Close of Service

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

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

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

Goodbye Meechi-Moo

I have to say that I am happy with how my service went. I didn't 'save the world' but I think the things I accomplished with my school were very successful, especially my end of the year event  and recycling project. I was ready to leave but there will be things I will miss about Py like the friends I made, the tranquiloness and watermelon season. But onwards and upwards, literally, because we're going to the bottom of the continent and working our way to the top!
I can barely even collect my thoughts about end of service because there was SO MUCH going on with the packing and goodbyes and trip planning and memorial service for a fellow volunteer and, as I mentioned, it still hasn't sunk in. But..it was a great experience, and I'm very glad I did it.

Long Field at David's Site

What the tetra paks turn into once recycled!

The old taju!

tree huggin

Walking out to the wetlands by David's site

 

 

 

 

 

Preparing for the event about to take place

                                                                 Caution sad pics!!!

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

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

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

Barefoot

Onda Verde!

Big success! My fair

Ignore the date!it was not 2009!

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

Lunch

Singing Jaha Jaguata

2nd Grade, where is the water on the earth

Most is in the oceans!

3rd Grade, The Giving Tree

4th Grade, Mural presentation

5th Grade, Recycling

6th Grade, Skit of a classroom teaching about migratory birds

5th Grade garbage decomposition timeline

Glass never decomposes!

Me and Eli, thedirector of my sector

The End

Recycled Art with Federico

Cutting milk boxes to make ornaments

Cutting bottles to make the tree branches

Federico directing

glueing magazine pieces to the bottles

Decorating the tree

The trees

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

The End Is Nigh

for my PC service.

It has been about four months since I've written in the blog, and that is quite a long time I know. Lots has happened of course and now my service is winding down. Lets see...
August: was all about my idea to have an end of the year assembly for the parents, featuring each grade presenting an environmental theme that we did over the last two years. The vice principal liked the idea so I went home and put together something for each grade.

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

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






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


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


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

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

So August was all about presenting the idea to the teachers and giving them the material for them to work on with the kids. I helped but had to leave them because ...
In September I was way busy!!
First I had my Close of Service conference. My entire G met up again for a three day training on what we need to do before we leave, what to expect when going home and everything in between.

At Iguazu falls

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

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

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

November: Recycled art day, fair, more training activity, language exam. The recycled art day and fair were a huge success! Monday we made christmas trees out of plastic bottles and tetra paks, tues was practice for the fair and David's long field training (which I did last year, and David was one of my trainees..now look! full circle) passed through and I took them to see my school, we hung out at the firehouse and saw Rebecca's rabbits.
Wed was the fair! The director of PC came out and my director of the environmental sector as well. It went so well, I was so proud of what each grade did with their subject and how they presented it! The school was freshly painted for the event and the broken steps fixed too, so that was a plus. All the classrooms were decorated with the work they had done over the year and they looked great! After I went out with Lauren to David's site to meet back up with the trainees and help out. In David's site there is something very rare in Paraguay, a huge Taju tree. It's the national tree of PY and the one that was featured in my mural at the school. This tree must be over 450 years old. It's amazing to see a tree with that many years and even more amazing that it's in this country....with it's deforestation rates through the roof.
What else is happening this month... Black Eyed Peas concert! my medical and dentist exam (woohoo), thanksgiving and general preparing to leave.

and that's the update!

My worms

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

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

Garden as of 2 weeks ago

Lil pepper so cute

Worm wranglin! Git to the shade!

 

 

Gave up wrangling and trying the crossing over method. New stuff on right, composted stuff on left.

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

Arbor Day

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

(Most of this is taken from our 'descovering the Atlantic Forest' book I have that was made by pc volunteers and Wikapedia :p
The Atlantic Forest is a tropical forest found mostly in Brazil and southeast Paraguay and a small part of Argentina. It contains ecosystems not found anywhere else in the world. It has also been being hacked apart since colonial times mostly to make room for sugarcane plantations (thanks sweet tooth), then coffee plantations and urbanization. It's estimated that only 10% of the forest is left and broken up into isolated hilltops and of course hosts a whooole boatload of endangered species, many that are endemic only to this forest.   
In Paraguay the Atlantic Forest has been totally devastated by deforestation. It used to spread over most of the lower part of the country but now only 6% remains in small patches.
There are a bunch of different orginizations trying to reforest and teach people about the importance of the BAAPA and sustainable use of it, but I think what would help the most are laws (ok there are laws) but ENFORCED laws to protect it!

some facts from biodiversityhotspots.org
unique and threatened flora and fauna..

plants: The Atlantic Forest has been floristically isolated from other South American tropical forests by the savannas and woodlands of the Cerrado for thousands of years, explaining the region’s remarkably high plant endemism—of 20,000 vascular plant species occurring there, about 8,000 are endemic. Endemism in trees is particularly high, with more than half the species found nowhere else. 
Birds
The Atlantic Forest has spectacular bird diversity, with over 930 species, about 15 percent of which are found nowhere else. There are 23 endemic genera. Because most of the region's forests have been cleared during 500 years of exploitation, many species are now threatened, and at least one is extinct in the wild, the Alagoas curassow ( Crax mitu). The species was last sighted in the wild in 1987 and now exists only in a small captive population in Rio de Janeiro. 
Mammals
More than 70 mammals, of a total of over 260 species occurring, are endemic to the Atlantic Forest. They include interesting species such as the thin-spined porcupine ( Chaetomys subspinosus, VU) and painted tree rat or cacao rat ( Callistomys pictus), which represent monotypic genera, and the maned sloth ( Bradypus torquatus, EN), a larger relative of the widespread three-toed sloths ( B. tridactylus and B. variegatus). One particularly notable endemic is the Brazilian arboreal mouse ( Rhagomys rufescens, CR), one of the rarest of the South American mammals. Originally described from a single specimen collected in the state of Rio de Janeiro in the 19th century, a second specimen was only recently discovered in Viçosa in Minas Gerais. 

The destruction of the BAAPA from 1945 to 2009