I´m sure all of you are enjoying the wonderful summer months. We are in the middle of winter here. The weather is pretty crazy. A few weeks ago I was freezing and couldn´t find any way to warm up. My little brick house with my tin roof just isn´t the best insulator for the winter time. Come to think of it, it´s going to heat up like an oven in the summer too!

When it was freezing I didn´t have hot water at first, so I would do as The Paraguayans do and heat up some water on the stove (well, they would heat up on the fire)and then take a bucket bath. There is an art to taking a bucket bath. I have learned that You start with your face, then go head to toe. You can wet your body with just a small handful of water. Then you get your bar of soap and scrub your body (just the important areas is good enough) and then scoop water with your hands and using a sweeping motion and wet and sweep all the soap off you quite easily. With the remaining water in the bucket you can then step in with your dirty feet since you won´t be using it anymore and use a scrub brush to scrub your feet and sandals. Your hair will take an extra bucket, if it´s time to do that. This can all be done with a liter of water! I did this for a couple of weeks at the start of winter and then decided it was rediculous to have a modern bathroom with running water and be taking bucket baths! It cost me about $40 to have hot water installed. 25 feet of cable was run through the family´s house to my house and i had to buy a new shower head. The way hot water works here is you turn on the water and then flip a switch which turns on the electricity through the shower head. The water heats up as it passes through the shower head. So, you are essentially running water through a toaster! The water pressure needs to be low for it to really heat up, but it does work and i am not taking bucket baths anymore unless I am visiting rural volunteers.

The weather is still cold some days but other days it is hot. It hasn´t rained in a long time and farmers are complaining and agricultural and beekeeping volunteers are complaining. I am glad that urban youth doesn´t revolve much around the weather. I met a beekeeping volunteer that lives about 2-3 hours from me. She invited me to come see her site and do a wild hive capture with her. I told her I thought i was allergic to bees, so i may just watch from a distance or help her with her massive garden instead. She came to my site and helped me make a bed for my garden. It´s always really fun to see the sites of other volunteers. We all live with different family situations, different housing situations and different jobs but we all are living in this same, strange little country and are therefore aware of all of our similarities.

I went to a nice 4th of July picnic at the U.S Embassy this weekend. They made us hot dogs, veggies burgers and margaritas. There was even a cotton candy machine and the U.S Marines served beer. It was a really fun day and the weather was beautiful.

The schools are now on winter vacation for 2 weeks and i am continuing with the work the previous volunteer started. Every vacation she did a camp on the soccer field in front of the house. I looked at past schedules she left and with the help of the youth group i work with and Chris (the other volunteer in Horqueta) have planned another camp. San Roque Rocks (san roque is the name of my neighborhood). It will be Tuesday and Thursday from 3-5pm. We´ll have games, activities, educational lessons, reading/singing groups. The kids will be divided into groups by colors and it will be like a 45 min rotation from activity to activity. I am having other volunteers from the area come in and help and the youth group. Sounds easy right? I hope so...

This week I wanted to have a parent´s meeting about it so the parents could be aware of it, learn what we will be doing and hopefully offer to help! I have learned by now that Paraguayans do not need to be informed more than a day before a meeting or they will forget or won´t show up. I went around the day OF the meeting and went door to door, or shall I say fence to fence. Since there are no doorbells and fences surrounding the house, you clap your hands when you are "knocking at the door". I had no idea which houses to go to so I grabbed by 12 year old neighbor and asked her if she wanted to help me with something. She was excited to help and it´s always better to have a Paraguayan with you who speaks the language and reads the culture better. It was a good way for me to meet new people and see the houses I haven´t seen before. It was like doing a million home visits in one day. I now realize that my family is a much more well off family than the neighbors and I thought they had it bad before! I saw one room wood shacks with tarps over the roof to keep out the rain where families of 7 were living. When i came home that day it sunk in how much these kids need this camp. 2 hours later we had 80 kids signed up for the camp and I am getting a little stressed! That is just in my neighborhood, in the 2 streets near my house! I know it will all work out. Chris had the youth group write a letter to ask the mayor to sponsor the costs of providing snacks and the material to make pasta necklaces, etc. They have always covered the costs in the past so it looks like it will happen again. If not, it will probably only cost Chris and I $20 or less. I´ve been told "any camp is better than no camp" and "you could go out on the soccer field and lay down and kids would come and be happy" so I know it will all work out.

I will be getting a puppy next weekend. She will be a little brown, short haired thing with white feet, black snout and a white spot on her nose. I haven´t decided if I will name her in English, Spanish or Guarani. Another volunteer has a dog from the same parents and she is a really cool medium sized dog so when they had puppies again she asked me if i wanted one. It will be good company and Paraguayans often kill the female puppies in the litter so I hope I am saving a life!

That is all the news for now. I will let you know how the camp goes and what I end up naming my dog!.