Long Weekend Getaway

Once I found out I was coming to Paraguay, Chile immediately jumped to the top of my vacation wish-list. I went to Santiago 5 years ago for my cousin Peter and Sandra’s wedding, and haven’t really seen or stayed in touch with them since. This weekend became a great opportunity to get to know Peter and Sandra better, and meet their kid, Michael!

I arrived in Chile last Thursday (after an overnight in the airport, my favorite, of course). I got in around noon, headed to their place, cleaned up, and then we were off! First stop was a delicious lunch at a Peruvian restaurant, where I tried ceviche (and liked it!) for the first time! Then I headed with Peter to Michael’s day care to pick him up. Not gonna lie, that is one cute kid! It took a while for him to warm up to me, but by the end we were high fiving maniacs!

Michael looking sharp is his new Ao Po'i!

Friday we had a lazy morning, and then headed out for a tour of the Chilean markets. One of Peter and Sandra’s friends is a tour guide there (www.foodychile.com), and we went with him. We saw a flower market, veggie market, fish market, and tried some local cuisine and drinks along the way. That night, I went with Peter to a MICROBREWERY! It had been a loooooong time since I enjoyed delicious beer, and we ran into a guy there who lived in Paraguay for a while and spoke a little Guarani!

Sandra, Peter and I

Terremoto. Why Chileans thought combining Fernet and ice cream would be a good idea baffles me...

Saturday and Sunday were more relaxed days. Highlights include WASHING MY CLOTHES WITH A WASHER, a fun and yummy lunch with Peter and Michael, enjoying delicious red wine, escaping a small mall fire (yea, that happened), drinking coffee & eating too much dessert, and lots of laughs.

Happiness in a machine.

In all honesty, it felt like it was the same as a long weekend getaway in the States. We kept the tourism low key, and it was the company I surrounded myself with that made the trip. Some friends asked me if it was awkward that I didn’t know them very well beforehand, and I thought about it… For many people the trip could have been really awkward! I grew up far away from Peter in the states and we are over 10 years apart, so had nothing in common with each other growing up. I am extremely lucky, however, to have amazing cousins who live interesting lives and are simply easy to be around. Hopefully they felt the same about having me visit!

I will leave you with this quote from Sunday just before leaving:

Me: Michael is being such a good boy right now!

Peter: Yeah, that’s because he’s busy sticking play-doh in his ears…

Little troublemaker...

Ahecha Paraguay

In Guarani, ahecha means I see. As a part of Peace Corps Paraguay, there is a volunteer organized club that lends out cameras for two months at a time to a community. In the kit there are 5 digital cameras and a training manual with how to use it in your site. I signed up months ago, and wrapped up the project last week! I had 12 kids sign up, 10 showed up to the first meeting, and I had 5 who came on a regular basis. At first I was disappointed by the number drop, but it actually worked out better this way since no one had to share their camera.

We had class once a week and an additional one-on-one session every other week where I reviewed the photos with the students. I planned each week with a general theme such as landscapes, portraits, lighting, Paraguayan culture, etc. Sometimes the kids came back with exactly what I wanted, while other times I got pictures of pigs when I asked for landscapes… but hey, better than nothing, I guess! It was great to see the kids get creative, and I think that the regulars really enjoyed the class.

At the end of the 8-week course, we selected the 25 best pictures (5 from each student) to be submitted to Asuncion, where there is an exhibition amongst all the volunteers’ photos. Also, I got those 25 photos printed so I was able to put on a smaller exhibition here in site. We invited family and friends of the students, and I talked about the class and then each student presented their photos, picked their favorite, and said why they liked it. The family and friends liked the pics, and not gonna lie, I was pretty proud of my kids!

Here are my favorite pictures taken by each student:

'Atardecer' by Silvia (16)

'Chulina' by Ramona (16)

'El Rayo del Sol' by Dulcina (12)

'La Rosa Rosada' by Auxi (12)

'Sandra' by Mica (12)

4 of my students after the exhibition with their favorite pictures

1.5 years and 15 countries later...

My brother and I reunited!

Just got back from a quick week-long break, thus, time for an update!

My brother has been in South America for the past 6 months or so, and finally we figured out a time to meet up. It had been over a year and half since we saw each other last -- crazy!! I left Sunday the 28th to head to Asuncion, and then left Monday aiming to arrive at Puerto Iguazu Monday night. I ran into a little hiccup, however, when I missed the last bus to Argentina, and ended up stranded in Ciudad del Este. I ended up sleeping on the floor of the bus terminal... Good times!

Anywho... Tuesday morning I made it to Iguazu easily, and the adventure began. I met up with Doug at the Hostel, and we left pretty quickly to see the falls. We hiked for about 4 hours that day, seeing some of the National Parks' best waterfalls. All were impressive, but definitely the most amazing was the Devil's Throat. Seriously incredible stuff! After the hike we went out for a nice dinner and drank some Argentinian wine (thanks M&D!), and passed out fairly early.

Taking in the view

'Garganta del Diablo' or 'Devil's Throat'

Wednesday, we left Iguazu and headed towards Paraguay. We had a couple more travel woes due to Labor Day (no ferry's were running, buses cancelled, long waits in terminals), and eventually at 2:30am arrived in my site. A looooooong day, but we were both glad to have made it home as opposed to been stuck somewhere else for the night.

Paraguay was very tranquilo, as always. We drank terere with my friends and favorite families, visited the high school and elementary school, made chipa and sopa with a family, relaxed in the hammock, and genuinely enjoyed the campo. He could only stay for 2 days, so it was a quick trip! Saturday morning he was off to Brazil again, and that was that.

Making Chipa

Overall a good break! This month is pretty crazy with coming and goings... After Iguazu, I headed into Asuncion for 2 days for G38's Mid-Service Training, and at the end of May I am off to Chile to visit Peter and Sandra. Busy but fun month!

G38!

Until next time...

Counting Down

Whether I intend to or not, I have found myself counting throughout the whole Peace Corps process. At the beginning it was a countdown full of excitement and anticipation - I was counting the days until I heard from placement. Then I had to count down 6 months until I left for Paraguay, 10 weeks until I swore-in as a volunteer, 10 months until I passed a year in country, and most recently, I passed the one-year as a volunteer mark. So what does that mean? It means that rather than counting up, I am now counting down. I have passed the biggest time hurdles the Peace Corps job comes with, and now am on the downward slope. It means that the countdown has changed from excitement to a ticking bomb, moving fast towards the inevitable… I officially have less than a year left here in Paraguay. But, rather than be depressing by talking about all I have left to do and see, I am going to share with you some great moments from the past few months. Moments that make this job worthwhile. Moments that makes the timeline of the Peace Corps not so daunting after all. 

Some of G38 at Ahendu

Sean Paul/Taio Cruz concert in Asuncion!

My pooch

I now take guitar classes...

Best friends :)

Semana Santa

Last week was Semana Santa here, or Holy Week. The celebration begins Wednesday, and then continues throughout the weekend. While I celebrated it last year with my host family in training, I enjoyed this year much more. I visited the families I know the best, and it was a really great week.


On Wednesday, I visited with Na Sixta and her family for the ever-important chipa making! Families all over Paraguay get together this day to make obscene amounts of chipa. Chipa is a bread made of corn flour, cheese, milk, salt, and a little oil. While the women were preparing the dough, the men were prepping the tatakua (wood burning oven) for cooking.

Lili prepping the dough

Tata Kua (or is it one word? not sure...)

My beautiful chipa :)

The finished products!

Also, eating pig is a huge part of Semana Santa. I woke up Wednesday morning to the sounds of pigs dying all over. Literally. Just when I thought it was finished, another neighbor killed their pig. When I got to Sixta’s house, the pig had already been killed (phew), but they were prepping it for eating. That means I got to help cut up pig fat into small cubes and watch them shave the hair off the skin to later be prepped for dinner. Yummy? I did try the pig fat (which is served fried and coated in corn flour), but chose to leave before the main course of pig skin stuffed with meat… I just couldn’t do it… haha

Next year's piggy!

Thursday, I was running all over, visiting 4 families in total. I started the day at 7am back at Sixta’s to drink mate, make more chipa and sopa, and chat with the family. Then I ate lunch with my landlord and her family (where i was sent home with both cow AND sheep meat! lucky me), stopped for a beer stop at Na Albina’s, and then relaxed in the afternoon at Na Esperanza’s. Busy and exhausting day, but fun!

The rest of the week was also lots of fun. It included a relaxing day with my neighboring volunteer, tereré sessions with new friends, Easter party in site, visiting more families, and of course, eating more chipa. Overall, definitely a successful Semana Santa!

Party in site!

My bestie in site, Silvia

On a different note, happy opening day!!! So glad us Cubs fans got to sing today! Go Cubs Go!

Getting Tech Savvy

Project update! The start of March also brought a new project for me – computer classes at the muni in site! The inauguration was a big deal. The mayor came, people applauded, and on March 6th we officially had our first class!

The classes are Monday-Thursday (same people go M/W and T/R), 1 hour long, and then there are 4 different sessions each day. In total, we are currently teaching 32 people basic computer skills. I only go twice a week since I have other commitments, and my counterpart who works at the muni is the main lady in charge. She leads the class, while I help monitor and answer questions. Look at that sustainability!

So far it has been going well. The students have to turn on and off the computer at the start and end of every session, and then we have a typing program that they are working their way through. Once they are all more comfortable with the keyboard and mouse (I forgot how weird a mouse can be if you have never seen one before. I saw one lady pick it up and place it on the screen not knowing how to use it), we will move on to applications like Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The mayor also said we will get our internet fixed (I’ll believe it when I see it…), so we will teach Google searches (can I get paid from Google for exclusively promoting their search engine? That would be awesome), how to work e-mail, and even the much anticipated Facebook. Don’t worry, I will teach Facebook etiquette as well (since I had to learn that too… woops), so hopefully I won’t be seeing too many revealing poses of the females modeling…

I also started a photography class, which is lots of fun! Will post on that later! (And sorry for the excessive use of parentheses’ in this post.)

Hope all is well!

February

Hello! Sorry for the long delay in posts… I sorta broke my computer at the beginning of February and have had very little internet, so it has been difficult to update.

So, what was I up to in February, you ask? Well, on February 9, I hit my one-year mark in country! Luckily, I was able to celebrate it with a lot of my G38 friends in Asuncion. I think we are all amazed at how fast the time has flown, as well as proud that all 28 of us who arrived a year ago are still here today. This also means that the new group of health volunteers is here! So, welcome to our sister G, G41!


With the library, I hit a bit of a wall. I really didn’t enjoy going there anymore. But then Valentine’s Day came along; I came up with a craft activity, and was rejuvenated. The kids LOVED the crafts! I’m not very artsy, which is why I never tried it before. I realized, though, that the simplest things are great for the kids, in which case my level of art is perfect! So last month we made valentines, drew our family trees, and made a welcome sign for a trainee visit I had at the end of the month. Also, I think we may have found a librarian!! Once I get more details I will post, but this is very exciting news!!!


I also started a reading club at the library. The first week failed. Only 2 kids came, and no one wanted to read. Week 2 brought 3 kids and we read two Curios George books in a circle, and played some checkers. Week three I came up with a plan: Read The Little Mermaid, create a word of the week based on the book (this week’s word was dreams), and then a writing activity based on the book/word. Smashing success! So now I will have that same layout weekly.


The last week of February I had a trainee, Meagan, come and visit me in site. I was super excited about it! When I went on my PCV visit a year ago, it made me so excited about my service, and so I hoped to do the same with this volunteer. We worked at the library, visited the health post, wrote a pedido for a new project to the government, visited with families, played pool and drank beers, and she even killed a chicken just like I did last year!! I had a great time, and of course hope that she enjoyed it as well!


What else… OH! I booked my flight in May to visit my cousins in Chile!!! It will just be a long weekend since they are busy with jobs and a kid and I am busy here, but I am SO EXCITED!!! I haven’t seen these guys since their wedding 5 years ago, so it will be a great chance to catch up and just hang out.

While a short month, I managed to cram a lot into it. As always, thanks for reading and hope you are well!