Scabies Free and Winding Down

I talked on Skype with my brother today. He’s in India and is super guapo (that means hard working here, though elsewhere means good looking) and was harassing me about updating my blog, which I somehow haven’t done in a full month. I realized that it isn’t that I don’t have anything going on in Paraguay, it’s just that things here just seem so normal to me. My library committee is trucking along, doing fundraisers for the 25% of the funds needed to build the library. The other 75% is (hopefully) coming in a couple of weeks from a SPA grant. I had originally wanted to do a Peace Corps Partnership for the money, which would have meant asking everyone I know to donate money, but the SPA grant (through USAID) seemed like a better option. All in all, the project will cost $4,000 and will be passed along to my follow-up, who arrives in Paraguay tomorrow. (NUTS!)

We had our Close of Service conference last week, which just meant a load of paperwork and realizing that I’m actually going to be leaving this wonderful and sometimes weird place in about two and a half months. Some of it was nice to think about—traveling after Peace Corps a bit through South America with my best friend from Peace Corps, going back to the US (and family, friends, and delicious foods that are included in that). But other parts made me anxious. I’m applying to grad school right now, which is an incredibly strange process to do from my house in Paraguay. I can’t believe that I will no longer be living in the fantastic community of Villa Madrid that has made me feel like I’m welcome and at home. I’m sad to leave the great Peace Corps relationships I’ve built here. It is just such a mix of emotions.

And then I think of how different I’ve become since joining the Peace Corps. I realize that there are all sorts of things that will be strange not to do while back in the US:
1) Drinking terere (the wonderful Paraguayan tea) all day every day.

2) Grunting at animals.
3) Giving myself a free day because it’s raining, or looks like it might rain.
4) Eating popcorn for dinner. All the time.
5) Making faces at children on the bus.
6) Having inappropriate conversations in English no matter where I am.
7) Siesta.
8) Being stared at everywhere I go. Unabashedly.
9) Considering eating lunch/dinner in a grocery store a delicious meal.
10) Speaking Spanish (and mishimi Guarani) daily.
11) Not flushing toilet paper.

There are so many more, but I just can’t even think of them. The US seems like such a foreign place at this point. It’ll also be sad to realize that that 10 year old kid who has a “This is What a Feminist Looks Like” shirt probably knows what it means. I’ll miss those horrible English grammar errors on clothing… I’ll try to be better in the next few months keeping an eye out for things that no longer faze me but once did. My February resolution is now to be better about this blog. You’re welcome.

PS-Best news I got yesterday is that I don't have scabies! This is what success looks like.

A Very South American Christmas

So this is Christmas…

On December 10th I found myself walking from my bus stop in Asuncion to the Peace Corps Office with this song suddenly stuck in my head and I laughed out loud. I had meetings all day in the PCO with other Volunteers, as we do every other month, and I was running late as per usual. It had been horribly hot and muggy when I left my house with my backpack packed for the weekend. I had heard it was supposed to rain, so I grabbed my umbrella, having left my rain coat in my mailbox at the PCO a few weeks before. By the time my hour long bus trip into the office ended, it was pouring. We’re talking buckets of water here. Somehow Paraguay’s capital city has nearly no water drainage, so when I got off on España (the street), it was not that surprising that I was stepping into a river. The dirty city water went nearly to my kneecap and continued to threaten to steal my flip-flops as I fought to wade through it. So I did what anyone would do—took off my shoes and trudged through, crossing two of Asuncion’s major streets completely barefoot. If that doesn’t give me some sort of horrible disease, what will? Of course I had that umbrella, but by the time I got to the PCO I was completely drenched (even down to my underwear!) and, since my backpack was also not covered, had no clothes to change into. Great. So, this is Christmas.

This entire month has flown by, as have the past nearly 23. It is truly incredible. We had some movie nights for the library project, for which the municipality loaned us a projector. Is it weird that I am totally buddy-buddy with the mayor of a town of 80,000? I was told recently that it is. Movie night was a success—everyone ate an absurd amount of popcorn, and many children later reported having nightmares after watching Drag Me to Hell. (I’ll just say that the movie selections were not my call.)

My parents got here on the 18th—we started the trip in Paraguay, then went east to Iguazu Falls, then flew down to Buenos Aires where we spent Christmas week. While in Paraguay I had a little BBQ with some of my closest families in site, introduced my parents to a bunch of my PC friends, and then showed them the comedor. They were amazed by the comedor—the kids were really enthusiastic to see me (this place seriously makes me feel like a super star) and were especially pumped to receive the bouncy ball and pencil that my parents gave each of them for Christmas. (My mom apparently got stopped at the border after they saw the x-ray of her bag containing 90 nearly lacrosse ball sized balls...) We went and saw the carpinchos (capybaras) in Villarrica and met up with my friend Tomas. I also finally saw Tomas’s house for the first time. Anytime I hear anyone complain about any sort of house problem for the rest of my life, I’ll probably think of this house. It can much more accurately be called a shack. There are wooden boards as the walls, but often times these boards are separated by an inch or two of open space. We’re talking about a place that most would decide should be fixed up if it was the shed out back—and Tomas lives there without a word of complaint. Que quapo!

From Villarrica, our driver (yes, we had a wonderful driver named Caballero) took us through Ciudad del Este to go to Iguazu Falls, where we were spending a night. Ciudad del Este (City of the East) is the only major town in Paraguay not named after something Biblical—we have Asuncion, Encarnacion, and Concepcion. It makes sense that the name is such. It is generally considered the biggest and most thorough black market in South America. Name it and you can buy it there, and yes, feel free to use your imagination. So we were stuck in traffic trying to cross the bridge into Brazil for an hour or two. But all around us, things were being brought out to cars and trucks in bulk. Though it was the middle of the afternoon, it was easy to spot a bunch of sex workers wandering throughout the traffic. Motorcycles and motorcycle taxis whizzed by and darted in and out of cars. It was quite a sight to see. We finally made it over the bridge and into Brazil, which we had planned to cut through on our way to Argentina, and weren’t stopped at all at the border. Twenty minutes later, when we were leaving Brazil to enter Argentina, that became a problem. It took some finagling to convince the border patrol not to send us back to the bridge to get stamped, but I’m happy to report that no money changed hands.

Iguazu Falls was amazing. I had heard other PCVs talk about it, but there is truly no way to describe how spectacular the Falls are. We stayed in the park on the Argentina side, so we’d have drinks or dinner while watching and hearing the falls in the distance. The nice thing about what is sometimes called “Niagara on Viagra” is that they allow you to explore the falls so completely—you get to walk out right near La Garganta del Diablo (the main falls), or walk out throughout the upper circuit to the tops of others, or go down through the jungle to be at the bottom level and look up at the falls all while surrounded by birds, lizards, monkeys, armadillos, and some weird rodent thing I don’t know the name of. My mom and I decided to do the boat trip where you get right under the falls. We got totally drenched, and the lifejackets smelled strongly of BO, but it was excellent. If, whoever you are, you have the opportunity to go to the falls, take it, and give yourself two full days of exploring to do it.

Buenos Aires was excellent as well, of course! This was my third time, which seems slightly excessive, and may be, but each time was quite different since I went with different people each time. BA is simply a city I could easily live in for a year or two. We had delicious food and wine, walked around a lot, and just explored. Restaurant highlights were: Don Carlos in La Boca (he just brings out plates and plates of food without asking what you want), Ceviche in Palermo (with hands down the best ceviche any of us had ever had and solid sushi), and Rio Alba in Palermo (with Raul, a great waiter, who would flat out tell us when he thought we shouldn’t get something and then bring some other deliciousness). We had so many delicious meals, but these stand out. We also spent a day in El Tigre, which is a river delta town about an hour north of BA that I adore and that we explored by boat. Another day was spent in Colonia, a historical town in Uruguay that is about an hour’s ferry ride away from BA. It was pleasant, but didn’t knock my socks off.

In South America fireworks are a big part of Jesus’ birth. As are watermelons. This may seem strange to a North American reader, but it’s true. In each nativity scene you see (in Paraguay and Argentina at least) there is a watermelon present. Maybe it has to do with the fact that it is peak watermelon season down here, or maybe North Americans just have it totally wrong to not include the watermelon. I won’t attempt to argue that fireworks actually were present for the birth of Jesus, but maybe there were some sparklers at least? At midnight on Christmas Eve, just after my father and I watched possibly the worst Christmas movie EVER, and after the three of us had read ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, the fireworks began. We stayed in a great apartment in Palermo on the 13th floor, and had views out of three sides of the building. In every direction (well, minus much in the Rio de la Plata direction) there were firework displays. We’re talking about thousands of people setting off fireworks at the exact same time all over the city. I’m not a huge fireworks fan, but it was truly beautiful and impressive that though there was obviously no official coordination, everyone knew to set off the fireworks at midnight.

So I got back to Paraguay yesterday afternoon, to find that my fridge door had opened. I was having some trouble with it right before I left, so I duct-taped it shut. Apparently I didn’t duct tape it well enough, and I came home to find it partially open, the freezer full of ice, and the fridge completely drenched with water from when the ice melted. So I unplugged the fridge, and went to work with a little bit of hot water, and a lot of machete to chip away at the ice. Yes, I know that I could have waited for it to thaw. Yes, I know it isn’t a good idea to hack at something filled with Freon with a machete. But I just wasn’t feeling very patient. That is the really what it came down to. So after a lot of very productive machete-ing, one bad swing resulted in a stream of smelly gas shooting towards me. I went to my neighbors (the same who help me with everything, from the broken water pipe to those grotesque cats behind my fridge) and they called a guy they know. He came last night to start working and is back today to hopefully finish the job. I honestly wish that I had a picture of his face when I told him what had happened. Apparently everybody everywhere knows that taking a machete to your fridge is asking for trouble…

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??