We only had 3 days of class this week due to Semana Santa (Easter week) Semana Santa here is a bit different than it was in Spain. In Spain there were huge parties and celebrations on the street and parades. Here, people go to church a lot, for hours and hours and they eat a lot of food. The thing they eat the most of this week is chipa. Chipa is a bread like treat that they make from homemade dough and cook in an outdoor brick oven that looks like an igloo. All day Wednesday people just make chipa. Everywhere you go, every family is making chipa. We made it with families in class on Wednesday for 4 hours! My hands were so tired from kneading the dough. Then we ate a ton of it, I actually really like it, other people hate it. When I got home, I was so tired I just wanted to rest but there were about 7 people in my kitchen making chipa with my host mom. So, I sucked it up and put on my "Yay, we´re making more chipa" face and made chipa for another hour or so! I´ve eaten so much chipa, I´ve probably gained 5 lbs this week. Of course my clothes are getting so stretched out from all the hand washings, it doesn´t really matter! In addition to the chipa Paraguayans eat a lot of pork, Thursday felt like the equivalent to our Thanksgiving. The whole family gets together and eats a ton of food. By the time Sunday gets around, it feels like Easter is over. Nobody really does anything on Sunday, they have been celebrating for a week and people need to get ready to go back to work on Monday so they go back to their normal routines. I woke up the other day to the sound of a pig being slaughtered for semana santa. If you´ve never heard a pig being slaughtered I don´t recommend it to anyone. They scream bloody murder because they know what´s coming! They cook the meat in the big outdoor oven igloo thing too.
Aside from eating chipa, I´ve been relaxing this week. Traning is coming to an end and Monday is the day we have all been waiting for-the day we find out our sites! At 3pm Monday I will know where I have been assigned to live for the next 2 years. We did give our input of what we would like in site but ulitmately we don´t have the say, we are put where they think we would be good. To keep our minds sane until 3pm, we are being taken on field trips all morning. I am going to Luque, which is a town famous for silver jewlery and guitars. I am going to buy a cheap guitar so I´ll have a good way to spend my down time once I get out to my site.
On Tuesday we meet our contacts, our contacts our people that live in our sites and will help us get aquainted in town, introduce us to people, give us leads on finding housing, etc. This person could be a principal of a school, etc. We will travel with our contacts to our sites on wednesday and stay for almost a week to see our site and find housing. Then we come back to Guarambaré for 2 more weeks of training and then we have our swearing in ceremony and we´re on our own.
I will let you all know where my site is as soon as I can!
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