Week 5 of Training: The G-bay Chronicles

I´m pretty sure this internet cafe has a virus because the spot to type my password is showing the letters, not turning them into stars, awesome....

Anyways, halfway point in training. Have yet to talk to anyone on Skype, including my own family. :(I will be on every Wednesday at this time until training is over or we have a special activity that day. Things are fine. Learning lots of new info, new skills (like brick laying) new language. Went on tech excursion last week to stay with a volunteer at a different site (who is extending third year to ecotourism in Jamaica), so we could meet new families and see what some different communities are. We put in a fogon (brick oven) and pileta (brick structure to support concrete sink) at their local school. The site´s lack of water, or ¨clean water,¨ as they had an uncovered well at the school with ferns growing down the side of the walls and a dirty chipped plastic bucket (don´t worry I didn´t drink this, though the clean water the volunteer brought us smelled wretched) and my inability to speak with the Senora whom I stayed with (or maybe her hesitancy to talk to a Norte,) was kind of disheartening. I got a pretty high mark on my Guarani Mid term Interview (everyone has kept using my self given joking title of Guarani Rainman) so I think it had more to do with the later.

We also have interviews this week with our RHS director in aiding him pick a site for us. I´m going to tell him that I´m more interested in working with youth in schools, summer camps, Ahecha Project (photography youth group) PC Mag, radio shows and partnering with hospitals and NGO´s. All this info are things that i´ve heard other volunteers working on and will hopefully get me in a decent sized community with running water....

Oh yesterday was interesting and different from our normal pace. We had a cooking session and group up with different moms. I got to go to my "aunt´s " house and I learned how to make soy empanadas, soy milk, and soy hamburgers, which they try to teach a lot of in conjunction with our nutrition charlas with all the hipertension and high blood pressure in Paraguay as it´s much cheaper and packed with protein it is per kilo compared to meat. I imagine once I´m cooking for myself I´ll be eating a lot of it since I don´t know how much I´ll want to bother with buying, carrying home, and preparing meat the way they sell it here.

Next week we´re gone in groups all week for ¨practica larga¨or long field practice. We go with 4 other aspirantes and stay at a volunteer site and just practice what we´d do in site: construction, charlas, censuses, meeting nurses who work at health posts, etc. Oh and something else exciting, our resettling allowance got increased with the bigger PC budget this year, so I get an extra 2 grand or so more when I come home, woot.

I´m saving up my guarani´s since I don´t really have any expenses, so with that and the money Dad gave me before I left, I figure I can probably buy a tiny netbook at a mall in Asuncion when I swear in so I can talk and post up my 400 or more pictures when I get to my site. If not, I can price them and budget out a portion from each paycheck until I do.

That´s about all I got for now. Oh and apparently it´s St. Patty´s Day, so someone drink a "carbomb" for me. I´ll go have a delicious Brahama at "Papu´s: Un Lugar Diferente" after school.

Jajotopata Folks.