Crazy Kids and American Food

3-8-09

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

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

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

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

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