Che Ro'y! I'm Cold!

I't is wicked cold in Paraguay. By wicked cold I mean in the mid 40s and 50s, but when you have no refuge from the cold, that's cold. Sure I was experiencing colder temperatures in Tennessee before departing, but that was when I had central heating, insulated houses, let alone houses that were closed to the elements. And appropriate attire. I'm a Floridian who came to South America for crying outloud. I was not expecting this. I've been wearing my lucky Gator hoodie every day now for almost 2 weeks, as when I had to send things to long term storage for Don Pedro to bring me in June, I sent my coat and sweater, as it was still warm. Now, I lay in bed in the morning in my Kelty mummy sleepìng bag, looking at my breath, and contemplate cutting holes in the bottom to put on my shoes and just hobble around the community like a walking bean pod. Showering has become a twice weekly, painfully freezing process.

I stagger out of bed, at 730, a minor miracle for myself, but looking like a lazy bum to the last family I was staying with, as they all got up with the roosters at 5, starting the fire for the fogon, milking the cows, scattering grain for the chickens. Anyways, I make my way to the kitchen, to prop my feet up in front of the fogon, or to warm my hands over the charcoal burning brasero and sometimes feel like I'm living in one of those Historic Colonial Tourist towns, like Williamsburg.

It doesn`t help that it has rained the past four days, and when it rains in Paraguay, especially cold rain, the world just stops. No one works. The kids didn't go to school as the roads became impassable muck and the whole campo operates by motorcycle. So I stayed inside for 4 days, with 4 stir crazy kids, their older sister and mom. I finally had time to go back and finish Shadow Divers, after having to put it aside in the chaos of swearing in, finished that by flashlight, as if you get up at 5, then you go to bed around 8, after finising Victorino, the first of I'm sure many telenovelas, or soap operas that I'll be sucked into with my senora neighbors. PS This keyboard is all whacked out and none of the buttons I'm pressing correspond to the punctuation I want, like parehtheses. Only a journalism major would feel the need to disclaimer a blog... Anyways, now I'm 350 pages into the Time Traveler's Wife, something light after diving U869 off the coast of New Jersey for a month.

They say that the first three months in site are the hardest three months of ''the toughest job that you'll ever love,'' so in theory I very well could be in the midst of the hardest three months of my life. Thank God for the Peace Corps library. Seriously though, it's really hard to find one's role in all this. They provide goals for health workers and guidelines within which months we should strive to accomplish these goals, but the how and the when really are left to us, with the first three months really focusing on nothing more than getting the community to warm up to you, learning the language, defining projects to focus on and community resources and by three month follow up we turn in a census and community study that includes at least 50 houses. That translates to me finding myself in a lot of awkward terere, or in the case of winter, mate, sessions where I make small talk in my second language and say cutesy baby phrases in my third. I have done some more formal things like attended the two schools to meet the teachers and talk about what they hope I can accomplish. One particularly guapa teacher is really motivated about trying to fundraise to bring computers and international sports equipment, particularly basketball, to the school, both of which I'm eager to pursue. When the half Hoosier in me sees a means for basketball, I follow it, haha. I also attended their school garden and recognized a need to start a girls' youth group, after watching a few of them approach a male teacher for chores to help prepare the soil and he sent them to go sweep the classrooms and rake the yard. Obviously, being my first day I couldn't be the Norte demanding gender equality on the spot, but I did stand my ground as the only female doing any work in the whole garden, to show the female students that we as a group were capable of this type of work and to make a point to the males that I wasn't going to be scared off so easily. That's why I'm here 2 years. To silently observe and approach what I've noted after they feel at ease with me. Soon I will have my girls' club to discuss self esteem, gender equality, goal planning, options for university. I met one girl who told me she wants to study medicine but her family wants her to live with her sister in the capital and study hair dressing. Not that I'm dishing on hair dressing, but I really want to support her in finding means to see her goals through, as with all the youth in my site.

Besides that little endeavor, two other activities included attending a PTA meeting where they proceeded to fight over me, in that they were copcerned which of the two communities would take responsibility for me in the eyes of Peace Corps, worried that while working in another community if something happened to me they'd be responsible. Have you ever been in a room where 12 people are arguing, which escalates to shouting in an indigenous language about you while you're in the room, but no one directly addresses you with the questions because you don't speak their language so you might as well be a blonde, glasses wearing lamp? I have. I tried to appease them that when Don Pedro comes in June to formally present me he could address all these issues, but they still kind of disbanded unsettled. Aside from that I made soy milk and meat with the woman whose house I moved to yesterday as the health sector is a big proponent of teaching the health benefits and cost effectiveness of cooking with soy. We do eat an absurd amount of meat down here, so it's not surprising one of the health issues I work with a lot is hyper tension.

Anyways, it's about time to head back to Tercera Linea, as the bus from Caaguazu to there leaves a 330 and I'm in town learning the ropes from my closest PCV neighbor Kyle.
My number is posted and I'm in the hardest three months, so give me a call!

Ciacito.