Monday, March 30, 2009

My New Favorite Sport

3-26-09

I simply love Villarrica. It has been an awesome few days. The volunteer we visited has been great and we did another charla today--this time in private school. The school was ridiculously international. There was one kid from Germany and another from Maryland of all places. WTF? Strange. The charla could definitely have gone better but we were prepared to teach kids with NO prior knowledge of computers without using computers. Instead we were shoved into a fifth grade class and then a seventh grade class where the kids have daily computer classes starting in first grade. We basically just played games.

We went back to see my new loves (the carpinchos) and got some pretty sweet photos of all of us rubbing their bellies. I really would love to abscond with one... We then went to a private museum run by one of Los Gomez brothers. They were a Paraguayan band who traveled to 60 countries, playing for the king of Iran, soldiers in hospitals during Vietnam, DisneyWorld, and recognized on several occasions by the pope. Strange. It was a silly and absolutely phenomenal place and our guide had a moustache that made you want to give him a big hug. (Try to imagine a mustache with that kind of effect. I dare you.)

Strangely, then we were on the radio. Paraguay is so unlike the US. Any of us can easily have our own radio shows in site. You can walk into a school essentially uninvited and I´ve been told that if I do want to volunteer in jail, the process is exactly the same. I don´t believe there is any sort of background check whatever. Anyway, after making fools of ourselves on the radio, and having another SUPER painful Guaraní lesson, we went to the handball tournament. That´s right. We were told it began at 7. We got there at 8, assuming we would avoid the inaugural events. I cannot explain how much random stuff led up to the beginning of the games. First some random people (including the mayor) spoke. Then all the teams paraded out with their Miss Fill-in-the-Name-of-the-Town-Here scantily clad and leading the pack. Then we stood for the PY national song. Other people talked. Like 5 different dance acts came out and did their thing--including one that was supposedly Arabic...the whole thing seemed silly. After watching the two teams warm up and take photos in front of the goals for another 45 minutes it began. Oh, and there were random kids and a dog that wandered out onto the court durin gthe dances/prep. We watched a 30 minute half, part of the half time show (which was a guy with fiddlesticks) and left at 11pm. As a side note, I am extremely interested in playing handball at my site. It was intense and phenomenal.

As I´ve said I´ve really been loving Villarrica but we leave tomorrow. I´m sad to leave my temp host fam--they have been great and my host bro is hilarious. In the AM we are going to an orphanage to do some games, then have language class, then stop back at that delicious Cucuruchu on the way home. I can´t wait for that delicious comida though I´m sad to leave my new Rodents of Unusual Size amigos...

Giant Rodents and Hardhats

3-25-09

I am currently in Villarrica sitting outside of my temp host family´s house. I´m waiting for the 22 year old son to get out of the bathroom so I can rinse the smell of river water off. I had an excellent afternoon swimming and hanging out at Salta Pa´i, the river/¨waterfall¨. The waterfall wasn´t impressive but we were in a nice area and packed a solid picnic lunch with our UYD training group. It was so incredibly nice to swim after the past 6 weeks of hot sticky weather.

We´ve been split into two groups and I´m obviously in Villarrica visiting the UYD volunteer here. It has been great. Villarrica is beautiful and has a good tranquilo feel along with the amenities of a city. There are about 8 colleges here. It somehow reminds me of Cuernavaca. They have a huge beautiful park, which is by far the nicest I´ve seen in Paraguay thus far. My favorite part wasn´t the the pond, or the paddleboats, or the fountain that supposedly makes you lucky in love, or the nice covered bridge...it was the rodents. Carpinchos. I fell in love. With a huge guinea pig. There are about 8 at the park and a couple new ones were just born a few weeks ago. They are so tame that you can feed and pet them. I obviously did both. I´ve been excited for these for months--yes, months...since before even arriving in Paraguay. Their fur is coarse and long and they make the same disgusting squeals that guinea pigs do. I started thinking of our guinea pigs from growing up--Molly and Fred, and the fact that Fred died with his head in the food bowl... Regardless, they´re wonderful; I´m going back tomorrow to take more photos and develop a plan to kidnap one to make it my very own so that I can just ride it all over Paraguay, never again having to cram onto a bus or explain the Peace Corps no motorcycle rule.

Yesterday we also went to a sugar cane factory. I was mostly excited for the opportunity to wear a hard hat and actually had our tour guide give one to each of us. To be quite honest, I didn´t follow much of what was being said about the factory. I got the gist...the machines are almost 100 years old, the sugar cane is cracked and squeezed for the sweetness, then the cane itself is burned (like everything else here) . I was distracted. At the factory there were empty booze bottles in some quiet corners. I was wearing a hard hat. I saw someone bump his head accidentally while wearing a hard hat. (Classic comedy.) One girl in my group was convinced the tour guide and I were long lost siblings. (There are a bunch of people of German decent in this area of Paraguay...many of whom still speak German.)

We did more charlas in schools today in partners. Ours was about the environment--specifically trash. We talked about what you can do with trash, then had the kids run around the school yard finding examples of different kinds of trash. If you´re reading this from the US, this may seem strange. Yes, we had kids running around picking up glass bottles (more booze, strangely), candy wrappers, paper, plastic, whatever with their bare hands. Then the kids were to make something creative out of it. The first group was great, the second was insane. I´m starting to get really good at recognizing when things are going well and when to throw up my hands...

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Right Site.

3-20-09

This week has been a bit crazy for no particular reason. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that we´re counting down the days until we find out our future sites. (We find out April 1.) We can request things we want and don´t want but ultimately have no clue of what things will be like until we get to our sites. Even knowing my future site provides only very basic information but I can´t wait to find out. Strangely, the only thing I requested was that there be a jail so I can do some work there. The people in Rural Health are requesting more basic things, like running water...

My partner and I had our fourth Dia de Practica where we worked with an eigth grade to have them color The Hungry Caterpillar. Next DdP they´ll read their lindo books to younger kids. We all have our long field practice Monday-Friday where we visit a volunteer, stay with separate families, and prepare some charlas (workshops/talks) for several groups on several topics. I am going to Villarrica which is about 3 hours east. It is supposed to be gorgeous and very chuchi...It also has those huge rodents so I´m PSYCHED about that.

Then the next week we find out our future sites, our new contact from said site comes for a couple days of activities, we have 4-5 days of actually going to our future sites/figuring out where to live. We then come back to Guarambare for the last few weeks of training. Things have been flying by already...I can´t imagine what the next month will look like! Anyway, I´m going to Asuncion soon so I´ll cut this short but we´ve been focusing on Guaraní the past week and a half, which is extremely frustrating and sometimes makes language class creep by. I find it nearly impossible to remember what grunts or nasally sounds pair together to mean what...We´ll see how this pans out. Hope things are great in the states.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Sickness.

3-15-09

Today my host father´s voice was nearly completely gone. I asked how he was feeling and he responded that his throat hurts because he drank some cold water. There was no language barrier issue. I understood correctly. In Paraguay there is an extremely common belief that I find difficult to swallow. People with sore throats should only drink hot things--even in 100 degree heat. They´ll probably blame a cold drink for the cold´s beginning as well. My four year old neighbor/neice is sick. Her nose is runing, her tonsils are swollen and she has a gnarly cough. I was told that it makes sense because she ate ice cream the day before her symptoms began. I argued that it may have nothing to do with the ice cream...maybe it has to do with the fact that everyone who works at BJ´s motorcycle shop, including the owner (her father), her mother, and her brother are all showing the same symptoms. My host parents cracked up at me. Crazy norte.

A few weeks ago my host sister was also sick. She went to the medico instead of the doctor. This has been explained to me as a sort of witch doctor who usually provides jujos (herbs) for terere instead of medicine. My sister had some tests done. I asked waht had happened and how she was feeling. Better, she said, I just have to stay out of the south winds for a while. Not knowing how to responde, I just said, Yeah, I hear those are really bad right now.......

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Dear Mr. Postman

So, I will have the same address for the next 27 months... I would say that baking something and sending it is a bad idea, but otherwise I´d be thrilled to get some mail love. You know you wanna...

You should know my name, PCV
Cuerpo de Paz
162 Chaco Boreal c/Mcal. López
Asunción 1580, Paraguay
South America

Crazy Kids and American Food

3-8-09

It is raining here today. This probably means nothing to you if you´re reading from the states since the weather is normally a mild annoyance, but that is simply not the case here. Here it means that everything shuts down. My family´s dispensa is still open selling rotisserie chicken and sopa Paraguaya (cornbread-esq), like every Sunday but I will now probably do very little. I had a sweet dance party with the four year old and nine year old after an hour and a half long Go Fish tournament with the older one. I´ll probably clean my room and read a bunch today. Or perhaps I´lll put on my fantastic bright yellow rainboots and visit another trainee....we´ll see.

Regardless, I´ve had a good weekend. The seven UYD trainees went to visit a UYDPCV (Volunteer) on Friday in Caacupe where I was last weekend for that baptism. We paired up and led activities with kids from the high school or Dequeni. Dequini is a kind of afterschool program for kids who usually sell goods outside of the church. My partner and I worked with kids in 4th, 5th and 6th grades. There were twenty kids, which should have been manageable, but these kids were rambunxious, the room was teeny, hot, and without a front. We did two projects--one was a personal flag where the kids were to answer questions about themselves in drawings or designs; the other was a parrot made of the outlines of their hands and feet. The personal flags were absurd. They were all copying off of one another, which makes it about as impersonal of a flag as possible. This was hectic and the kids were screaming, super grabby, and basically doing everything you don´t want children to do. The second project went better in that the kids seemed to have some sort of a grasp on what they were to do, but they were still pretty insane. Weirdly, all that said, I thought it went fairly well..... (I´m not sure when or how my expectations for projects with children changed like it has.)

We out for dinner and had delicious pizza, which was a welcome vegetarian meal after the absurd amount of meat normally on my plate. (As a sidenote, I had chicken gizzards for lunch on Tuesday.) Also welcome was my phenomenal sleeping situation. Half of the group stayed with the volunteer and her host family, the other half with another family. UYD volunteers stay with host families for 6 months after getting to site to get to know communities better. Other volunteers only have to stay with families for the first 3 months after training, but since we´re more urban and sometimes in more dangerous areas they have this rule. I stayed with the other family. Barbara, the other 6 foot tall blonde in my group, and I got a room with a king size bed and a huge flat screen TV with cable!! I couldn´t believe it. I felt like it was vacation. Unfortunately though, the only thing on TV was Die Hard 2. We fell asleep to Motorcycle Diaries without English subtitles.

We woke up early yesterday to climb a mountain...only it was much more like a hill. Paraguay is pretty flat overall. We walked along the highway to get up there, but it was a fantastic view of Caacupe. We did a quick tour of the church, then went to Cucuruchu. It was the most amazing meal I´ve had since being in Paraguay. I had a cheese burger with an egg on top, french fries, and a cookie with chocolate soft serve on top. We were all in massive food comas as we loaded the van to return to Guarambare.

Last night I accidentally went to a party in my backyard. I was totally exhausted from the trip but thought it´d be rude not to make an appearance and say happy birthday to some cousin I´ve never met. No one told me about the party until it was already happening...this is so Paraguayan. It was the most awkward of my social interactions in Paraguay to date. I was given dinner with the kids for some reason. There was a 76 year old woman, me, and girls ranging from 4 to 13. I chewed my way through some fatty meat (this too, unfortunately, is very Paraguayan), was given some terribly sweet pineapple soda, then after not drinking any after the first sip, was given a Brahma. Four beers can be found easily in Paraguay. One is Brahma, and strangely, another is Labatt Blue. I sat awkwardly with the kids while the adults ate, teaching some English phrases while being ridiculed for my lack of Guaraní. I can say greetings, my name, and my age only at this point. After the adults finished dinner, they proceeded to dance. There are basically two lines facing one another, with everyone swaying from side to side. I was forced to do this by a middle aged drunken woman who I believe is my host mom´s sister. I was then promptly ridiculed. It seems especially unfortunate for the US to be represented on any dance floor by me. I would sit down, then be dragged back up into one of the lines. I finally went to bed at midnight even more exhausted than before and slept like a baby despite the fact that the party and loud music continued on for several hours not 100 yards from my window.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Rabbit Rabbit and a New Reason for a Pedicure

3-1-09

Happy March. It feels like August with this heat. So, I live with Alejandro, who is 5 months old, super cute, happy, and hopefully over the throw up on the tall white girl phase. Yesterday was his baptism. It was in Caacupe (ka-ah-coo-pay), where the Virgin of Caacupe is. She is absolutely Paraguay´s fav Virgin. I asked my parents what the story was, but they couldn´t remember somehow. But I just googled it and apparently she saved a converted Guarani from some hostile Christian-hating natives. Anyway, it is common for pregnant mothers to pray to her to ask for a healthy baby, and apparently Alej´s mother falls into that category. So the whole fam got into a van taxi on the hour long trip to Caacupe. I was drifting in and out of sleep in the back while my host bro (Alej´s dad) held the sliding door open for the breeze for half the ride. I woke up at one point to hear ¨Are we human? Or are we dancers?¨ bumping from the front speakers...

We get there and I walk around, excusing myself from buying rosary from the street kids who work with another PC UYD volunteer. The building was pretty...not very exciting but nice. It is fairly new, and I was surprised to see the Paraguayan flag in some stained glass. Also surprising was just how white and muscley Jesus was, along with how the Virgin of Caacupe looks an awful lot like a Cinderella Barbie... (I didn´t bring my camera to the cyber, but will try to get a photo up soon so I don´t sound like such a bad person and you can decide for yourself.) The baptism took maybe 15 minutes for Alejandro and the six other kids involved. Anyway, it was a good day overall....it concluded with a bizarre party where a 10 year old child asked me if we had dogs in the USofA. I said yes. Then she asked if there are babies in the US. Ha.

OK, totally different topic. UYD volunteers are known for being chuchi (this basically means that we live in cities, are given slightly higher pay, and dress up more). I don´t think that this is a hard thing to bedcome nown for considering the amount of people who live in the campo and do farm work. (We also have to dress up for schools, blah blah blah.) Regardless, I think that every single UYD volunteer I´ve met has had their toe nails painted. This is a stupid little thing, but one of my fellow trainees just learned one more excellent reason to get a pedi. This isn´t because they cost about a dollar, nor because Paraguayan women are disgusted by unpainted nails. As she was getting her feet cleaned, the pedicurist started cutting away at the bottom of her foot. She assumed it was a blister or something, but it was actually, don´t worry, a WORM! Ew. There are worms here that are extremely common among barefoot children. They crawl under your skin and lay eggs. Ew ew ew. I really can´t handle this idea. Luckily for my amiga, they got it out early so she shouldn´t have any problems but wow. We´ve been here for 3 weeks and already one has infested in a foot. This is the best reason ever to get pedis regularly...oh, that and they insist on putting some sort of silly design on your big toe.

Google Earth.

2-24-09

Matthew Marz, my sister´s fiancee, was right. There are essentially two main paved roads in this country. Not surprisingly, they are popular. Ruta UNO runs north-south . I´m on the bus right now going back to Guarambare from near Encarnacion. I have to go north. The bus was doing just that until about 45 minutes ago. Then we simply stopped moving. Ruta UNO was shut down. People on this completely full bus seemed only slightly surprised by this. We waited. People got off of the bus and trucks and cars close by. Then the bus driver did a near 20 point turn. Thanks to the fact that I was reading in English, my Spanish needs work, and no formal announcement was made, I was briefly confused. Then we turned off onto a gravel road. We´re trying to go around and take a detour. I have a feeling that we´ll be on this road for quite some time. We´re passing lots of farms, guys with cowboy hats, and people who look especially confused to see our big AC´ed bus pass by.

I can´t write more because it is so bumpy but if you´re bored, take a look at google earth. Start to look at South America. Then take a closer look at Paraguay. See all that space with no lines whatever? No roads? I´m somewhere in the midst of all that...unsure of how many hours this´ll add to my 5 hour busride.

NOTE: It added only about an hour and I clearly survived. I also have never actually looked at Paraguay through google earth because I only use cyber cafe comps, though I´m interested to know what it looks like.

Supermarkets are my New Fav Hangouts.

2-22-09
Does that sound stupid to you? It shouldn´t. Today I went to a supermarket for lunch. There was airconditioning. HUGE BONUS. Another bizarre thing: supermarkets have food courts that are extremely popular and actually delicious. They also have LIVE ENTERTAINMENT. That is crazy to me. Unfortunately, live entertainment consisted of some dude singing into a microphone with karaoke type music playing from the speakers. It was incredibly, obnoxiously loud. But that air conditioning.....Ooooohh.