Happy Late Turkey Day!

OK, no real time to write, but I figured I should put something up here. Here's hoping you're as amused by underwater cameras as I was over Thanksgiving with my fellow PCVs! We ate traditional food, had a talent show, did an auction to raise money for the Gender and Development Camp, and spent a lot of time poolside. Hope the cold isn't getting you down up north!

Over the River and Through the Woods

Though this is not representative of most of the Chaco, there was an article earlier this week about how an expedition to the Paraguayan Chaco was cancelled so as to not disturb an uncontacted tribe that lives there. Interestingly, it is the only place other than the Amazon in which uncontacted tribes are known to live in South America. (Remember the article a few years ago with the uncontacted tribe in the Amazon shooting arrows at an airplane??) I sent the article to my friend Drew, who commented that his favorite line is:

"Anthropologists and indigenous campaigners fear that accidental contact with the expedition would put the Ayoreo at risk of infectious diseases that could wipe them out, and drastically disrupt their traditional lifestyle."

As Drew said, "yes, I imagine if I was 'wiped out' that would 'drastically disrupt' my lifestyle." Perhaps...

Anyway, I went to a very different part of the Chaco this past week. My closest PC neighbor lives about 5 miles away as the crow flies. The problem is that Rio Paraguay separates us. This is not an especially wide river, but in order to get to my friend's site, I have to go south, then west, then back north. It takes a bit over an hour by bus. BUT, I can go by boat and it takes about 30 minutes with a short walk, quick bus, and very pleasant boat ride. I'll remind you that it is getting to be summer here. It doesn't seem like it has been nearly as hot here, but it makes me want to spend as much time as possible on boats.

I went down to Piquete Cue, which is on Rio Paraguay, but still in Limpio, and started talking to the water police. They had given me a ride across a few months ago and I was hoping for the same free taxi service. I chatted with them for a while as the boat came back and then waited while they went to get gas. They claimed that the river was clean enough to swim in, as long as we didn't go too far down river towards the factories. I finally boarded the row boat with a motor on the back with a guy dressed all in camouflage (despite it being 95 degrees or so) and another guy who seemed to do handy work for the cops. They insisted I wear a lifejacket that looked and felt as though it wouldn't save a small child, even after I explained that I know how to swim. We chatted as we went along; I took the lifejacket off as we approached the shore of Villa Hayes where people were fishing from the beach and an old abandoned boat. I thanked them and said goodbye as I stepped off the boat and knee-deep in mud. I just totally sank. I'm sure I screamed--or at least yelped. I was sitting on the bow of the boat, with my left leg totally plunged in mud, but refused to pull my leg out and lose my flip-flop. (I have huge feet and it is impossible for me to find women's shoes here--these are the leather flip-flops I wear daily.) The man in camo jumped to action, holding my shoulders as I attempted to pull my foot and flip-flop out of the gross mud while cracking up at my luck. Although near Limpio we are upstream from the factories, in Villa Hayes we were not. I finally got it out of the mud, realizing I had quite the crowd. The man in camo took my flip-flop and washed it in the river. There was no way I could get out of the boat at that part of the shore. My flip-flop was clean but I was still covered in mud. Not to worry--the camo-clad man had found a bailer (a cut off jug), and was filling it with water. He told me to hang my leg off the boat and washed my leg--even between my toes--as I balanced there, laughing at what a scene I had created and the fact that my PC friend had shown up on the beach at this moment, looking pretty confused. With my leg and flip-flop mostly cleaned and the boat re-parked in a sandy spot, I departed, still laughing and thanking my camo-clad friend for the pedicure and the mud treatment.

Eeek!

"Eeek!" is honestly the only word I can come up with to explain how I'm feeling at this moment. I have less than 6 months left in Paraguay! That means less than 6 months to get this library project rolling, less than 6 months to hang out with the children, families, and teens that have come to be like family to me. And on top of me wanting to be the best PCV I can be (how cheesey am I?), I also have an online statistics class to do while applying for grad schools for the fall. YIKES! I was gone for a bit this past week working on the Kuat (the PC newspaper) and though I had a blast with the other editors (new and old), I came back in a bit of a panic. I don't really want to leave my barrio for a while. But then I picture a calendar. I'm going to the super fun Thanksgiving fiesta in southern PY the weekend after Thanksgiving. Then there is the sweet concert of Ahendu ("I hear" in Guarani) on the 11th of December that I'm in charge of with some other PCVs. THEN my parents come on the 18th!! I'm stoked for their visit, and have decided to have a little fiesta in site to welcome them to my neighborhood/celebrate the holidays. Then we go to BA (yes, otra vez). But then I'm back in Paraguay like the 28th of December and am down to less than 4 months. How effing nuts is that? And so, EEEK!

But anyway, other than me being crazy and being astonished at how time has flown, things are going really well right now. Well, I've hit some speedbumps--got all my stuff ($$, cards, iPod, camera, sunglasses, purse I use daily, etc.) stolen in BA, then lost my phone last week (and all #s), and it was a total bitch to get my card figured out--but I feel my positive attitude coming back, nice and strong! My annoyances in site have mostly been with random drama that seems to have subsided, thank God. And now my library committee is A.W.E.S.O.M.E! Tomorrow is the municipal election (more on that later) and we're planning on selling hamburgers (hamburgueseada is the word for a hamburger-selling event) all day. We're starting at 9am. This seems gross to me--I have no real interest in eating a hamburger for breakfast--but isn't weird at all here. Anyway, hopefully we sell all 200 hamburgers we have ready. We got everything donated--buns, burgers, lettuce, tomatoes, mayonaise (yeah, I know), eggs, and are now waiting on the ham, cheese, and ketchup. You've gotta love the hamburguesa completa, right? I don't think I'll ever want a burger without an egg on it ever again in life. Anyway, even though I was gone for a good chunk of this week (and without phone), my committee did what they needed to to make sure the donations came through. They're excellent. People are psyched about the library and working hard to fundraise our piece of what we need.

The weather here is getting hot hot hot and I'm loving it! I sweat an absurd amount with this heat but I don't really mind. It just means that bucket bathing is actually really refreshing. It also gives me an excuse to drink an absurd amount of terere (the cold tea drink that I've mentioned a bunch). This time of year also means that no one goes to sleep early and that people are out and about all day (minus the siesta). And so, with everyone doing a lot of porch sitting, the candidates for the municipal race have an easy audience. Cars and trucks go down the main drag of my barrio (aka right in front of my house) with their speakers blasting campaign music and the candidate's names. I love the song Papa Americano which is played CONSTANTLY here, but now there is a candidate who inserts his name into the song every now and then which is slightly obnoxious... I had a really interesting conversation with a 20-year-old from my library committee about elections here vs elections in the US. I thought of Obama in the last presidential election, using all these different electronic forms of spreading the word and rallying people, and then I look outside to the car bumping music while lighting off fireworks in the middle of the day with people sitting in truck beds and hanging out the trunks of cars they're sitting in. One mayoral candidate is the brother of the past two mayors of Limpio. Today I went to Limpio to collect the food for our hamburgueseada and saw that they're painting the road. I like that little last minute push for votes. Also, I talked to that same candidate on the phone today to see if he didn't want to donate just a little bit more to our library event. Of course he did! Did he ask how I got his cell phone number or who I was? No. Anything for those last minute votes! (Not that I vote or get involved with this election in any way...)

A Cultural Note About Death

So, I’ve been avoiding my blog for the past few weeks mostly because I’m kind of lazy but also because Nessie (or La Baronesa) died a couple of weeks ago. It was a terrible thing to see her die and was obviously quite painful for her at the end. I believe she had hemorrhagic gastroenteritis, which was probably a result of either her eating meat that was thoroughly cooked and then left out or possibly a problem she was born with. The meat hypothesis seems like an obvious one to me—Paraguayans cook their meat for an extremely long time, nearly burning it most of the time. There is never any pink in cooked meat here. Anyway, so I was totally heartbroken over Nessie to say the least. I live alone and it was nice having a distraction from a bunch of drama in my site that was happening in September. (There were two huge rifts in two of the main groups I work with—one ended up with a woman saying “You hit my kid in the face, I’ll hit you in the face” to a woman at the comedor. All this happened literally in front of 40 kids. They wouldn’t listen to me when I told them to take it to a more private place, nor when I reminded them of how immature and what bad examples they were being. Frustrating.) So Nessie had been a very positive distraction for me, and was the cutest thing ever. When she was obviously very sick (it happened pretty suddenly), I walked over to a veterinarian’s house with a neighbor. I don’t trust this vet to begin with since he had told my neighbors that their dog, Mika, was allergic to cats and that’s why her eyes were so red and messed up. It was very obvious that this was not the reason for her eye problem, and no amount of allergy shots helped. But my vet lives 45 minutes away and wouldn’t be able to help until the next morning. So we walk over to Dr. Incompetente’s house. He gave Nessie a few shots. (After looking all this up online it turns out that there was really nothing he could have done to save her at that point.) After giving Nessie the shots and some medicine orally, he asked how she was doing. I choked out that she wasn’t breathing. The vet’s wife in the exact same moment in which I gave the news asked if I wanted a new puppy. Just like that. Tactless.

So I bring this up for a few reasons. The cultural differences between here and the US are quite great on a handful of topics—one being pets and the other being death. It is common for a puppy to die here, so no one thinks anything of it when it happens. Dogs are frequently for protection and normally sleep outside. The US is obviously an extreme—people pick up their dog’s poop after them, sometimes put them in ridiculous clothing, give them medical attention that some humans don’t get, and mourn over their death. I cannot explain how many people have offered to give me a new puppy in the past 10 days or so since Nessie died. It is really sweet of them to offer, but I think I’ll wait a while to have a new puppy until I’m back stateside.

The other much more serious death that has taken place in the past few weeks happened while I was in Buenos Aires. I’ve been teaching in one particular class (11th grade) for a few months now. We’ve done a lot of work on sex ed and HIV/AIDS weekly. Apparently two kids from the class (a brother and sister) were leaving school 2 weeks ago and were both hit by a bus. The boy died instantly and the girl has been in a coma ever since. Victor, a teen I work with in that class and in a lot of other groups, told me about the accident, though I don’t hear much about it since it happened a few neighborhoods over. When I talked to him about how his classmates were coping, he said that some were just not going to school anymore and that others were mourning in various ways. I asked about support for the students and family, but he seemed confused. I asked about social workers, psychologists, anything, but he said there was nothing. This is astounding to me. In the US, we’d have grief counseling or at least a guidance counselor to talk to the students, but here there is nothing. The class is doing a bunch of fundraising to help out the parents of the girl who is still in the hospital, but that is the only kind of support Victor could think of. There are a group of psychologists who come on Tuesdays and Wednesdays to the community center in my neighborhood and I’ve invited them to come to help out with the class this week but they still haven’t given me a solid response. When I asked them, they didn’t even understand at first what kind of services I wanted them to offer to the kids for a day. It is that peculiar. Anyway, unfortunately I don’t have any more news on that subject, but am really hoping they’ll be able to help out this week. Otherwise the kids are going to just continue to bury their feelings or avoid dealing with it for now. I’m hoping that once school ends (exams start in 10 days or so) some of them take advantage of the very cheap individual sessions that the psychologists offer; maybe I can figure out a way to have the group drop the charge for this particular group of students. We’ll see…

Quick Pics of Nessie Being Adorable

This kid, Julian, was just so good with Nessie!


Awww...


Nessie kept biting Julian's ear, which he seemed to love and hate. Hilarious.

My 12th Birthday 14 Years Too Late & a New Puppy

So this past Sunday was my 26th Birthday. It has been very surprising to me that I've gotten so old, but Sunday in no way, shape, or form reminded me of a typical 26th birthday party. My youth group, which mainly consists of 15 and 16 year olds, came over, as did a bunch of their younger siblings, and my PCV amiga Barbara. The party consisted of me entertaining kids while Barbara cooked popcorn, hotdogs, and a birthday cake. It felt really much less like my own birthday party and more like I was a parent hosting a party for my 12 year old child. It was definitely an enjoyable event--the kids seemed pleased, Happy Birthday was sung in 3 languages (English, Spanish, and Guarani), and I received some rather odd--but sweet--presents. They consisted of: a very old stuffed animal, three little virginal/angelic figures, a 7 inch lighter (from a PCV friend), broccoli (also from a PCV), a bag of store bought cookies, Heart's Greatest Hits (PCV), a little card about friendship glued to a piece of wood, sparkly hair elastics, and an old Snoopy change purse. The fiesta was quite enjoyable but very exhausting.

The day before I saw carpinchos again, which obviously made me incredibly happy. Here are some pics of both carpinchos and the fiesta.

Yesterday it stormed all day, which meant I did absolutely nothing. It was extremely pleasant. Today I ran some errands and then went down to the comedor to see the kids and talk to some of the ladies in charge. One kid invited me to his house to see the 5 week old puppies they have. The kid, Eduardo (13), is quite nice and very shy. His mother is not very shy, and is actually quite pushy. They'd been trying to talk me into taking a puppy home for quite some time. The more I thought about it, the worse of an idea it seemed. I'm going on a vacation next month for a week, my parents come in December, and I leave in just 8 months. I'm not at home very frequently--I spend a lot of time around the community--and don't really have the time or patience to train a dog. My friend got 2 puppies 2 months ago and is now super annoyed at them all the time. All signs pointed to "Don't Get a Puppy", yet as I write this, there is one laying in my lap, fast asleep. Why did I cave? I don't know. I might as well blame that damned birthday party for making me revisit my 12-year-old self who would absolutely never have turned down a puppy.

On that note, this cute little thang is looking for a name. I'm thinking something in Guarani...not sure but will keep you updated, but am definitely open to suggestions.

Lions, Tigers, and Chicken Feathers, Oh My!

Just a quick note: Went to Emboscada, Paraguay, which is a small town about 20 minutes north of where I live. There is a large Afro-Paraguayan community there, which is really uncommon for Paraguay. The story is that the Afro-Paraguayan community would dress up like this (see super sweet photo) and then attack the violent indigenous groups. Anyway, once a year they celebrate. I was lucky enough to attend.

God as Videographer, Breaking into my Own House, and the Origin of Sex

Oh so much to catch you (my many faithful readers) up on! Where to begin? How my language has deteriorated? How I lost my life? How I was called a liar by one of the señoras I’m closest to? How I think I need to do something about my love of karaoke in Paraguay? How God is apparently really technologically advanced? OK, here we go. I’ll try to do this chronologically.

I went in to help teach the trainees how to teach English a few weeks ago. I showed them Monkey-Fire, which is a game I love! You say “monkey” and the kids run in one direction; if you say “fire” they go in the other. In between you say different animals and the kids at them out. I use drawings of animals with the English name of the animal underneath. When the kids get good at remembering animal names in English, you just say the words without the cards. Some of my drawings are much nicer than others, and I explained that I copied some from some temporary tattoos I use for prizes, but the other ones “I draw out of my mind.” I knew immediately that was not said correctly but could simply not think of the right way to say it. My old trainer cracked up…maybe since I still ridicule him for the time he asked, “What do you call bread that has already been sliced?” Umm…sliced bread? (Guess which I copied from a temporary tattoo.)

How I lost my life? I was biking to do a HIV/AIDS talk in a high school. My tote bag (with my phone, 20.000Guaranis ($4), my planner, my house key, my bike key, and a bunch of other stuff inside) was tied to the back rack. I figured out it was gone too late. When I biked back it was gone. I then spent two hours going door to door explaining what had happened, going to the local police station, asking my neighbors to keep an eye on my house. It was annoying. To deal with this annoyance and avoid having to take the locks off my door I went to another PCV’s house for the evening. Luckily my wallet was in my house so I just had a neighbor boy climb through one of my many broken windows to get it. That was quite a production—my teenage neighbor girls tried to climb in, and then tried to get their cousin to climb through. We literally picked up like 3 kids to try to shove them through my window. It was absurd. The next day, my neighbors got the locks off by taking what looked to me like a big crab mallet and bashing them off. They tried sawing the locks off but it was taking too long. I found it fairly disconcerting just how easy it was to break into my house… (Luckily, though, if I’m inside I have what can only be described as dungeon locks that I use. So no one, other than a very small child with an exceptionally small head, could come in undetected while I’m home. I think I could probably take said child.) I waited in the PC office for 6 hours the next day to get a different cell phone. I guess all’s well that ends well. Several things that make me feel better about the situation: 1) my wallet/passport/bank card wasn’t in there; 2) a whole neighborhood now knows who I am and what I do here thanks to my door-to-door visits; 3) whoever found my bag now has an absurd amount of info about HIV/AIDS so hopefully learns something; and 4) I got out of dressing up like a clown for the fourth time in four days.

A clown? Why in the world would you want to stand out more in Paraguay? Answers: Yes and I didn’t. The problem? My old host mom, Mimi (who is phenomenal!) asked me to dress like a clown for the church’s celebration of Día del Niño (Kids’ Day). I was such a hit (obvi) that I was then asked to do repeat performances for 3 other Día del Niño fiestas. For the one at the school I was given a microphone and led songs with the entire elementary school. Ten days have now passed and I’m still being called Payasa (clown). On my walk home from one of these events 5 different people (3 of whom I didn’t know) stopped me to ask if they could take my picture.


I’m a liar…or apparently that is what like 20 people think. I had my one year visit with my PC bosses. We went all over my neighborhood talking to people I work with. One lady told my boss that I’m part of the family, but that I’m a liar. This goes back to the library project. I had originally wanted to do a library/comedor project in the 3rd phase of my neighborhood. Unfortunately I’m not doing it anymore for a few main reasons: 1) I was given BOGUS estimates in which people very clearly (and repeatedly) tried to take advantage of me; 2) the women’s commission has fallen apart nearly completely; 3) there was no support from anyone/any group; and 4) with construction and the lack of enthusiasm, we simply do not have time to build all this in the 8 months I have left in site. Anyway, so in the community center there is a room where we can put a library pretty easily, and without construction costs/timelines. The problem: it is in a different part of my neighborhood and people apparently felt like I’ve abandoned them, taken sides, and think I never actually intended to do the library in the 3rd phase. I’m just happy that this one lady told me. The joys of this passive culture is that I had no idea that this was happening since people were acting the same with me like nothing had happened. Che Dios!
Karaoke? I simply do not have the voice to sing Total Eclipse of the Heart. I need to remember this. It doesn’t help that the kids (and teens) at the comedor constantly ask me to sing the Titanic song and tell me how nice my voice is, when in reality they’re just psyched to hear it in English.

God is technologically advanced? That’s right. You heard it here first. The other day I was at the comedor and started talking to this lady I don’t know well. She is the mother of some of the kids who eat there, but doesn’t really participate in activities normally. Anyway, the other day she was talking to me about heaven and Hell, and asked if I believe in Hell. I said, “Yes, of course!” and she told me that on my judgment day, I couldn’t claim to God that I hadn’t been told about heaven and Hell because she was telling me now, and He videotapes everything. Yes, she repeated, He videotapes everything…and has everything completely computerized up there. I struggled to keep a straight face as I pictured God with a big old video-camera with just VHS tapes.

Sex Ed Questions! So, as always, I’m doing sex-ed classes. My favorite question of last week was a double question: “Who invented sex? For what reason was sex invented?” How do I even begin to answer that??

Ranting and Raving.

OK, so as I've mentioned, there is a ton of drama at the comedor within the women's group. It has gotten ridiculous. Tuesday night there was a meeting with the women's group and the neighborhood commission. All of the ladies were complaining about one woman who, of course, wasn't there. They were just plain bitching about her. Petty nonsense. This lady can definitely be a bit crazy at times, but so can a LOT of the other ladies AND she has done a great deal of work on the comedor and with a pharmacy in my neighborhood. Finally, someone asked me what I thought. I had been sitting there silently gawking the entire meeting up to this point. And then I let it go. Paraguay is a very tranquilo, indirect, gossipy culture. I went on a rant about how the problem isn't this one particular lady, but the fact that no one can talk openly and directly to other people in the comedor, that they'd rather gossip than actually try to work together, that they see no problem bitching about or fighting with each other in front of the 60 kids that we serve. I said my biggest frustration was the inability to act like adults and keep the goal (feeding all those kids) in mind. One woman tried to say that I was just saying this because I was on the side of the other woman, completely ignoring my comments. She also said, "You practically have your college degree", and I interrupted, pointing out that I do not "practically" have it--I do. So now this lady is pissed at me. Fine. I think she's a bit crazy and more of the problem than anyone else. But THEN today the first lady who was singled out (and not at this meeting) called me into her pharmacy, began to cry, and asked why I hadn't said anything to defend her. I honestly don't even know how to deal with this situation. Both sides think I'm on the opposite side simply because I refuse to pick sides in their bullshit argument in which both parties are WAY off base. It is driving me insane. In-effing-sane.

Anyway, that is really all I have to report. I've been enjoying my time with kids a great deal this week, doing a bunch of reading projects, playing a lot of Uno, throwing the frisbee around, thinking about getting a puppy, and trying to figure out where to put this library since there is no possible way it'll work out with this women's group or the neighborhood commission in that part of my site. Goodness.

El Rio

Aug. 4, 2010

Sunday morning I woke up early and went to the grocery store to buy myself a single burner electric stove. After a week without gas, warm baths or coffee and with no end to this gas crisis in site I decided it was time to take action. I went to a Friendship Day lunch at this lady from the comedor’s house where my boxer was. I couldn’t avoid this event, unfortunately, so I spent 3 hours eating sausage, meat, rice, and sopa Paraguaya (the cornbread dish that I love love love). The boxer is super nice but I can’t help but shake the feeling that even if I was a total bitch/psycho/dullard he would still be interested in me just for my blondness/tallness/Americana-ness. He did give me a box of chocolates for Friend Day (which was on Friday), which I appreciated and enjoyed.

But I was ready to get the hell out of Dodge, or, umm, Villa Madrid. For months now, I have been talking with a PC friend who lives on the other side of Rio Paraguay about meeting up on a boat and just floating/anchoring/chilling, but we hadn’t gotten our shit together to make it happen. He lives 5 miles from me as the crow flies but it is an hour plus bus ride to cross the bridge. So I walked to the other main road through Limpio and hopped on a bus down to the river. It had gotten a bit late (and cold) so I figured just getting dropped off, hanging out with my friend, and then getting picked up a few hours later would be best. I asked a few guys with boats but they were uninterested. Finally one suggested I ask the river police. The water cop (I like the sound of that) said I just had to pay for gas for his row boat’s small motor so away we went. I got to Villa Hayes slightly cold and wet, had a few beers, and then called Jorge to come pick me up. I was slightly nervous about how much he would charge me, though Paraguayans tend not to try to rip you off, so I explained that I was really hoping that when it got hot again I could float around on the river regularly with PC amigos.

We got back to the station and he asked if I wanted wine and Coke. Note: If asked, the answer should always be “Yes” to this. I had the most pleasant conversation with this water cop, chatting about his toddler son, Paraguayan and US stereotypes and cultural differences, and the many trips I will be planning on the river. He ended up not charging me for the boat ride (or wine and Coke) and had a younger river cop assistant walk me to my bus stop. It was, in short, the most pleasant day I’ve had in some time. I can’t wait for the weather to heat up so I can have little flotilla fiestas with amigos!

Without Gas and Tricked into Dating

So on Sunday the gas that makes my stove function ran out while I was heating up water to bathe. It wasn’t a huge deal—the water was warmish and I survived. We got paid on Tuesday and I was too poor to buy more gas Monday so I went without coffee Monday and Tuesday but headed off to Limpio (which is 3km away) with two 13-year-old kids from my neighborhood to get some more gas. We went to four different places but had zero luck and returned to my house empty handed. I talked to my neighbors and apparently there is a huge gas shortage in Paraguay. We import gas from Argentina and (as was explained to me repeatedly by various parties) it is so cold in Argentina right now that everyone is using more gas than usual and they feel no need to export any to little ol’ Paraguay. What does this mean for me? It means cold bucket bathing (during our winter), no coffee in the morning (which is KILLING me—Nescafe courses through my veins), or cooking of any kind. Apparently I can maybe find some in the capital, which is just an hour away, so I’ll need to continue my search ASAP.

As I mentioned in the last post, there has been some major drama with the women’s group. One lady called me this morning to ask me to come to her house as soon as I could. I had the eye doctors visiting again, and then realllly wanted to take a nap afterwards, so I told her I couldn’t be there until this evening. She texted me later asking me to come at 5pm and said it was urgent. I assumed it was a meeting for the women’s group but it was only her, her family, and the super muscular boxer she’s been trying to set me up with. Apparently it was just urgent because she wants to speed things up between him and me. He doesn’t live in my neighborhood, but is taller than me, has no children, and doesn’t have a girlfriend or wife. These were her selling points on this guy a month ago when I had a super awkward interaction with him where she forced the two of us to sit in her yard drinking terere (the cold tea) while the rest of the family left us alone. Some of the kids from the comedor were really curious, especially Diosnel (my favorite) who attempted to spy on the entire conversation (though not very stealthily). So now, thanks to the date disguised as a meeting, I’ve had a second date with this dude. Thanks, Lourdes.

Back Home with a Bang

07-22-10

So, I went to the US for about 12 days for a wonderful visit in mostly Chautauqua, NY and briefly in NYC. It was excellent. I was thrilled to see friends and family, eat delicious food, and enjoy the heat—the inescapable cold of Paraguayan winter is miserable. (Last week a fellow PCV who came in a year after me reminded me that a group of PCVs asked me what I disliked most about Paraguay and I said the cold weather. They scoffed since at the time we were sweating it out in 100degree heat and didn’t believe me when I explained that cold weather here is much worse than hot. The PCV now completely agrees with me, obviously.) Anyway, the US was fabulous and it was great seeing everyone—especially my family before my brother Rahde takes off for a year of studying open fire cooking techniques in Jamaica, South Africa, India, Turkey, and Austrailia. Check out his blog. www.rahdefranke.com

I got back to Paraguay last week but had a 4 day conference with other PCVs and some community contacts. (I am very pleased to report that both of mine showed up despite the fact that I wasn’t around to remind them! Lovely surprise!) Anyway, then I was back in site for a night before heading back to the capital to work on the Kuatiane’e (Guarani for “Talking Paper”), which is the PC Paraguay publication we put out 3 times a year. I’m one of the editors. When I got back to site Tuesday night I was thrilled to be back home, though not very excited to see that a deep clean of my little house was definitely in order. Yesterday (Wednesday) I cleaned a bit and then went down to the Comedor. Seeing the kids I work with about 4 days a week after not seeing them for 3 weeks was wonderful. There were a lot of hugs, double kisses (which I think is so funny and cute from an 8-year-old), and questions about the states. My favorite kid, Diosnel, acted like he didn’t see me for a while and instead continuously “accidentally” bumped into me repeatedly. He always reacts to me in the exact opposite was as the other kids. I told him (and the other kids) that I missed him and his face lit up…this kid so desperately needs some positive attention. It was fabulous seeing them all again. But I wish I could report that the whole reunion was a joyous one. I also got back to find that there has been an absurd amount of drama between the women who run the free meal program. They have been bickering and asking one another to step down from their positions. One woman apparently almost hit another in the face. Another claimed that she was the “Queen of the Kitchen” and said another woman couldn’t cook there. Within my youth group it seems as though there has been some drama as well, though not in any way as ridiculous as the drama between the women’s group. They’re switching their focus it seems and may not work with the comedor quite as much—instead focusing on building a business to make baked goods. Last night we had a two hour plus meeting in which we planned activities for Friendship Day (July 31st—big deal here), Kids’ Day (August 16th), and Youth Day (September 21st).

I talked to my landlord just as I was leaving my meeting and he asked if he could come over so I could pay rent. We had a bit of a mix-up in which I thought he was trying to charge me an extra month’s rent, but we figured it out. He is really an ideal landlord. I sometimes ask if I can do something to the house (like maybe paint the last room that hasn’t been painted) and he says, “This is your house—do whatever you want.” That being said, he isn’t super ideal in that I still have a bunch of broken windows that my fellow PCVs continuously ridicule me for. He told me last night that that can be the next step—fixing the windows—but I’m not holding my breath. He also asked me what kind of security I have. I told him I have five locks on the door and that seems to be enough. Then he asked me about guns. He knows a random mix of English words and loves to use them as much as possible, so his comments are more like, “Y que tenes para security?” and, “No hay guns en the house?” Sometimes I think he asks me things just to use his English vocab… Anyway, when he asked me if I had a gun, I said that I have a machete. He laughed and said that he could get me a gun. To which I laughed and said I’ve never shot a gun and I don’t know how. I am not sure where this assumption came (Westerns, NRA ads, Mafia movies, action movies, whatever?) but he absolutely did not believe that I had never shot a gun. He kept claiming that he knew I was an expert at shooting and nothing I could say could convince him otherwise. He even showed me a gun tucked into a holster and said he goes nowhere without it, suggesting I do the same. I said that as a PCV I am not allowed to have a gun (which I think is true but really doesn’t matter since buying a gun is the last thing I’d do) but am still kind of convinced that I’ll come home one day soon to find my very own gun and holster waiting.

A quick note on Paraguay, the World Cup, and me

6-29-10

OK, so I’ve never been that into soccer. I’ll admit it. I stopped playing soccer sometime in middle school to play field hockey, which is a sport that I’d still much rather play than soccer but is somewhat miserable to watch. I’m not that into watching sports. Sure, I love to go to lacrosse, baseball, soccer, football, hockey, fill-in-the-sport games but watching them on TV is really not my favorite past time. I didn’t watch the Super Bowl this year (I was in Paraguay, the announcing was in Spanish, they weren’t going to show the commercials, and I would have had to go to Hooters or TGIFridays in Asuncion to watch) and last year, though it was one of my last days in the US before Peace Corps, I fell asleep during the first quarter.

All that being said, however, this World Cup has been phenomenal! Like every other Latin American country I’ve been to, Paraguay loves its soccer. Everyone plays. Everyone watches. Everyone asks you what your favorite Paraguayan team is (Olympia should be your answer if we’re friends). Being here and watching with families in my neighborhood has been such a treat! The fact that Paraguay has now made it to the Quarter Finals is truly excellent. Today I watched the win in a restaurant in Limpio. When we all ran onto the street to see the fireworks (or just hear them—it was the middle of the day, after all) a guy who had been sitting at the next table pulled out a gun that apparently was tucked into his waistband and started shooting into the air. (I was especially glad we won at that point.) I hope that soccer gets bigger in the US. I think it will grow steadily over the next four years—I have two different friends who have World Cup related activities/blogs. (One followed US Soccer fans all the way to South Africa, and the other has sworn that he will move to whatever country wins the World Cup.) I hope that the next time the US advances more than it did this year. But really I’m just thrilled that I was able to be here, in Paraguay, at such an exciting time when a country the size of California with the population of Manhattan has gotten this far—top 8!! I know the next match will be a tough one. We’re playing Spain. They’re ranked #2 in the world. I’ll be stateside watching the game with my Paraguay jersey and Neil Armstrong-type Paraguay bracelet. All I have to say is FUERZA PARAGUAY!!

Hi-Yah Cock Block!!

OK, so just a quick comment about gutsy drunk Paraguayan men and the middle-aged ladies that are some of my closest friends...

Saturday night was the weird (and wonderful) San Juan Festival here in my neighborhood. There were definitely a bunch of drunk dudes there who were enthusiastically hitting on me. At one point a guy said "Sos de djaklfjda?" ("You're from da;lkfdjal?"--I didn't hear the last word). I asked, "From where?" He said "..de verdad?" or, in English: "for real?" In other words, "Are you real?" Then his buddy said my eyes were the color of the sea. Thanks, drunkies.

Anyway, I thought that was the hit-on highlight of the night, especially since one of my señora friends and her kids were with me...I'll never hear the end of it. BUT then I talked to another señora friend of mine yesterday and she asked if i had seen an especially drunk guy sitting in a chair near her husband all night. I said I had seen him, and that I had been avoiding him since he was looking at me so creepily. Apparently my intuition is right--he said to Mari (my friend), "What do you think I'd have to say to talk that girl into sleeping with me?" (Except "coger" was used which is realllly strong for Paraguay.) Mari, being the lovely lady she is, said, "I don't think you could say anything to do that...plus she knows karate, so you should watch out." Ha! Oh how I love my 40-something amigas! Fin.

Mis pantalones estan en fuego!

06-12-10 When I think of a bunch of young men scrambling up a greased-up pole, I generally think of the Naval Academy. (Hey, I’m from the Annapolis area.) And I usually don’t imagine those young men being in drag. Or wearing wigs. Or masks from the Scream movies. That all changed tonight. The Festival of San Juan is a weird, weird event. Yes, I said it. Yes, that might make me culturally insensitive. But I’ll stand by this statement. It doesn’t help that no one I asked could explain why they do any of the things they did. They only knew the names of various activities that are traditionally done for San Juan in Guarani. It should be mentioned that although San Juan generally consists of activities that include fire and others that do not, here in wonderful Villa Madrid those non-fire related activities were largely ignored. Oh how I love my neighborhood!

So, to be honest, I didn’t especially want to go to San Juan today. I’ve been kind of sick the past few days and really didn’t feel like being at a party where I was going to be standing around awkwardly with a bunch of people who watched a handful of teenagers dance. That is what many parties here look like. What do I usually do? Play with children. Anyway, my assumptions about what I was in for were totally off, thank God. I got there and went over to where some of my youth group was sitting behind a bare tree (actually branch) in a planter that was covered with little balloons. Children would come and pay 1,000Guaranis (20 cents) to pick a balloon. They pop said balloon and a piece of paper either says “San Juan tells you YES” or (you guessed it!) “San Juan tells you NO”. Yes means prize, No means you get nothing. Since it was the only activity for kids at the beginning, it was quite a hit. I was surprised because, to be honest, the prizes sucked. Who wants to win an eraser?? (Later another booth opened up for kids—you got a prize if you shot a can off of a windowsill. If I was ten and had to choose between popping a balloon and shooting a gun I’d probably chose the gun. Note: Not much has changed in the past 15 years, though I’ve never shot a gun…)

Some key male members of the youth group were missing though. Where were they? Prepping to be Cambã—I have no clue what that means, but it looked a lot like this. Have you ever drunkenly put together a Halloween costume? Well, you may well have fit right in at San Juan. When I asked about the theme of the costume, I was told they were all supposed to be ugly and (some thought) feminine, and disguised. The costumes ranged greatly, but each of our Cambã teens definitely had a stick. That threw me at first until I saw them running around dancing and having things thrown at them by children. The Cambã then ran after said children swinging that stick while a band of wind instruments played. It was weird. Luckily these boys are my amigos and gave the ever-valuable backstage pass where we had a little photo shoot.





Then I actually slipped out for a little while to eat fish (fish for the first time EVER in my neighborhood!) at a house nearby with one of my closest 40-something comedor lady friends at a party she invited me to. When we got back to the fiesta, the yvyra suĩ or greased-up pole was in full force. People were stacked on top of one another. Below? Cement, obviously. At the top of the pole were several prizes. There was a rumor that there was 100,000Gs (US$20) up there but it turned out just to be 2,000Gs (US40cents). Oops. What else? Some crackers, a soda, a bottle of caña (the super strong Paraguayan sugar cane booze), some cookies.

Next comes torro candi (or burning bull). In this a guy puts on a costume that you might otherwise see in a Chinese parade (I’m somehow blanking on the words right now), but it is of a bull. His front horns are lit on fire. He runs after people—mostly children—for a while. I don’t have anything really to say about this part except that when that dude did finally take off his costume he seemed quite drunk. It made me curious if there was anyone in particular in charge of these fire activities…

So at this point I’m feeling good—full of fish, sopa Paraguaya, and water (I don’t drink at all in my neighborhood because of a very strong divide between those who drink and those who work)—and so is everyone else. People are drunk. Very drunk. It’s still early enough in the month that people aren’t totally broke yet. The kids are running around, covered in grease from the pole, throwing cans at each other. As I’m talking to this nice couple I look over to see a handful of people crowding around a ball. Only it isn’t just a ball. It is a fireball. A ball of fire. In Guaraní: vacapipopo tatã. Anddddd it starts to get kicked around aimlessly. I’m sorry if I misled you before with the comment about me maybe being interested in shooting a gun but I’m actually a huge wuss. And a ball of fire was coming at me! What the F*%$? Somehow I’m one of the few people who seem at all concerned about the fireball. A kid falls down in a swing-and-a-miss kick. There is just laughter. An especially drunk guy picks it up and throws it—into a crowd! We’re talking about a ball of cloth with some sort of flammable spray helping the flames. I don’t know what else to say about this. It was insane. Check out the video at the bottom of this blog for a quick glimpse...

The finale was the burning of Judas. This was basically a scarecrow tied to another pole. I thought it’d just be burned but apparently it had “fireworks in his belly”, which of course became fireworks that shot sometimes into the air, but more often out into the crowd at random, causing screams of both joy and fear. It was quite an interesting night. Last year I actually went to the same party but went too early and stayed too short a time to see anything interesting. (I remember eating some food and then leaving because it was freezing and I had a ride home.) So I only have myself to blame for not seeing all this ridiculousness last year. The really good thing though? The actual San Juan Festival isn’t until the end of the month and I’m planning on going elsewhere to experience it again. There should be people walking on hot coals at the next festival as well…who knows? Maybe I’ll join them for a quick stroll…

A Quick Note on Cat Proofing my Casa

I spent a while last night cat-proofing my house. No, this doesn't mean that I suddenly like cats and have decided to get a nasty little creature of my own. It means that ONCE AGAIN I have had a cat break into my house. Several months ago the cat marked its territory by leaving three kittens behind my fridge. This time it (actually probably a different cat) marked its territory in a more traditional sense. It urinated on a jacket of mine that I left on the big table in my main room. I went to put the jacket on last night to go to English class and smelled something foul. After some investigating, I found a small puddle next to where the jacket was sitting. Why do these cats consider my house to be a barn?? Ugh. I happen to love my casa.

So I spent some time with cardboard, the last of my duct-tape (gasp!), and some packaging tape patching up the front window--one of many my landlord had promised to fix months ago until he decided that they tried to charge us too much once they came to the house to measure and saw that I, a tall Norte, was living here. Since then I've just been waiting. And waiting knowing that nothing will be done about this situation. It doesn't actually really bother me to have some glass missing from the windows other than when rain and the now horribly frigidly cold weather and wind blows through the house, leaving me cold at night even when I wear spandex, sweats, a bathrobe and a winter hat to sleep.

Not all of the windows are blocked now. Unfortunately I've run out of cardboard just when I would be blocking my bedroom window. A few months ago a cat actually leapt through the window and then bolted through the house as I was watching a movie. Mokoi Nambi (the dog Two Ears who lived with me for a few months) didn't even react. I'm just hoping that I don't wake up one day with the cat cuddling up next to me as I sleep...

Big Fish

05-24-2010

Well, it’s raining. Again. And it’s driving me insane. When it rains here, as I’ve written before, things stop. School is cancelled, meetings out the window. Last winter there was a drought so although the weather was cold, the days were pleasant out in the sun. The past week has been wet and dreary. Ugh.

Though the talk here in Paraguay very frequently revolves around the weather, I’m not sure I want my blog to follow suit, so we’ll move on. The past week has been a bit quiet thanks to the rain, but I’ve had two surprising conversations with Paraguayans. Well, OK, I lied. The first was actually with a drunken Argentinean who asked if I was thirty-six! Thirty-effing-six!! I’m twenty-five, jerk. The kicker? He claimed to be thirty when was definitely at least forty. Jerk.

The other surprising interaction happened this past week in my neighborhood. Tomorrow an organization called Fundación Visión is coming. They came last month as well to do cheap/free eye exams and sell cheap eye glasses. Both times I’ve been responsible for putting up fliers to let people know about the visit. So I was putting up propaganda (the word for advertisements in Spanish) in front of local stores. I went into a used clothing store I’d never been in before and asked to put up a flier, explaining who I am and the project. The woman asked me about English classes for her teenage kids and I explained that I do have an English class but it is now too late for new students so I’ll let her know when I start another. She was absolutely thrilled by this and the idea of any and all of the projects I’m doing. We said goodbye and I walked outside to tape a flier outside her store. She followed and stopped me just as I was about to leave, saying I should come over for lunch one day and then spend a whole day together. And then a huge smile spread across her face. You know, she said, last night I had a dream that I was a fisherman…and I caught a huge fish…and I think the dream I had was actually about meeting you—YOU were the big FISH!! I really didn’t know how to respond to that. So I laughed and smiled and promised to come back for lunch some time—what else could I do?

So aside from being asked if I was 36 and being told I appeared in a stranger’s dream as a fish, what’s new in my life? Well, as I mentioned, the eye doctors are coming back again this week and to two other parts of my neighborhood next month. We did the second day of the community census this past Saturday and now have a bit more than 150 of 600 done. The project is going painfully slowly, to be honest, and the teens who were originally enthusiastic about the project have become much less so. Only five of them showed up to help this Saturday and two of those five are actually part of my other youth group and just came to be nice. Three PCVs came to help as well, which was really sweet of them. With the younger youth group we have continued doing activities on Saturday mornings with the kids from the free meal program. This past week I checked out a Mobile Library from the PC library which consists of a bag of 15 kids’ books that I’ll have for the next month. I read aloud to the kids in small groups Saturday and plan on bringing the bag of books around at various times so they can read to themselves or with me. It is absolutely amazing how attentive even the most hyperactive children are when a book comes out. There are almost never opportunities for them to read books at their leisure—the books they see are always textbooks. English class is going well but nothing really new to report there. The sex ed/HIV/AIDS/relationships class is also going well, though it got cancelled a few weeks in a row thanks to soccer tournaments. This past week at the end of class I had the students write down things that they want to talk about/learn about. A few kids wrote that they want to talk about pornography…I don’t really know what that class could possibly look like to be honest. Weird. This week the topic is decision making and we’re doing an activity in which they talk about reasons to have sex now and reasons to wait to have sex. It usually makes for an interesting discussion. I’d better run but will try to get better about blogging. Chaucito.

The Letter E: Easter, English, Early, Eyes

So my brother’s visit has come and gone. We had a great time running around Paraguay, visiting friends of mine, and reminiscing about the days when I could beat him up. Highlights were definitely the waterfall Salto Cristal, which we went to with a PC friend of mine and some Paraguayan neighbors of his, seeing the capybaras (obviously), and having Rahde convinced that he can market the terrible Paraguayan sugar cane booze in the States. Check out the photos if you’d like. Somehow we didn’t figure out until our farewell at the airport that we won’t see each other until August 2011. (He got a Watson Fellowship and will be traveling to New Zealand, South Africa, India, Turkey, and Jamaica studying open fire cooking techniques. Jealous? Yeah, me too.)



I was ready to get back to work after he left and I got back to site after helping with the PC Paraguay publication but I got back just in time for Holy Week. Holy week in the US (at least for me) just consists of possibly dying Easter eggs and enjoying an early Cadbury Egg or two. Here it consists of eating a ridiculous amount of chipa hard corn-based bread) and doing very little. Oh, wait. That is everywhere else in Paraguay. Here in Villa Madrid there is no shortage of chipa but we also enjoy Pascua mita’i and Pascua Joven (translation: Children’s Easter and Teenager’s Easter). Obviously. The youth at my local church put together three days full of activities. Since I was out of site beforehand I didn’t help plan and was not really involved, but I did attend to play with kids, dance for God, and take pictures of the event. Dance for God? Right, you should question that. There was a great deal of calling out different groups to have them dance for a while in the middle of a circle of 80 kids and a bunch of teenagers. They were all called in groups but me. This is the joy of being the weird Norte here. Anyway, the teenagers did a good job and the kids all had a blast.

I talked to my mother yesterday and she asked me what I did for Easter. I had kind of forgotten it was Easter, since it was also a PC friend’s birthday. Three of us had planned to sit in the food court of a mall in Asuncion playing Banana Grams (obviously) and having some beer until a movie started. The online movie schedule was wrong so the movie wasn’t until 6 hours later. We nixed that idea but figured we’d spend the day Banana Gramming and playing chess anyway. A mall employee interrupted a Banana Gram hand to tell us that the mall food court had a no gaming rule. I still really don’t understand/believe this. He went on to tell us that the food court was for consuming food and drink only, even though we were doing so. Unfortunately we had to move on to actually talking to each other. We were all thoroughly disappointed and decided to move our gaming next door to the grocery store food court. They welcomed us with open arms. So although my Easter did not involve bunnies, eggs, or pastels of any sort, it did involve Brahma beer, Banana Grams, and a grocery store food court. This may be my new tradition.

Since then life has been super busy in site. Last week I started English class. I have been avoiding this for the past year but finally broke down and began it. The class is to run for ten weeks, twice a week for two hours a class. The first day was horribly painful (6 people showed and one girl was mean and snobby which I thought was weird since this is obviously a completely optional course); the second was much better (12 showed up and seemed invested and interested); and the third (last night’s) was even better. 23 people are now in the class, even though I had closed the class to just 20 people. I really have no idea how this happened. Anyway, I have an attendance policy and strict rules as far as what it takes to receive a certificate but the class is pretty relaxed. I’m actually enjoying it much more than I thought I would, which is to say that I am actually enjoying it while I thought I was going to hate it.

Yesterday Fundacion Vision came to my site to do free eye exams for people over the age of 60 and for 10,000Guaranis ($2US) for everyone else. It went much better than I expected as well. I had somehow misunderstood a month or so ago when I invited the group and made 30 fliers for my neighborhood that said it was free for people over 60 and kids under 10. Guess what. Not true at all for kids. I ran around like a crazy person Saturday afternoon changing all my fliers and explaining my incompetence to all the families I had invited. The foundation also sells cheap glasses and offers follow-up surgeries at low prices at a later date. They’re coming back at the end of May and again in June in two locations—the first phase and the fourth phase (which sounds like it should be part of my neighborhood but is actually the same size as my neighborhood and about 2 miles away). Anyway, I’m psyched to be working with them, though I did have to be at the comedor at 6am yesterday to welcome them and then they were obviously an hour late…Oh how I love Hora Paraguaya!

This past weekend at the comedor (free meals program for kids) we began activities and educational chats with the kids. I did a bunch of stuff that focused on dental health, which is really lacking here. There are a lot of kids who have cavities that are actually visible in their front teeth. It is very common for adults to be missing teeth in Paraguay, especially since dentists frequently find it best/easiest/who knows? to just pull teeth to deal with whatever problem. Anyway, we read a story, sang some songs, and practiced tooth brushing on a big set of teeth I got from the Peace Corps office. The kids then had a competition of plays, music, and games for which I was a judge. They tied, thanks for asking. Jovenes Unidos (my youth groups who works with these kids) then did a little chat about the environment and we had a trash pickup competition. Again, it was great, though for whatever reason I had to be there as well at 6:30am. I really hate how early things start in this country. A lot. I can’t stress this enough.

Anyway, that’s what my life has been looking like lately. Work is good and steady. Today I’m going to a high school to talk to the principal about a series of activities/presentations that two students and I want to do there about sex-ed, healthy relationships, and HIV/AIDS. If all goes as planned we’ll be doing this at three different high schools in the area and then have a day of basically the same presentations but also invite a non-profit from Asuncion to come give out free condoms and information. I’m psyched.

An Underwater Adventure...Indoors

03-15-2010

The weirdest thing that has happened to me here in Paraguay to date happened today. That feels like a big claim to make—things get weird here—but its true. This teenage boy, Ricardo, was at my house for one of our informal English chats that we do a couple of times a week. We were chatting in English and Spanish when I saw that there was a puddle forming in my “guest room”. This is much more like storage space than anything else but was definitely originally constructed as another bedroom. Because of the crumbling walls I didn’t paint it and can’t put anything important there because of some leaks in the roof that have supposedly been fixed several times. It is not a very nice room. But I was still surprised to see the puddle. Did I leave the refrigerator door open and did my ice melt? No, I used the fridge a half hour before and it isn’t that hot today… But what is this? And why does it seem to be growing so quickly? And then I found it—the gushing water pouring out of my wall. There was a pipe that is partially exposed about five inches from the ground. It runs along the wall. I’ve never noticed it before, but it was definitely the culprit, and I realize a bunch of stuff is getting soaked. So Ricardo and I start moving some things out of the room—boxes filled with crafts supplies, a radio that has never worked, my friend’s suitcase that she left with me. I guess its worth noting that I’m swearing a lot. Not that I was stressed or worried, but mostly because I know nothing about plumbing, lots of cardboard I was saving to do charlas was getting drenched, and the water was coming steadily. Ricardo was very pleased to hear the words coming out of my mouth—words that before today he had only heard in movies.

I tell Ricardo we should turn off the water but that I have no idea where to turn it off. He glances into the front yard and tells me I don’t have a water shut off valve. (Note: My plumbing lingo/vocab is not impressive in English, Spanish, or Guarani. I may make up words in English, as I did in Spanish when explaining this issue.) Ricardo wants to know if he can borrow a book. I look through my bookshelf and hand him one of short stories to occupy him for the next 10 days while I can’t meet. This is how totally unconcerned he was. He leaves. I call my landlord, trying to explain just how quickly the water is coming into the house. Maybe my powers of persuasion are a little rusty, or maybe it’s the tranquilo lifestyle, but his response was that he would come by sometime tomorrow to take a look at it. Not useful. I literally at this point have what I described as a lake forming in my room. I go next door to talk to Marisa, who is the very same lady who helped me with the cats behind the fridge issue. She comes in, seems appropriately concerned about the water level, and though she finds the water shut off valve, cannot turn it off. She and I rack our brains for plumbers in the neighborhood. She looks for a number unsuccessfully, and then we go a few doors down for more neighborly help. I don’t know this neighbor’s name. This isn’t uncommon—there are simply too many names to remember and no one uses names when they talk to or about people here. We’ll just refer to him as Don Hero for the rest of the story.

Don Hero comes to my house and shuts off the water. End of story. No, just kidding. It doesn’t do anything. He shut off my water but it is still coming—and getting stronger still. (Well, maybe not stronger, but definitely not slowing.) He gets down on his hands and knees in the inch and a half of water that has gathered, cups his hands together, takes up some water, and brings it to his face. For a moment I think he is washing his face with it. Then I think maybe he is drinking it. Apparently he is smelling it. Very luckily for both of us, it apparently isn’t sewage. He asks me for a tool to break the wall open. I don’t actually question this request. He has always been very friendly, and though his children are slightly devilish, he doesn’t strike me as a destructive person. I hand him my machete, which was a gift from our trainer (on which my trainer wrote “Gender” on one side and “Environment” on the other in Spanish in an exercise in which we went around in a circle talking about various PC themes at the close of training). Don Hero seemed surprised by the writing on the machete, but started whacking away at the wall anyway, sending plaster flying in every which way and showing that the gushing water was actually coming from under the wall much further to the right. The water obviously continues gushing out. Marisa comes back to check on us. They speak in Guarani. I have no idea what they’re talking about. I fight back the urge to giggle at the ridiculousness of the situation. Apparently he wants to know if this leak is in the same place where their (Marisa’s) bathroom is, since our houses are side-by-side and share a wall. Don Hero continues hacking away, trying to find the water source while Marisa stands by then goes to get her husband. I make jokes about becoming more popular being the only person in our neighborhood with an indoor pool. There is nothing else I can do but laugh. I have changed into my Crocs (note: this may actually be what Crocs were made for) and the water has gotten so deep that it literally covers them. I chuckle again. The neighbors turn their water off. (Though I only have water 3 times a day, they have another system that makes it so they always have water.) The water coming out of my wall slows to a trickle. I make another joke—I should have known this wasn’t coming from my pipe; I never get that kind of pressure! No wonder they think I’m weird.

So as we survey the damages and move some stuff in my main room to make space for the water that has spilled out into the house, my landlord gets there. (I called him a second time at some point during this and did a better job at stressing the urgency of the situation.) The landlord chats with the men in Guarani. I know what’s going on. It is decided that the neighbors will pay for someone to come over and fix my wall tomorrow morning. We exchange smiles, the landlord asks me random things in broken English as he always seems to do at the weirdest times. My water is turned back on (but has been turned off at the main water tank by this point) and I say goodbye to my landlord and his wife and teenage son. My landlord asks me if my neighbors are treating me ok, which I find almost offensive considering how wonderfully useful they had been for the past hour. We chat, I mention off-hand that I don’t especially want to push all this water out of my house with a squeegee. He tells me that I should just leave it, and that it will soak into the brick floor. Obviously.

Just as I’m about to start cleaning up, the neighbor father and daughter show up with a bucket and several brooms. Cleaning it up with them was so much faster than it would have been by myself. We finished getting the water up and the father obviously wanted to look around, since he had never been in the house while I lived there, and quite possibly had never been inside, though they had lived next to it for 16 years. (In Paraguay if you go to someone’s house, you very frequently just stay on the porch or patio—the house can be considered very private space.) I welcomed him to look around and chatted with his daughter, laughing about how my landlord thought I should just leave the water to dry itself. I keep my shower supplies up high on a board that I can barely reach. He came out of the bathroom grinning, apparently very amused at the arrangement.

I spoke to a friend just after they left, telling him the story, and several things occurred to me. I realize that my reaction to laugh at such a ridiculous situation is maybe a good one and that on a different day I could have reacted quite differently. I have found that having a sense of humor about these sorts of things helps me maintain my sanity, but that also it is impossible to do so. A couple of months ago I had one of those weeks that everything had gone wrong. Some projects weren’t going over well, things just didn’t seem to be going my way, I kept being sick… and then I found out I had head lice. And it was just the absolute last straw. But then today literally half of my house was completely flooded and it is one of the more amusing things I’ve ever seen. And I’m lucky…I’m lucky that I was here in the house when it happened. I cannot imagine getting home at the end of the day or after a few days out of site to a completely water logged house! And I’m lucky that my neighbors are wonderfully curious, open, helpful, and just plain neighborly! What kind of baked good best says “Thanks for busting my wall apart with a machete, finding the huge water leak, and then helping me bail out my living room”?

Photos & Olympia is Better Than Cerro for about a Billion Reasons

3-3-2010

Here is a link to see a bunch of photos of a field trip to a park/zoo I took with the comedor kids, and the two camps that I mentioned in the last blog. Take a look if you want. I’ve added some labels to help explain what’s going on and who is in the pictures. Also, there is a single photo of the disgusting kittens I found behind my refrigerator a few months ago so you can see just how hideous they are. (Note: other people claim these wretched animals are cute. I no longer speak to said people who clearly have absolutely no taste, morals, or decency.)

Moving right along, the past few days I had a trainee visiting. I had expected four days filled with awkward silences and mutual dislike but instead found it to be a rather pleasant few days. Perhaps due to the fact that he had never had to bucket bathe before, he seemed not to especially enjoy that part of his visit… We spent a bunch of time with my younger youth group—having lunch, practicing dirty Guarani phrases, doing and participating in some charlas—and playing with kids. And on Sunday we met up with another Volunteer who was hosting a Trainee to go to a Cerro-Olympia game in the capital. These two teams are a favorite conversation piece in Paraguay, second only to the always interesting topic of the weather (aka “Wow, it is hot today.” “Yes, it is.”). Kids here ask which club you’re for, assuming that in the US we too are divided between Cerro and Olympia fans. I’m for Olympia, and if you’re reading this blog, you should be too. Cerro fans are malicious, violent, ugly and stupid. That may sound a bit uncalled for, but studies have shown this to be true time and time again. Why am I an Olympia fan? Oh, let me count the ways! I like black and white better than blue and red. Olympia is a bit of an underdog. Cerro fans are like Yankees fans. (I’m not talking Yankees fans that grew up in New York, blah blah blah. I’m talking the fans who just like the Yankees because they’re a huge institution with a bunch of money and a lot of gear for sale everywhere you go.) But mostly, I lived with a bunch of Olympia fans and one of my favorite language professors during training was an Olympia fan. No, I can’t name a single player on the team. No, I have no clue of their record this year or any other. And no, I really no nothing else about them other than what their uniform looks like, but damnit—I’m a fan. (Also, according to Wikipedia, Olympia is the oldest soccer club in Paraguay.)

What I also know is that they won this past Sunday. I was there, sitting in the hot sun, on the bleacher seats that have those little seats that could double as a kayak seat, with just a line of riot police dressed in what honestly looked like Gladiator uniforms separating us from the Cerro fans. I had never been to an Olympia-Cerro game before but had been to the stadium in October for a Paraguay-Colombia game. The crowd was much more rowdy this time, and I heard more expletives that day than probably in the entire last year of my life. I was later told that a Cerro fan threw a switchblade onto the field during the game. At the end of the game, Cerro fans sulked out of the stadium to the roar of our wonderful (and always tactful) Olympia cheers. We walked down to the street, had a beer, parted ways with the other PCV and trainee, and jumped on a bus to Limpio. At the rather quiet corner where we boarded the bus were two lines of riot police, seemingly randomly placed watching the buses pass. There were no seats left on our bus, but we were some of the only people standing, until about 3 blocks after we got on when about 20 teenagers took over. They piled on through both doors, yelling and hitting each other. Shortly thereafter they were singing Olympia cheers and songs, flipping off anyone outside the bus with Cerro jerseys or colors, while some drank beers and smoked cigarettes in the back. Then, suddenly there was a loud CRACK above the rest of the noise and everyone threw themselves to the floor of the bus. Apparently those dirty, no-good Cerro fans had started throwing rocks, breaking one of the bus windows. The driver sped on, knowing that stopping to investigate would just invite more rocks and the possibility of more injuries. Everyone seemed fine, with the exception of a layer of shattered glass covering the seats, floors, and people. I told the trainee that I had heard of people throwing rocks at buses for no reason (and more frequently after games) but thought it was fairly uncommon. The throng of teenage boys got off shortly thereafter. The bus was much quieter, and we were back to just a few people standing in the aisle. One of these people, however, was donning an Olympia jersey. The rocks started flying again—this time several made contact with the windows, causing a rain of shattered glass to come down on us and the other passengers. I honestly had no idea this was so common! Some teenage girls in the back of the bus pleaded for the middle-aged man with the Olympia jersey to take it off, but he refused. We spent a great bit of time ducked down near the floor, chatting about the usual things—Paraguayan customs, news I’ve missed in the US the past year, the annoyances of training. All told, we got out unscathed—the trainee got hit by one of the rocks on the shin, but luckily the window slowed it down before it hit just hard enough to require a Band-Aid.

The next few weeks should be good, but busy. This weekend we may be doing a sex-ed/HIV/AIDS half day of charlas. I’m bringing some teenagers to a HIV/AIDS conference at the end of next week, then have 7 of the trainees coming to visit for a night of activities in site. And the following week my brother, Rahde, comes to visit for 10 days! I’m not sure exactly what the plan is as of yet, but we should be travelling around Paraguay, visiting other PC amigos’ sites and eating/killing various things. I’m hoping we can both kill chickens while he is here, and perhaps participate in a pig roast. Although I oh-so-dearly-love carpinchos, I’m hoping to eat some of one and perhaps an alligator. On another note, my landlord said he is willing to split the cost of replacing the 20 broken windows in my house and that we can have them fixed at the end of next week! And, to top it all off, he said he’d even take care of the hornets that have invaded my front patio area! I’ll be living like a queen in no time!!

Camp, Dam, Camp

2-24-2010

Alright, so I haven’t written in about 6 weeks, which is a new record for my blog slacking. The summer has finally ended here—school started yesterday all over Paraguay, though I have a friend who lives further south who told me that inexplicably no one showed up for the first day in her neighborhood. I’m pleased the school year is starting again—it means a more structured environment and also that the comedor kids may have a bit less energy to pick fights with one another and generally be rambunctious. That being said, I’m not sure what happened to the summer.

In February I’ve gone to two different camps with teenagers from my community. Both were organized through other Peace Corps Volunteers—one was the Urban Youth Development Camp, which was just for UYD volunteers and their youth (13-18) while the other was Gender and Development Camp which was open to any volunteers to bring youth (15-25). The first was a leadership camp, where the kids did a lot of games, activities, charlas run by other youth, etc. and was held at Jack Norment, near Caacupe. The highlights for the two kids I brought were meeting other teens from all over Paraguay, getting away from home for a few nights, and the pool. They seem really excited to do some of the activities we did there with our youth group here—particularly the one where you have kids dress up one member of their group as a bride using only toilet paper, tape, and random things found in the area. The camp only cost about 10,000 Guaranis for each of my kids (US$2) since we received funds to do it. Each kid had to pay the cost of the bus ride to get to and from the camp, which was more expensive for some than others. It was just really great to see this kind of rare opportunity given to the kids. One of the four kids I brought lives in a one room shack made entirely by found materials with her mom and 12 year old brother. All the kids have already asked me about going back next year.

The other camp I went to, the Gender and Development camp, was at Tati Yupi, a Biological Reserve near Ciudad del Este and the Itaipu Dam. I brought three kids from my neighborhood—one was invited to help run the games at night since she’d done so the year before with the last volunteer who was in my site. The ride was a long one out to Ciudad del Este (about 6 hours by bus) but comfortable. Unfortunately for us (we travelled with my friend Barbara and her teens as well) the driver wasn’t a big fan of our group for whatever reason and started leaving the bus terminal in Ciudad del Este before we got a chance to get off. He then slammed on the breaks suddenly, sending me flying down the stairs with my hands full just to stub my toe, get rug burn on my elbow and slam my head against the wall. It was a nice welcome to the biggest city in Paraguay not using some sort of Christian name (i.e. Concepcion and Encarnacion). This is the city of black markets—a city where Peace Corps Volunteers are actually not allowed to stay overnight. Regardless, we made it out to Tati Yupi and from there had a great 4 days and 3 nights of charlas, activities, a great deal of singing and chanting, tractor rides, and an absurd amount of BananaGrams (among Volunteers). The theme was Service Learning, so we focused on how to train these kids to go back to their communities to be leaders there. On our last night we went out to Itaipu, which has been named as one of the 7 Wonders of the Modern World. We went for a light show. It was honestly one of the most disappointing displays I’ve ever seen. I thought light show meant colored lights, maybe some fireworks, etc. Instead it just meant someone turning on a bunch of light switches (seemingly) to show the dam, then lighting up a 7 floor office building floor by floor. But don’t worry, all this was set to dramatic music, which made up for it. Another great addition was that they took the velvet rope down once the whole thing was lit up, thus allowing us all to go forward to the railing. Regardless, the next day we went back to see the real deal in daylight. It was MUCH more impressive then, especially since the water was flowing. Apparently it has been since November thanks to a bunch of flooding in Brazil. (The dam shares borders with Brazil and Paraguay, providing 20% of all of Brazil’s electricity and 90% of Paraguay’s.) It was amazing to see and really made me want to ride on water rides… I’ll try to put up some photos. I think that all the Volunteers who went to GAD Camp are putting up photos together somewhere, so I’ll post that when I know.

New trainees got here a few weeks ago as well. There are three groups of trainees that arrive in Paraguay each year but the numbers are growing, and this is the first group that has come in as my sister G—meaning they are all part of my project, or the two other projects that come in in February (Rural Health and Sanitation and Early Elementary Education). It is amazing that I’ve now been here for a year, and am now the one going in to trainings to teach other trainees what its like to be a Volunteer. This weekend, in fact, a trainee will come to visit as a kind of day (or weekend) in the life… Bizarre. The timing, too, is off, since school has just begun and Monday is a holiday here. The weekends tend to be slow, but we shall see. My younger youth group wants to do a project, so we’ll see how that goes. Also I’ve been trying to figure out a way to motivate my older youth group to come together to reignite our census project within the neighborhood. Anyway, I’m not sure how it’ll go, but it should be interesting. Thus far I’ve gone in to help with ice breakers and games and also to talk about youth groups. They’ve gone well, and the trainees have all now been taught Gaga, which is obviously the best game ever played.

Funny things keep happening, obviously. I was telling a story to a bunch of other PCVs about how my friend Hugo and I keep track of the mini-telenovelas happening between the pre-teens at the comedor…basically lots of flirting by way of hitting and chasing each other. Hugo and I laugh about bringing popcorn to eat while we watch these little dramas unfold. I mentioned Hugo as “my friend” in the story (in English) and then realized that this is how greatly my life has changed over the past year. Hugo, someone I consider a friend, is actually 9 years old. He is honestly one of my favorite kids. He’s so thoughtful and sweet…the other day, for example, I was walking down the big hill to the comedor but was running late. So naturally he offered me a ride on his bike. As I sat on the seat with him standing on the pedals, my hands reaching under his armpits to grip the middle of the handle bars in fear as he ignored his fully functioning brakes, I realized that my life really is quite different than it was a year ago...

Work, Talent Shows, and Belly Buttons

01-11-10

So, I’ve jumped back into my work life as planned. It has been a bit crazy, but very enjoyable. I’ve been spending a great deal of my time at the comedor. Barbara came to visit on Saturday morning after her lovely mother left to head back to the states. On Saturday we ran a bunch of errands. I am now the proud owner of both a blender and a bookshelf! (You have no idea how excited about both of these items.) Then we went down to the comedor for a meeting that obviously was cancelled. It was to be a parents meeting but hardly anyone showed up so it is postponed until further notice. This has been a really frustrating part for the old comedor ladies, new comedor ladies, and me. There are about 50 kids who eat breakfast and lunch there for free every single weekday. This is a service offered for free and run by volunteers who dedicate their time out of the goodness of their hearts. And then they try to call a meeting to try to plan events, improve the comedor, have more people involved, whatever, and none of the parents show up. Infuriating. I don’t know how to fix this—we talked about maybe having a raffle in which your name is only entered if you show up to the meetings, or perhaps offering snacks, but the problem with the snacks is that then all the kids will come and you have 75 mouths to feed. And obviously it’d be unfair to not feed kids because their parents are irresponsible/busy/whatever.
Anyway, Barbara and I went to one Señora’s house because I had to talk to her husband who is in charge of the neighborhood commission. I commented on her wedding picture that was on the wall and the next thing I knew I had a huge wedding album in my hand. After the wedding album came her teenage son’s album. This was all fine and good until I came across the page where she had pinned down his umbilical cord. It was a very surprising addition to the album and my Saturday night. We then went to a 19-year-old’s birthday party briefly. I like the girl but these parties are always so strange. There are so many kids (literally kids—like 10 year olds) grinding and/or dancing extremely provocatively. It just creeps me out. They just dance and the rest of the group sits around and watches.
Sunday included 4 hours on buses to visit training families. It’s so interesting to me to now go back and visit my family from training. I had such a rocky relationship with them at the time but now my visits are so pleasant—and I feel really guilty if I don’t go back and visit. That being said, my visits usually only last for a delicious meal and then I leave. Last time I actually took a nap after lunch, although I was only there for about six hours total. Regardless, Babs and I got back to my site just in time to be the judges for the talent show put on by the comedor. It was so much more enjoyable than I expected it to be! The kids danced, sang, and did really short plays. The singing was rough—a few kids did solos without music or microphones, but to popular pop songs. The dancing was hilarious and at times impressive. There was a lot of gyrating. Today I was actually supposed to be the judge for the comedor Olympics as well, but it just turned into a few of us watching the boys play soccer.
Tomorrow my plan is to bike to the water treatment plant in Limpio, where they have a really impressive and large vegetable garden. They told me that they don’t have any gardening manuals to give out to people in the community who want to transplant in their personal or community gardens so I found a bunch in the Peace Corps Office and am bringing them in tomorrow to see what we want to cut and paste. I’m also hoping that I can help organize this gardening project and help do the charlas about how to have the best garden possible. (I know little about gardening but luckily the manuals are thorough and I’m a fast learner.) And I’m really hoping that I can develop a good relationship with this place so that I can possibly get some free veggies out of it. If I got free veggies weekly for the next 16 months life would be stupendous! (I’m not a vegetarian but I really dislike touching raw meat and so essentially just have a vegetarian kitchen.) We’ll see how that goes.
Anyway, that is basically my life right now. I’m planning on doing a world map project where I paint 2 big world maps on walls in my barrio with kids. I’m also kind of doing a camp at the comedor a couple of times a week but I play with the kids so frequently it doesn’t change too much. On a very different note, thanks to my inability to no and not thinking things through, I am now the (sometimes) proud owner of a dog named (translated from Guarani) Two Ears. I have a love-hate relationship with this dog. I’ve been in charge of her for a little less than a month. The kids love her but are now getting rough, and I’m just waiting for her to bite one of them. Although some of them may deserve to be bitten—this kid Alexander bit me twice today and I think tomorrow will bring bruises. It also makes me feel like a bit of an idiot to be wandering around my neighborhood yelling “Two! Two!” To end, I’ll just say that I don’t hear many new Paraguayan beliefs at this point in my service, though I did hear one today. A girl wanted to take a picture of my dog with her cell phone but one of the mothers stopped her, saying that if you take a picture of any animal it will die three months later. I was given an example—one woman took a photo of her dog and it died three months later when it was hit by a car.

Happy Holidays!

1-06-2010!

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Happy Engagement to a certain favorite couple of mine as well!! This year has certainly been unlike any other holiday season of my life, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. I’ve been slightly reflective the past few days, mostly thanks to the fact that I’ve been sick and spent much of that time laying in bed feeling sorry for myself but happily watching a great deal of Gossip Girl (thanks, Mimi and Matthew) and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (thanks PC amigos). I went to the doctor yesterday after a few nights of rushing to the bathroom nearly hourly, fever, and general ache to find out I have a gastro-intestinal infection which can be cured by antibiotics. (About a month ago a PC friend of mine got sick and was given antibiotics. He looked in Where There is No Doctor, a book all PCVs are given that explains what you should do about just about any sickness or injury if you are stranded in the middle of nowhere. It is some of the best entertainment ever with extremely detailed drawings and descriptions, though I do NOT recommend looking through it when you’re sick or you’ll quickly turn into a hypochondriac. Regardless, in Where There is No Doctor, my friend saw that the prescribed antibiotic treats gonorrhea. I, obviously, ridiculed him to no end for receiving gonorrhea medication. Karma wins again—I was given the same. Please note: I generally don’t think STDs are comical.)

So, going back to my holiday season… I went with some friends to another PCV’s site for Christmas. He lives in basically the middle of Paraguay, in the middle of the campo (read: boonies). The first night (the 23rd) we visited some neighbors and then had some Paraguayans over for some boxed wine and cola. There was yet another Paraguayan woman who told me that you can peel the bellies of 7 frogs to make a stew that cures cancer. I convinced a bunch of teenagers that Barbara (my PCBFF) won American Idol and kisses frogs hoping to turn them into princes. Paraguayans are disgusted by this—they are disgusted by frogs and claim that their urine, if it somehow gets into your eye, will blind you. So, this may sound ridiculous but I really don’t know if this is true or not. Luckily it seems unlikely that I will ever figure this out since I find it difficult to imagine a time in which frog’s urine will be anywhere near my eyes. Once everyone left we made a midnight feast (Babs and I hadn’t eaten all day) that involved about a pound of ground beef, a pound of spaghetti, and random seasonings. Barbara cooked. It tasted exactly like Hamburger Helper. The stars this night were beyond anything I have ever seen in my life—I had no idea that there were that many stars in the sky to be seen.

Fast forward to Christmas Eve, the following day. Another PCV (Little Anne) and her brother from the states arrived. We spent most of the day, as well as the afternoon before in fact, playing BananaGrams, which is possibly the best game ever. Ever. Whoever you are, you should invest in this wonderful game—it is like Scrabble but quicker, more portable and involves less patience. In the evening we went to some neighbor’s houses despite the fact that the electricity had gone out. We arrived caroling in English. They were obviously extremely impressed with our perfectly harmonized angelic voices. We sat around drinking clerico, which is essentially the Paraguayan version of sangria and the typical holiday drink here. (Having trouble imagining yourself sitting by the fire on Christmas Eve sipping sangria? Please remember, it was a super humid 100°. Sitting still we were all glistening with sweat.) The strange thing about the clerico here is that everyone drinks it—including children. The youngest son is 6 and apparently has developed a habit of drinking by himself with some frequency. I honestly can’t begin to imagine the sort of damage that does to a 6 year old brain. Anyway, in sobriety the day before this 6 year old was happily showing off his firework skills for me while we chatted with his parents. He also visited us at our friend’s house, and began openly flirting with me. You know, the usual 6-year-old way…by spitting on and hitting me. Anyway, after apparently having a few glasses of liquid courage, he was getting more direct and his parents (and my friends) thought it hilarious that he was so enamored. The lights still hadn’t come on so we all sat in the moonlight chatting. Finally we went to another neighbor’s house (caroling again) to see their nativity scene, which is more like a bunch of branches with lights, candy, fruit, and miscellaneous objects woven throughout that shelter a small nativity scene blocked by watermelons. At this point the electricity hadn’t been on for hours, though we had been told that all of the state’s electricity is turned off briefly on Christmas Eve every year because Paraguayans use too much power during this time of year. (Originally they said only a half hour though, so…) The lights finally came back on and we headed back to the original house where we danced briefly then sat down for dinner. Unfortunately, once again the lights went out. The oldest son was put in charge of holding the flashlight over the picnic table. I was seated at the head of the table and for some reason the light didn’t stop spotlighting me throughout the meal. Unidentifiable meat, mandioca (Paraguay’s potato) sopa Paraguaya (cornbread-ish stuff), milanesa de pollo (country-fried chicken) were served alongside a fork and the dullest knife imaginable. As I sat in the spotlight attempting to cut the fat-meat from the bone, my new 6-year-old boyfriend sat down the table gnawing on his meat using only his hands while intently staring at me and making incredibly loud “num, num, num” noises. I’ve never had such trouble keeping a straight face at a meal before.

We left a bit before midnight, directly after our extremely late dinner. I assume that if you’re reading this, you know me, and so know of the Christmas Eve tradition that I have and am, admittedly, obsessed with. It is cheesy, I know, but I love it. The tradition is that on Christmas Eve a great deal of my mother’s side of the family (think 20-30 people) sit around, each with their own copy of Twas the Night Before Christmas, and read aloud, verse by verse, the entire book. The same jokes are made each year (i.e. “Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash” is followed by a great deal of vomiting noises) but there are always kids (and plenty of adults) to enjoy them. My parents had sent what was obviously a Twas the Night Before Christmas but I was instructed to open it on Christmas Eve. When we returned home, I did, and found a wonderful book in which various members of my family had recorded all the verses, except those on one page which my PC friends and I recorded. It was honestly the best gift I’ve ever received. And yes, I’ve admitted that this is super nerdy, but I loved it so thanks to everyone involved.

For Christmas itself we woke up to find that there was no running water (and thought this, too, may be a Paraguayan tradition). We lounged, talked about the menu for the day, talked to our respective families on Skype, BananaGrammed, and talked more about the day’s feast. The problem, we found, was that none of us were particularly motivated to cook, possibly because we ate cheese, crackers, pepperoni and brownies early on. In the end we had a Christmas dinner at about 8pm of pepper jelly, two baked chickens, salad, mashed potatoes, and wine-and-soda. And our dinner was actually a picnic, where we sat outside on a blanket under Christmas lights strung between two trees. After dinner more Paraguayans joined us as we dazzled them with our phenomenal Christmas carol skills.

The next day we said our goodbyes and went to wait for the bus on the main road. Our bus time estimates were poor, however, and we all burned severely as the midday sun beat down on our backs and the pavement. Also, the bus was too crowded for each of us to have a seat in the 4 hour stretch back to the capital. Luckily I was in a front seat with enough leg room for Little Anne to sit on the floor in front of me, my knees on her shoulders, bandanas making sure there was no skin-to-skin contact on that crowded, hot, air-conditionless bus. New Years was fun and the company grand but not especially notable otherwise. And there was my holiday season. I hope that yours was half as phenomenal and nowhere near as sweaty!