Week One Report

I have now officially been in Paraguay for a week and I´m enjoying it a lot. I like my family, the staff and fellow aspirantes de PC and what we´re studying. We spent most of our classes in our little town. The school is nothing more than a small house with some empty rooms, kitchen, and bathroom. I got put in the straight to Guarani classes, as I´m so awesome in Spanish :) Cows can be seen from our windows and the occasional wooden ox pulled cart passes the school on the red dirt road. We eat food depending on the season and wash clothes depending on the rain. Chickens and roosters roam the town freely. People sell different wares from their houses, either hand sewn clothes, food, and basic supplies like you could pick up in a convenience store. When I have to catch the bus into Guarambare, we as a town (the 12 of us) wake up at 5:30 to leave by 6:15 and make the 30 minute walk to the main road together (about 45 minutes in total from my house.) When we have class in town, I get to sleep in an hour later and the 5 of us who live off my road walk together, which is about 15 minutes. We come home (or our sent with it to Guarambare, from now on GB) at 11:30 for lunch and our back to school by 1. We only have morning language classes on Saturdays. Our first weekend, we watched and spectated some different sports, with the occasional ice cream man bicycling by. I played a little volleyball, but only watched soccer as they have a tournament against 4 or more teams, like pickups games, taking it pretty seriously, with the losing teams buying the winners´beer. Sunday morning we helped clean up the school grounds, raking dried leaves and garbage, a little bit as the local kids start school at the end of the month.

Monday we had some techincal hands on training and I got to slice bamboo with a machete to make a fence for a garbage pit (hardcore!) and learn some other construction skills, like building the reinforcement for pouring a cement floor in a latrine, which I wasn´t expecting to but really liked the building and using tools overall. I signed myself up for the demonstration on integrating into the schools though, to gear myself more toward teaching (which I think they´d do based on my language skills and experience with kids anyways) and to force myself into some more leardership roles. Oh! the 3rd year PCVolunteer who is staying on in the health office in Asuncion is a Gator.

Still really like my family. Our main form of entertainment is talking, so we spend a lot of time practicing languages and just asking each other questions, for instance I taught them about Manaties and how we categorize hurricanes in Florida. Also, everyone is related to everyone it seems, so we spend time at each other´s houses and at town birthday parties like last night. My great aunt´next door is measuring me when I get home today to make me a skirt. I think I actually like being in the campo better as the crime rate is way lower and once you intergrate into a community they kind of take you on as their own and protect you.

Anyways, that´s about it. My days consist of Guarani classes, which I really like because I like looking at the word structure as puzzles, tech and common areas classes in the afternoon, studying, writing in my notebook, and visiting with my family.

Jajotopata.