Mbaeichapa, Che Cherera Jill, Che Californiagua. Che aiko Guarambarépe!! That is how I introduced myself on the radio show I was on this week, in Guaraní!!! It was so much fun. I then participated in a 3 minuted skit that demonstrated a couple of examples of what Urban Youth Volunteers do. I played the part of the volunteer and the other 2 UYD trainees played the part of youth. We got our 5 min of fame and then sat back and watched the hour long show that 5 Peace Corps Volunteers put on once a week on the 2nd biggest radion station in Paraguay. I was really impressed with how well they did. Getting on the radion in Paraguay is not hard, sometimes radio stations are just a beat up old computer in someone´s house with a micorphone attached somehow and then a stack of CDs next to it! This one was pretty nice though.
Being on the radio was just one of the things we did during our long field practice. I went to a small, rural town called Quiindy. Quiindy is the equivilant to the smallest urban site a UYD volunteer would be placed in and I loved it. So it made me alter my site selection form to say I could be happy in an urban or rural site, so basically put me anywhere you think i´d be happy and where i am needed. The air is cleaner and there is beautiful scenery the farther you get from Asuncion. One girl actually developed asthma in Asuncion so i don´t think i would mind being more out in the country. I find out in a week where I will spend the next 2 years, eek!!
The week was a wonderful insight and motivation into the work I will be doing. We gave 3 charlas, (speeches) during the week. One was on nutrition and we did it with some rural health and sanitation volunteers out in the country in someone´s front yard. Only 2 Paraguayans showed up but it was still really good and those 2 Paraguayans are more informed about nutrition now!
We did a charla on Values in a class of 30 students, all 17 year olds. We did a fun ice breaker, then we handed out pieces of paper that had different things on them like "marrying someone outside my religion or culture" etc....and each student read the paper and said what their family thinks about it. Then we put up a big piece of paper on the board that had all kinds of value on it like "being a virgin when i get married" "buying a house" "having a good job" "living in accordance with my religion" and each student put them in order of what was most important to them. When they were finished I asked if anyone wanted to share, expecting no one to raise their hand, but someone did right away. After she read, every single person read theirs! Then we did a wrap up about how you may have values different than your friend or family and it is important to learn what your values are and live in accordance with them. They were so into the activity. Everyting we did required participation, creativity, getting up out of the desks, etc. They are not used to that kind of thing. Class time is always spent copying word for word, VERY neatly what the teacher says of writes on the board, for hours.
We did team building games in another class but that class was a little more rowdy and the Principal of the school was blabbing for a half hour, so our 1 hour slot got bumped down to a half hour. It was really frustrating but good to see how some charlas will go great and others won´t.
The volunteer we stayed with was awesome and very motivating. She kept saying "you guys did so great, i am so proud of you!" I heard stories about some of the other trainees having horrible volunteers that were telling them to dress nicer and critizing them on their work.
My host family was great in Quiidy as well. The only bad thing about all of long field practice was that one morning I went to the plaza with the other 2 trainees to run. I put my nalgene bottle and tevas in a very hidden spot under a statue in the middle of the plaza. We were literally running in circles around the tiny plaza but somehow a little girl stole my bottle and tevas. (tevas are expensive sandals just in case) It was dumb of me to leave them there but I just didn´t think that would happen. A woman said she saw the girl and pointed at the house she went into so I went clapping at their front door (people don´t have doorbells so you clap outside their gate) The mom came out and said her daughter went to school and insisted the little sister take me to the school to get them back. I went to the school, which happened to be right in front of my host family`s house. My host mom came out and asked what happened. Once she found out she demanded the girl come out of class. That is why host families are great. They got your back! The teacher came out and I felt horrible because everyone was accusing this girl of stealing my stuff but I still wasn´t positive. She said she touched the stuff , then put it back and her "friend" took it. So then she took me to this imaginary friend`s house at whichpoint i realized I didn´t have time for this wild goose chase and gave up. I am sure she passed it off to her friend in class, although what she wants with size 10 Tevas I don´t know. The amount of stuff I own that I value is getting smaller and smaller so pretty soon, if anything goes missing, i bet i won´t miss it.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Sunday, March 25, 2007
I Was Robbed!
Well I did everything The Peace Corps told me to do. I locked my bedroom door every time i left the house. I kept things hidden and never told anyone where they were, not even other volunteers, i did not flash my stuff around. Yet, somehow somebody got in my room and by somebody I mean a family member and stole my camera, along with the camera battery charger and the USB cable. It happened somewhere between last Sunday when i last saw my camera in my suitcase and Friday. Friday afternoon I tore apart my room and had another volunteer help me look. Sure enough it was gone. I know that my host mom has a key to my room, which they are not supposed to have so I am pretty sure my 26 year old host brother got a hold of it and had himself a shopping spree in my room. He has a really bad reputation in town for being a crazy drunk and has come home multiple times with black eyes and swollen cheeks. My host mom always said "he fell down" but I knew someone must have given him what he deserved. When I told my host mom it was missing she acted really strange, normally if i misplace something she helps me look for it or gets really concerned-not this time.
All along I knew something was off with this family. Other people would talk about how their mom´s were so sweet and accomodating. Mine asked me for money and for things to be mailed to them from the states. Other people´s families made them pizza and things they liked every once in awhile. Every once in awhile my family would not even make me dinner, or would give me just rice or just yogurt! Other people had little brothers and sisters they played with, i had a creepy brother older than me that was often very rude and inappropriate. Despite all these things I just kept thinking it was normal, after all i didn´t have anything to compare them to. I´ve never lived with a host family before. My brand new camera was the last straw though. I reported it to my trainer and my Paraguayan house contact person. Within a few hours, they had gone to talk to my mom (i heard she was very upset and defensive) and arranged for me to move out. I went with my Paraguayan language teacher and my American trainer and we packed up my stuff in about 10 min and had it in the Peace Corps SUV and out the door. It´s really kind of liberating to know you can be really pissed off at someone and move out of their house in about 10 min with everything you own and still have the car running outside to drive off in! It sounds dramatic and trust me it was and very uncomfortable!
It was really sad because my 7 year old host nephew had just come to visit for the weekend and he was ready to play with me. He didn´t know what was going on and just watched us pack up from the doorway with really confused eyes. My host mom wouldn´t even look me in the eye when i said goodbye to her, I am sure because she is embarrassed about her son. I never got to say goodbye to my host dad, who actually is a really good guy or the 16 year old brother who is nothing like his older brother. The saddest part was that I spent about half my time at the neighbor´s house, who was my host Aunt. She owned a little dispensa (a tiny store out of her house) so i would go sit with her sometimes and talk, drink tereré or yerba mate with her and listen to her play guitar and sing in Guaraní. She has a beautiful voice and a very warm spirit. When I left she gave me a huge hug and said it affected her too that i was leaving and she hoped I still talked to her!
I spent Friday night at my trainer´s house because they had to find a new family for me. Saturday after class I moved into a new home. They dropped me off and introduced me to my 48 year old host mother and 12 year old host sister. There is no one else in the home but there are Aunts and Uncles and neices next door and accross the street. I went from a mostly male home to a mostly female home. I was tired, still upset about my camera and feeling really disorganized with all my stuff thrown in bags in a pile and was sitting in my new room with about 10 Paraguayans staring at me, ready to make me feel at home. It was a bit overwhelming. The whole street came over to meet the new American girl :)
I left the house and went to another meeting with the grandparent club and I did some fun activities with them and even got to dance with them! I thought we were going to work on getting a garden started but it didn´t happen. They are not sure if they want one now, I heard about the frustration of thinking you are going to get a project going, and then it doesn´t happen the way you would like it to and now i can see what that must be like. The garden was their idea to begin with so I am not that dissapointed, just amused. The singing and dancing cheered me up and then I went home again and unpacked and watched Beethoven dubbed in Spanish with my host mom (how random huh?) and bonded with her and her daughter. My new host mom is awesome. She is very sweet and asks what I like to eat. She calls me corazón and carino, which mean heart and sweetie. I didn´t eat dinner with them because she really didn´t have any food in the house since she wasnt prepared for me to come. My fellow trainees and I went out for hamburgers instead, well i had a burger with fried egg instead of a patty and then we had a few drinks. It was a lot of fun and at one point I was trying to talk about the abuelo club and everyone was involved in their own conversations and I said "i feel like i am in California right now when i always tried to talk about my job with older adults and my friends back home didn´t really care to listen there either!" Funny how in Paraguay I found a way to do it again! They said "okay, Jill go ahead and tell your story.....only because you got robbed"
I lost a camera and a lot of pictures but I am still safe, happy and healthy. It was kind of a blessing because it got me out of the house. I am going to try to live without a camera until August when another volunteer´s parents are coming to visit. They will be able to bring me a new one if i have it mailed to their home in the U.S. or reimburse them. Until then, I will still be able to have pictures taken on other volunteer´s cameras and I still have 2 years here to take pictures.
Tomorrow morning I leave for my long field practice with 2 other trainees. The 3 of us, along with our language teacher are going to Quiindy (pronounced keendoo) and we will each stay with a host family of our own and for a week basically shadow and work with a volunteer who has been here a year. Quiindy is about 2 hours from Guarambaré so I¨ll get to see a little more of the country. I am excited for the trip and the practice. When we get back on Friday, there will only be 4 more weeks of training. It will go by really fast because in those 4 weeks, there will be Semana Santa celebrations (Easter week) we find out our sites and visit our future sites to find housing and have goodbye parties with our host community and we have our swearing in ceremony at the U.S Embassy! Not to mention still cramming in more language classes and other things we will need to know and learn before we head off on our own.
I turn in my paper tomorrow that says what i want in a site and I think i sound so wishy washy they will priobably put me wherever they want! Its hard to know if i want to be a follow-up volunteer or if i want to be the first volunteer in that site, or if I want to be more rural or urban when i really have only seen more urban areas so far, or if i want to work in schools or if i would rather work with non-profit agencies. I keep thinking I don´t know but our trainers know us pretty well and I have heard they always do a good job with matching our skills and personality with a site. We will see! I did express that I would prefer more urban areas and that I would like to have more than one school in my site and the opportunities to continue working with things like older adults as side projects. Maybe I don´t sound as free flowing as I thought. No matter what, it will be up to me to make it what I want and to keep on keepin on!
All along I knew something was off with this family. Other people would talk about how their mom´s were so sweet and accomodating. Mine asked me for money and for things to be mailed to them from the states. Other people´s families made them pizza and things they liked every once in awhile. Every once in awhile my family would not even make me dinner, or would give me just rice or just yogurt! Other people had little brothers and sisters they played with, i had a creepy brother older than me that was often very rude and inappropriate. Despite all these things I just kept thinking it was normal, after all i didn´t have anything to compare them to. I´ve never lived with a host family before. My brand new camera was the last straw though. I reported it to my trainer and my Paraguayan house contact person. Within a few hours, they had gone to talk to my mom (i heard she was very upset and defensive) and arranged for me to move out. I went with my Paraguayan language teacher and my American trainer and we packed up my stuff in about 10 min and had it in the Peace Corps SUV and out the door. It´s really kind of liberating to know you can be really pissed off at someone and move out of their house in about 10 min with everything you own and still have the car running outside to drive off in! It sounds dramatic and trust me it was and very uncomfortable!
It was really sad because my 7 year old host nephew had just come to visit for the weekend and he was ready to play with me. He didn´t know what was going on and just watched us pack up from the doorway with really confused eyes. My host mom wouldn´t even look me in the eye when i said goodbye to her, I am sure because she is embarrassed about her son. I never got to say goodbye to my host dad, who actually is a really good guy or the 16 year old brother who is nothing like his older brother. The saddest part was that I spent about half my time at the neighbor´s house, who was my host Aunt. She owned a little dispensa (a tiny store out of her house) so i would go sit with her sometimes and talk, drink tereré or yerba mate with her and listen to her play guitar and sing in Guaraní. She has a beautiful voice and a very warm spirit. When I left she gave me a huge hug and said it affected her too that i was leaving and she hoped I still talked to her!
I spent Friday night at my trainer´s house because they had to find a new family for me. Saturday after class I moved into a new home. They dropped me off and introduced me to my 48 year old host mother and 12 year old host sister. There is no one else in the home but there are Aunts and Uncles and neices next door and accross the street. I went from a mostly male home to a mostly female home. I was tired, still upset about my camera and feeling really disorganized with all my stuff thrown in bags in a pile and was sitting in my new room with about 10 Paraguayans staring at me, ready to make me feel at home. It was a bit overwhelming. The whole street came over to meet the new American girl :)
I left the house and went to another meeting with the grandparent club and I did some fun activities with them and even got to dance with them! I thought we were going to work on getting a garden started but it didn´t happen. They are not sure if they want one now, I heard about the frustration of thinking you are going to get a project going, and then it doesn´t happen the way you would like it to and now i can see what that must be like. The garden was their idea to begin with so I am not that dissapointed, just amused. The singing and dancing cheered me up and then I went home again and unpacked and watched Beethoven dubbed in Spanish with my host mom (how random huh?) and bonded with her and her daughter. My new host mom is awesome. She is very sweet and asks what I like to eat. She calls me corazón and carino, which mean heart and sweetie. I didn´t eat dinner with them because she really didn´t have any food in the house since she wasnt prepared for me to come. My fellow trainees and I went out for hamburgers instead, well i had a burger with fried egg instead of a patty and then we had a few drinks. It was a lot of fun and at one point I was trying to talk about the abuelo club and everyone was involved in their own conversations and I said "i feel like i am in California right now when i always tried to talk about my job with older adults and my friends back home didn´t really care to listen there either!" Funny how in Paraguay I found a way to do it again! They said "okay, Jill go ahead and tell your story.....only because you got robbed"
I lost a camera and a lot of pictures but I am still safe, happy and healthy. It was kind of a blessing because it got me out of the house. I am going to try to live without a camera until August when another volunteer´s parents are coming to visit. They will be able to bring me a new one if i have it mailed to their home in the U.S. or reimburse them. Until then, I will still be able to have pictures taken on other volunteer´s cameras and I still have 2 years here to take pictures.
Tomorrow morning I leave for my long field practice with 2 other trainees. The 3 of us, along with our language teacher are going to Quiindy (pronounced keendoo) and we will each stay with a host family of our own and for a week basically shadow and work with a volunteer who has been here a year. Quiindy is about 2 hours from Guarambaré so I¨ll get to see a little more of the country. I am excited for the trip and the practice. When we get back on Friday, there will only be 4 more weeks of training. It will go by really fast because in those 4 weeks, there will be Semana Santa celebrations (Easter week) we find out our sites and visit our future sites to find housing and have goodbye parties with our host community and we have our swearing in ceremony at the U.S Embassy! Not to mention still cramming in more language classes and other things we will need to know and learn before we head off on our own.
I turn in my paper tomorrow that says what i want in a site and I think i sound so wishy washy they will priobably put me wherever they want! Its hard to know if i want to be a follow-up volunteer or if i want to be the first volunteer in that site, or if I want to be more rural or urban when i really have only seen more urban areas so far, or if i want to work in schools or if i would rather work with non-profit agencies. I keep thinking I don´t know but our trainers know us pretty well and I have heard they always do a good job with matching our skills and personality with a site. We will see! I did express that I would prefer more urban areas and that I would like to have more than one school in my site and the opportunities to continue working with things like older adults as side projects. Maybe I don´t sound as free flowing as I thought. No matter what, it will be up to me to make it what I want and to keep on keepin on!
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Excursion
On Friday afternoon, each group went on an excursion to get out of town and have a break from host family and training life. The Urban Youth Development group i think had the best excursion by far. We went to a camp that was founded by an Amercian named Jack Norment years ago and stayed the night. It was just like an american camp back home with cabins and bunk beds and everything.
We found a frozen yogurt place on the way and made our driver pull over and let us get our fix of American sweets. When we arrived at camp, we were led through a series of "challenges" by two Paraguayan camp leaders. We had to use teamwork to do things like cross over a "swamp" using only two pieces of wood, stand on a blance beam and figure out a way to organize ourselves according to birth date and not step off the beam, etc. It was a lot of fun, especially since i never really went away to camp when i was litte. After the activities we went swimming in the only swimming pool we have seen in Paraguay. All of us said we would never go swimming in a pool that dirty back home but we were so happy to get cooled off that we all jumped in at the same time.
We had pizza for dinner and were feeling on top of the world. After dinner we had a bonfire and I busted out my firedancing for everyone with my homemade equipment. Finally my group was able to see what my hidden talent was all about and they cheered me on as i danced around and twirled my fire poi. I was able to find some kerosene and was glad it worked just as well as lamp oil that i used back home. We had our Ipods out and we had a great time.
We stayed up late talking like we were having a slumber party and the next moring woke up early for a morning hike. We hiked two and half hours through a really poor, poor village, then up a mountain that gave us a view of the town below - Caacupé. The biggest church in all of Paraguay is in Caacupé and we could see it from the top of the mountain. A few people got attacked by these strange wasp-like insects that were obviously protecting their home or something. I was so glad i didn´t get stung. The surroundings were so incredibly beautiful on the hike, it felt like i was just back in California doing what I would normally do on a saturday in Chico. I had to remind myself that I was in Paraguay, hiking with people i didn´t even know a month ago and I thought "how cool is this?!"
We returned home that afternoon and I immediately changed my clothes and went a meeting with the abuelo club (grandparent club) I have been talking with the woman who runs it and I am going to be working with them for my project in training. We were given the mission-goal of finding someone in the community to network with and then develop some sort of work related activity to utilize what we have been learning in classes. I am supposed to be working with youth but i was so excited to find the older adult club that i went with that. I am going to help them get the ground ready for a garden next saturday and I am going to lead some sort of activity with them as well. They are so lively and fun so it will be easy. Yesterday they sang songs and did excercised and read poems by mother theresa!
I also observed a class last week and will be working with the director of the school to organize a volleyball game during recess on Friday.
It feels good to be getting involved in the community and feeling integrated. This week we will be in Guarambaré all week for a regual week of training and next Sunday we have our Practica larga. We will go spend a week with a volunteer in their site and work with them to get an even better feel for what we will be doing in the future.
This week we have an interview with our director to express to them what we want in a site, i-e small town, big town, another volunteer in site, more rural, more city, etc. In the end, we dont get to choose but we get to express our desires anyways. Keep your fingers crossed that i get what i want! I find out April 9th!
We found a frozen yogurt place on the way and made our driver pull over and let us get our fix of American sweets. When we arrived at camp, we were led through a series of "challenges" by two Paraguayan camp leaders. We had to use teamwork to do things like cross over a "swamp" using only two pieces of wood, stand on a blance beam and figure out a way to organize ourselves according to birth date and not step off the beam, etc. It was a lot of fun, especially since i never really went away to camp when i was litte. After the activities we went swimming in the only swimming pool we have seen in Paraguay. All of us said we would never go swimming in a pool that dirty back home but we were so happy to get cooled off that we all jumped in at the same time.
We had pizza for dinner and were feeling on top of the world. After dinner we had a bonfire and I busted out my firedancing for everyone with my homemade equipment. Finally my group was able to see what my hidden talent was all about and they cheered me on as i danced around and twirled my fire poi. I was able to find some kerosene and was glad it worked just as well as lamp oil that i used back home. We had our Ipods out and we had a great time.
We stayed up late talking like we were having a slumber party and the next moring woke up early for a morning hike. We hiked two and half hours through a really poor, poor village, then up a mountain that gave us a view of the town below - Caacupé. The biggest church in all of Paraguay is in Caacupé and we could see it from the top of the mountain. A few people got attacked by these strange wasp-like insects that were obviously protecting their home or something. I was so glad i didn´t get stung. The surroundings were so incredibly beautiful on the hike, it felt like i was just back in California doing what I would normally do on a saturday in Chico. I had to remind myself that I was in Paraguay, hiking with people i didn´t even know a month ago and I thought "how cool is this?!"
We returned home that afternoon and I immediately changed my clothes and went a meeting with the abuelo club (grandparent club) I have been talking with the woman who runs it and I am going to be working with them for my project in training. We were given the mission-goal of finding someone in the community to network with and then develop some sort of work related activity to utilize what we have been learning in classes. I am supposed to be working with youth but i was so excited to find the older adult club that i went with that. I am going to help them get the ground ready for a garden next saturday and I am going to lead some sort of activity with them as well. They are so lively and fun so it will be easy. Yesterday they sang songs and did excercised and read poems by mother theresa!
I also observed a class last week and will be working with the director of the school to organize a volleyball game during recess on Friday.
It feels good to be getting involved in the community and feeling integrated. This week we will be in Guarambaré all week for a regual week of training and next Sunday we have our Practica larga. We will go spend a week with a volunteer in their site and work with them to get an even better feel for what we will be doing in the future.
This week we have an interview with our director to express to them what we want in a site, i-e small town, big town, another volunteer in site, more rural, more city, etc. In the end, we dont get to choose but we get to express our desires anyways. Keep your fingers crossed that i get what i want! I find out April 9th!
The Post Office
Our postal lady forgot to come to our school this week so I decided to track down the post office in Guarambaré to mail my letters myself. I followed the directions i was given and found the post office, which in reality is the postal lady´s house. Her house IS the post office. Sure enough, there was a little flag and a symbol on her front porch that said "correos" which means mail. She saw us walk up to the gate and said very enthusiastically "come on in girls, i am just working on mailing the letters from your group!" We went into her front room, aka the post office and she told us about how she has been running the post office for 27 years, all on her own. Before her i don´t think there was a post office. Paraguayans just don´t really use mail like we do. If you addressed a letter to a person in this town, you would literally have to write the name of the biggest street closest to the house, then like "5 trails past the main road, 4th house on the left" and that is how the letter might get there. she brought out two big photo albums and showed us pictures of all the traditional dances shé has been involved in over the years, pics of her family and even pictures of the 7 Peace Corps volunteers she has hosted in the past. They were volunteers from the 70s and 80s!! It was so trippy to see those pics and wonder what their experience must have been like 20 years ago!
After a long time of chatting and hearing stories, she eventually sat down and weighed our letters, taped down our envelopes, put stamps on them and changed our money. This whole process took about 40 min. when i left i just thought "if people back home knew this is how their letters and postcards got to them, they would laugh hysterically" So...now you know.
After a long time of chatting and hearing stories, she eventually sat down and weighed our letters, taped down our envelopes, put stamps on them and changed our money. This whole process took about 40 min. when i left i just thought "if people back home knew this is how their letters and postcards got to them, they would laugh hysterically" So...now you know.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Cooking with Soy
Despite the fact 3 trainees are going home, it was a good week. One day The Urban Youth group got to go out to a more rural area, where the rural health and sanitation trainees live and learned how to make soy empenadas. It was so much fun and nice break from sitting in a classroom. We peeled skins off the soy beans, cooked them, cooled them, blended them into soy milk, then we drained the soy milk in this special cloth. That left the soymilk with this paste that we then mixed with some cooked, minced vegetables and rolled that into the empenada. It was so good and I was so thrilled to be eating soy. We did all this outside on a big table with a small group of trainees and Paraguayans. We also made salad (Paraguayans like their salad, if they ever eat a salad with the vegetables chopped very, very tiny and no lettuce) I brought one home for my host family to try and they liked it so they want me to make it for dinner tomorrow night. I found some premade soy at the store that i hope will work.
I had a bit of an issue this week with my host family because they asked me for money for the electric bill and we are NOT supposed to be paying for anything. Peace Corps is paying our families directly for all our costs. Peace Corps talked to my family and they said they are charging me because I use the iron a lot, i only use it once a week!! So, now i have to find someone outside the house to do my laundry to avoid any drama. It is frustrating that they think we have a lot of money, when we are not making hardly anything! Our allowance is 3 dollars a day, which goes far here but sometimes i think Paraguayans think we must be getting paid a lot if we left behind good jobs to come down here.
There was a big storm this weekend, I have never seen so much thunder and lightening in my life, I was actually pretty scared and felt like a little kid with the sheet over my head at night! The roads are dirt so it´s sometimes impossible to cross the street because there is a 3 foot river in front of the house. I just stromped through it with my Tevas on! But Paraguayans don´t go anywhere if it rains.
It is cooling down a bit and we just set our clocks back an hour to get ready for Fall. I now have to use hot water in the shower, which means I have to turn the water on, then flip an electric switch, yes you heard me electric! Then when you´re done, you flip the switch off and then turn the water off. If you mix up the order or forget the switch is on and touch the metal handle on the shower, watch out, you might get woken up with a big shock in the morning! This hasn´t happened to me yet.
It has become really normal for me to see huge bugs everywhere, in the shower, on my bed, on the walls, in the internet cafe, wherever. I don´t even think twice about drinking a glass of water with a tiny bug in it anymore either.
The one thing i am not getting used to is the dogs. They are everywhere, they are skinny, sick, dirty, and many times look like they are in a lot of pain because they got hit by a car. I will never get used to seeing people kick them either. I may try to adopt a puppy when i get to my site but then i don´t want to think about what would happen to it when i leave. It would be nice to have the protection and the company though.
Hope you are all well and enjoying the last of winter! I am enjoying the last of summer!
I had a bit of an issue this week with my host family because they asked me for money for the electric bill and we are NOT supposed to be paying for anything. Peace Corps is paying our families directly for all our costs. Peace Corps talked to my family and they said they are charging me because I use the iron a lot, i only use it once a week!! So, now i have to find someone outside the house to do my laundry to avoid any drama. It is frustrating that they think we have a lot of money, when we are not making hardly anything! Our allowance is 3 dollars a day, which goes far here but sometimes i think Paraguayans think we must be getting paid a lot if we left behind good jobs to come down here.
There was a big storm this weekend, I have never seen so much thunder and lightening in my life, I was actually pretty scared and felt like a little kid with the sheet over my head at night! The roads are dirt so it´s sometimes impossible to cross the street because there is a 3 foot river in front of the house. I just stromped through it with my Tevas on! But Paraguayans don´t go anywhere if it rains.
It is cooling down a bit and we just set our clocks back an hour to get ready for Fall. I now have to use hot water in the shower, which means I have to turn the water on, then flip an electric switch, yes you heard me electric! Then when you´re done, you flip the switch off and then turn the water off. If you mix up the order or forget the switch is on and touch the metal handle on the shower, watch out, you might get woken up with a big shock in the morning! This hasn´t happened to me yet.
It has become really normal for me to see huge bugs everywhere, in the shower, on my bed, on the walls, in the internet cafe, wherever. I don´t even think twice about drinking a glass of water with a tiny bug in it anymore either.
The one thing i am not getting used to is the dogs. They are everywhere, they are skinny, sick, dirty, and many times look like they are in a lot of pain because they got hit by a car. I will never get used to seeing people kick them either. I may try to adopt a puppy when i get to my site but then i don´t want to think about what would happen to it when i leave. It would be nice to have the protection and the company though.
Hope you are all well and enjoying the last of winter! I am enjoying the last of summer!
Down 3
I just finished week 4 of training. 7 more weeks to go still! Time is going by fast because we are kept so busy but the days in training are getting longer. I am learning a lot and our trainers are great but I can see how by the end of the 11 weeks we will be so ready to get out there and start experiencing what we´ve been preparing for.
This last week has been pretty hard for a lot of people. I think a month has given us a really good picture of what we are here to do, what our job is going to look like. The initial exitement of being in Paraguay, the "honeymoon phase" has worn off and by now almost all of us have experienced some sort of medical problem or personal problem. By now, at least a few rumors have been spread about us by the community (not really bad gossip, just gossip) , we are growing tired of the food, or the fact we don´t really have the option yet to cook for ourselves and we are starting to miss things at home. Whether that be friends, family, boy/girl friends, food, pets, etc. Some people´s grandparents are sick at home and others have started to wonder why they left their careers to come here. With all these challenges 3 people have decided this isn´t right for them and are going home. One girl left because her project got changed once she got here and she did not want to work in Education. She thought she was going to be doing Urban Youth like me but there was an error on the paperwork. She left last week. After her, a guy left and we´re really not sure what the whole story was but we think it had something to do with his personal issues with The Peace Corps. We all really loved him, he was so happy, upbeat and friendly. He left a few days ago. The third person is leaving on Tuesday and she just didn´t feel this was a good fit. She left a job at CNN to come down here and I think she just couldn´t picture herself doing this for 2 years. There was another girl in our group that never even made it on the plane because she got in a skiing accident a week before our departure and The Peace Corps told her she needed to wait for another assignment, even though i hear she was not seriously injured. We all still wonder what it would have been like to have her here with us.
Every time someone leaves, whether you liked them or not, it changes the group dynamic and there is huge disspointment on the part of fellow trainees, staff and Paraguayans. It also messes with our heads because it reminds us the door to home is always open, we are not under any sort of contract, which can be a distraction in hard times. Every 3 or 4 months a new group comes in and a group leaves. We are G'23, Guarambaré 23. G17 is about to leave. I heard there was one group recently where like half the people didnt make it. Statistically I read 33 percent will not make it the whole 2 years. With that in mind, i decided to share a letter our Country Director wrote for friends and family of volunteers back home!
On March 1, 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed the Executive Order creating The Peace Corps. This year, the agency celebrates its 46th anniversary. 2007 also marks the 40th anniversary of continuous service for the Peace Corps here in Paraguay. In honor of these events, I have shared the following thoughts with Volunteers and staff here in Paraguay and encouraged them to in turn share them with friends and family at home if they wish.
Being a Peace Corps Volunteer is one of the most honorable and indescribable experiences a person will ever endeavor upon. It tests just about every aspect of an individual´s character...creativity, patience, perserverance, dedication, commitment, humility, resilience, maturity and sense of humor to name a few. Serving in Paraguay requires Volunteers to be persistent in understanding how cultures come together to influence community development, education, norms, and beliefs. while the Volunteer has many support systems to help achieve Peace Corps´s three goals, in reality the lion´s share of the responsibility, and opportunity lie with the Volunteer. The Volunteer experience demands self motivation, self'determination and the ability to work with little if any supervision. The Volunteer must draw from their inner strength to donfront the all too frequent disapointments and detours. Peace Corps prepares local communities and agencies for a volunteer´s arrival by introducing the concept of volunteerismn, the background of Peace Corps, and the framework for the Volunteers´s work, but in reality the Volunteer must learn to artfully describe why they are there, what they hope to contribute, and motivate and inspire others to work with them. It is this real "art of community development" and not the mythical "paint by the numbers" community development that is in fact the essence of the challenge and joy of serving in the Peace Corps. The Volunteer must learn to redefine success. He/She must recognize success in the small and perhaps almost invisible changes that occur. He/she must recognize success in those who have never felt that emotion in the past.
As Country Director here in Paraguay, I want to thank you as family and friends for "loaning" us your child, sibling, grandchild, neighbor or boy/girlfriend. We are committed to supporting Volunteers as best we can to help them achieve Peace Corps three goals with Paraguayans in the communities where they live. Over the years I have been associated with Peace Corps, beginning as a Volunteer here in Paraguay between 1985 and 1988, I have grown to realize that the PC experience is a "family affair" defining "family" quite broadly. With emails, blogs, skype, and cell phones the Volunteer of today shares their experience generously and almost simultaneously. You all are experiencing ups and downs of being a Volunteer with a Volunteer.
Thank you for supporting "your" Volunteer, but at the same time please recognize that at the end of the day, this is an individual adventure. To really get the very most out of the 2 years, the Volunteer must learn as much as possible about him or herself and work diligently and strategically to meet the goals the Peace Corps is holding the Volunteer accountable for. We encourage the Volunteer to share the excitement and frustration of service with you, while at the same time encouraging the Volunteer to "be here in Paraguay" as completely as possible.
It is an honor to serve as a Country Director. I take my job very seriously. Although the ultimate responsibility for keeping a Volunteer safe, healthy, productive and satisfied lies with the Volunteer him/herself, the dedicated staff, and I personally, will work very hard to assist the Volunteer in that quest.
By best wishes for wonderful 2007.
Michael Eschleman
Paraguay Country Director
This last week has been pretty hard for a lot of people. I think a month has given us a really good picture of what we are here to do, what our job is going to look like. The initial exitement of being in Paraguay, the "honeymoon phase" has worn off and by now almost all of us have experienced some sort of medical problem or personal problem. By now, at least a few rumors have been spread about us by the community (not really bad gossip, just gossip) , we are growing tired of the food, or the fact we don´t really have the option yet to cook for ourselves and we are starting to miss things at home. Whether that be friends, family, boy/girl friends, food, pets, etc. Some people´s grandparents are sick at home and others have started to wonder why they left their careers to come here. With all these challenges 3 people have decided this isn´t right for them and are going home. One girl left because her project got changed once she got here and she did not want to work in Education. She thought she was going to be doing Urban Youth like me but there was an error on the paperwork. She left last week. After her, a guy left and we´re really not sure what the whole story was but we think it had something to do with his personal issues with The Peace Corps. We all really loved him, he was so happy, upbeat and friendly. He left a few days ago. The third person is leaving on Tuesday and she just didn´t feel this was a good fit. She left a job at CNN to come down here and I think she just couldn´t picture herself doing this for 2 years. There was another girl in our group that never even made it on the plane because she got in a skiing accident a week before our departure and The Peace Corps told her she needed to wait for another assignment, even though i hear she was not seriously injured. We all still wonder what it would have been like to have her here with us.
Every time someone leaves, whether you liked them or not, it changes the group dynamic and there is huge disspointment on the part of fellow trainees, staff and Paraguayans. It also messes with our heads because it reminds us the door to home is always open, we are not under any sort of contract, which can be a distraction in hard times. Every 3 or 4 months a new group comes in and a group leaves. We are G'23, Guarambaré 23. G17 is about to leave. I heard there was one group recently where like half the people didnt make it. Statistically I read 33 percent will not make it the whole 2 years. With that in mind, i decided to share a letter our Country Director wrote for friends and family of volunteers back home!
On March 1, 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed the Executive Order creating The Peace Corps. This year, the agency celebrates its 46th anniversary. 2007 also marks the 40th anniversary of continuous service for the Peace Corps here in Paraguay. In honor of these events, I have shared the following thoughts with Volunteers and staff here in Paraguay and encouraged them to in turn share them with friends and family at home if they wish.
Being a Peace Corps Volunteer is one of the most honorable and indescribable experiences a person will ever endeavor upon. It tests just about every aspect of an individual´s character...creativity, patience, perserverance, dedication, commitment, humility, resilience, maturity and sense of humor to name a few. Serving in Paraguay requires Volunteers to be persistent in understanding how cultures come together to influence community development, education, norms, and beliefs. while the Volunteer has many support systems to help achieve Peace Corps´s three goals, in reality the lion´s share of the responsibility, and opportunity lie with the Volunteer. The Volunteer experience demands self motivation, self'determination and the ability to work with little if any supervision. The Volunteer must draw from their inner strength to donfront the all too frequent disapointments and detours. Peace Corps prepares local communities and agencies for a volunteer´s arrival by introducing the concept of volunteerismn, the background of Peace Corps, and the framework for the Volunteers´s work, but in reality the Volunteer must learn to artfully describe why they are there, what they hope to contribute, and motivate and inspire others to work with them. It is this real "art of community development" and not the mythical "paint by the numbers" community development that is in fact the essence of the challenge and joy of serving in the Peace Corps. The Volunteer must learn to redefine success. He/She must recognize success in the small and perhaps almost invisible changes that occur. He/she must recognize success in those who have never felt that emotion in the past.
As Country Director here in Paraguay, I want to thank you as family and friends for "loaning" us your child, sibling, grandchild, neighbor or boy/girlfriend. We are committed to supporting Volunteers as best we can to help them achieve Peace Corps three goals with Paraguayans in the communities where they live. Over the years I have been associated with Peace Corps, beginning as a Volunteer here in Paraguay between 1985 and 1988, I have grown to realize that the PC experience is a "family affair" defining "family" quite broadly. With emails, blogs, skype, and cell phones the Volunteer of today shares their experience generously and almost simultaneously. You all are experiencing ups and downs of being a Volunteer with a Volunteer.
Thank you for supporting "your" Volunteer, but at the same time please recognize that at the end of the day, this is an individual adventure. To really get the very most out of the 2 years, the Volunteer must learn as much as possible about him or herself and work diligently and strategically to meet the goals the Peace Corps is holding the Volunteer accountable for. We encourage the Volunteer to share the excitement and frustration of service with you, while at the same time encouraging the Volunteer to "be here in Paraguay" as completely as possible.
It is an honor to serve as a Country Director. I take my job very seriously. Although the ultimate responsibility for keeping a Volunteer safe, healthy, productive and satisfied lies with the Volunteer him/herself, the dedicated staff, and I personally, will work very hard to assist the Volunteer in that quest.
By best wishes for wonderful 2007.
Michael Eschleman
Paraguay Country Director
Thursday, March 1, 2007
I just wanted to make a quick note that the picture of the road is a road right near my house. Only 25% of the roads in Paraguay are paved. The picture of the family is my host family right now. From left to right it´s the maid (yes, i said maid-she doesnt work for my host family anymore because she was charging too much, I´m told) then my host mom sitting down, her son Jose standing up, he is 16 and then my host mom´s nephew David, he´s so cute, he´s 7 and he is being raised by his grandma sitting accross from him. Not pictured is my host dad and my older host brother, Alexis who is 26. And these two pictures are of my room and the kitchen sink. That´s right-kitchen sink. this is where they brush their teeth, wash their clothes and wash the dishes! I learned how to wash my clothes in this sink. But i suck at it and i started paying someone else to wash them. At first i wanted to be independent but I learned they actually like to do it because it provides someone an extra income and they are so much better at it than we are. I will probably have to do my own washing when i get to my site and I still have to wash my own underwear. We have to iron everything, even underwear because flies land on your clothes and could lay eggs in them, so the iron kills yuckies! It costs 10 mil for 12 articles of clothing, which is 2 dollars. Keep I know...but 10 mil works like dollars here to them. 10 mil will buy you a movie in the capital, a nice meal at a restaurant, etc.
The mosquito net in my room is a Peace Corps requirement and i would get eaten alive every night if i didn´t use it! I have a bed (twin size) and a table in my room and that´s it. :) The tree next to the kitchen sink is a guava tree, we have fresh juice made from the fruit almost every day. It is almost avocado season and i heard there will be so many people throw them away! Oh yes, and bannana season is coming too! They are smaller bannanas than we are used to because they are organic! And the avocados are huge and organic! They taste a little different but are so good!
The night before last, I was in a lot of pain due to my ear infection and I sat down at the table to eat dinner. My host dad was trying to teach me Guaraní like he does everyday but it´s not really teaching, it´s like pointing at stuff and saying "tree, cat, dog, table, ball, etc" I was not in the mood but kept smiling. Then my host mom brought out the dinner and it was a bowl of soup with a giant fish in the middle. Like, the whole fish, head, eyeballs, tail, fins, skin and everything! I have already informed them i don´t eat meat and so far, they´ve been pretty good about it. I have been eating a lot of carbs and greasy stuff but i don´t complain as long as there is no meat. I could not eat the fish though, so i said as politely as I could that i didn´t know how to eat it and she was kind enough to take it out of my soup. So i had fish broth for dinner that night and nothing else. I went to bed hungry and in a bad mood and in a lot of pain. The next day was a lot better though. We had onion soup. I really hope we´re not having soup for dinner tonight because I am a little sick of soup and bread :)
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