Formerly my Peace Corps Paraguay and travel blog. December 9th, 2011 I swore out as a volunteer and proceeded to travel through South America with my boyfriend for four months before returning home. Paraguay to New Jersey! I took the long way home.
This blog still contains my PC experience so, disclaimer: my thoughts and opinions are my own and in no way reflect the thoughts and opinions of the Peace Corps or the Government
As I sit here on my bed, stomach full of pasta and empanada, I feel the need to touch upon everyone’s favorite subject to complain about here: food. Here’s the rundown…
Lets say you make a list of everything we know we should eat and a list of everything we know we should limit. The “good” list would probably have fruits and veggies and whole grains, legums and lean proteins and the like. The “bad” list would have include lots of sugar salt, oil, animal fat, empty carbs like white bread, rice and pasta and fried things. Good. Now take the bad list and that is what your Paraguayan daily menu will look like…. HOLY CRAP I JUST SAW THE BIGGEST SPIDER ON MY WINDOW. UUUUGH.
Ok, disposed of. by the h mom, who was not grossed out at all. Real mom would have been in the other room. Don’t worry I took a picture.
Anyway, I shouldn’t say everything is unhealthy. We do have salad for lunch. Of course it’s lettuce with tomato with oil and lots of salt on top. And I do get an orange and some bananas every day (the bananas here are much smaller than back home so I get a couple). Here’s a sample of my daily food intake:
Breakfast: cocido. I forget exactly how it’s made but it’s boiled water made on a brasero (charcoal grill) and you put sugar in the water along with some of the charcoal so it burns. Take the charcoal out add milk and that’s my breakfast. Burn sugar milk tea with white hard bread sticks.
Snack: my banana and orange (yay fiber!)
Lunch: some form of oily soup with white pasta and tough beef fat (which I usually cut up and pick at so it looks like I eat it, but I sneak some to the dog) and oily salty salad. To drink a glass of juice made from a powder you mix with water which is all sugar. And of course mandioca, a tuberous starch kinda like a potato that they eat plain with every meal. It’s a staple here.
Afternoon snack: we’re in training for this Ricardo usually brings us cookies and bananas. We also found this amazing ice cream place we sometimes frequent after class.
Dinner: usually something fried like empanadas filled with hard boiled eggs or tortillas which are not what we think of tortillas. It’s pretty much fried dough greasy oilyness. The first couple I had were pretty good but, I’m over it now.
So when I weighed myself today and realized I’ve lost 8 lbs since I’ve gotten here I thought ‘there’s no way…’ then I realized, it’s my muscles! Atrophying away from inactivity! Weeeeeoooooo! But I bought an exercise mat and will try to do more pilates in my room, maybe some running although 1. it’s hot and 2. I will get laughed at. Apparently someone running just to be healthy and active is extremely funny although the humor goes right over my head.
Unfortunately we have no control over what we eat until we get out to site and live on our own. Some people have it a little better in their house, some the same. Ways we’ve coped: buy fruits! They have fruit in the market, I just never see my fam eating it. We don’t eat everything they serve us, if you try to please them by eating everything you’re just hurting yourself. and if ever we’re served raw veggies we devour them in seconds. They can grow many things here, but unfortunately a lot of Paraguayans when they see a garden they say ooh how pretty, look at all the cebollita (green onions) they’ll be great for our tortillas. Yep, put em in dough and fry em up, then we’ll eat em.
I just have to keep thinking, things will get better in 5 months when I can start to reverse the effects the Paraguayan diet has had on my poor body!
mandioca, salty salad and rice. the rice wasn´t to bad actually it was pretty good. sure beats oily soup! and i had fresh made carrot and orange juice, really good as well. still to be determined if she puts sugar in it or not though...
Today we made soy stuff!! The beekeepers came over and we all split into 4 groups depending on language (spanish or guarani) of five or six and went to different houses to cook some soy foods. My house was one of the houses which was aaawsome. course it was with a guarani group but it´s ok. We went to the house with 2 language teachers and my h mom and Lizzy were there. We had the soy beans soaking overnight so they were ready to go in the mornin for us. here´s how it went...
unfortunatly i can´t caption the pictures but..first we took the shells off the beans. then we made some tortillas by fryin up some stuff.then we blended up the soy beans and made some milk which we added apples to for sweatness. we squeezed drained the milk thru a cheesecloth and used the soy ¨meat¨ to put into our empanadas which we fried up. we also made some salad. We had a very good lunch that day :) (that´s my h mom in the red shirt)
This weekend we went to visit a volunteer at their site just to see what life is like as a volunteer. Environmental volunteers who have either been here for a year or two years were to have us at their site and stay with a host family and show us their life. After our day in Asuncion on Thursday we found out who we were going to visit and if we had to leave Friday because they were far away or Saturday if they were closer. So I was off to visit Kevin two hours away at his site where he’s been living for a year. Not a bad ride since other people had 7 and 8 hour bus rides, plus another volunteer was taking the same bus and getting off before me. the bus was crowded so we had to stand for most of the ride in the isle and there were all these vendors selling snacks going up and down the isle that had to awkwardly squeeze past every 10 mins. They would jump on and off at random stops, must be the thing to do here. Kinda like the knife salesman that came on our bus when we were going into Asuncion thurs.
So I got there around 11am and Kevin was waiting for me at the terminal. After introductions over lunch we went to his house which on the outside looked like an old big shack but it’s a sweet deal what he’s got. The yard is big with a lot of fruit trees and it’s all fenced in. The house belongs to some guy in Italy and the landlord is letting Kevin live there rent free to look after it. It needed some work like a new sink and he bought a fridge and a mattress but everything else he is borrowing from neighbors like his bed and tables. There are four big rooms but no doors other then the bathroom door, and the bathroom is nice. Running water, hot water, electricity, the works.
We had a lot to do though, first we went over to this church that some of his friends volunteer at. Ever Saturday they provide a snack to the poorer kids in a community near this one. The snake was just rolls that we put some jam in but the kids came, about 37, and first they all sat down and got ready to sing. They love to sing songs here with kids and the kids love doing it. They sang along to this tape they played with kid church songs on it, then the girl running it taught them a mini lesson about being nice, then they went to the park next door to pick up trash. So that’s good, teachin them some garbage management, but then of course they burn the trash so……that’s not so good. Then they ran back in and washed their hands and had their snack with hot chocolate. They kept staring at me like they do and I think they were calling me Miley Sirus … or at least the one girl was talking about her.
After we had to go to another church and give a speech on global warming. A youth group was doing a campout that night so we walked out pretty far out of this town looking for the church. We were alittle late but we knew they were watching the movie first, or so we thought. When we finally got there turns out they hadn’t even started it because they were waiting for us, and asked us if we needed to rest before they started it. we told them we’d be able to sit and watch the movie without resting first because we’re guapo like that (here the word guapo doesn’t mean pretty like it does in other Spanish speaking countries, it means hard working. It’s very important to be guapo here they like that). So the movie they picked out to watch for our global warming charla (speech) was… the day after tomorrow. In Spanish. It was pretty long. But after we played an icebreaker game and then Kevin did a chat on global warming and how they can help reduce it in Paraguay. (most of their power is from a hydroelectric power so they’re good on that one, although they cut down their trees like there’s no tomorrow).
After that we had a birthday party to go to. A teacher he works with at school was turning 24. So we walked back down the long dirt road and got back into town and to her house. Tables were set up in the dirt yard and there were lights all over the trees. It looked very nice, the food was already on the plate at all the seats so we just sat down and started eating. Ok so on the plate was hunks of meat, and potato salad and rice salad and..a salad and of course sopa paraguay. Ugh. There was a lot on it and the only good thing was the potato salad. I didn’t want to appear rude and have it look like I wasn’t eating anything but I couldn’t’ eat all that! So it sat on my plate for awhile and what luck, a dog came by. He had a good meal that night… during the dinner there was a Paraguayan group singing traditional Paraguayan songs! 2 guitars and a accordion, it was really nice to hear. After we ate came the cake. It looked really nice a lot of icing, and it was a circle shape. They cut cake different here, she cut a small ring around the outside of the circle and then cut little pieces of that ring so it was like little slivers of cake. And thank god it was! Because I was all excited and took a bite and it was…not yummy. Ugh another thing I had just get it down and over with quick and hope she didn’t’ give me more. So that was the party. And what would be a birthday party without a lot of sitting around and staring, which is what we did. Then we left.
Sunday was a chill our day. We watched movies and there was a huge rainstorm that killed the power for a few hours but it was nice and we walked in it and got soaked. Made a stir fry for dinner though which was an awesome change.
Monday Kevin does a radio show for an hour at 8 with some other volunteers. We went over to the station, or room with a computer in it, and we were the only ones there. So Kev had to do the show on his own. I wasn’t about to get on air and wing a radio show about the environment with my Spanish! So I just hello. That’s all they get from me. but it went well, played some music, talked about gardening, who knows who listens to it but I’m sure there’s gotta be one or two people! After we went to one of the schools he works at on Monday where he made a garden with the kids. It’s a special needs school which is kinda unique there’s not many that I’ve seen or heard about around. There’s a fica volunteer here, it’s kinda like the Peace Corps but a Japanese version. Speaking of Japan, this community has a lot of Japanese Paraguayans living in it. A bunch settled here to grow rice or something awhile ago and they’re pretty integrated now. But they do still learn to speak Japanese and about their culture. I met one volunteer and it was cool because her Spanish was like mine, we’re both still learning.
After we went to lunch, had some terere during the siesta, then went to Kevin’s main school that he works at every day. He made a huge garden there with his different classes! So sometimes he just goes and sits in the library, other times teachers may ask him to teach a class on some environ theme, he also just got a grant to buy more books for the library because they really don’t have many. He’s doing a good job over there. After that we met up with another volunteer who was hosting a trainee as well and we all went and had a Japanese dinner at the Japanese hotel in town. IT WAS SO GOOD! Such a nice chaaaange. They brought out a nice spead of sushi and noodles and tofu with shitake mushrooms and dumplings and other things. Nice change of pace. After we all played uno.
Left Tuesday morning at 11 and got home around 2 (after spending time at the internet café). At home I hung out with the fam for a bit then decided to have a nap. Ok. So this is random and weird. I go into my room and close the door, unpack my bag and lay on my bed and have a 30 min nap. I’m drifting in and out of sleep and at one point I hear a little noise under my bed like a cat is under there. I figured it was just Pingy and went to look if she was under there. No. it was not Pingy. It was a small child!?!?!?!? He appeared to be sleeping on my cold tile floor, I left my room and told my h mom there was a small child under my bed, she was like what? And I repeated and she went to look, she came back and was like “ooh that’s just Gustavo, he’s so crazy. He’s your friend” I don’t know little Gustavo nor did little Gustavo ask to sleep under my bed. I think what happened was his mom was gonna take him to the dentist and he was hiding and my door was open so he went in there and hid and fell asleep. So lesson learned, always check for small children under your bed.
Speaking of which I’m gonna do that now. It’s 8:14 pm! Bed time waits for no man! Night!
here´s some pics of the massacre of my toe to get out my third pique. some uno times in the room that looks like it could be out of one of the texas chainsaw movies. and a really good dinner we cooked!
I came here with all intentions of posting my blog about my weekend site visit, but subsequently forgot my pindrive in my room. Que lastima! So I´ll take this time to report that yesterday I was pretty sick with a fever and stomach probs, today I´m ok. I was still pretty guapa (hardworking) though since I went to class anyway, fever and all. But I did go to bed at 7 pm...
Today Leah and I started our Dia de Practica, our practice days to do a project in the community just like a real volunteer. we have five days throughout the next 2 months to pull this off even though in real volunteer time this would happen in like 2 days. Anyway we decided we´re gonna go to the school and ask the directora what she would like. They were pretty into it, I brought some school books to show them that we could work with and they were very excited about that. So we decided we would do a class about trees an animals and why we shouldn´t randomly go around killing them with our slingshots for target practice. Then we´ll go outside and plant some trees. Hopefully it will go well!
Chiquitin, my piglet, has become pretty friendly and i can pet him and he rubs his dirty nose all over my feet. Images of Wilber come to mind, I need a spiderweb....
Yes that’s right, after my summer months of planting and tilling and harvesting and collecting eggs on my electronic farm on facebook, I can say it all prepared me for… absolutely nothing to do with planting a garden. But I’ll get back to that.
Yesterday we went into Guarambare with the agroforestry group for some more information sessions which included reminding us that although we are here we are not volunteers yet, we still need to earn that spot. So while we already have applied and gotten in (kinda) we’re still on a three month long interview and job training process. So come December when we’re sworn in it will have been a year long application process! And of course, this being a government position, we had papers to sign. Then we watched a movie called “Living on the edge of Death” or something like that which was just as depressing as it sounds. Not about us living on the verge of dying! But about helping communities learn to help themselves as opposed to not teaching them and just giving them money. You know, the whole “give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime”.
After the other 2 groups showed up and we learned all about vegetable gardens (huertas). We learned how to transplant and why, where to put what in the garden for the best results, how to make organic compost and a fence out of bamboo with a machete and wire, and of course a practical lesson on making of the garden itself. Hoeing, turning the soil, making a raised bed, putting on the fertilizer (compost) and transplanting some little onions and lettuce plants. Good information but I felt like a lot of people knew a lot more about growing plants and organic gardens and soil..and they did, because all I know about was the tomatoes my mom and I tried to grow which just got really big and turned green and fell off (although looking back we could have had fried green tomatoes). On a side note they made us a spread of all sortsa fresh veggies and dip to eat, we descended on the table like Paraguayan children at a candy store. Eating raw veggies here is a big deal, something you don’t get a lot since healthy food here consists of white bread on sugar on white bread on meat and mandioka. It was a fiberus surprise we all needed!
Walked home, watched the news and the lottery like we do every night. The lotto here is a bit different and I’m not sure exactly how it works but the host fam seems to win something like every night. Last night was $3 tonight was $20! After a whole buncha things happened at once. Well two things. First a moto semi crashed, more like fell over in front of the house. The one kid got up and got the moto up and the other wasn’t really moving so my host mom went down there and then he got up, he had just cut his leg. Then this boy showed up holding a screaming piglet about a month old. I’m not sure who the boy was hmom started to tie a rope around its neck and middle like a harness and I thought the boy just need a rope and was showing us his piglet, but then he walked away and left the piglet with us. But he was sooooooooo cute and little. Also terrified out of his mind, deff taken away from his mom way to young but, I could go into a whole entry about how they treat animals here which I won’t do right now. Uh. Anyway after we gave him food for him to step in and he stopped squealing I asked “Por Que tenemos este conchito?” (Why do we have this piglet?) and apparently it was a regalo (gift) and then I asked the question I already knew the answer too : What are we going to do with it *wince*. “We will kill it in four months and eat it”. Of course this I knew. But he’s sooo cute! Can’t get attached! Just like the fuzzy little chicks that hatched last week! Our yard is overflowing with cuteness I can’t even handle it. and more chicks are going to hatch in a couple days!
So today was our half day tech session in which we started our own huerta! We had to finish building a fence, hoe out all the grass, turn over the soil with shovels to aerate it, rake it down, make raised beds and plant the veggies. No standing next to a plot of land and it’s all of a sudden a plot to sew (Farmville). NO! this was 3 hours of hard labor with the hot hot hot sun on our backs and Terere by our side. So much work to get some lettuce, I now have a new appreciation for those little veggies we all eat.
The other night when we were walking our friendly neighborhood farmer invited us into his garden to see his vegetables. He had rows of goodies and he gave us some lettuce and squash to take home. He was just a random guy who said hi to us on the road who wanted to share his garden with us. He was very excited about it. He also showed us his pig he was going to slaughter for new years and invited us into his house for a piece of something that was a pig skin roll with fat. It made my stomach turn just to look at it but he was so happy to give it to us and 4 slices off so we could try it. Omg. We all didn’t know what to do. First off more than half the people in EE are/were vegetarians or ate little meat, which is funny (but not really) because we’re all here in a country who loooooves their meat and thinks you’re absolutely crazy if you don’t. So we all took our slices in a napkin and said we would try it later (by that we meant we’d give it to one of the street dogs). Then he gave us a piece of sopa Paraguay, the countries national dish, which I already knew I didn’t like. I took a bite (it’s kinda like corn bread) and chewed for awhile until I knew I could muscle it down without gagging. After we said our thanks and left I gave my pig skin roll to Mangey, our favorite street dog who we named for his mange, who was very happy to have it.
On another side note, I was sitting outside tonight with the h sis and h dad talking about the environment and the US and Paraguay and Mayans and toads when I realized we were having an actual fast paced conversation without me stopping to think about what words I need to use. Grant it I’m sure my grammar was scary but it’s all about the small steps!
here are some pics: the first one is our Pingy the cat
Let me start out by saying that yesterday got up to 100 degrees F, today the high was 53. oooohhhh myyyyy gooooodness! In a country that has open buildings and no heat that is COLD! I spent most of the day shivering and being unprepared for the cold. It just reminds me why I like the heat so much more!
Yesterday I went with the fam to their nephew’s 1st birthday party. They’re our neighbors so it wasn’t a far walk. I was interested to see what a birthday party would be like here, at least a one year old birthday. So here I’ve noticed they like to sit around and talk, or sit around a talk and drink terere (more on that in a later blog). The birthday party was no exception. When we arrived there was a whole buncha chairs and benches in a wide circle in the front of the house. The yard is just red dirt with some big trees shading most of it. In the front of the circle was a table with a cake on it and all sorts of sweets lined up. Next to the table was a box that people were putting Louise’s presents in. Everyone was sitting, even the kids, and talking with the people around them. A few chickens would run in and out the chairs and the dogs would try to lay in the middle of the big circle, but someone would hit them and chase them out (there’s a lot of dog hitting and animal chasing goin on round here). The Loui’s mother then passed around hot milk chocolate that was pretty good just had a different taste then I’m used to, and then some pieces of torta (dessert or little piece of cake). Then passed around more. And more. And again. Now I’ve told them many times I’m not eating a lot here because I don’t want to get fat so they know! Thankfully they’re not trying to feed me a lot (there’s not a lot of nutrients in what is consumed here, lots of white bread). We sat and ate for about an hour and a half and talked, some kids were running around a bit more and not just sitting. No one was really mingling and walking around only my host sister taking pictures and people helping serve food. Oh did I mention the whole time little kids songs were blasting from inside the house? It was mostly women and kids there, some men were playing cards away from the party though. My host dad stayed at the house to listen to the football match on the radio. Finally it was time for the piñata, or what we could call a piñata. There were two big balloons with what looked like some of the red dust from the ground inside, I had no idea what was going to come out of it that the kids were so excited about and I was told they hit it with a knife! So it seemed as if many small children in close proximity to one another were going to be wielding knives to open balloons full of red dust. I had to watch. Fortunately it wasn’t carnage that followed but a woman who came over with a steak knife. All the little girls ran over and stood under one balloon and the woman popped it with the knife, out came confetti and those things you blow at birthday parties that look like unwinding tongues. They were really excited about this and scrambled all over to grab a dusty lizard tongues and put it in their mouth. Next was the boys turn. After the cake and candy from the front table was passed out, cake to all and candy and chips to the kids as well as balloons. Then they all left. And that was that. A birthday party. After we left we did some more sitting and chatting, then ended up going back to the party house to sit and talk some more. They were teaching me to count in Gurani and the colors. And that was my Sunday!
I found out today I’m starting off in the Spanish review class. There’s another Spanish class for people who need more practice and the rest have started learning Guarani. At first I was a little upset I wasn’t in the Guarani class yet but I’m ok with in now. I know I do need to practice speaking more since I didn’t really in Mexico, I also wish I had more time with the Rosetta Stone! That helped me review so much! But it doesn’t matter, I’m gonna be the best Spanish/Guarani speaker eeeevvveeeerrrr. But first, bedtime.
Got done with some training aaalll about Diarreah! and our health care. It´s really good healthcare. going from no health care to the best health care we´ll ever get is awesome. 221 ppl to 2 doctors! awesome!
I’v arrived safe and sound in Guarambare, the training town an hour away from Asunsion. The plane ride to Brazil was uneventful other than my tv screen not working and me not being able to fall asleep, but that’s no big surprise. After we arrived in Asunsion, Paraguay from Brazil we got our bags and loaded it into a big van, then we all got into a different van depending on what group we were in. Only one person had lost a bag which is pretty good for a group that’s 42 people with 84 bags! Don’t worry she got hers the next day. The weather was beeaauuutiful, clear sky and around 80 degrees! During our ride to the training center in Guarambure, Richard (the environmental ed trainer) told us that 3 people die a day in motorcycle accidents! And then we saw one! Well not happen but the aftermath. Way to drive the point home!
Anyway once at the training center we had our interview for our family. They asked us how we felt about living with animals, any special diet, living with small children and whatnot. Also we had our photo ID pictures taken, yes, a picture that will haunt us for the rest of our time here since they took it after being on 2 planes with no sleep and bad hair. So it was important to have a nice change of clothes in our carry on’s and makeup (which I did not have). We had some more briefings then went to our respective areas to meet our new fam! Our group is the biggest with 13 people and our personal EE training center is very pretty and big. There’s a pool and a small soccer field and kitchen and patio for classes outside and it’s all fenced in. Driving up there were horses and cows milling about grazing and walking around, all very tranquil. Our families were inside on the patio ready to meet us as we pulled up, and when we got out we hid behind the van out of awkwardness. Finally someone walked around (prob Richard our trainer) and we all very timidly followed and stood in a group in front of all our new families. One by one our name was called out and everyone watched as that person said their saludos or kissed cheeks and stood by the their fam. My name was called second to last, waiting till the end almost felt like being the last kid picked in gym class, but really it just went by alphabetical order. My name was called and I met my host mom who took my bag (which was probably 459872435 lbs) and I took my other one and we walked across this field to my new house! Thankfully Ricardo (Richard) took my bags in his van to my house because they were 436347356754687 lbs each. (actually they were 90 lbs in total and I didn’t have to pay extra! Bonus!)
That all feels like so long ago but it was only 2 nights ago! I’m not on my third night and I’m so happy I have the family I have! It’s only mi madre y mi padre and their 20 year old daughter who helps me with my homework and everything else! And of course there’s the chickens and the 2 dogs and the cow and the cat and Jamie the parrot mi novio. The weather has been beautiful! It’s spring now so there’s not to many mosquitoes which is good because we didn’t get our nets yet. Also the we got our med kits the second day so I didn’t have repelente till then. But it’s all good because I actually don’t have one bite! Only a bee sting. That I got on purpose. For fun. Well, partly for fun partly to see if I was allergic. It was required that the beekeepers, crop extentioners and agroforestry people get stung but we had the choice. I hope to work with bees for one of the training sessions so I decided to get one too. Apparently it’s easy to set up a hive here and cheap and it’s something we can do as a side project if we’re rural enough. Back to my house…. I have a room all to myself with 2 beds and a dresser, high ceiling, 2 chairs, a desk, a night table and a picture of a drunk chimpanzee in soccer clothes with 2 bottles of wine leaning on a goalpost that that says “ no hay rivales” (there are no rivales) which is good because he helps me sleep. The house is small but the yard is big and the bathroom is outside! It’s not as bad as it sounds though because it’s like a regular bathroom with running water, a sink and toilet and heated showerhead, just outside. I’ve noticed for food they eat a lot of white bread, white bread sticks, white rice, mandioca ( a root tuber kinda like a potato) soda, and they load everything up with sugar or salt. Like the salad I had today. Lettuce, tomato and a cup of salt, not the healthiest food in this culture so I must be very conscious to … not get fat :p and people don’t really work out here so…
I have electricity and I’m glad I have my laptop because I’m able to type out this blog here in my bed, save it to my little travel stick thing, walk 15 mins toward the center of town and use the internet café quickly. The road near the town center is paved, then getting more into our area it turns into bricks and red dust, and for my road it’s a total red dust dirt road. Pretty cool. You can find lots of things on it like animal bones and flattened frogs (when I see that I know I’m close to my house). There are dogs and chickens wandering about everywhere as well.
I’m pretty sure I’ll start learning Guarani Monday but I’m so glad I knew a little before I came, one step ahead of the game! Tomorrow my family has been invited to our neighbor’s son’s first birthday party. He’s their nephew and we went there tonight actually. It’s a very tranquilo lifestyle here, it’s the weekend so there was a lot of sitting around and talking, during the day, after dinner, tonight. We talked about how expensive it is to live in the US and how the lifestyle is different and how everyone has stress up there but not here. My host dad couldn’t believe when I told him how much it costs to have a child in a hospital in the US, apparently it’s free here unless you need a c-section. The weather tonight was beautiful and on the way back to the house he showed me the different trees in the backyard like lime trees and orange trees and had me smell and chew the leaves to taste the different flavors. There was also pinapple plants growing… it’s like living in my very own real life Farmville!!!
I’ve only been here for the three days and each night it’s getting hotter. The first night was chilly and I needed to bust out the blanket I brought for the plane plus the sheets and blankets my host mom gave me, last night I wasn’t cold and right now I’m pretty warm. And all night the dogs battle it out with the roosters to see who can make the most noise, fortunately it’s not right outside my house so it doesn’t bother me but it’s different to hear! So, roosters do not crow only when the sun comes up, it’s all the time. Myth busted!
The people here are very nice and friendly and love to teach you Guarani. This town is used to Americans though since they’re always here 4 times a year training, so I don’t know what it will be like more in the interior. I’m the 4th person my host family has hosted so they know the deal which is nice. In Paraguay if you go into your bedroom with a boy even if he’s a friend it’s automatically assumed that certain things are going on in there and between you two. The other night Dan my Jersey comrade was walking me home (since they want the girls to not walk around alone in the beginning) and my host mom invited him into the house and showed him my room and told us we could go in there if we wanted. This was interesting because it means she knows what to expect from the American culture. But we steered clear of the room situation because we knew they would see it as something else, but they knew American’s were different and wanted to be culturally sensitive to us! We both were trying to be respectful to each others cultures at the same time! We went over to Jamie instead to get out of the house before the neighbors could come to any conclusions!
Water. They pretty much get us drinking the water here right away to get used to it. It’s actually not that dirty of water here it’s just there’s different microbes in it than we’re used to that we need to adapt our bodies too. So far I’m handling it well :p
This is getting way long so I’m going to, plus I have to stop myself from writing a mix of Spanish and English since my brain is thinking more and more in Spanish.. so far I’m very happy with everything! This is a great place and It’s so cool to be in a country that doesn’t really have tourists. We get to live and see the real lives of it’s people and they’re happy we’re here getting to know them.
**factoid: Paraguay grows the plant that makes Stevia**
The field I walk through to get to the training center
My bed
dresser, other bed and chimpanzee
Me armed with my new monies and Spanish dictionary
Drivin out of Asuncion
The great EE training group G31
