First Week in Site

Friday April 27th I woke up at 5:30am, ate breakfast with my host mom in Guarambaré then quickly got dressed in my fancy dress that I had made for about 10 bucks by the local seamstress (fits like a glove because it´s designed by me and she took my measurements) put on makeup for the first time in months and met the rest of my trainees at 6:30am to go to Asuncion for our swearing in ceremony. We got driven to the Peace Corps office where we were searched and patted down then piled into another van that had been searched as well. We were then driven a few blocks away to the U.S Embassy where we had a short, sweet ceremony to swear us in as volunteers. The U.S Ambassador spoke, our country director spoke, one of our trainees spoke and randomly some important U.S representative that works in foreign affairs was visiting and decided to swing by and give a speech too. The press was there and filmed the whole thing. Doubt any of the footage made it to the states but it did air in Paraguay nationally! We had to stand and raise our right hand and swear to protect the constitution against all enemies....and then we were volunteers!!! Afterwards there was cake and I got to talk to the Ambassador for a good 20 min or so. He is a nice guy. The Embassy has the only nice pool i have ever seen in Paraguay and we get to use it as volunteers!

After the ceremony we went back to the Peace Corps office, got our cells phones. Yes, you heard me I have a cell phone now. What is this Peace Corps or Posh Corps? We all stayed in Asuncion in a nice hotel all weekend and celebrated and spent time together before we all had to split up and go to our sites. It was fun, we went to clubs, danced the night away and enjoyed air conditioning, comfy beds and hot showers in the hotel.

Monday morning I got on a bus and 6 hours later I arrived in my site, Horqueta. I got off the bus at the terminal and realized I had no idea how to get to my house so I used my new cell phone and sent a text message to the Municpality Peace Corps volunteer that lives in my site, Chris. He replied "no I will not help you find your house, that´s part of being a new volunteer" Then he said he was joking 5 min later and came and got me. I took a taxi since I had all my crap with me and arrived at my new home. It´s about as awkward as it sounds just showing up at the house and being like "here I am, I´m moving in for 2 years".

I actually feel pretty lucky that I have another volunteer in my site. He has been a great help since he has been here for 2 years. He will leave in August so for my first few months I´ll have him to help get me started. My initial contact is a very involved, active youth too named Celso and he has been so much help too.

I am living in the same house the previous urban youth volunteer lived in. It is a cute, little house in the back of the family´s house. She didn´t leave any of her furniture so i went to a local carpenter and had him make me a bed, kitchen table with 2 chairs, and two little tables. The furniture is beautiful, when would I ever have furniture like that made in the U.S all for around 300 dollars??? I did get ripped off pretty badly on a mattress but everything else was a good deal. I have a little stove and bought some kitchen utensils so as soon as I figure out where to buy my food I will be able to cook for myself! I plan to eat lunch with the family though and since lunch is the main meal of the day, my dinners will be light.

The house is situated right near a cemetary and a soccer field. what more could a girl want, eh? There are kids everywhere on my street and every evening I play frisbee with them. They watch me wash my clothes, they follow me everywhere and constantly are interested in what I am doing. They are really cute but I have to set boundaries with them like they are not allowed to come in my house and once it is dark they can´t knock on my door. Sounds kind of mean but otherwise they would just never leave me alone.

Chris and the volunteer I followed up had a radio show every Wednesday where they educated the community about various topics and also just had a lot of fun, told jokes, etc. I did the radio show with Chris this week, he just interviewed me and talked about how I am the replacement, etc. We had fun with it so it looks like that will be one of my projects. Next week we will talk about what Urban Youth volunteers do and what my plans are.

So what are my plans??? I still am not sure. Right now I am getting settled in, getting to know people. My first project will be to create a survey to find out what youth do in their spare time in my neighborhood, etc. I am going to have a local youth group help me with it and then report the findings to the Municipality. From that I hope to see what the interests and needs are a bit more clearly. June 5th is Earth Day and I am going to to my first foramal lesson on trash and the environment in a school then. I will talk about what kinds of trash you can burn, what kinds you need to bury and what you can recycle. (here in Paraguay most trash gets burned, plastics and everything). I will bring in a huge bag of trash (clean trash) and dump it on the ground in the classroom and have each student take a piece. After the lesson they will have to come up and put it in the appropriate pile. I then want to follow up by teaching them out to make drinking glasses out of wine bottles. It is easy to do and fun and demonstrates a way to recycle and reuse.

Other than that I am starting to give private English lessons to my youth contact. He already knows a little bit and is very interested in learning. I will do that at the library and I am sure it will progress into a larger English class. Okay, so i guess I do have some plans right now.

I also want to fix up my house and I am going to try and build a garbage pit in my backyard that the family and I can use. There is no garbage collection here, trash is burned in the yard or on the street. At home we use landfills and a garbage pit is a hole a meter deep that acts as a mini landfill. I learned how to make a fence out of bamboo in training to put around it so kids and animals don´t get into it. These are all things that will get me through my first couple months and keep me from being bored. Eventually I hope to be doing work with the girl´s group home and possibly do a yoga class with them or some sort of excersise class, work with them on self esteem activities, team building activities, sex education, etc. That´s all further down the road.

I have a new address here. It is:

Jill Anderson
Barrio San Roque
Horqueta 8820
Paraguay, South America

Thanks to everyone who has mailed me letters and packages. So appreciated! I miss things like starburst, sour patch kids and instant hot chocolate and American chips like cheetos, good tortilla chips and salsa if anyone out there is wondering ;)

That´s all I have to say for now. I´ve only been a real volunteer for about 4 days now. These four days have gone by fast and Chris said it feels like just yesterday he was at his one year mark. That is encouraging. My 27 months is down to 24 now.....and the real challenge and the real fun is about to begin!