I´m Cold and Swine Flu is Ruining My Life

7-16-09

I miss clothes right out of the dryer. That’s where my mind is. I’m freezing. I’ve slept with spandex, sweatpants, knee high wool socks, and several sweater/fleece layers the past few nights and all I can think of is my lone request to Peace Corps for where I wanted to be placed—no where cold. I told them, “I don’t care where I go or what I do as long as it isn’t in cold weather.” As I write this I’m in two sweaters, a hat, a hood, a fleece, spandex, jeans, socks with my feet under a blanket. Ugh. I wish I had a dryer…I’m glad I’ve already bathed today because I’m not sure I’d be up for the aftershock of a bucket bath. Maybe I’ll boil some water to put in my Nalgene to sleep next to tonight—another PCV told me that trick.

Life is S-L-O-W right now. This marks the end of the second week of winter break here. The first week I was soaking up the sun and enjoying fantastic food, drink and company back in Maryland for my sister’s beautiful wedding. It was fabulous, but flew by as expected. To curb some of the boredom I figured was inevitable with a two week school break I decided to turn my energy towards camps. I did an “environmental” camp at the comedor Monday and Tuesday afternoons. Environmental is in quotes because though that was my goal I ended up doing the camp by myself and was overwhelmed at times by attempting to provide educational activities to 40 rambunxious six to thirteen year olds. We did make 5 batches of Play-Doh though… Today and yesterday I helped my married couple Peace Corps friends with a health camp at their site, which is a few hours away. It was nice to see another site and eat delicious vegetarian cuisine for a few days. (I was welcomed back to Paraguay by a liver feast! Damn you, organ meat!) I’ve been looking forward to developing more of a set routine in the schools starting this upcoming week and have already planned some charlas. Unfortunately though, all of Paraguay’s children will be enjoying at least one more week of winter break thanks to the swine flu. Some schools say they’ll take the next two weeks off. I’m not sure how many Paraguayans have died thus far—I believe it is 6, though Monday I was told four people were dying per week in Limpio, the next day I was told it was 5 per day. In a country this small, it is amazing how completely scrambled gossip can become. People all over are equipped with tapa-bocas (surgical masks I believe is the English?) though there was also a claim that Paraguay was completely out of them. We’ll see how I spend the next week. I think I’ll go into the municipality to do some work, though I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if they took the opportunity to close as well. They do close their offices for the day at 1:30pm somehow… Silly.