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

Tree Pruning Time

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

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

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

Blogging

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

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

Plastic bottles and fishing.

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

English Class.
Ok, It's very frustrating coming from the US where we teach free thinking, to PY where it's all about following and being told what to do. It can really bother me sometimes but I have to step back and remind myself that it's not the kids fault.
Two examples: I do a review in the beginning of each class of what we did last class. I write words on the board that we learned last week and that they wrote in their notebook last week. Yet they still ask me if they should copy what i'm writing on the board. Every week! and every week I say 'if you already have this in your notebook you don't need to write it'. Every week! They're just so used to the teacher writing on the board and telling them what to do and not do.
The other example is when i'm writing on the board and i'm in the way of a student who is trying to copy, they'll yell 'PERMISO PERMISO PERMISO'  over and over till I move, even though I'm copying stuff for them to copy. Every week! and every week I say, get up and move to a place you can see!! EVERY WEEK!!!! I don't know if it's just the kids at my school or a byproduct of the PY education system, but it is a test of patients!

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

That's enough for now!

Pictures

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

Compost pile before

The making of the bamboo rabbit cage

finished!

Worm compost made out of old suitcase

garden after

The bunny arrives! Chisme wants to play

Compost area after

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

demonstration of how we contaminate our water

the contaminated water plus bottles to show how much water is available on earth

Summers Over, School's In & Projects Unvailed

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

Having no internet and dealing with the internet company for a month before it was fixed
Teaching an English class to 5 interested students twice a week, went very well
Sitting around doing nothing
Watching Glee, 30 Rock, The Office and Gossip Girl
Doing a major very late spring cleaning of the house
Another trip to the waterfall close by
Hosting a sweet party and
Going to Buenos Aires.

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

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

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

My project idea: **drumroll**


An Urban Garden Project

Living here in the city may sometimes seem like I'm living in the country with all the roosters crowing, turkeys gobbling, pigs squealing and cows walking down the street..but it's still the city. And while it may sound like people are already doing some urban gardening (and some definitely are, my neighbor has cornstalks) there are still some stereotypes that need to be broken.
1. They think you need a lot of land for a garden and have to grow veggies in rows
2. Not enough composting going on! I've been told that burning leaves is like burning money, and we know what they think about leaves!

I'm sure there's more.

So what I would like to do is set up my house as an example of an 'urban garden' complete with compost, lumbricultura (worm composting) rabbit and container gardens. Everything will help everything else! The bunny will poo which the worms will love, the mango tree will produce leaves which I will start to compost and maybe add into the worms, the compost will go into the containers to grow the veggies. the veggies will be eaten and the restos (scraps) will go to the bunny or compost and the cycle continues.
Once I get it up and running I would like to start having workshops here to show interested families that veggies can be grown in many different things, you don't even need to have dirt in your yard (I have all bricks). Teach them that worm compost is the best compost and that burning leaves is burning $$$. That kitchen scraps can decompose and that keeping rabbits for food can be cleaner, healthier and easier than chickens (just no eggs).
*side note*
I will not be eating my rabbit nor doing the teaching part on rabbit farming, that is my fellow site mate Rebecca's project and while I see the benefits of rabbits they are just too cute so I will only use mine for eating weeds and leftovers and for his poo.

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

As for the school, I will continue to work there but only if the teachers are willing to participate more and for me to be more in the 'background'. Also the 5 students want to continue the English classes.
When I talked to the Directora the other day she said she wanted to paint a mural on the wall with a tree and animals in it, I'm all for murals with animals so I am looking forward to that and will push them to do it.
Should be a good year!

Uruguay Travels, cont...

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

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

, 

Luna, beach dog

La Pedrera beach, guy kite surfing

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

Zombie Bunker house

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

Brian cookin

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

Some houses in Punta del Diablo

Lighthouse at Cabo Palonio

Sea Lions

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

Fireworks on the beach!

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


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

Monument/Mausoleum

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

Uruguay travels!! so far..

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

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

Anyway, off to Uruguay we go! We decided we would fly down because it would take 1 1/2 hours as opposed to 18 on a bus. Our flight was at 6:40am so we had to stay in Asuncion the night before and take a taxi to the airport because we didn´t think there would be any buses. Turns out there were buses and one was driving by as we pulled up in our taxi that cost us WAY to much and wasn´t really a taxi but just some worker at the hotel and his car. We get to the airport, checked in ok except for that pesky baggage fee no one told us about when we bought the tickets. $60 less we move onto immigrations where nick had to pay an exit fee (not meee cuz i´m a resident of py hehe) and we headed to the waiting area with our wallets much thinner after all our unexpected spendings.
At this point I´m past the tired stage as we board the plan and find out we have the exit seats, good, we think, more leg room! But soon I realized that the seats don´t recline, the arm rests are different from normal and uncomfortable and you can´t close the blind when the sun 7am sun is shining in your face. Thank god it was a quick flight.
There´s an hour time difference so we landed at 9am tired and hungry. The view of Uruguay from the landing was mostly flat pasture land and the airport was really modern and funky lookin. Got in with no probs, immigration didn´t even ask us why we were here, just said hola..stamp..stamp.. adiós. Now what! We had to get to La Pedrera where we would be staying but we weren´t sure exaclty hooow. I went to talk to the information lady but she was just ignoring me and then was on the phone so I walked away. Nick went to talk to the tourism guy who also appeared to hate his job but we figured out the buses we needed to take to get to the terminal in Montevideo.
The city buses were nicer than what we were used to but getting on was another thing. Firstly, we both had our big bags on us which isn´t easy to squeeze on a bus and people continued to be rude. here´s the thing, I don´t expect to arrive somewhere and have everyone bend over backwards to help me but some common decency woudl be nice. Coming from Paraguay where common decency in public settings is as hard to find as brown rice (the way I get cut in line all the time, infuriating)but I was hopeing here it would be different. So far I was not impressed. Then Nick tried to ask a bus driver who had pulled up if he went by the terminal, the bus driver shut the door in his face. Finally, a bus came that we knew we could get on and as i went to get on it this lady selling random stuff was getting on and asked me what I thought was if this bus was going to the terminal. I wasn´t used to the uruguayan accent yet (which is like an Argintinian BA accent) so that´s what I thought she said. So I said I´m not sure. And she came back with well i´m trying to teach you! and did not say it in a nice way. I said we wanted to go to the terminal and she said two different names and I wasn´t sure what she wanted, if she was trying to help or just wanted to be a bitch. She kept yelling that this wasn´t the bus and finally I´d had enough and just said OK JESUS! She glared. thankfully another bus came after that one left with the same number on it and yes, it took us to the terminal. At this point my frist impression of Uruguay was not good, I was tired, hungry and people were being d´s. I was thinking maybe it would have been easier and cheaper to just have taken the 18 hour bus ride. But, after an uncomfortable ride trying to fit on the bus with our bags we got to the terminal and bought bus tickets out.
The bus ride was nice, not like PY where the bus stops and picks people up the whole time. It was nice and empty with comfy seats and i got to sleeep finally! The country side was really nice, kind of like Py but not, and I couldn´t put my finger on why not. We got to La Pedrera 3 hours later and learned that our hostel wasn´t actually in the town and we had to call to get picked up. Here´s where things started to get better with the people.
the only phone we could find was one that you had to put a phone chip in to use, a chip we did not have. the cyber seemed to be closed so we couldn´t go in and use skype and we weren´t sure what to do. We went back out to stare the phones some more and right then a man pulled up who works with the phones. I asked him what to do and he said we could get a chip at a small grocery store, i told him why we needed it and he said hold on, maybe you can use my thing and with a wink he went to his car and came back out with this phone that he attached to the phone booth! He called the number and gave me the phone and we got our ride. He was so nice! We got to our hostel called La Casa de La Luna. It´s very tranquilo surrounded by bushes and from our room you can see and hear the ocean. It´s a small house converted hostel with a hippy, arty vibe and nice wooden floors and a common room w bean bag chairs and brick walls. our room is small but cosy and I´m not sure but I think there are only two other guests here.
We kinda need a car but walking back into town takes only 20 mins so it´s not to bad. there are soo many houses to rent here, which range from chuchi to funky to cute. A great refresher from the PY houses that all kinda look the same more or less.

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