tardes," I call, slipping through the barbed wire fence, hoping my clothes haven't caught on the wire. Pulgita has already slipped under the fence, way ahead of me and enerjectically greeting their dog.

"Buenas tardes," Claudia responds, sitting in her low seated metal chair, and throws a limp, but now clean towel into a bucket of water. "Eguaheke," (arrive), she tells me in Guarani. "Ajohei che ao ha upei, ja'u terere," (I wash my clothes and then we drink terere), she says as I pull up a chair beside her in the shade.

"Good grief, does she ever stop?" I think. I know already the answer is no, which is exactly why I came at this hour. Most Paraguayans take a siesta or rest during the hottest part of the day but Claudia just keeps on plugging away, taking advantage of the time to wash her clothes, shell peanuts, rearange her kitchen, or some other project. The only time I have come to visit her and have found her sitting down or resting is when she has stopped working to drink terere. But most of the time, she just works. Out of all the Paraguayan women I know, she just might be the most guapa and I have a deep respect and admiration for her.

But that's not it, Claudia is one of the few people I call my friend and really mean it. I am typically wary of telling anyone any kind of personal information because I have heard creative lies and gossip about me and what I do, but Claudia has proved over and over than what I tell her doesn't get repeated to other people. Her jokes are never stinging, but said because she loves to tease and because she cares about me. She is also one of the few people that doesn't make me feel stupid. I lived with her family my third month in site and we got into a good rythm of communicating with her limited Spanish and my limited Guarani. Our conversations were full of repeated sentences, explanations, laughs, and an occasional translation from her daughter. Even with my somewhat improved Guarani, our conversations go back and forth between my white girl Guarani and her 5th grade Spanish.

I think most Americans would consider her poor, but what she lacks in monetary wealth, she more than makes up for in her hospitality and generosity. As different as our income levels are, and as popular a subject as my money is here, she manages not to see a problem or injustice in that. If money is ever mentioned with her, it is said as a fact, not a complaint. When I am getting ready to leave her house and she hasn't already found something to give me, she says, "mba'epa ame'e ndveve," (what will I give you?). She tells me that I have won her heart and that I bless her, so she is always trying to give me gifts. Five kilos of mandioca, a grocery bag of peanuts, more green peppers than will stay fresh in a week, 2 liters of milk, 50 bananas, half a dozen eggs, half a kilo of pig meat, mandioca flour,a bottle of honey, an entire asadera of chipa guazu, and anything she can think of to give me and make me agree to carry home with me.

Her hostpitality, generosity, and guaponess remind me of the good things here and why I truly love this country. It is people like her that remind me why I am here and make me feel like I am actually making some sort of difference here. It's really not about getting projects done, it's about the people and having friendships like hers that make my job worthwhile.

I was 18 years old in my college dorm laundry room, sitting on one of the dryers and facing the boy I imagined myself in love with. We were using the toasty dryers as chairs, chatting, and waiting for our clothes to dry. A mutual friend, David, came in and joined the conversation as he changed his clothes from washer to dryer. He stopped and chuckled, “Oops, someone dropped their undies.” My mind froze and silently prayed to God that it wasn’t mine. The guy I liked leaned over to check out the lost underwear, thereby socially forcing me to join the peep show, and sure enough they were mine. They were the pink stripped ones that I hated. I laughed uncomfortably, trying to figure out the best plan of action. I though for a few seconds too long, and by the time David asked whether they were mine, I felt the option of claiming them had long since passed. I don’t know if I denied that they were mine because of the guy I liked, or because they were pink, but it was done and there was no backing down. When I exited the laundry room with the rest of my clothes and the boy I liked, I left the pink underwear on the floor. I pondered for a few minutes on returning to claim the underwear but didn’t’ want to find myself in the embarrassing position of running into either of the two boys and with the undies in my hand. Instead, I told my friends who laughed heartily at me, secretly found them, washed them in the sink, and left them in my mail box with a fake note from the boy I liked. To this day, I am ashamed of that denial.

I am not however, ashamed of my underwear anymore. Not to say I have nice underwear. They are actually mostly worn through pieces of fabric, decorated with barbed wire holes. I just don’t care if people see them, and really don’t have a choice in the matter. Washing clothes in Paraguay is very different than from my college dorm. I first put soap and water into a shallow bucket called a palingana along with the clothing. Then I use a bar of soap to suds the clothes more and scrub each piece of clothing thoroughly with my hands. When it comes to the tougher stuff like jeans, towels, and sheets, I lay it flat on one of my wooden chairs and scrub it with my bristle brush that conveniently doubles as my foot scrub, removing not only the red dirt, but also the top layer of skin. Once clean, and slightly more worn looking, the clothes are thrown into another palingana and I go through the process of rinsing and wringing out everything four times, dumping out the palinganas, and refilling as I go. This can be an exhausting process when the laundry includes a load of sheets, or a heavy blanket, or just half my wardrobe. Then everything has to be hung out to dry in my yard. This is all in plain site of my neighbors, with a nice, pretty row of colorful underwear and bras for good measure. People often walk by my hanging laundry while passing through my backyard. There is no option of denying whose underwear is whose. It’s all mine.

When I lived with host families, I had people wash my underwear for me, and comment on how nice it was. I had people take down all my underwear from their spot on the barbed wire to save it from the rain. Not only did people see my undergarments, but they touched them and talked about them too. When I do my laundry, one of my neighbors will typically comment on it. “You did laundry today Ali?” they ask, while looking over at my dripping clothes. No, I have let go of those reservations of claiming my pink or otherwise colored underwear. I now think it’s normal for guys to pass the row of underwear, neatly lined up outside my house. Maybe to them it’s just not as big of a deal, it’s just norm

al. Underwear is underwear and everyone has it (or should at least).

That same pink piece of underwear somehow lasted me through the rest of college and made it to Paraguay. Sometimes I laugh when I see it hanging outside my house for the world to see. If it happens to fall off the clothesline, I won't wait for a friend to claim it for me first.

A few years ago I was at my Aunt Trish and Uncle Jeff’s house, cutting avocados, only slightly listening and not watching the hand motions to the story my Aunt Trish was telling about cutting her hand from jamming a dull knife into the pit of an avocado. I thought that was a great way to get the pit out, and a few seconds later, my hand was gushing blood onto their clean wooden floor. My ingenious Uncle Jeff butterflied up my hand with a bandaid rather than getting stitches and my thoughtful and caring Aunt Trish forbade me from ever cutting up vegetables, fruits, or any other food item that required sharp objects in their house again. I figured it was something that could happen to anyone and justified the cut on my hand as a common mistake. In my first couple months in site, I cut my hand on my host family’s dull knives. Again, I blamed the object, not the user.

Last Thursday I decided to be creative (aka copy something I saw in another volunteer’s home) and hang a piece of bamboo above my stove with clothesline, and attach wire hooks to hang up my pots and pans. The machete and bamboo were no problem for me with my adequate 8-year-old-Paraguayan-boy-machete-skills. I cut off a piece of wire with my scissors, hooked it onto the bamboo, now hanging above my stove and decided it was too long. Rather than unhook it and shorten it with a safe distance to my body, I instead stood on my chair, stretched my arms up, pinched the wire with one hand to keep it steady and cut with the other hand. When doubled, the wire is a little tough and it took a second for me to force the scissors through. In that second, the extra pieces of wire fell to the ground, my pinky finger felt like it was on fire, and I looked down with horror to find blood gushing out of my finger.

I soon realized an old washcloth was not sufficient to stop the bleeding. I panicked for a second and called a friend, which proved to be useless. “Hey, I need help,” I say.

“What’s happened? I’m working in the field right now.” In Paraguayan language, this means he is indisposed at the moment and will only leave his hoe and ox if I tell him I’m dying. I consider that option for a second but instead, I tell him the truth.

“I cut my finger and it’s bleeding. What’s that plant you guys chew up to stop the bleeding? I can’t get it to stop bleeding.” Now that I think about it, this is no cause for any kind of alarm here because stuff like this happens every day in the campo. Why would he leave the hot mandioca field to save my finger?

“You know where you throw all your vegetable scraps? There’s a lot of that plant right there.”

I look over in that direction and see lots of different plants and the pain in my finger and the growing red on my washcloth tell me it would be better not to try and figure out which one it is right now. “I don’t know which one it is,” I say.

“How can you not know?” he asks, obviously unaware of the pain I’m in.

“You’re not helping me, I’m going to my neighbors. Bye”

“Yah, that’s a good idea,” he says, still obviously unworried about my pain as I hang up the phone and all but run across the street.

I will not go through all the details of the ensuing events but will instead give you a summary. What may or may not have been clean cotton got put on my finger to stop the bleeding, got stuck, got pulled off again the afternoon and my finger became a fountain of blood again. I did what I should have done that morning and called my doctor while a friend found the right plant to chew up to stop the bleeding again. I was sent to the hospital, received 3 stitches, and prescribed the inadequate drug of ibuprofen to stop the pain. I demanded better drugs from my doctor, went home, and woke up that night with a fever. I spent the next two days in my bed, insufferably hot from the fever and rising summer temperatures, and quite miserable. Many well meaning, and others not-so-well meaning visitors came over to see how I was doing and was forced to stand on my porch and talk to people in my weak state. One of them had the gall to tell me I looked terrible, force me to stand for 10 minutes on my porch until I was almost dizzy, continue to stare at me, ask me if I could transfer her saldo (the equivalent of cell phone minutes) to her phone, and then comment on how much money I had. I also received from others orders to lie down and put a cold cloth on my forehead and received various gifts, including but not limited to: 2 liters of carrot juice, some medicine sworn to take away all and every kind of fever (I didn’t take it), a melon (to be cut up by me in my feverish and maimed hand state and liquefied in my blender), half a liter of milk, apples, and repeated/ insistent offers to make my way 10 minutes down the road to spend the night so that I wouldn’t be alone.

My doctor put my on antibiotics and told me to call if it got any worse than my already 100.6 degree temperature. I was thankfully not forced to repeat my trip to the hospital and instead the antibiotics began treating the infected pinky finger and my fever broke. The next day I found myself in Asuncion holding the hand of one Peace Corps doctor, leaning on her well-endowed chest, fighting tears that somehow leaked their way out, and all but screaming from the pain, while the other Peace Corps doctor ruthlessly attacked my finger with an iodine swab to remove the blood that had congealed over my stitches. As if he hadn’t done enough already, he made me pee in a cup and took my blood to run some tests to make sure the fever wasn’t anything other than a virus or infected, scissor-cut finger. I was again, allowed to stay in a hotel, courtesy of American tax dollars. (Don’t worry, my hotel only costs about 13 American dollars. You’re not wasting that much money on me.)

Ok, horror story over. The antibiotics are really working now, my finger no longer throbs in pain and I’m going home after stopping at the wonderfully stocked grocery store in Asuncion with an American aisle. Watch out, they have Pringles! I am beginning to wonder if perhaps the user of the scissors is to blame in her blind rush to complete her task rather than the object. They are after all very good and useful scissors. No, on second thought I prefer to be in self-denial. I prefer not to be at blame. And Aunt Trish, I promise never to use sharp, or dull objects ever again, in my house or yours… except when I’m cooking, or finishing my lovely hooks for my pots and pans. But I promise I will use them only when necessary and I promise that next time I will outsmart those tricky knives and scissors and get the best of them.

Yes, I admit, I have those days. They are frequent in fact, probably more than you think. I have a hard time writing about those days though, maybe partly because I don’t want tot think about it, but also, who wants to read a bitter, angry, and depressed blog? No one, probably, and I don’t feel like publishing that stuff anyway. But I have many days that don’t go so well emotionally, and I feel like my blog would somehow be incomplete if I didn’t at least share a part of that.

The longer I’m here, the easier it gets, but at the same time, the longer I’m here, the harder it gets. I have now been in country fro 10 months (that leaves 17 for those of you counting down) and the magic and newness has worn off and some of the initial charms are no longer there. It gets easier for me not to see my family and talk to my friends, but I miss them more specifically and more dearly and am trying to brace myself for a Christmas season without them. I get along quite well without access to many familiar and comforting American foods and products, but it has produced a strange, glutton-type of attitude that has caused me to do strange things like, eat a pound of dried mangoes in 4 days, make pancakes with peanut butter every day for a week, or eat an entire Pringle’s super stack in approximately 3 hours. I could have eaten it faster, but I was in fact restraining myself. I am used to my form of communication with almost everyone I care about being reduced to emails and am used to my internet not working, but that incredible gift of internet often makes me feel more alone and isolated when I sign online to have my gmail tell me, “your inbox is empty.” I have adapted very well to speaking Spanish every day, and don’t find Guarani quite as tiring, but I now struggle to know how to communicate in my own language, now knowing which vocabulary words to use or grammar rules to follow.

Is it obvious that the most trying things are not the physical challenges which are so easy to describe and write about, but the emotional challenges that are often bottled up, too confusing and painful to let out? I truly don’t mind my rickety, wooden house with holes in it, and I can take a cold shower or bucket bathe without complaints. I can live with the dozens of bug bites that itch so badly, I wake myself up in the middle of the night, scratching until I bleed. I can deal with walking to my neighbors well 8 times in a day so that I can wash my clothes when the water goes out. I can laugh at the red dirt that lodges itself in every crevice, staining my bug-bite-scarred legs, and barbed-wire-torn clothes. Those are the easy things.

But what is hard for me is that regardless of how much I have given up to be here, people still expect me to be an endless supply of money, able and willing to take on any expense they might have. I fight indignation when people walk into my house or yard uninvited (and sometimes unwanted), and have no qualms in touching my things, making commentary on what I have, asking how much my things cost, and asking whether I will give them my things when I leave. I have even been asked for the shirt off my back. I can not help but feel angry and insulted by the overwhelming amount of catcalls, sexual references, and general rude comments I get from ignorant machista men. I struggle to feel that I am worthy of something better than that. I don’t now how not to be offended and greatly hurt when people say one thing to me and I later discover they are talking behind my back, saying something different. I also don’t know how to keep from being angry when I hear gossip about me that is not only not true, but puts me in a negative light. It has become normal for me to feel like an idiot in front of large groups of people, but that doesn’t make me eel less uncomfortable or less hurt when they laugh at me. I don’t know how to describe to you the absolute frustration and hopelessness I often feel when I find myself wondering if there is even a point in me being here, if I am making even the smallest difference in these people’s lives. And maybe what hurts the most is wondering if people back home have forgotten about me, if they care anymore, if they will be able to understand me. Are they even reading this?

You see, my life is not all exciting and grand adventures. It is however, most often like the Peace Corps slogan, “the toughest job you’ll ever love,” emphasis on the tough. I do not know how to write well about those tough days, and instead typically get bogged down in my own bitterness and anger, not understanding how to communicate it clearly or without putting a negative light on my host country. I have come to love this country and the people in it, but when I face new challenges, I often find myself silently cursing Paraguay as if the entire country was the source of my personal problems. So I tell you these things not to make you think badly of this truly unique and beautiful country, but to hopefully communicate some of my own weaknesses and true frustrations.

So yes, I do have days when I just wish I was home and free from all my problems situated in the Southern Hemisphere. I often fight the ugly and unwanted feelings of depression, bitterness, loneliness, and anger. I am not always happy to be here, and don’t always have the positive attitude that I try to show on my blogs. But lest I emphasize my hopelessness and loneliness too much, let me end with this: true, there are days when I wish I could be at home, but in spite of that, I’m not ready to leave. I often have the desire to escape, but I am not ready to give up and the thought of packing my bags and catching the soonest flight for Los Angeles is not ever a serious thought or real temptation. I might sometimes be angry with the people here and the country in general, but I still see the good and beautiful things here. I am often lonely and feel friendless and misunderstood, but this experience has taught me invaluable lessons about myself and taught me to love people better, to value and treasure dearly the people that do care about me. So there you go, I give you the good, the bad, and the ugly; the parts of this experience that are the most undesirable, the most unspeakable, but also the parts that are the truest and most growing for me.

I’ve always enjoyed hotels and traveling. There is something exciting about leaving what is normal for a little while to see and experience something different. I think that’s partly why I decided to join the Peace Corps. I also find an incredible amount of pleasure is staying in a hotel where someone else will make my bed for me, deliver me fresh towels, and give me a complimentary breakfast. But this is only pleasant for me if I know I get to go home soon. As much as I like feeling like I get pampered from staying in hotels (even if the one’s in Asuncion look like they were built in the 1950’s), after a while of living out of my backpack, I am more than ready to get back to my own bed, my own space, and feel organized and normal again.

I am now at that point again, ready to be back home with my dog and sleep in my own bed. I just spent the last 5 nights in a hotel in Asuncion. Normally, I think that might have been a great break for me, but the problem was, I couldn’t even really leave my room because if I walked further than a city block, I started hacking out one of my lungs. I left my site last Tuesday to come into Asuncion for a 2 and a half days of meetings, and the timing perfectly worked out to my advantage in that I got sick the first day there. Wednesday the doctor was called and came out to our training site and I was informed that I had both a viral and a bacterial infection. Four medications and a few hours later, I started feeling better. Then came the real problems. Luckily, I have not had problems with my asthma since I have been in Paraguay, but as my sinuses began draining out the infection into my lungs, I started finding it difficult to breath. Thanksgiving morning I was driven to the Peace Corps office by one of my bosses to meet up with my doctor who gave me a steroid shot in my butt (that by the way hurts A LOT), 2 nebulizer treatments, and 4 more medications. I took a taxi to a hotel and spent the rest of my afternoon trying to find TV channels in English and trying not to think about all the great, all-American food my family was consuming back in California. Had I had a choice by the way, this would not be how I would want to spend my Thanksgiving.

Five days, one medication, and 2 more nebulizer treatments later, I am well enough to travel back home. I spent the majority of my days taking naps, watching more TV than I have in the last 9 months combined (and in English!), and read half of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise to be so sick on Thanksgiving that I couldn’t truly concentrate and therefore couldn’t miss fully my favorite American holiday. I was too focused on getting enough oxygen into my lungs and trying not to worry about the fact that my arms and legs were tingly from all the chemicals that had been pumped into my bloodstream and airways. But either way, my first major American holiday that I have to spend in Paraguay has now passed and it has left me with an eagerness to return to my Paraguayan house and sleep in my own bed, and did I mention that I get to see my dog and that I miss her?

Oh, and to all of you dutiful taxpayers of the United States of America: not only are your hard-earned dollars paying my salary of approximately $250 a month, they also paid for a week of hotels and 9 medications for me. Thank you.

It was about 8 weeks into my training when I fell in love. It was actually during my preview site visit 4 weeks before swear-in when it happened. Dark-brown hair. Greenish-hazel eyes. She could fit into both of my hands and she was covered in fleas. Once I started calling her Pulgita (from the Spanish word for flea), I knew I didn’t really have an option anymore. I had to keep her. The family I was staying with amiably told me I could have her when I got back in a month. I later figured out that people typically give puppies away, or dump them on the side of the road, whichever is easier. Being a girl made her less appealing because the owner has to keep the dog from getting pregnant, so I was actually doing them a favor. But either way, she was there waiting for me with a brand new collar my first day I rolled into site on an ox cart with my host brother and sister. I whistled to her and she came running. She already knew she was my dog.

From that moment on, it was made clear to the community of Cariy Potrero that the American was clearly crazy in her devotion and in the attention she gave to her dog. Dogs here are typically viewed as an expendable commodity and I’m sure any animal rights activists would go on a rampage were they to visit the Paraguayan campo. Most dogs get fed only if there is leftover food, and even then it is often split between a couple of dogs and a cat and they viciously guard their portion from the others and from pecking chickens. The amount of leftover food available in a household is often apparent by the visibility of the ribs on their dog. It is unfathomable that I buy special food to feed my dog. Their method of training them is yelling and throwing rocks and sticks at them. The dogs quickly learn that when someone yells “fuera” (outside, or away), they should run away fast. When I tell my dog “eguapy” (“sit” in Guarani), and she listens, jaws drop in astonishment. Needless to say, dogs are not typically petted and it is strange to see anyone care too much about the wellbeing of their dog as I do. If something happens to one dog, you can always just get another one.

She and I became fast friends. I needed a friend, and she is an attention whore and an extremely friendly and playful dog. When I was living with my first host family, I would sneak her in my room so that she could sleep on my bed. I couldn’t bear listening to my puppy crying outside my door in the cold. She began to follow me everywhere and she leaves my side less and less as time goes on. When I go visit people, she comes with me. When I ride my bike or go for a run, she trots along beside me or in front of me and runs ahead to growl at the cows on the side of the road, jumping in excitement. She follows me when I walk to my latrine, sighs, and plops down on the cement floor, waiting for me to finish relieving myself. She follows me to the school and waits outside the principles office or runs around outside in the field until I am done talking. When I go into town or somewhere she can’t follow, I have to tie her up to a tree outside so she won’t follow me. When I come back, she has usually chewed threw her rope and runs up to me, wagging her tail so hard, it appears as if her hind legs and butt are a separate entity than her front legs and head, bobbing back and forth. And if I leave her for more than a couple hours, she will cry on my return. At night, she stretches out next to my torso or curls up by my feet and sleeps next to me. When I have a bad day and need to cry, she cries with me and starts chewing on my hands, trying to get me to play and chase away the sadness. She is a great companion.

Like her owner, she loves food, and will eat just about anything. Literally. No matter how much I feed her, she is always still hungry and searches around for more things to eat or chew. I have seen her eat cow poop, chicken poop, human feces, and diapers. Of this, I am not proud. If the neighbors have not stored away their chickens and eggs above ground level, she will search around until she finds the eggs and eat as many as she can until someone starts yelling at her. She will chew on sticks and pieces of plastic that have the smell of food on them until they are completely obliterated. Bones never last long when she has them. She even eats a variety of fruits including tangerines and blackberries. I have quite a few large moths and beetles that find their way into my house and night and she catches them, tortures them, and eats them. Some nights she will stand on my porch under the light waiting for the beetles to fly lower so she can have a snack. I do not know the variety of animals she has caught and eaten, I just know that it has included rats, and in the past, baby chickens. Once she ate the hide of some animal and kept throwing it up and eating it again until I put it in a plastic bag and buried it.

Because I am the white girl, I get special allowances and privileges for my dog and while I will argue with people to give me equal treatment as Paraguayans, I will not say a word if they want to give my dog special treatment. When I eat at people’s houses, they often give the best parts of the leftovers to my dog and let their dogs fight over the rest. Once someone even put leftovers in a plastic bag for me to bring back for her. One day at the school, she got in a little fight with another dog, and she was allowed in the principles office to protect her from another fight. This was a huge offer, as most dogs are not allowed in any type of building. People know better than to hit her in front of me and will let her take her place beside my chair rather than shooing her away like they do with the other dogs. On the rare occasion that people see me without her, they ask me, “And your Pulgita?” She is not just “Pulgita,” but she is “My Pulgita.” Most of the kids in my site know her by name and when they see her will call out, “Pulgita! Pulgita!” and try and play with her.

The phrase, “a dog is a man’s best friend,” is so true. Few days go by that she doesn’t do something that makes me laugh or puts a smile on my face. She needs me, and I need her. She is always happy to see me. Even though she doesn’t understand, I talk to her and tell her my problems and how crazy the world is. She is the one living to whom there is no need to give explanations and she never laughs at me. Perhaps better yet, she is always there, day in, and day out. I truly can not ask for a better friend.

Something very important happened to me this week: I was compared to Homer Simpson. Despite this sounding like an insult, this was a good thing. Let me explain.

Paraguay is influenced by American culture through the random movies and TV shows selected to be translated into Spanish and aired on Paraguayan television. The Simpsons happens to be one of them and all of my host families watched the show consistently. I have never been the biggest fan of the Simpsons, although I never actually watched it consistently until I got to this country. Somehow I found it funnier in Spanish, perhaps from the pop culture references that have no Paraguayan cultural translation and other badly translated parts that barely made my host families laugh but made me laugh loudly, and because as much as I thought Homer Simpson was an idiot, he gave me some type of connection to my much missed culture. Although my appreciation for the Simpsons grew enormously, Homer Simpson was far from the person I aspired to me and I still considered him a complete idiot.

Last week I was talking to a friend about my yard and the many plants that I have seeded, transplanted, and water every day without seeing much growth. It is often quite discouraging to feel like I am doing so much work on my house and at the same time feel like it’s not pretty yet. I have planted, but I see no flowers, and the seedling trees will not even be as tall as I am by the time I leave this country. “I just want to finally feel like my house is pretty,” I say, subconsciously hoping that I will be told that my house is pretty even though I don’t think so.

Instead, I get this response: Little smile. Laugh. Pause. “I was just thinking,” pause. “There is this Simpsons episode and Homer decides to plant tomatoes and he goes out to live in the country.” Pause. I start wondering if my thoughts were even heard or Homer Simpsons life is more interesting than mine.

And then the story continues, “He plants a whole bunch of tomatoes in one day and he goes to bed and goes out to his field the next day and doesn’t see anything. He gets angry because his tomatoes haven’t grown yet.”

Ok… This is apparently not a random story, and I begin have a feeling that Homer Simpson and I have something in common…

“And he goes to bed again,” the story continues, “and the next day he gets even angrier because his tomatoes still haven’t sprouted. So he goes to his work, you know the biochemical plant he works at, and he gets some chemical and puts them all over his tomatoes. The next day he wakes up and his tomatoes have sprouted, but they are huge, like trees. So he has all these tomatoes, but they are addictive. People will take one bite of them and think it’s gross, but the more they eat them, the more they want them.”

I am now feeling a little bit dumb and wondering if there was more of a tie in to the story and hoping it’s not just about getting angry that plants haven’t grown yet. But that’s it, story over. I look up, “So I’m like Homer Simpson?” I ask.

Smile that looks almost guilty. Little laugh. Pause. “Yes.”

“Ok, I get it,” I say, now feeling more than a little dumb. I just got compared to a cartoon character, and not just any cartoon character, one that lives on beer and doughnuts, is famous for doing and saying stupid things and who used bio-chemicals to grow tomatoes. But the lesson is not quite over and I am given a few words of encouragement.

“But really, be patient. Your flowers will grow, you just have to wait. It takes a long time for them to grow and you have not been in your house for that long. I left a plant in my backpack for almost a week before I planted it, and it grew fine.”

This is a very true statement, but one that I often forget. I all too often get caught up in the fact that I feel like I am working hard, but not yielding any fruit (or flowers in this case.) The fact is, change takes time and I can’t expect to have plants exploding with flowers right after I plant them. I just had to have my thoughts be compared to the thoughts of Homer to remind myself of that.

The guy that was living in my house before me (aka used-the-bed-to-sleep-in-and-store-a-change-of-clothes-but-still-ate-at-his-mom’s-house-next-door) was a drunk. Actually, I shouldn’t say “was,” because technically he still is, he’s just not a drunk that sleeps in my house. anymore I’m pretty sure he half got kicked out of his parents house because of this problem, but probably partly because he wanted his own space to drink and smoke. Because he was really only using the house to sleep in and get drunk every night, he didn’t care about keeping the place up and dirt, trash, and the glass bottles from drinking gathered all over the place. While some Paraguayans are very clean about their trash and either burn or reuse it all, others don’t seem to mind letting trash (especially unburnable glass bottles) accumulate in their yard. Now I don’t know if this guy did this because he was drunk, or because he just didn’t care, or maybe both, but after he finished the alcohol in his bottle, he made a habit of throwing it into the backyard/forest area. This resulted in not only glass bottles all over the place, but shattered glass literally all over my property after many of them smashed up against a tree, completely destroying any practical future use for the glass. When I first moved into my house, I spent a few hours one morning picking up all the whole glass bottles and parts of glass that I could find and piled them up together next to a tree. I thought I had collected it all, but soon realized that these broken pieces of glass were lying around every few inches in my backyard and every time I walked to the latrine, I would pick up a piece or two as I discovered it in passing. A couple weeks later I was walking around my backyard and found at least 10 more whole bottles thrown in random spots bringing the total of undamaged bottles to about 35.

In cleaning up the outside of my house, I had to machete my way to the latrine (that was in the beginning not visible from my back porch), chopping down large bushes, parts of trees, and raking up excess leaves and sticks to make myself a path that I felt comfortable walking on in the middle of the night should the need to relieve myself arise. This unsurprisingly, uncovered hundreds more slivers and chunks of pointy, dangerous, glass. After a few weeks of picking up a couple pieces every day, I thought I had at least gotten the majority out of the way. I then turned to my trash pile. Now I’m not a huge fan of burning trash as some of you probably already know. A couple of you might even remember me yelling at someone when he threw my plastic bottle in our beach bonfire. I’m still not the biggest fan of releasing harmful chemicals in the air by burning and damaging the ozone layer (yes Jess, I know, I’m a hippie), but the amount of trash that I had piled up just from cleaning up around my house was so large that I didn’t know what else to do with it. I actually had two separate trash bonfires, and the second time, my trash pile was smoking for no less than 48 hours. When all was said and done, and I had done my part in damaging the ozone layer, I was left with a large pile of dirt, ash, and charcoal…. Or at least that’s all I thought it was. Unbeknownst to me, there were still plenty more shards of glass in my lindo path to my latrine and in my burnt-ozone-damaging trash pile. I found this out the first time it rained and the heavy, fat drops pounded away the first layer of dirt to reveal more shiny, pointy objects for me to collect. The first time it happened, I was amazed to find several more glittering objects, half-wedged in the dirt the day after it rained. The more it happened though, I began to associate the appearing of the glass with the rainfall and half felt as if the rain had been the cause of their appearance. Even more surprising was the size of some of the pieces of glass that magically appeared after the rain. I am used to little plants springing up and some growing twice their size the day after a rainfall, but larger pieces of glass made me feel as if the baby shards of glass were sprouting and growing into glass chunks in the fertile Paraguayan soil and life-giving rain. I am debating whether to accept the rain as an opportunity to find more of the millions of pieces of glass scattered about or to begin researching the possibility of actual glass plants in Paraguay.

It is 1:30pm and I am sitting on my bed sweating with my computer propped up on my feet to allow some good air-flow to the bottom of it to keep it from overheating. My legs form a diamond shape and my back is hunched over to see the computer screen well, which, oddly enough, is beginning to give me a back-ache. I have several times tried leaning back, but every time I do that and take the computer with me, my internet cuts out. I would love to go sit outside under my mango tree in the shade as I’m sure it is about 15 degrees Farenheight cooler than it is in my house, but I try not to flash my computer around and I only use it in the confines of my rickety, semi wind-proof wooden walls.

I think it has been close to a month since I have written my last blog, and since I have time right now, I’m determined to use the internet and the time it while it lasts. I have encountered a variety of problems in sitting down to write a blog and respond to long over due emails. I think soon after I posted my last blog, my computer charger, without warning, broke, and I was left with an uncharged computer for about a week as MacBook chargers are a little hard to come by in Paraguay. Luckily, my mom came to visit me and brought me a new charger for my foreign and strange Mac laptop. But, as she was the first person from home I have seen in over 8 months, I valued her company far much more than time I have to spend using my computer and I let it sit there for another week while I soaked up hours of English conversation. After she left however, my internet became as unpredictable as the weather, or rather, completely predictable in that it hasn’t been working. I have several times opened up my email only to be cut off as soon as my gmail opens, or it will trick me and work for about 5 minutes and then completely cut me off. But typically, it tends to just be completely non-compliant and refuse to connect, telling me there is no signal even though I see at least 2 bars in the left hand corner. This is, as you can imagine, quite frustrating, especially after it happens to several days in a row.

The concept of “not working” has already become a familiar and regular problem for me. Early on in training, I would often walk 30 minutes out to the ruta to use an internet café with some other trainees only to be told by the woman that the computers “weren’t working that day,” which translated into either, “I don’t know how to turn them on and neither my husband or my teenage daughter are here to turn them on either,” or “it’s going to rain soon and I don’t want to be using all that electricity when it starts thundering.” A few weeks ago I hopped on a bus to go to Caacupe, a nearby city, and we passed by a broken down bus that “wasn’t working” on the side of the road. Now the fact that the bus had broken down was of little surprise to me. I’m more surprised at how many busses in Paraguay fly down the ruta, looking like half the engine just might fall out any moment. This bus however, was from the same company as ours, so rather than giving everyone back their money, they packed in half of the passengers onto my bus, leaving the other half to wait for another bus. I’m still not sure how I actually got off that bus, but I know I rubbed up against too many butts and felt violated while at the same time feeling a little bit like I was violating other people as I manipulated the slivers of space I somehow managed to find.

My most recent “not working” experience has been my running water. The community water tank is in the process of breaking and we do not water for a good portion of the day until the plumber drives his moto out at night to make it continue working until the following afternoon. I have now been 2 days without running water and I hear it won’t be fixed for another 4 or 5 days. The other day it went out at 8:30 am and I had no extra supply of water in my house, I hadn’t washed my dishes, and I had a huge pile of laundry that I really needed to wash. When you use faucets, you really don’t realize how much water you are using because you get to just turn it on and off. The water magically appears, and conveniently disappears down the drain (if you are lucky enough to have a drain.) When you have to walk to your neighbors house with your one small bucket to supply all of your water from their well, you begin to realize how much water you really use and how much water you can conserve if you are careful. That day I went over to my neighbors at least 7 times just to get my dishes and clothes clean and to cook. I might have had to return later that night, but I think I blocked it out.

After a while, you get used to things not working or breaking down all the time and you just learn to live with the consequences of it, even if it’s squeezing up against stranger’s butts to get off the bus or walking over to your neighbors every 15 minutes to ask to use their well again. And, you become thankful for things like having a water source nearby even if it is convenient, or having some kind of connection to the outside world, even if it is irregular. So with my now functioning computer, and my semi-only-functioning-when-it-feels-like-it internet, I will continue to update as the internet servers allow. Sorry for the delay.

This is not just a figure of speech or a mere song title, it is in fact a reality for me. My house is made of wood and I have a metal roof, which doesn’t give me as much protection from the elements as I would like. When it’s windy, the wind seems to enter on one side of my house and blow right through to the other side. I actually have some holes in my walls big enough to look outside and see stuff. When it rains, the noise of the rain is multiplied when it hits the metal roof.

Last night it rained and when it rains in Paraguay, it rains hard with full on lightning so bright it lights up your room and thunder so loud you feel like it’s cracking right outside your door… sometimes even inside your door. I spent half of the night awake, listening to the thunder and wondered how my dog could sleep so soundly through all the noise. The only time she even budged was when there was a crack of thunder so loud I could have sworn a bolt of lightning hit something in my front yard. She popped her head up as if there was a predator invading the house but then settled right back down when she realized the noise wasn’t continuous. I then dragged her across half the bed so that she could sleep closer to me. This wasn’t because the thunder and lightning scares me (although it definitely did my first month or so here) but I just felt like I could sleep more peacefully with her next to me in the midst of all the racket. That didn’t happen. Besides the constant noise of the rain and thunder that I had to block out, my dog insisted on taking up half of the bed, stretching herself out fully to sleep nice and relaxed while I was politely pushed to the side of the bed.

It was about that time when I felt a drop of water on my face. I figured this was a good time as any to get out of bed and figure out what was going on since I apparently wasn’t getting any sleep anyway. I turned on my light and got a good look around my room, surveying the damage. The leak above my bed wasn’t all that serious, I just had to deal with a drop of water or two falling about every 15 minutes or so when it’s raining really hard. There were however other problems that I became aware of with my light on. There were three small puddles on my floor from leaks in the roof, but fortunately, none of them were in problematic spots or large enough to be a real problem. I turned around again to get back in bed and I got a good look at my walls. For any of you who weren’t already aware, wood is not waterproof. This means that when there is rain and any kind of wind, the rain gets slammed into my walls… and then soaks through to the inside of my house. I now have water spots all over my walls, and in a few places, leaking down to the floor. This isn’t so problematic except that my bed is located right next to the wall, thus my blanket and sheet are susceptible to getting wet. I moved my bed a few inches away from the wall just to be safe. As there was nothing else I could do, I crawled back under the covers, shoved my dog over so that I could at least have half of the bed, and eventually fell back asleep listening to the rain and thunder with the occasional drop of rain on my face.

I often have trouble communicating with Paraguayans. Part of it is the whole language thing. I’m close enough to fluency in Spanish, but they mix their Spanish with Guarani, and when they speak to each other they typically only speak Guarani which I still haven’t quite got the hang of. Another aspect to this difficulty with communication is that they talk differently. They say funny things like, “veni un poco” (come a little) or announce what they are doing, “ja’u” (we eat… as if I didn’t already know that we were eating). They like to say redundant things as if they were informing you of something you weren’t aware of, like “okyhína” (it’s raining), or ask questions that we both know they already know the answer to. “Empa’apohína,” (you’re working?) they ask me, and I want to respond with something sarcastic like, “nope, I’m just standin’ in my front yard with my rake and machete trying to look like I’m doing something.” But instead, I respond with, “Hee, che guapa” (yes, I’m guapa).

Another problem I have with communication is that if they don’t like my answer to their question, they keep pushing until they get an answer they like better. “Do you want to play volleyball?” they ask me. “No, I’m tired,” I say, pleading silently with my eyes for them not to ask me again. I actually am tired and would really rather just go into my house and make myself dinner or sit and read, but since I live right next to the volley cancha, I feel rude ignoring everyone and being anti-social. I’m not exactly sure why, but I’ve discovered that I hate volleyball. It’s not because I don’t know how to play (which I don’t), because they don’t know how to play either. I just don’t find it entertaining to jump up and down trying to hit a ball over a net only to have it come right back at me. Put it on the ground and let me kick it and run into people accidentally in the name of futbol, and I’m good to go. But volleyball, no thanks. Apparently my feigned tiredness doesn’t convince them. “Oh come on, just a little bit,” they ask again. “No,” I say again, “I don’t know how to play.” This is also somewhat of a lie. I actually do know how to play, I’m just not all that good at it and being the prideful person that I am, I typically don’t enjoy anything that I’m not good at. They respond with, “but it’s just for fun, veni!” “Yah, fun for who?” I think. But I’m out of excuses, so I obediently go stand in front of the net, not moving for a full 5 minutes while I sleepily watch my teammates rush to wack the ball. The two times I actually did hit the ball in the entire game proved to everyone watching that I did know, mas o menos, what I was doing out there, but I’m not sure anyone caught on that I had been forced into playing.

Ok, so maybe I wasn’t really forced that time, but I really have been all but forced (sometimes literally) into several uncomfortable situations. It seems they don’t understand the word “no.” By using the word “no” several times followed by some lame excuses, I have gotten myself trapped into going to painfully terrible fiestas as well as other social engagements, dancing with drunk men, eating more food than my stomach can handle, eating greasy food and unidentifiable parts of meat, having awkward conversations with older men, drinking wine and coke when I preferred the whiskey, staying far later for a “visit” than I ever expected or wanted, accepting to take home more food than I know I can eat before it goes bad, as well as many other awkward, painful, or dreaded situations that I don’t care to remember. I don’t even know how to get myself out of these situations most of the time. There were times when I gave excuse after excuse of why I didn’t want to do something and it was like they didn’t hear any of it… even when I actually had valid excuses. They really just don’t listen, and once they have it in their mind that you should do something, that’s it whether you like it or not.

On the other hand, if I am agreeing to something in the future, whether it be tomorrow or next week, it is perfectly acceptable for me to say yes and then back out at the last minute. I’m still not sure why they think this is an acceptable way for society to function, but they think that saying no at the last minute (or just straight up not showing up) will hurt your feelings less that just saying no in the first place. A few weeks ago, I agreed to go to a high school event in a nearby pueblo to get to know the school a little better and meet a few of the teachers. This was also supposed to be followed up by me spending the night at one of the teachers houses so that I could teach his daughter English in the few hours I was there and take home one of their kittens that they didn’t want. I by the way got into this situation by saying “no,” but that didn’t work and I ended up promising all of the above. The day before the event, I found out that it was my recent host dad’s birthday and the whole family was getting together to celebrate. The celebration included killing their pig (I know love pig asado) and making sopa. Being that it was a family event, I said I would come and spend the day with them and eat some delicious pig asado. I now was double booked and of course preferred spending the day hanging out with my family than going to some awkward high school event and spending the night with people I didn’t know and then being forced into adopting a cat that I didn’t want. I didn’t have his number, so I text a friend so that she could text the teacher and inform him that I no longer could come. While this might seem a bit evasive, I felt absolutely no qualms in having someone else communicate for me at the last minute that I was bailing. Besides, I really did have a good excuse this time. That’s just the Paraguayan way and people expect you to act like that. I often find it frustrating trying to communicate this way and would really prefer straight up honesty. But, unfortunately, I often have to conform to Paraguayan ways in order to get by. So this is what I have figured out: when you say “no,” they won’t listen and will insist until you change your answer to “yes.” When you say “yes,” you have every right to back out up until the last minute even if you have a very lame excuse. “Yes,” means “maybe,” which often translates to “no.” Somehow I find this way of communication a bit backward.

I have already been in site for over 4 months now and I have my tri-yearly meeting with my bosses in Asuncion this week. Two weeks prior to coming in, I had to fill out a report basically giving statistics on what I had done in the last few months and what I have learned. While writing down numbers and giving data sometimes makes me feel like I actually am doing something, I found myself more interested in reflecting on what I’ve learned these past several months. While this is not a complete list, nor is it all included in the report I sent to Asuncion, I thought I would share some of my reflections and lessons with you.

• Be purposeful in doing things to make you happy. While being depressed sometimes seems an easier choice, staying active and involved is much more fulfilling both for me and for other people.

• Dogs are capable of having separation anxiety issues (aka my dog).

• There are moths that exist that are bigger than my hand.

• While spiders might be frightening, they do not “get you,” and I don’t need to call for help every time I see one… except for the poisonous ones… those are dangerous.

• I am an introvert. I need my time and space to be alone… lots of it!

• Despite my aggressive and take-charge attitude, I am very often shy.

• Listening to people speak in another language can be exhausting even if I am not participating.

• Food and drink always make conversation go easier. They are universal topics and a great way to bond with people. If you want to be aquaintances with people, share a drink. If you want to be friends with people, cook with them and share food.

• Sitting in silence is not a bad thing.

• Old wooden houses have LOTS of cobwebs and just when you think you have cleared them all out, they magically reappear.

• Trust people less but love them more.

• In English when we want to get out of a commitment but don’t want to say no, we say “maybe.” In Paraguay when you want to get out of a commitment but don’t’ want to say no, you can say, “later,” “tomorrow,” “in between now and tomorrow,” or even “yes” as well as several other evasive phrases. Almost always, people know exactly what you mean.

• There are days when the last thing I want to do is leave my house and go talk to people. I have learned that on those days, that is exactly what I need to do to make myself feel better.

• Both rich people and poor people waste resources and money, they just do it in different ways.

• I can go without much more than I thought was possible.

• Banana peels on the floors of city busses are a very bad idea.

• When it is 5 degrees Celsius outside and your house has very little protection from the elements, bathing is a painful event that is very rarely worth the suffering.

• I can function without an addiction to coffee. I am however, a much more energetic and happy person when I do get my morning cup(s) of liquid happiness.

I have put up pictures of my house and a few others. I'm still in the process of trying to clean everything up and make it look lindo, so the "after" pictures are still on their way.

Before I got to Paraguay and during training, I had a few people tell me that Peace Corps was kind of like retirement. I laughed with them and privately thought to myself that people were just lazy and lacked motivation to make things happening and silently promised myself that I would fill every day with work and never lack motivation. I seriously misjudged them. Peace Corps really does feel like retirement sometimes, and it’s not really for lack of motivation, but simply because that’s just the way the culture works. I have never in my life felt that I had so little to do and simultaneously felt like I had too much to do. I have also never in my life been so purposeful in keeping myself happy.

Every day I have quiet time to myself that I usually spend reading or writing. I also try everyday to do something to “fix up the house” whether that’s spending a couple hours raking the ever abundant supply of leaves, starting a compost pile machete down some overgrown weeds, or buying a table. I tell myself that even if I can do something simple like that, I have accomplishes something that day. I go to community events partly because I feel like that’s part of my job, and partly because it’s something to do. I spend many afternoons visiting with neighbors, complaining about the weather, gossiping about what the other neighbors are doing, and sometimes just sitting in silence. I have a dog partly to make me feel safe at night, but mostly for the company. Every few days I like to find a new recipe and try something new, or just experiment with something I already know how to do. I always have either one or two books that I’m in the middle or reading and every time I go into Asuncion/Peace Corps library, I pick up a few more to supply myself for the next month. I typically go to bed between 9:30 and 10 and usually get up at 6. If I sleep in until 7, I feel like I’m being lazy. On extremely cold days I typically sleep in later than normal and read more than normal because it’s “too cold to do anything.” My work consists of working in the schools and organizing and motivating community groups and events which means that my personal and professional life are basically the same thing and there is little separation between the two.

I keep pictures on my fridge to remind me of the people I love. Every couple of days I pick wildflowers while walking back to my house because they make me happy. I do everything I can to keep my house clean, organized, and a comfortable environment and have many plans on improvements. There are many days when I don’t feel like leaving the house and on those days I know that’s exactly what I need to do to make myself feel better. I go for a walk or go visit someone that I like (I don’t like everyone in my community) and I always leave feeling happier and more connected. I stay as connected to my friend and family back in the states without making myself feel like I should be there instead of here and I continually keep myself plugged in to my community here. When I have a really bad day, I call a Peace Corps friend because they are really the only people can fully understand what I’m going through or I text my mom to call me because somehow mom always makes it better… even thousands of miles away. Even though some of it is involuntary, I always have plenty of exercise, usually averaging over an hour of walking ever day.

I’m not sure what I’ll do when I finally go back home and have a “9 to 5” with an actual schedule. I find it quite relaxing and pleasant living like this even though sometimes I feel like what I’m doing is more normal for a 60 year old than a 21 year old. I will enjoy my “pre-tirement” while it lasts and read as many books, pick as many flowers, make as many new friends, try as many new recipes, and attend as many community events as possible.

For about the last month, the electric company has been changing all of the electricity posts and cables in my site. This means that the electricity gets shut off at about 8 o’clock in the morning (sometimes earlier) and doesn’t come back on again until abut 5 in the evening. It’s been quite frustrating only being able to use electricity at night. I have more than once forgotten to charge my cell phone and went on a low battery all day hoping no one would call me. When I was living with a family, the lack of electricity didn’t affect too much in terms of cooking because we were cooking with fire. Now that I’m by myself, I cook with an electric stove/oven so when the electricity goes out, I can’t cook and I can’t heat up water to wash my dishes. While it is theoretically possible to wash dishes with cold water like every Paraguayan does, I prefer to use at least warm water to cut the grease to ensure that I have actual clean dishes and not halfway clean ones like most Paraguayans use. I also have to make sure that I keep my refrigerator closed as much as possible to keep as much cold air in there as possible.

To complete the problem, after a few hours without electricity, the community water tank goes out and everyone is without water as well. The plumber is out of town a lot, so we usually don’t get water again until nighttime as well when he gets back home and then drives out to the tank to fix it. A few times he was gone for 2 or 3 days and the entire community went without running water the whole time. In the last 5 years that most of my community has had running water, most people have neglected or gotten rid of the wells that they do have so access to water is difficult. The people who do not have wells have to walk to a neighbors house or down the street to fill up buckets to do their laundry, wash their dishes, cook, drink terere, and bathe. And if they have livestock, they have to lug even more water to their house to care for their animals. I am one of those people who’s well is too dirty to use. I also have no good way to transport water since I am still trying to get settled in my house and only have 2 palinganas which are not suitable to transport water, and one small bucket that I use for my latrine.

I knew water and electricity were precious resources, but I never realized how precious they really are until I had to go without. After I eat breakfast and wash those dishes, I fill up my palinganas with water so that if the water does go out, I at least have something to bathe in or wash dishes in and my dog has access to water as well. If I don’t do that, I have to wait all day, sometimes until 8 o’clock at night, maybe even the following morning to be able to wash my dishes or bathe. I also keep pitchers and bottles of water in the fridge to ensure I have water to stay hydrated or cook if/when the electricity comes back on. Sometimes I feel like I've gone back in time.

It’s rather difficult to make sure you use all the needed electricity/water you need for the day in the morning, especially when everything shuts off unexpectedly before 7:30 am like it did this morning, which by the way, is a Sunday. My old host family had asked me to bake a cake and bring it over for lunch. I wasn’t expecting the electricity to go out on a Sunday, and even if it did, I wasn’t expecting it to go off that early. I had my cake all ready to go and the moment I plugged in my oven, everything shut down. I have no idea if/when it will come back on today and have no way of finding out. I also had a pile of dishes loaded with grease from getting the cake ready and had really been hoping to heat up water to get them all clean. I figured I would just get them all clean with cold water as best I could so I didn’t have a pile of dirty dishes. I loaded my palingana with soap and turned on the water. After about a minute of water dribbling out of the spout, the water just stopped all together. I had also really been hoping to wash my hair this morning since I’ve been saying that for the last few days but have not had enough water to actually do that. I’m not really sure what to do with this predicament. I have cake batter ready to be put in the oven, a pile of dirty dishes, a cup and a half of really soapy water with no water to rinse, and dirty hair. I feel like things like this happen all the time in Paraguay and while it used to surprise and frustrate me, it doesn’t really phase me anymore. I’ll get to the dirty dishes and dirty hair when I get to them and have water. Maybe I’ll go find someone with a gas oven to bake my cake, or maybe the electricity will come back on. Thank goodness Paraguay doesn’t function on deadlines and promises and thank goodness my hair looks good dirty.

First off, I want to apologize for my infrequent updates this last month and a half. I was sharing a room with my host sister this last month, and I don’t like bringing my computer out in front of Paraguayans. When one person gets a glimpse of my shiny American laptop, their eyes widen a bit, they tell me it’s pretty, and then they leave to go tell the rest of the family that Ali has her computer out. Then the entire family tromps in my room to get a glimpse of the pretty computer that the American has and proceed to stare at me as I try to type. As you can imagine, not only does that make it hard for me to concentrate, but it also makes me feel extremely uncomfortable and confirms more solidly in their minds that I am incredibly rich. So my computer has pretty much been sitting in my backpack the last month or so, only brought out when most of the family is gone. I fake taking a nap and close the door and window to get an hour or so to type up some emails.

I am extremely happy to announce that I am no longer subject to sharing a room or hiding my laptop. After 6 and a half months living with Paraguayan families, I am finally living by myself! It has only been a week that I have been in my own house, but it’s incredible what it has already done for my sanity. As if I wasn’t already aware of the fact that I’m an introvert, living with 4 different Paraguayan families (and sharing a room with someone) brought out my introvertness (yes, that is now a word) more that ever. I now live in a very small, old, wooden house, that even after hours and hours of work is still lacking. I love it. I can now cook by myself and cook whatever I feel like cooking and not feel like an idiot. As I am typing now, I have bread baking in the oven and it smells amazing. I now have some peace in the morning when I wake up and at night before I go to bed without having to worry about screaming children running in my room.

To make my house as homey as possible, I completed it with decorations. I have wildflowers in a glass on my fridge next to a beanie baby that a friend sent me, pictures on my fridge, a world map on the wall, and a princess like mosquito net over my bed. I live very near a creek/woods and every night I have a ridiculous amount of mosquitoes in my house. The fact that I also have very large gaps in between the walls and the ceiling might contribute to the number of mosquitoes I have as well. I also have my dog living with me again which makes me so happy. She follows me absolutely every where I go whether it’s the patio, the latrine, or down the street. She probably would follow me onto the bus if I let her. On my property I have somewhere between 10 to 15 tangerine trees (some of them different types), a sweet orange tree, two sour orange trees, a lemon tree, 2 guava trees, a peach tree, a nispero tree (tastes like a kiwi), two mango trees, and a few pomelo (white grapefruit) trees. Oh, and my neighbors have passion fruit vines as well. I probably have some other kind of fruit trees that I haven’t discovered yet or have already forgotten about.

While the space is somewhat small, that fact that I’m by myself makes me feel like I have more than enough space. I have a latrine that is located about 25 meters away from my house (it makes going to the bathroom in the dark an adventure), but it has a cement seat with a real toilet seat on it so it almost feels like a real bathroom. You just have to pour water down after you go poop. I am also planning on putting in a shower but don’t have that done yet so I’m bathing out of a bucket again. My roof is metal so it gets pretty warm around 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Winter hasn’t even officially ended yet, so I think I need to do something to remedy that before the hot months come. I also have hours of work ahead of me with my machete and a rake and probably a few matches. The outside needs more than a little bit of fixing up. All that said, I can’t find reason to complain. Pictures are coming soon… or at least when I have time to upload them all online… I’m sorry if this blog is confusing. I feel like it’s about at disorganized as all of the thoughts in my head right now.

more photos coming soon of the broken down house i've been fixing up/moving into.

and sorry it's been so long since i've posted! more coming soon!

So I know I’m a health volunteer and my job here is to teach people how to lead more healthy lives, but sometimes I’m surprised at what people here don’t know or what they think they know. Somehow I managed to get through 5 full months without getting sick and I was a little bit proud of myself considering how many other volunteers had gotten sick within the first few months. I attributed it to the fact that I thought I had a good immune system. The month of July proved that my immune system was not quite strong enough to combat all the germs in this county. After a trip to Asuncion, I came back to a sick house. Everyone had a cold, and when I say cold, I mean hacking up your lungs type of cough. Within about 48 hours I joined the bandwagon and started sniffing and coughing too.

It really shouldn’t be any surprise that when one person in the family gets sick, everyone in the family gets sick. Their standards of cleanliness are not always exactly what I would call up to par and their understanding of how germs pass from one person to another is frighteningly appalling. Part of it I’m sure has to do with how they wash their dishes, aka, using a sponge that looks about a year old to scrub the dishes, they sometimes use soap, and half the time with already dirty and cold water. Then they stack the wet dishes in the cupboard without drying them, leaving any germs that live in water free to thrive on the plate until the next use. While drinking terere and mate while you’re sick is supposed to be a no-no, that rule never really is applied, and you see people hacking away as they pass you the guampa, or cough on their hand and then adjust the bombilla (straw) with the same hand. I had a really hard time convincing them that I really didn’t want to share dishes/terere until I no longer had a cold because I didn’t want to get worse. They just thought I was crazy. But like I said, they don’t really understand the concept of passing germs. I was making a cake with my host sister and my 5 year old brother came up to look at the cake and started severely coughing with his face about 5 inches from the batter. I winced and then tried to push him back a little, telling him it was better to cough “over there” instead of on top of the cake. My sister raised her eyebrows and asked me what I was doing and even when I explained you aren’t supposed to cough on food you are sharing, she just kept looking at me funny.

So considering the lack of general education here on germs and bacteria, and the standards of cleanliness they have for their bathrooms/latrines, I shouldn’t have been surprised to get giardia during my stay in Paraguay (or at least I think it was giardia, I’m not really sure). I’m actually surprised it took me so long to actually get sick. If you feel so inclined, go look up giardia on the internet. I’ll just tell you that I had diarrhea, vomiting, and headache for three days. It was not fun. Surprisingly, while my host mom was not quite so worried about the vomiting and diarrhea, she started getting really concerned when I refused food. I went over 24 hours without eating anything and the next two days I ate very little. During that time I also used an absurd amount of pepto bismal tablets. Between cleaning out my system and taking that many anti-diarrheal pills, I stopped up my system for a good few days after that.

I spent the next few weeks blissfully “germ free.” This week I suffered a migraine that lasted for over 48 hours. My neighbor laughed at me when I told her I was taking anti-inflammatory and drinking a coke with caffeine to help get rid of the headache. And as I’m sitting here writing, my stomach is making some quite absurd noises. I should have believed them in training when they told me I couldn’t go two years without getting sick.

Probably the most frequent question people asked me both in preparing to come to Paraguay and since I have been here is, “so what do you do?” Before I left I really had no idea what I was going to be doing here except for some very vague ideas from an introduction pamphlet sent to me in my invitation packet. So when people asked me what my job would be in Paraguay, I either parroted the pamphlet or I just made something up. “You know, I’ll be building brick ovens, building latrines for people, and educating them on stuff like hygiene, you know, like washing your hands and stuff.” I really had no clue how that was supposed to happen especially considering I probably wouldn’t know what to do with a brick oven, much less know how to build one. Nonetheless, I had high hopes of moving into a community and building brick ovens and latrines for every family and leaving two years later with the knowledge that every child in my community washed their hands after using the bathroom and before eating. Ok, maybe my ambitions weren’t that over the top, but that was mostly because my hopes had been dashed by that same pamphlet in my invitation packet that had this huge section on patience and not going in expecting to be able to change everything. It talked about suffering from boredom and depression and feeling like you aren’t actually accomplishing anything. I tried to take this into account considering it was probably written by former volunteers, but I still kept thinking, “but I still will be able to build those brick ovens for these people right?”

Over training some of that was cleared up, starting with me learning how to build a structurally sound and functional brick oven and a sanitary latrine. They also spent hours of horribly boring medical sessions talking about how there would be days we were depressed and every session we had enforced the idea that we might not feel like we are making a difference. Most people here want a brick oven because that is of course preferable to cooking on the floor, but you don’t just get to waltz into their homes, build it, and walk away. The whole idea behind Peace Corps is self-sustainability, so we don’t get any extra funding. To get the money for materials for the fogons, you either have to raise the money as a community or petition the local government which sometimes feels like giving money and sometimes doesn’t. So our trainers taught us how to do all this stuff, showed us the resources we have within Peace Corps Paraguay, told us we wouldn’t get it all done and might not feel like we’re doing anything, encouraged us against depression, and sent us off to our sites hoping we had retained everything.

I arrived in site with high hopes determined to not get bored or depressed and determined to at least start every project that was needed. Now I’m not writing this to say that I’m bored and depressed and not getting anything done… but sometimes I feel that way. I moved into this community knowing my two contacts and their families and also knowing that part of my job is to meet everyone here and explain who I am and why I’m here and figure out what it is they really need. My idea of what work is has changed a lot and some days if I spend a good few hours visiting with people, I consider that work, even if most of the time I sit in silence listening to other people talk (which is usually the case). Ok, so back to the question, what do I actually do? When people back home ask me that I usually laugh and then say, “um, hang out??” because sometimes it feels like that’s all I’m doing. I usually get up between 6 and 7, depending on how long I feel like sleeping in and typically spend the morning drinking mate (hot terere), helping out with preparing breakfast and lunch and cleaning up a little bit, do some laundry, and sometimes I do a little reading or go for a run. Then there is more terere, lunch, and usually a “rest” because my family is always telling me I should “rest a while.” In the afternoon I usually bake something, go visit someone, get something done for the preparation of my house, or complete a few censuses (short interview with families to get to know the main heath problems). The evening consists of more mate and dinner, sometimes a shower, watching the popular telanovela “Victorino,” and then an hour or two of listening to music, reading, or writing before I go to bed at the late hours of 9 or 10. I feel like my life has become quite simple.

The thing about my life as a Peace Corps Volunteer is that it usually sounds more exciting on paper than it really is and people telling you that you will have hard days or be bored is a lot different than the actual experience. Last time a group of volunteers were in Asuncion, one of the guys told us he had spent about 45 minutes just thinking about whether flies compete with each other to see who can be the most annoying. We all just laughed in understanding, all knowing that we had all spent hours contemplating equally useless topics. Since coming to Paraguay I have read 16 books (that is if you count the entire series of Narnia as 7 separate books) and I know many other volunteers have read much more than I have in the 6 months we’ve been here. I’m not even sure now that I really understand what being bored is. There were a few rainy/sick days this month when I literally spend hours just lying in bed with the covers over my face. I can’t tell you what I thought about except maybe the music I was listening to on my ipod, but I don’t think the thought, “I’m bored,” crossed my mind. I just was how I was and was perfectly happy to just be without having to think in Spanish or Guarani or think cross-culturally. Yes, in my two years I hopefully will build fogons for all the people in my community who need them and I will be doing a lot of work in the schools. I’ve actually already visited quite a few times and have done a dental charla with every class. But I don’t log my “work hours” in time spent in construction or in the classroom, my work mainly consists in building relationships and sharing cultures. Yah, sometimes it’s boring, sometimes it sucks, and I have the feeling many days that I’m not doing anything here. Sometimes I think that these people are teaching me more than I am teaching them. So for now, for all of you who are wondering what the heck I actually do here... that is about it...

I'm not really sure what I thought cooking on a wood burning, brick oven would be like, but in my mind it seemed like a kind of cool idea. I even entertained the idea of building my own fogon in my house until I realized that meant I would also have to go search for firewood everday. The whole thing sounded easy enough: you light some sticks on fire and you just throw your pot there instead of on the normal stove. I guess somewhere along the way in my imagining the exciting experience of cooking with "real fire" I overlooked a few things. First and foremost is the constant smoke inhilation. Sometimes I can't even stand in the kitchen while my host mom is cooking because the smoke makes tears pour out of my eyes and I begin severly coughing as my body is rejecting the ash attempting to line my airways. It's painful. Plus, your clothes and hair are stained with the smell of smoke until you use large amounts of soap to remove the smell. Second of all, the whole getting-the-fire-going part isn't always as easy as my host mom makes it look and you have to continually feed more firewood into the fire and make sure that the fire is actually under the pot and not next to it.

I cooked for my family yesterday because my mom and sister were washing clothes (yes, by hand)and I thought I'd help out a little bit. When I got to Paraguay, I was both facinated and appalled at how finely Paraguayans insist on cutting up their vegetables. They somehow dice green peppers into green slivers and I stand there in amazement watching them work. Not only can I not chop as finely as they can, but the smaller I try and cut the vegetables, the slower I chop. I will get through cutting up half an onion while my sister has peeled and cut the other onion as well as two tomatoes and as I put the finishing touches to my onion half, she stands there staring at my sloth-like actions with the knife and tear-giving vegetable. I tried yesterday to work my way through those vegetables as quickly as I could, all the time thinking that my sister would walk in and wonder why the food wasn't already halfway cooked. About halfway through the vegetable cutting process, my 5 year old brother came in to stare at my and was ambiable enough to point out that I should have peeled the carrot before cutting it up. I sent him outside to go get me water to cook the noodles. Finally I got to the meat. I'm not even sure how to describe this process, but let me begin by saying I don't really cook that much meat and I still have issues actually touching raw meat. And if you have ever seen me cut up a chicken breast, you know how anal I am about cutting off every single peice of fat off the meat. I'm pretty sure this peice of meat was about 46% fat and 54% meat, and the whole thing was so tough I didn't know how to begin sawing my way through it. I would never have thought to cook this meat back home, much less serve it to anyone I liked. I probably spent a good 15 to 20 minutes cutting it up, swearing and talking to myself the whole time and thinking how it would have taken my host sister approxiamately 2.5 minutes to do the work that I was doing. I don't know how they do it, but they do. I even picked up a few peices and pulled it apart with my hands becasue it was easier separating the fat with my hands than with the knife. Oh, and by the way, this whole time I had my head right next to a window to ensure I had a steady semi-clean oxygen supply rather than coating my nostrils and lungs with ash. However long it took me to cut up all of the ingredients apparently didn't matter and the food turned out tasty enough.

This type of cooking experience is a typical 2 or 3 times a day activity in Paraguayan homes. They really do cook with meat like that, some families every day, and they really do cut up their vegetables fine enough so that you can barely see them. Some families are more generous with the vegetables than others and with others you might be lucky enough to get two baby onions and a small green onion cooked to oblivion in the mixture. After the vegetables and meat are chopped up, they throw it in about 3/4 cup of oil over the fire and cook all the vitamins out of the vegetables and fry the meat so that it's barely chewable. Then they throw in a ton of water (never measured) and after it's boiling, they either put in rice or noodles and then cook them so that they are just over-cooked and squishy. Finally once everything is overcooked and the vegetables have been obliterated into food coloring for the ample amount of broth that has a layer of oil for a topping, the family sits down with a spoon in one hand and a peice of mandioca in the other. My first host family typicially ate like this 3 times a day.

I will conclude by saying that this whole experience really isn't all that traumatizing once you get used to it and the whole broth mixture is actually quite tastey sometimes. That said, I'm planning on buying and using a gas stove in my house rather than a fogon and I plan on using many vegetables that are not cut up finely and meat that is not tough and fatty.

I’m not really sure why, but I’ve always found it easy to hang out with kids. Maybe it’s because they have so much energy and joy, or maybe it’s because I’m still kind of a kid myself. But either or, I think the neighborhood kids here have become some of my favorite people in Paraguay. Many times I find it easier to hang out with them than to hang out with the adults. First of all, they all look up to me, but they don’t ask as many annoying questions as the adults, nor do I feel like they pass as much judgment on me as the adults. Second of all, they don’t laugh at me when I try and say something in Guarani and most of them take in on as their personal job to teach me their language. It’s funny how sometimes children understand and see so much more than their parents.

Alberto lives across the street from me with his parents and 6 brothers and sisters in a house that I think has 2 or 3 rooms. He’s 8 years old and like most Paraguayan boys, he is pretty much obsessed with soccer. I think every time I’ve seen him, he has been running around barefoot with shorts and a t-shirt that are dirty, and sometimes his face matches his dirty shirt. It’s not like he’s too poor to bathe, because his mom and his 14 year old sister always look clean, he just runs around too much in the dirty, dusty Paraguayan campo. About every other day he’s in my front yard kicking around a soccer ball and as soon as he sees me, he asks me in Guarani if I want to play soccer with him and the couple of times I have said no because I was busy, he was highly disappointed. When he found out that I wanted to learn how to speak Guarani, he decided to only speak to me in Guarani because he wanted to help teach me. Luckily I can keep up with most 8 year old level conversations about soccer and when I don’t understand, he usually starts shouting louder (his “talking” voice is typically a shout) and waving his hands in the air while his eyes widen as if he is willing me to understand his words. One time he said something to me and another boy, Gustavo, overheard and the following conversation commenced in Guarani:

“You have to speak to her in Spanish only! She doesn’t understand Guarani.”

“No! She understands Guarani!” Alberto’s eyes are getting wider, his voice is getting louder, and his hands are starting to wave around in the air.

“Well she understands some things, but only a little, she hasn’t learned everything yet. We have to speak to her in Spanish!”

“But we HAVE to speak only Guarani to her so she can LEARN! And she understands!!” Alberto now turns to me, “Right Ali, you understand?”

While my apprehension is consistently getting better, I still have trouble responding in Guarani, so I just spoke in Spanish. “Yes, I understand. No Gustavo, I haven’t learned everything yet, but I understood everything you guys just said.” At this response, Gustavo’s eyes just widened about the same size as Alberto’s and he didn’t say anything. Alberto just stood there smiling with an I-told-you-so look on his face. I really like that kid.

Another boy, Ariel, about the same age as Alberto has also decided not to speak a word of Spanish to me. Even when I don’t understand a word he’s saying, he just keeps going on in Guarani. He also usually sports dirty shorts and a t-shirt, even when it’s cold outside, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen shoes on his feet. When I go for my runs, I pass his house and when he’s standing outside, I’ll yell at him, “jaha!” (let’s go!) and I jerk my head forward as if inviting him to run with me. “Moopiko” (Where?) he asks as he starts trailing behind still trying to figure out if he wants to tag along. And I just keep running and say, “jaháma!” (let’s go already!). After this, sometimes he falls in step with me asks again, “Moopa jahata” (where are we going?) and then repeats the question about every 2 minutes. I just respond with “allí” (over there) and then listen to his monologue in Guarani, trying to understand at least the main idea. The only thing is he kind of sucks as a running partner and every 5 minutes or so, he sighs and says, “che kaneo” (I’m tired) and we have to walk for a few minutes. While I usually prefer interrupted runs, I always enjoy his company, and I know that at least someone is happy to see me.

And then there is Monsuerat, a 5 year old girl with a button nose and one of the cutest kids I’ve met in my life. Every time there is a social event that we are both at, she will sidle up next to me and sometimes grab my arm, and smile, squinting her large brown eyes just a little bit and showing off her dimples and long eyelashes. She likes to sit next to me and help me name objects in Guarani. “Mba’e pe’a” (what’s this) she says pointing to a chair. “Apyka” I say, “ha pe’a mesá” (and this is a table) I add pointing to the table. Then she giggles and searches the room for something else to name. I think it’s a mutually beneficial relationship. She gets undivided attention from someone who is willing to talk to her and play with her, I get to practice my Guarani and not feel like a complete idiot.

While most people here are usually excited to see me and expect me to hang out with them for the next 5 hours, even if I’m just passing by their house, these kids probably express the most enthusiasm at spending time with me. Their faces light up, their eyes get bigger (if it’s Alberto, his hands start waving in the air) and they start speaking to me in Guarani. Even if I don’t understand, they speak to me in their language because they know that even if I don’t understand today, one day I will understand and they want to be a part of helping me learn.

Directions in Paraguay are a funny thing and in fact, most directions are rather relative. Of course pre-Paraguay, I quite enjoyed and used rather often both Map Quest and Google Maps, two wonderful websites that will tell you approximately how long it will take you to get from point A to point B, how many miles you will be on every street, and the fastest way to get there. They give you precise information and always gave me a sense of comfort because I felt like I knew exactly where I was. You’d be hard pressed to find that kind of information anywhere in Paraguay. If you are in Asuncion, you usually have to ask anywhere from 3 to 5 people directions to the same place to ensure you are actually getting correct directions. I will admit sometimes it’s my own stupidity in not understanding the directions I’ve been given, but the majority of times I get about three to 4 different answers when I ask 5 people the same thing. (And for those of you who have spent a lot of time with me getting lost and know that side of me, yes I have gotten over the whole lets-stop-and-ask-for-directions thing. I kind of had to.) Apparently the different answers stem from a couple of different things, the first being that people don’t know the city that well and sometimes they think they know where something is and so they tell you where they think it is. Other times, people just want to feel nice and don’t like telling you that they have no clue where that restaurant is, or where the post office is located, so they just make something up in the direction they think it could be located. I have backtracked so many times in that city it’s not even funny. The strange thing is, Asuncion is neither large, nor complicated. I could probably walk from one end of the city to the other in less than 4 hours and every single street runs either north-south or east-west. So when I get one person telling me to walk two blocks to my destination, another person telling me 5 more blocks and then turn left for 2 more blocks, and a third person telling me I need to walk about 6 blocks and then turn left and I’m there, I start wondering if my final destination is imaginary. By the way, I should also mention that 85% of the time, the estimation on number of blocks I have to walk is off by about 2 or 3 blocks so even if you do get 2 people to tell you the same thing, you still can’t be completely sure those directions are 100% accurate.

And then there are directions in the campo which are about as vague as they come. Maybe this is partly because everybody knows everybody and their families have usually lived in the area for a few generations so they never really have to give directions. I told a girl that I would come over to her house the next day to help her with her homework and I asked where she lived. She said, “you know where Fulana’s house is?”

“Yes.”

“Well I live right by there.”

Um… ok… “So your house is next to her house?”

“No, that’s not my house, but I live right near there.”

Well that was helpful. “So your house is in front of her house?”

“No, I don’t live there, but my house is like right there.” Ok, well that just cleared up my confusion. I still don’t even understand if it’s on the left or right side of the street.

I’ve also been told things like, “Oh you know where so and so lives? Well just pass their house a little bit and you’re there.” Well tell me, how long is “a little bit?” For someone who likes facts, exact directions, and an estimated time of arrival, responses like this are not something I like to hear. The other day I went to go visit the Heath Center in the nearby pueblo to ask for fluoride pills for my school. I had been told by several people that the it was “just down that road a little” by the plaza. When I left that morning I asked my host mom directions just be sure I knew where I was going. She told me, “Oh ya, just go down that street, you’ll see a big sign and it’s on your right.” I got off the bus confident and feeling good about myself that I knew exactly where I was going. I walked all the way down the street until I hit a dead end and no Health Center. While the walk wasn’t all that long, it was uphill and a cobble stone like quality that really hurts if you’re walking in rubber flip-flops. Now feeling a little foolish, partly for not knowing where I was, and partly for thinking it could really be that easy to get somewhere, I turned around and headed downhill while the people sitting out in their front yard watched the white girl retrace her steps. Half way down the street, I asked a lady if she knew where the Health Center was. She pointed down the street she had just been walking down, “Yes, just walk that way and it’s right there.” A few minutes later, I came up to a semi-official building that looked like it had a waiting room in the front. There was no big sign indicating my stop, but there was a nice little sign on the lawn that had a whole bunch of information about the Department of Cordillera and it said somewhere on there, “hospital.” Ladies and Gentlemen, I have arrived. The Health Center was on the right side of the street, but I’m still mystified why no one ever told me you have to turn left on to a side street to get there. Maybe when my host mom told be “big sign” she meant there is a big sign on the street where you want to turn left to get to the health center which is on the right side of the street approximately 5 buildings down and it has a small sign on the front lawn and is located across from a park. Yes, now that I think about it, she must have meant that.

I have a couple updates on the whole futbol front. First of all, let me correct myself in saying that Paraguay has qualified for the world cup before, but you can probably find better facts on the internet than I can asking people in my site. My current host dad told me they have qualified the last 4 World Cups, but I’ve also been told by more than one Paraguayan they’ve never qualified before, so I really don’t know what’s happened.

Second, the closest thing I can compare watching Paraguay’s opening game is watching the Super Bowl. Unless you had to work, you were watching the game, even if you never follow futbol. I went over to my neighbors house and watched it with them, laughing at them freaking out every time Paraguay almost made a goal or someone stole the ball from Paraguay. When they made the one goal of the game, almost everyone jumped out of their seats screaming because they were so excited. The 6 year old started running around the room doing a victory dance that had some resemblance to Michael Jackson style dancing. We made popcorn for the second half and one of them started throwing popcorn at the TV every time something happened in the game that she didn’t like. The whole thing was quite the event, and quite exciting.

Lastly, I would like to tell you how being in the World Cup has suddenly made the neighborhood boys much more serious about our front lawn pick up games. We usually spend an hour or two playing two on two or three on three and I spend approximately half of that time listening to them yell at each other in Guarani about whether or not it’s a corner shot, whether or not they have 3 goals or 4, or whether or not they get a penalty shot. The games usually spontaneously start and people join in and leave in the middle of the game. On Friday we played 4 on 4 and not only did we have an official start to the game, but we had everything from line up and the national anthem, to shaking hands, and warm up exercises. They decided one team would be Paraguay and the other would be the United States in honor of me. We also had to choose which famous soccer player we wanted to be for the game. They asked me who the most famous soccer player in the United States was. Um, I don’t know… David Beckam? I don’t even think he’s in South Africa right now but he’s honestly the only soccer name I know. Luckily they were satisfied with only one name and I got to be David Beckam while they all fought over which Paraguayan soccer player they would be. We all stood in two lines and then they told me that I had to sing the national anthem of the United States because that was our team. I made it through two lines before bursting into laughter. Apparently just singing, “Oh say can you see, by the dawns early light,” was good enough for them and they all put their hands over their hearts to sing the Paraguayan national anthem. I don’t even think the game actually lasted for 5 minutes before the ball got stuck in the tree, or one of the boys ended up on the ground fake crying because he got kicked… I don’t remember which happened first, but after that happened, I just sat around listening to them yell at each other in Guarani and chase each other around to beat up the kid who kicked the boy lying on the ground. I guess the ceremonies were more important than the actual game.

For those of you who follow soccer, and possibly some of you who don’t follow soccer, you probably know that the world cup has started in South Africa. I think I’ve said before that Paraguayans get really excited when it comes to futbol. Let me make myself clear: Paraguayans are serious about their futbol. It is about as hard to imagine Paraguayans without futbol as it is to imagine them without terere every day or without chipa on Semana Santa. Maybe qualifying for the World Cup doesn’t sound like a huge deal, but for a country who lives and breaths futbol but has never qualified for the World Cup, it’s the most exciting thing that has happened here for a very long time. Because of this, for the last month or so, about two thirds of the commercials on TV and every few billboards or so in Asuncion have had something to do with the upcoming World Cup. “Fuerza Paraguay” has become a very popular phrase recently. My host mom told me that if the United States, who has also qualified for the World Cup, plays Paraguay, I have to cheer for Paraguay. My neighbor asked me what I was going to do if the US plays Paraguay as if I was obligated to cheer for Paraguay because I was here. “I don’t know,” I said feeling a bit conflicted about cheering for my home country while everyone here almost expects me to turn against my roots. “I don’t know.”

There was an opening concert Thursday night and my family stayed up late to watch Black Eyed Peas and Shakira perform even though they didn’t understand a word of it except for the line in “Hips don’t lie” that says, “Como se llama, bonita. Mi casa, su casa.” They got all excited for this part and said, “Listen! She’s singing in Spanish!” Friday was the inauguration and neither my 6 year old brother or my 14 year old brother went to school so they could watch the opening games. By the time I had woken up my 6 year old brother had drawn a mini soccer field in the dirt and spent the next few hours kicking around a mini soccer ball and yelling, “Gooooooooooooalllll!!!!!!! Ole Paraguay! Ole ole!” My 14 year old brother devoted his morning to gawking at the TV for the inauguration and the opening game between South Africa and Mexico. After the end of every game played (I think there have been 7 so far) my brother dutifully tells me the score of each team and then makes sure to inform me which countries will be playing next and at what time. Paraguay hasn’t even stepped foot onto the field and he’s already keeping track of every single goal. My 20 year old neighbor and host mom are a little disappointed that the World Cup lasts for a month because that means a month devoted to watching soccer games instead of their favorite TV series. Paraguay will be making their way onto the field this afternoon to play against Italy. I have been told that there will be no school that afternoon because everyone will be at home to watch the game. Since when did school get cancelled for a sports game? In honor of the upcoming game, my dad (and several other Paraguayans) put up a Paraguayan flag in his front lawn. I can`t wait to see how this whole event goes and I am secretly praying I the United States will not be playing against Paraguay in the nearby future. But for today, FUERZA PARAGUAYA!!