10-20-09
I’m on a bus to go to Asuncion for Agro-Shopping and a meeting in the Peace Corps Office. Agro-Shopping, held in the parking garage of a chuchi mall, is where local farmers and vendors have sold fresh produce, dairy, meat and the like every Tuesday for the past 11 years. I love it. I try to go every week but sometimes can’t quite get my schedule to work around it. Tonight I’m going to stay with my training host family in Guarambare so I can help with a sexual harassment session with the new PC trainees. Although I frequently feel like I just got here—even though it has been 8 months—another group swore in a month ago and these trainees have been here for a few weeks. PC is very much like a high school in that trainees seem so long (even if they’re older than me) and people who have been here for a while are basically seniors.
Things are still great in site. Movie night was a hit—lots of kids came and lots of popcorn was eaten. Have a new youth group that began Sunday. Most are 14 or 15 and they want to start a small business making and selling bread and baked goods in order to make money to work on projects with the comedor kids. It is fabulous. The kids are really interested, motivated, and hard working. I’m curious to watch it progress, since I never know what it’ll look like a month from now. I keep having random visitors at my house, which is great but potentially annoying. If I don’t want visitors I just don’t open my front door or front curtains. It has been working thus far.
Sex ed is still chugging along. With one class yesterday we did some labeling of anatomically correct drawings. I’ve been amazed at the mislabeling. A group of 11th graders taped the Clitoris label next to the arrow pointing at the anus! I couldn’t believe it. Some of the anonymous questions I’ve gotten (from 2 different 11th grade classes): Is it necessary to lose your virginity before you turn 18? What is an orgasm? Where is the G-spot? Are there times when the girl asks to have sex? (Meaning when she initiates, I assume.) Does penis size matter? How do I know if a partner has an STD? Is it bad to have sex with your cousin? How many liters of blood does a girl lose when she has sex for the first time? How do you use a condom? What is masturbation? Also, there have been a number of questions about the best age to start having sex. Anyway, to say the least this has been interesting and I’ve been wondering if a group of 11th graders in the US would have the same questions and misconceptions.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Saturday, October 17, 2009
My Super Sweet Weekend Plans
10-17-09
Things are going well. Tonight my youth group is showing a double feature at the community center to raise some money for our community census project. I really have no idea how it´ll go. First we´re showing a kids movie (The Incredibles) and afterwards there´ll be another movie for adults but we couldn´t pick a movie last night during our 1.5 hour long meeting. It is pretty impressive how slowly things move in our youth group meetings. There is usually a great deal of texting throughout. (Last night I was actually actively texting, then felt kind of bad about it... But is this just cultural assimilation? Can I at least tell myself that?) Anyway, we´ll be making the popcorn at my house, so I´m interested to see how that goes. My youth group is between 15 and 22, consists of about 6 guys and 3 girls, though sometimes we have almost double that and the girls who show up change slightly depending on who the guys are dating from week to week. It is an interesting bunch and takes FOREVER to decide on the littlest things, but I like them. Tonight marks the third night in a row I´ll be hanging out with them. The past two nights have gone to making the smallest decisions about tonight´s movie. They can be little shits, but they are teenagers, so....
This week has been good. I´m still absolutely loving sex ed. I´ve expanded it to a few other classes, and those are going well. We have a question box for each class so that the kids can ask questions anonymously without being embarassed. The three questions I got this week were: 1) Does it hurt for the girl the first time she has sex?; 2) Does it hurt for the guy his first time?; and 3) Is there love between homosexual couples? The class was so amazingly attentive when I answered these questions. The classes are really living up to my expectations thus far. We´ve begun with myth vs. fact, during which I´ve been pretty amazed at some common misconceptions, and anatomy in which I was surprised by some of the mislabeling during the introductory games. I also went to the Paraguay-Colombia game this week. Paraguay lost 2-0, and it was rainy and kind of gross out, but I enjoyed it. A bunch of volunteers came into the capital for the game, so it was great to see everyone, obviously.
The house is still going well though I´m continuing to live out of my luggage. I just kept trying to buy wood to do construction and they kept being closed. It is a slow process but I´ve been busy enough and I don´t mind too much living out of my bags. Tomorrow should be a crazy day. I´m debating going to church or not (I honestly just go from time to time for my reputation), then I´m going to a meeting in the squatting community, then some middle schoolers are coming over for a meeting about how we can plan activities and games with the comedor, then I have a girls´ group meeting. The crazy thing is that tomorrow is scheduled to be so busy, but if it rains I´m sure the only thing that´ll happen is church. We shall see.
My favorite children are doing better. Their brother got back from the hospital and seems much better so their mom is back now and actually just started working doing daycare in our neighborhood, which is excellent. The kids did end up coming over last week for lunch and coloring/play time, and a few days ago I noticed that my name, spelled incorrectly (Nasi), is now written in red marker on my freshly painted wall. I think it´ll be a while until I have children of my own but in the meantime, I don´t mind these Paraguayan children...
Things are going well. Tonight my youth group is showing a double feature at the community center to raise some money for our community census project. I really have no idea how it´ll go. First we´re showing a kids movie (The Incredibles) and afterwards there´ll be another movie for adults but we couldn´t pick a movie last night during our 1.5 hour long meeting. It is pretty impressive how slowly things move in our youth group meetings. There is usually a great deal of texting throughout. (Last night I was actually actively texting, then felt kind of bad about it... But is this just cultural assimilation? Can I at least tell myself that?) Anyway, we´ll be making the popcorn at my house, so I´m interested to see how that goes. My youth group is between 15 and 22, consists of about 6 guys and 3 girls, though sometimes we have almost double that and the girls who show up change slightly depending on who the guys are dating from week to week. It is an interesting bunch and takes FOREVER to decide on the littlest things, but I like them. Tonight marks the third night in a row I´ll be hanging out with them. The past two nights have gone to making the smallest decisions about tonight´s movie. They can be little shits, but they are teenagers, so....
This week has been good. I´m still absolutely loving sex ed. I´ve expanded it to a few other classes, and those are going well. We have a question box for each class so that the kids can ask questions anonymously without being embarassed. The three questions I got this week were: 1) Does it hurt for the girl the first time she has sex?; 2) Does it hurt for the guy his first time?; and 3) Is there love between homosexual couples? The class was so amazingly attentive when I answered these questions. The classes are really living up to my expectations thus far. We´ve begun with myth vs. fact, during which I´ve been pretty amazed at some common misconceptions, and anatomy in which I was surprised by some of the mislabeling during the introductory games. I also went to the Paraguay-Colombia game this week. Paraguay lost 2-0, and it was rainy and kind of gross out, but I enjoyed it. A bunch of volunteers came into the capital for the game, so it was great to see everyone, obviously.
The house is still going well though I´m continuing to live out of my luggage. I just kept trying to buy wood to do construction and they kept being closed. It is a slow process but I´ve been busy enough and I don´t mind too much living out of my bags. Tomorrow should be a crazy day. I´m debating going to church or not (I honestly just go from time to time for my reputation), then I´m going to a meeting in the squatting community, then some middle schoolers are coming over for a meeting about how we can plan activities and games with the comedor, then I have a girls´ group meeting. The crazy thing is that tomorrow is scheduled to be so busy, but if it rains I´m sure the only thing that´ll happen is church. We shall see.
My favorite children are doing better. Their brother got back from the hospital and seems much better so their mom is back now and actually just started working doing daycare in our neighborhood, which is excellent. The kids did end up coming over last week for lunch and coloring/play time, and a few days ago I noticed that my name, spelled incorrectly (Nasi), is now written in red marker on my freshly painted wall. I think it´ll be a while until I have children of my own but in the meantime, I don´t mind these Paraguayan children...
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Life as a Real Live Adult!
10-7-09
I’m finally living no my own after 8 months of living with very different host families. After a long search in which I was offered one place with AC for way over half my monthly salary and several places in which I would be in charge of a child or two while parents worked elsewhere during the week I found my current house. It is actually where the last volunteer lived for her last 5 months in site. Since she was only living here for a short time she didn’t put much effort into fixing it up. After her, a family of 5 lived here for a bit. The house is about 5 blocks from my old house. It is closer to the highway (about 150 yards away) so I strangely have traffic noises to get used to at night. It is a little house with a big open living room, teeny kitchen not quite big enough for both my stove and fridge, standard bathroom where I’ll be bucket bathing still, and two bedrooms. The paint was a child-ate-peas-puke-green and peeling grossly along with the crumbling walls. The floors are made of big bricks. I have a fair sized backyard with various fruit trees/plants: lemon, grapefruit, banana, orange. I’m thrilled about that. So I’ve spent the week painting the walls with a lime-and-water mixture that I’m sure is great for me and the environment and cleaning a bunch. There is a bed that came with the house but it was grey Thursday so I couldn’t put it out in the sun or beat it so I ended up putting my yoga mat and air mattress on the big table and sleeping there. Other than that first night though, I’ve been in my new-to-me bed. The house is coming along, but I still have no clue where to put clothes and need to figure out a way to make it so the lime doesn’t come off on whatever touches it.
I’ve been thinking the past few days of how happy I am to be in my own house. Throughout September I felt like I was looking for any excuse to get out of site for a night or an afternoon but now I am so content to stay here and do random home improvement tasks. I’ve started sewing my own curtains by hand. I’m planning on making myself a bookshelf and some storage shelves for clothes and (separately) kitchenware. I don’t think I realized that I was in a bit of a funk during September. Obviously my sister’s visit and the fabulous Buenos Aires vacation were excellent but afterwards I was dragging a bit. Anyway, I just feel like I’m finally getting settled and can actually be an adult rather than a teenager (which is how I frequently felt in the house with two teenagers and my host parents).
My work life is going pretty well right now, with a few kinks. I started sex ed with a group of high schoolers yesterday and it went extremely smoothly. There are two girls from the class who have elected to help me out with sex ed for the month. They’ll get certificates at the end, though when I told them that, they said that I should only give them the certificates if they’ve earned them. I love these two girls! They’ve agreed to help me out with sex ed not only with their own class but with other classes, shifts (I don’t know what else to call them—they’re morning, but they’ll help with afternoon and night), and even another high school in the area. I’m really thrilled about this. The class we worked with yesterday was 60 students so if we actually work with all the classes we want to, we would end up training/educating more than 300 students. I was thinking the other day that if I really only teach teenagers about sex ed, parts of the body, HIV/AIDS, STDs, birth control, and how to put a condom on I can feel good about my work.
In the elementary schools, the cardboard project is still going strong, but I’m going into the office today to see if the health office has a set of big teeth available for tooth brushing charlas. I’ve just started star charts with my three favorite children because their dental hygiene is so amazingly poor. They all have visible cavities and some rotten out teeth. With a star chart you can have them mark when they brush their teeth (the goal is obviously twice a day) and then after ten days as long as they’ve been brushing they get a prize. We used these a lot at Rosemont, where I worked with the teenage girls with behavioral and substance abuse problems, and they were frequently very effective. You can change the target behavior to really anything. Those three favorite kids came over yesterday to color and hang out. Their baby brother has been sick in the hospital for the past few weeks and their single mother is with him. The three kids (ages 6, 8, and 9) have been left with their older brother who is 16. A couple of days ago I realized that they are absolutely not eating anything other than what they get at the comedor for breakfast and lunch on weekdays. Weekends they simply aren’t eating. This is obviously a heartbreaking realization for many reasons, and made me think of all of the other things that are happening within the community that I’m totally missing. They’re coming over Sunday to cook lunch and I’m planning on sending some basic foods for dinners.
On the theme of the comedor, I’m increasingly frustrated. The women are so caddy and gossipy and indirect. It kills me. There is the usual drama but now the temporary president is saying that I should pay to eat there whenever I go. I didn’t even hear this from the women. I was told this yesterday by a nine year old girl. This is nonsense since I’m doing projects with the kids and am always suggesting activities I can do with the women. The problem is that I’m refusing to do all of the work for these possible projects. For example, I said that I would go get the free seeds that a place in Asuncion offers but that someone needed to write a letter to ask for them. This letter can be hand written. It only needs to be about 3 sentences long. I gave the women a manual on how to write letters asking for goods, but somehow it still hasn’t been done. And I will also be in charge of planting the garden and probably working it throughout its life so I thought it appropriate that the women write this letter. My written Spanish is really lacking as well. Anyway, I’m really frustrated and, frankly, at my wits end with the women. I just love the comedor kids so I refuse to abandon the project. My plan is to be super guapa (hard working) to remind them of all the shit I do there. I also only eat there once or twice a week, mostly because they serve so much organ meat which still grosses me out.
OK, sorry about that rampage, but the indirectness here is even worse than it was in Portland, Oregon. I don’t think of myself as a super direct person but I have no tolerance for passive aggressiveness. Otherwise life is good. Friday is bird day so I think I’m going to make some bird masks with the comedor kids and the Abrazo kids (kids who would otherwise be working on the street). Monday was Road Day, which I really did not understand, nor did I celebrate, unless using the roads like normal is considered celebrating…
I’m finally living no my own after 8 months of living with very different host families. After a long search in which I was offered one place with AC for way over half my monthly salary and several places in which I would be in charge of a child or two while parents worked elsewhere during the week I found my current house. It is actually where the last volunteer lived for her last 5 months in site. Since she was only living here for a short time she didn’t put much effort into fixing it up. After her, a family of 5 lived here for a bit. The house is about 5 blocks from my old house. It is closer to the highway (about 150 yards away) so I strangely have traffic noises to get used to at night. It is a little house with a big open living room, teeny kitchen not quite big enough for both my stove and fridge, standard bathroom where I’ll be bucket bathing still, and two bedrooms. The paint was a child-ate-peas-puke-green and peeling grossly along with the crumbling walls. The floors are made of big bricks. I have a fair sized backyard with various fruit trees/plants: lemon, grapefruit, banana, orange. I’m thrilled about that. So I’ve spent the week painting the walls with a lime-and-water mixture that I’m sure is great for me and the environment and cleaning a bunch. There is a bed that came with the house but it was grey Thursday so I couldn’t put it out in the sun or beat it so I ended up putting my yoga mat and air mattress on the big table and sleeping there. Other than that first night though, I’ve been in my new-to-me bed. The house is coming along, but I still have no clue where to put clothes and need to figure out a way to make it so the lime doesn’t come off on whatever touches it.
I’ve been thinking the past few days of how happy I am to be in my own house. Throughout September I felt like I was looking for any excuse to get out of site for a night or an afternoon but now I am so content to stay here and do random home improvement tasks. I’ve started sewing my own curtains by hand. I’m planning on making myself a bookshelf and some storage shelves for clothes and (separately) kitchenware. I don’t think I realized that I was in a bit of a funk during September. Obviously my sister’s visit and the fabulous Buenos Aires vacation were excellent but afterwards I was dragging a bit. Anyway, I just feel like I’m finally getting settled and can actually be an adult rather than a teenager (which is how I frequently felt in the house with two teenagers and my host parents).
My work life is going pretty well right now, with a few kinks. I started sex ed with a group of high schoolers yesterday and it went extremely smoothly. There are two girls from the class who have elected to help me out with sex ed for the month. They’ll get certificates at the end, though when I told them that, they said that I should only give them the certificates if they’ve earned them. I love these two girls! They’ve agreed to help me out with sex ed not only with their own class but with other classes, shifts (I don’t know what else to call them—they’re morning, but they’ll help with afternoon and night), and even another high school in the area. I’m really thrilled about this. The class we worked with yesterday was 60 students so if we actually work with all the classes we want to, we would end up training/educating more than 300 students. I was thinking the other day that if I really only teach teenagers about sex ed, parts of the body, HIV/AIDS, STDs, birth control, and how to put a condom on I can feel good about my work.
In the elementary schools, the cardboard project is still going strong, but I’m going into the office today to see if the health office has a set of big teeth available for tooth brushing charlas. I’ve just started star charts with my three favorite children because their dental hygiene is so amazingly poor. They all have visible cavities and some rotten out teeth. With a star chart you can have them mark when they brush their teeth (the goal is obviously twice a day) and then after ten days as long as they’ve been brushing they get a prize. We used these a lot at Rosemont, where I worked with the teenage girls with behavioral and substance abuse problems, and they were frequently very effective. You can change the target behavior to really anything. Those three favorite kids came over yesterday to color and hang out. Their baby brother has been sick in the hospital for the past few weeks and their single mother is with him. The three kids (ages 6, 8, and 9) have been left with their older brother who is 16. A couple of days ago I realized that they are absolutely not eating anything other than what they get at the comedor for breakfast and lunch on weekdays. Weekends they simply aren’t eating. This is obviously a heartbreaking realization for many reasons, and made me think of all of the other things that are happening within the community that I’m totally missing. They’re coming over Sunday to cook lunch and I’m planning on sending some basic foods for dinners.
On the theme of the comedor, I’m increasingly frustrated. The women are so caddy and gossipy and indirect. It kills me. There is the usual drama but now the temporary president is saying that I should pay to eat there whenever I go. I didn’t even hear this from the women. I was told this yesterday by a nine year old girl. This is nonsense since I’m doing projects with the kids and am always suggesting activities I can do with the women. The problem is that I’m refusing to do all of the work for these possible projects. For example, I said that I would go get the free seeds that a place in Asuncion offers but that someone needed to write a letter to ask for them. This letter can be hand written. It only needs to be about 3 sentences long. I gave the women a manual on how to write letters asking for goods, but somehow it still hasn’t been done. And I will also be in charge of planting the garden and probably working it throughout its life so I thought it appropriate that the women write this letter. My written Spanish is really lacking as well. Anyway, I’m really frustrated and, frankly, at my wits end with the women. I just love the comedor kids so I refuse to abandon the project. My plan is to be super guapa (hard working) to remind them of all the shit I do there. I also only eat there once or twice a week, mostly because they serve so much organ meat which still grosses me out.
OK, sorry about that rampage, but the indirectness here is even worse than it was in Portland, Oregon. I don’t think of myself as a super direct person but I have no tolerance for passive aggressiveness. Otherwise life is good. Friday is bird day so I think I’m going to make some bird masks with the comedor kids and the Abrazo kids (kids who would otherwise be working on the street). Monday was Road Day, which I really did not understand, nor did I celebrate, unless using the roads like normal is considered celebrating…
Buenos Aires, “La Tigra”, and Mannequins, Oh my!
9-16-09
So I spent all of last week in Buenos Aires with my sister, her best friend Liza, and two of my closest Peace Corps friends celebrating my quarter century birthday. It was superb! BA is maybe now my favorite international city, and I spent a great deal of the week fantasizing about what type of work I could do there for a year after my Peace Corps service is done. We basically ate a lot of delicious food (particularly meat) and drank a bunch of wonderful wine. The wine variety was a nice change from the boxed wine and Coke/pineapple soda that is such a Paraguayan staple. One place that really knocked our socks off was in La Boca, in southern BA, where all the houses were painted bright colors. Right by the soccer stadium is a place called Don Carlos, where Don Carlos doesn’t give you options about what you’re having. I believe the only requests were that vegetarian options be provided for my sister and that he brings out chorizo. It was amazing. Francis Ford Coppola randomly recommends it in a New York Times article, claiming it is his favorite restaurant in BA. (Don Carlos brought out the article and the guest book at the very beginning of the meal.) We all walked out wishing we were in elastic-banded pants as I wondered if Don Carlos had a nice son I could marry. Another highlight was Recoleta Cemetery, where a number of rich and famous Argentines are buried, including Eva “Evita” Peron, who is apparently buried 27 feet underground to prevent her body from being stolen again (yes, again). There is also a woman who was buried alive, apparently in a coma. She woke and began screaming but cemetery workers did not get to her in time. Because of this, another man designed a coffin for her that opened from the inside, but when he tested it for the 25th time or so he could not get out and was then himself buried alive. How crazy is that??
My favorite day perhaps was spent going on a train about an hour north of the city to a town called El Tigre. My sister continued to call it La Tigra, which sounds wonderfully cougar like. Porteños (people from BA) ran to El Tigre to escape the yellow fever via the newly constructed railroad in the 1870s. It is an understandable refuge, with 5 rivers converging to create a maze of canals and water ways, framed by beautiful low hanging trees and marshes. We took a two hour tour of some of the islands by boat, but it quickly became evident that most of the people on our boat were locals using it as public transportation. Grocery bags were heaved off at numerous docks, empty water jugs and gas tanks thrown on the top to be filled and returned later. The water ways have everything you would need to live in El Tigre delta, including a school, a health center, and municipality. I expected to see a pretentious BA vacation spot but there was a real mix. I wouldn’t mind going back and perhaps writing a book there…it’s that kind of place.
Anyway, BA was phenomenal to say the very least. The week before Mimi, my sister, came to Paraguay for about 5 days. After some visa issues (read: you need a visa to get into Paraguay), Mimi got in late on Tuesday. I wanted to show her a “typical” day in my life on Wednesday so we went on a walk through my community, went to the comedor (where the kids were absolutely psyched to meet her), then heard some drama/gossip from some of the comedor ladies who just split from the group (that wasn’t planned), then to the internet café to see about free copies for the community census I’m doing with the youth group. We had then planned on going to Abrazo, an organization for kids who would otherwise be working in the streets, to play games and do activities but ran into some kids who said that the organization had a last minute meeting, so it got cancelled. (It is actually appropriate that while trying to show a “typical” day something got cancelled very last minute.) The evening consisted of a youth group meeting during which a 20 year old kid told my 27 year old sister, “If only you weren’t so old and married…” After I translated this, Mimi laughed, pointing out that it was interesting that he didn’t mention the language barrier or the fact that she lives in New York. We then went into Limpio itself and had pizza by candlelight. There was a storm that had apparently knocked out all power in Limpio. The next day found us heading to Villarrica to see (and feed) the carpinchos (capybaras) that I think I’ll have to take every US visitor to go see. (I’m obsessed but so is my entire family.) We had some nice meals with other PCVs, and then headed into the capital for the evening before leaving for BA.
And so, here I am, back in site, diving back into my work. It is getting super hot here. In a charla yesterday the middle school aged kids were worse than ever. I have to really focus on finding my own place to live, hopefully so I can move in on October 1, but we’ll see how that goes. I thought it’d be tough to get back to work but I feel like the projects are still coming at me as fast as ever. I also have tentative plans to start doing sex-ed charlas in October in one local high school. The professor said he had no problem with me teaching kids how to put condoms on mandioca, so I’m psyched for that!
So I spent all of last week in Buenos Aires with my sister, her best friend Liza, and two of my closest Peace Corps friends celebrating my quarter century birthday. It was superb! BA is maybe now my favorite international city, and I spent a great deal of the week fantasizing about what type of work I could do there for a year after my Peace Corps service is done. We basically ate a lot of delicious food (particularly meat) and drank a bunch of wonderful wine. The wine variety was a nice change from the boxed wine and Coke/pineapple soda that is such a Paraguayan staple. One place that really knocked our socks off was in La Boca, in southern BA, where all the houses were painted bright colors. Right by the soccer stadium is a place called Don Carlos, where Don Carlos doesn’t give you options about what you’re having. I believe the only requests were that vegetarian options be provided for my sister and that he brings out chorizo. It was amazing. Francis Ford Coppola randomly recommends it in a New York Times article, claiming it is his favorite restaurant in BA. (Don Carlos brought out the article and the guest book at the very beginning of the meal.) We all walked out wishing we were in elastic-banded pants as I wondered if Don Carlos had a nice son I could marry. Another highlight was Recoleta Cemetery, where a number of rich and famous Argentines are buried, including Eva “Evita” Peron, who is apparently buried 27 feet underground to prevent her body from being stolen again (yes, again). There is also a woman who was buried alive, apparently in a coma. She woke and began screaming but cemetery workers did not get to her in time. Because of this, another man designed a coffin for her that opened from the inside, but when he tested it for the 25th time or so he could not get out and was then himself buried alive. How crazy is that??
My favorite day perhaps was spent going on a train about an hour north of the city to a town called El Tigre. My sister continued to call it La Tigra, which sounds wonderfully cougar like. Porteños (people from BA) ran to El Tigre to escape the yellow fever via the newly constructed railroad in the 1870s. It is an understandable refuge, with 5 rivers converging to create a maze of canals and water ways, framed by beautiful low hanging trees and marshes. We took a two hour tour of some of the islands by boat, but it quickly became evident that most of the people on our boat were locals using it as public transportation. Grocery bags were heaved off at numerous docks, empty water jugs and gas tanks thrown on the top to be filled and returned later. The water ways have everything you would need to live in El Tigre delta, including a school, a health center, and municipality. I expected to see a pretentious BA vacation spot but there was a real mix. I wouldn’t mind going back and perhaps writing a book there…it’s that kind of place.
Anyway, BA was phenomenal to say the very least. The week before Mimi, my sister, came to Paraguay for about 5 days. After some visa issues (read: you need a visa to get into Paraguay), Mimi got in late on Tuesday. I wanted to show her a “typical” day in my life on Wednesday so we went on a walk through my community, went to the comedor (where the kids were absolutely psyched to meet her), then heard some drama/gossip from some of the comedor ladies who just split from the group (that wasn’t planned), then to the internet café to see about free copies for the community census I’m doing with the youth group. We had then planned on going to Abrazo, an organization for kids who would otherwise be working in the streets, to play games and do activities but ran into some kids who said that the organization had a last minute meeting, so it got cancelled. (It is actually appropriate that while trying to show a “typical” day something got cancelled very last minute.) The evening consisted of a youth group meeting during which a 20 year old kid told my 27 year old sister, “If only you weren’t so old and married…” After I translated this, Mimi laughed, pointing out that it was interesting that he didn’t mention the language barrier or the fact that she lives in New York. We then went into Limpio itself and had pizza by candlelight. There was a storm that had apparently knocked out all power in Limpio. The next day found us heading to Villarrica to see (and feed) the carpinchos (capybaras) that I think I’ll have to take every US visitor to go see. (I’m obsessed but so is my entire family.) We had some nice meals with other PCVs, and then headed into the capital for the evening before leaving for BA.
And so, here I am, back in site, diving back into my work. It is getting super hot here. In a charla yesterday the middle school aged kids were worse than ever. I have to really focus on finding my own place to live, hopefully so I can move in on October 1, but we’ll see how that goes. I thought it’d be tough to get back to work but I feel like the projects are still coming at me as fast as ever. I also have tentative plans to start doing sex-ed charlas in October in one local high school. The professor said he had no problem with me teaching kids how to put condoms on mandioca, so I’m psyched for that!
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