Winter is Coming

It’s hard to believe that only 3 months ago one of my favorite activities was sitting under a cold water shower for as long as I liked. Now I try to stay warm by eating hot food, drinking maté, wearing all of my clothes while curled up in my 15°F sleeping bag with a movie on my laptop. I hate to make it sound that bad because it is only getting as cold as the 40’s but when you are in an unheated, uninsulated house that has a metal roof, concrete floors, and half inch wooden planking for walls that don’t quite reach the ceiling that  40 degrees tends to infiltrate every part of your life. As the weather changes my daily routine changes. Waking up isn’t so hard but getting out of my nice cozy cocoon is terribly difficult especially knowing that I am only to go outside with the sun barely up and hop on a bicycle to ride about 3.5 miles through sand, uphill the entire way, to teach some 50 kids ranging from 4 to 14 year olds the basics of computers. Nobody said it would be easy. Luckily this scenario only happens two days a week. The other days can be a slower start, after staking the goat out to forage I can sit down with piping hot maté that gives me a little energy boost as well as warms me from the inside out. Then in the morning I generally walk around town to see what is happening whether it be in the school, my neighbor’s house, or how many fish ponds have been dug for my aquaculture project. Around lunchtime I get back home to move the goat and give her some food and then I have to decide if showering will be in my future because I know by afternoon it will be impossible to convince myself to stand under cold water for any amount of time and bucket bathing does not sound entirely appealing yet. The very short afternoon is much like the morning but recently has included a little bit of exercise to get the blood circulating. Then I bring the goat back close to the house and feed her again maybe make myself some dinner and get another pot of boiling water ready for maté and settle into my sleeping bag. Then I have time to plan activities for the next day, watch whatever movie strikes me on my laptop, listen to the rats crawling around my kitchen and hoping they finally eat the poison and not my soap and eventually I fall asleep resting to start another day.

Luckily, I took a vacation before this most recent cold snap and was able to escape to Uruguay for a week with my bestie, Josh. The whole point of the trip was to break up our service a little bit in order to see someplace new as well as spend some time in a bigger city and to lounge on the beach. So after a severely delayed hour and a half flight we landed in Montevideo, Uruguay, the third most southern capital city in the world, which is a decent sized modern city with a little over a million residents and sits on the River Plate where it enters the Southern Atlantic Ocean.  We stayed in a place called the Red Hostel right outside the Old City and right in the center of the city not far from a McDonalds. The very first night we were able to experience a lot of what Montevideo had to offer us. It started and ended with the Uruguayan variety of Pilsen and in between a great dinner of Seafood Paella (it had been a really long time since I had seafood) accompanied with Uruguayan Tannat wine. After this we were drawn in with some Brazilian tourists and some others staying in the hostel and went out to see what nightlife is like in the Uruguayan capital. To say the least it was not what we expected. Turns out that music circa the 1950’s US is the popular scene in the dance clubs. That the dance club scene isn’t really inside the dance club at all but instead out on the street outside the club where everyone is gathered drinking, smoking and being raucous. After an hour of this it was decided it would be a good idea to move on and try to find our way back which we eventually did but not before getting some good old South American street food, hamburgers and hotdogs. At about 5 am we were in bed. The next few days in Montevideo were spent walking around and seeing the sights that included the zoo where we discovered a giraffe and a housecat that had formed some sort of symbiotic relationship, the famous Port Market where every booth sells more cuts of meat than you could ever imagine, McDonalds where the Big Mac is the Big Mac no matter where you are, and the Old City where the streets are covered in dog poop. Then it was off the Punta del Diablo (the Devils Point, named for its trident shaped coastline) for some fun in the sun. Luckily it was sunny 80% of our time there which is unusual for low season and the temperatures were warm enough to go into the surf. As a result of it being the Low Season the whole town was empty. Normally, during high season, there are probably 50 or so hostels and hotels open, for low season only one, the Diablo Tranquilo Hostel. Lucky for us it is also the best hostel in Punta del Diablo and offers all sorts of excursions that include surfing, sand boarding and horseback riding. We didn’t participate in any of these excursions but still had a great time. The Diablo Tranquilo hostel was the first ever hostel in PDD (Punta Del Diablo) and was created by an American entrepreneur at the age of 25. After several years of managing this hostel and opening up an associated restaurant and suites he has decided to get out and sell especially since PDD has blown up with hotels and luxury suites as a result of it being listed as one of the 10 Places in the World to see in 2008 by Lonely Planet. I imagine that low season in PDD is not much different than the early years as far as the crowds go and I was happy to get into the ocean every day and even get a little bit of sun. Aside from that we did a lot of walking and saw a lot of the coastline that included dead sea turtles and sea lions as well as live dolphins and many beautiful vistas and opportunities for beach jumping and planking. After a few days at the beach, barely avoiding ammonia poisoning, we had to get back to Montevideo in order to fly back to Paraguay and then of course to get back to our cold countryside reality.

Semana Santa and When Being Literate is not a Good Thing

Happy Easter! The past few days have been spent with my Paraguayan family/neighbors for Semana Santa or Holy Week. In the United States we recognize Holy Week but in Paraguay and most of Latin America it is a big deal. Kids get a few days of vacation and people aren’t allowed to work. More importantly chipa is heavily consumed and family from all over comes back to the countryside to spend the holiday with their parents and relatives. This past week starting on Wednesday the kids were off from school and the people began to prepare for Viernes Santo or Good Friday when meat cannot be consumed and chipa is the main course. This preparation means washing all the laundry, getting the house in its cleanest state, and making lots and lots of chipa and sopa. Chipa is a popular food in Paraguay sold in the streets and on buses from baskets. It is made from pig fat, eggs, cheese, buttermilk, mandioca flour, salt and anise. This is all mixed together then rolled out into rings, wedges, or whatever shapes you feel inclined to make. Then this is placed on top of banana leaves and then into the tatakuaa or wood fired oven. Once it comes out the chipa is at its softest most delicious state. Then once Friday comes around when chipa is the primary meal for the day the chipa is rock hard. On Thursday a giant meal is prepared for the Last Supper and is generally and asado, sopa, mandioca, rice salad and beer. While this time is filled with traditions it is primarily a time for family to be together and to catch up and luckily for me my neighbors invited me to spend the Holy Week with them and they made me feel like I was part of the family.

Now that we are well into April, the kids are well into their school year as well, which has meant a great deal of work for me. I am now a few weeks into my computer classes which at one school have grown to include kindergarten through 3^rd grade as well as my traditional 4^th grade through 9^th. These young kids have created another challenge for my teaching as I learn how to teach young kids who are afraid of the big strange looking and strange speaking teacher but also have very short attention spans.  At my other school I have integrated English lessons into the lesson plan which breaks up teaching computers every week. As of right now my student count is at 180 or so students; kind of overwhelming to say the least. In other news my fish project is taking off and about 2/3 of the entire cost is has received funding and ground will be broken in the next few weeks on the 10 new fish ponds that we have asked for. But there is still funding to find and this will probably require even more work as I try to find alternative sources of money for our project. From here on out I will continue to work on the Fish Project as well and my Chicken Project but my primary focus will be on my schools and preparation for my classes.

Cultural Integration Note: In Paraguay, a popular term that is often thrown around is letrado which literally means literate. While we understand the meaning of the word literate to mean being able to read in Paraguay it generally means devious or sneakily smart. I have come across the term letrado in two main contexts one referring to the ability to learn and the second one referring to being flirtatious or good with the ladies. People generally use this term for me on a daily basis with different people using its different meanings depending on the context of the conversation. Upon meeting someone for the first time and the find that I can speak Guaraní or that I know some agricultural technique will often call me letrado. Inevitably, every conversation comes to the topic of women and then letrado becomes a completely different word and refers to be sneaky or even womanizing. In this context letrado can be a damaging term as it can lead to mistrust. In my personal experience the use of letrado is entirely innocent if not used in a jokingly manner and has become a humorous part of my daily life. I have one bus attendant that will call me letrado on cue, essentially whenever I get off the bus he will say, ‘Gregorioooo letradooo.’ All you can do is laugh. In other contexts the best response is to laugh it off and say, ‘I am not letrado, I am stupid,’ and that generally will get a laugh. But as in any situation where I don’t know the culturally correct response I just ignore it or laugh it off and then change the subject. 

Chicken and Fish

Summer is finally coming to an end, school is about to start, the honey harvests are just about over and my life is about to get a lot busier. My major focuses of late have been on my Aquaculture and Chicken projects. As my Paraguayan counterparts have told me you have to fight to get these projects pushed through and I have definitely been fighting for both of my groups but at the same time trying to be as patient with my possible donors as possible. I have gotten a lot of practice writing grants, shopping for prices and requesting various donations from NGO’s and Government Organizations. I suppose that this is great experience for whatever the future has in store for me but it has caused a lot of headaches and required a lot of travelling and meeting with various people to get my aquaculture and chicken projects out of the planning stages.

My aquaculture project is nearly to a point where I need to sit back and wait to see what PLAN International will contribute to the entire cost of the project. It is likely that they will fund a good portion of it but that we will also need to ask the Municipality and State for additional funds to help to get the project rolling. This aquaculture project will be using a semi-intensive fish farming technique to grow two native species of fish. The first and most expensive portion of the project we will have a 2500 sq. ft. pond excavated and then lined with a plastic tarp to contain the water. The second part will be getting water pumped into the pond from the nearby stream and then add fingerlings (babies) of the two Native fish, Pacu and Carimbata. Pacu is a delicious (really good in fish soup and my next experiment will be baked in a banana leaf) medium sized fish that can grow up to 4 lbs in this type of system. It is also vegetarian so it will eat leftover bananas, melon, beans, etc. that the farmers have from their harvests. Carimbata is a bottom feeder and will eat the excess food that sinks to the bottom as well as waste produced by the Pacu. These ponds will be oxygenated by a simple yet clever method where cow manure is added to the water so that algae can thrive off of the extra nitrogen and produce oxygen. This is a relatively low maintenance system and the only inputs are once daily feedings and the occasional addition of cow manure. In about a year the fingerlings will grow to about a kilo in raw weight depending on how well and often they were fed. The current market price for these fish is about $6 per kilo and in a pond with 1,000 fish that could translate to $6,000 after the first year. Not a bad sum from a project that requires so little maintenance. However, the primary goal for this project is food security based and not income based. Fish is a much healthier source of protein than cows, pigs and chickens and it will also theoretically decrease deforestation because of the small surface area required to grow the fish compared to the amount of pasture land required to grow a cattle. The potential economic, nutrition and environmental benefits of this project make me believe it is one worth fighting for and the results will touch 10 different families that have 40 children between them.

The chicken project is an effort I am working on with my Women’s Group called ‘Madres Unidas’ (United Mothers). The ultimate goal of this project is to obtain higher productivity laying hens for 14 different families. This plan includes construction of a chicken coop where the hens will spend most of their day as opposed to the traditional chickens that spend their entire day foraging around the yard. This means that it is a more intensive chicken system that will allow the hens to put more energy into laying eggs instead of spending the whole day searching for little bits of food. Being kept in a coop will also keep the hens healthier than the normal yard chickens that pick up tons of parasites in their daily ventures. The training involved in this project will also teach the women some basic economics, how to make their own well balanced chicken feed, how to diagnose chicken diseases as well as treat them and better nutrition for their families. I have already demonstrated and practiced making a large amount of chicken feed for the women to feed their chickens and how to bake homemade bread. They especially loved the bread making where we made over 40 loaves in a tatakuaa (wood-fired oven) and are excited to start making pan casero on their own instead of going to the store to buy bread.  I have been supplying the women with the baker’s yeast since several have been making the bread independently and the local store does not sell it. Eventually I will have our local despensa (store) sell the yeast so that the woman can get everything they need for the bread locally once I am gone. The status of the chicken project is a little behind the aquaculture project but has potential to jump ahead in the very near future as the total amount being requested is much smaller and the sources of the money will be easier to work with as it is a very common project.  I have very high hopes for both the chicken and aquaculture projects and they are at the point where I can start to focus on other things such as my classes which will start up again in the next week or two.

After nearly 3 months without rain, San Pedro and my site have finally gotten the rainfall that they needed. Unfortunately, the rains have come too late to salvage many of the crops that have been lost due to the drought and the heat. To say the least, it has been a tough year for farmers in Paraguay after an especially cold winter that froze a lot of produce, then this terrible drought that dried up the corn, hoof and mouth disease that is wiping out cattle and the price of cotton that stood at about $1.50 per kilo last year has plummeted to $0.40 per kilo this year. I have several good friends that are seriously considering selling off their land and moving to the city where work is more stable and life is a little easier. Many people cannot afford to take this route so the government is saying that it will step up and distribute corn and beans to those that lost their food crops in addition to their cash crops. But Paraguayans are a resilient people; talking to them I have had the conversation of how hot it has been and how much we need rain a million times, they will tell me how they have lost a crop yet at the same time tell me how blessed they are that their corn crop ripened before the worst of the drought or they will simply smile and say that this is just how life works: when things are good they are great and when things are bad they are terrible, yet we will survive. The past few months in site have been tough, I have been struggling with work while also dealing with tragedies in the community and tough times in my personal life but I am taking a page from the Paraguayans book: life can be hard but I will survive. 

Passing the Holidays

The month of December has gone by like a flash and most of it has been spent out of site. While I feel bad being away from my people so often I have also enjoyed seeing more of the country and being a bit touristy and experiencing more of what Paraguay has to offer. Being away from home for the holidays is tough enough but being alone in the Paraguayan campo is even tougher especially when it is super hot and most days are spent sitting around drinking terére and lounging in a hammock so travel with fellow volunteers seems justified. Travel has also been made a lot easier as a result of my fantastic new neighbors whom have essentially adopted my dog and goat. In repayment to them I have done some plumbing in their house, worked in their field, made them bread (and taught them to make bread), and done a lot of general sharing with them. I am still eating several meals a week with them though not as many as the beginning which is a great thing for my diet and independence.

This month has also been a very introspective time as well as I am a year into service and everything is downhill from here. The month started off with the farewell get together of the environmental and agriculture volunteers that were in our sister group and arrived a year before us. It was great to see how they ended their service and how close of a group they were as they prepared to leave the country. We celebrated by gathering in one of the prettiest areas of Paraguay at an awesome hotel with a pool. The whole day was spent poolside sipping on beers and that night featured skits, slideshows, and a dance party. It made our group realize that we have to do a better job documenting our next year so that we have great memories to share by the time we swear out. The other half of a group swearing out is a new group swearing in. Peace Corps is very cyclical like that and at every swearing out there is a swearing in and a group that is halfway through. You essentially get 3 completely groups of being with very different mindsets regarding Peace Corps and their service. Personally, I am at a place, and I think a lot of my fellow group members would agree, where I am full of negative feelings and at the same time hopeful expectations regarding my Peace Corps service. I have been let down and taken advantage of more times than I would like to admit and the failures have added up. My actually role in country has been a constant question on my mind, I have constantly been asking myself about how much good I have actually accomplished and if I am making any difference whatsoever. Am I just wasting my time here? The answers to these questions have been mixed at best. Admittedly some days are better than others and some of those days are really bad but many of us have agreed that our lives are on a rollercoaster and while in the States life is the same in Paraguay you can be on top of the world one morning and hitting rock bottom that afternoon. That is likely to happen at least 3 times a week and the only way we get through it is our network of friends and long phone conversations with our own personal support groups. When I really sit down and think about it I have realized that I do have a good list of accomplishments between my computer classes, english classes and individual work with farmers. Another perspective that I have gained is that big sustainable projects are practically unheard of in Peace Corps and that the most long lasting positive impacts that we can make as volunteers is with individuals through conversation and just hanging out with them. The other day we ran into a volunteer who left Paraguay 3 years ago and his perspective was similar to mine, your service is most fulfilling when you pass your time in your community with the people you want to spend time with. The projects that we try to push along rarely have much of an impact but its the individual conversations we have and a day spent helping someone out that makes the longest lasting memories in our Paraguayan communities. It has been hard to be a laidback as Paraguayans recently but the reality is that we need to be and when we do our lives become happier because we are able to enjoy our time in the moment instead of some future project that we are pushing towards.

Now that the holidays are over I have decided to try out a few projects that various groups of Paraguayans have approached me about. I plan on playing a strictly supporting role providing information when applicable but never leading their gatherings or doing paperwork for them. I have three projects that seem to be impending one is a chicken egg project with a group of women in order to produce higher quantities of eggs, the second is a home garden project to create a more diverse food supply in community members houses, and the third is a fish farming project with a community member who is a an expert in this area and wants to help others in the community acquire their own aquaculture projects. These 3 are fairly large projects but luckily I have a handle on them in their subject matter, all I need to do know is help the groups to nail down funding sources and with that my second year could be a huge success. Realistically, I only see one of those projects coming to completion, but in my role as a facilitator I will do what I can for all of them even if all that ever happens are informational meetings for the interested parties.

It is crazy that it is already 2012 and I have less than a year left in my service and returned volunteers keep saying to us that this year will go by in a flash and I must say it already feels like it is. But that has to do with my crazy travelling going to see places like a white sand beach on an isolated lake in Paraguay for Christmas or spending New Year's Eve at a huge beautiful waterfall miles away from the nearest paved road and a 40 minute treacherous hike through the forest. My next few months will be more tranquilo as I will be spending almost of it in site because I have no foreseeable travel plans. But I will keep you updated! So happy 2012 may it be a great one!

Thanksgiving in the Summertime

It is summer once again in Paraguay. School is out, the crops are growing and it is getting real hot real fast. Since my last post I have changed houses and moved to the other side of my community. My current house is a modest structure that faces some beautiful pasture land and backed by fruit trees. I had to vacate the old place because the house owners decided to leave Buenos Aires early and restart their lives in Paraguay (About 10% of Paraguay’s population works abroad mostly in Buenos Aires, Spain, and the Northeastern US and send their income back to their families in Paraguay). But the change has been nice, while moving was a little stressful especially considering all of the activities I had going on and only recently returning from a vacation, the outcome has been a tremendous improvement in my happiness. So after a couple of trips in a horse drawn wagon loaded with all of my possessions I was officially moved out of my old house and into my new rustic residence. The best way to describe my current house is as a fixer-upper. When I first moved in there was no electricity or running water and full of coriander seeds. Luckily I happen to be fairly handy and I got the electrical problem fixed and then I started with the plumbing which involved replacing old broken plastic pipes and then adding a couple taps, one inside and the other outside. The neighbors were very impressed and they now want me to do a little plumbing in their house! My neighbors, Ña Ramona and Karai Amarilla (Mr. Yellow), are the best part of my new house. They have adopted me as their son and describe me as a son that fell to them from heaven to their visitors. They are both in their late 60’s and extremely respected in the community. Ramona is the community medicine woman and gets several visitors a day looking for her natural remedies. Mr. Yellow is a farmer who still works out in the field just about every day. They are super kind and invite me to eat at least one meal a day with them as well as to use their refrigerator as my new place does not have one. They are also in love with my dog and my goat and feed them 2 meals a day. This has been a great relief to me especially while travelling or working away from the house. They do all this essentially in exchange for my help around the house and homemade breads. My new home has also come with several roommates: two toilet frogs, one tarantula the size of my hand, 2-3 giant toads, the occasional kitchen lizard and a young family of doves above my porch (I have already killed my wasp roommates/guards). The houses location has put me about 1km further from most of my work commitments but also to a sparsely populated pocket of the community which results in spectacular stars and quieter mornings.

With the end of the school year came the end of my English Class and Computer Classes and looking back at the numbers it is amazing to think that I introduced some basic English to about 30 students and computing basics to some 130 kids. I never thought I would be teaching so much when I came to Paraguay as an Environmental Education Volunteer, but it is my belief that as a volunteer it is important to work towards the needs of the community instead of working towards a set of premade goals. This past week I was a proud teacher and was able to give out 70 Certificates to one of my schools where I have taught computation for about 6 months. Certificates are a big deal in Paraguay and are essentially diplomas that show the holder has received some sort of technical training. The kids were super excited and the school principals and parents committee through together a little ceremony with food and drinks and picture taking while I made a power point presentation showing everyone the work that the kids had done over the past few months. After I got up and said a few words they even asked me to come back and teach more next year and possibly 2 days a week to cover other areas such as working in the garden as well as an English course. It is hard to commit to those things right now but I will see where the next year takes me. Now that summer is here I plan on continuing one of my computer courses for a few more weeks and then throw together some summer camps and get back to working in the fields with the farmers. I currently have 25 watermelon plants in Karai Nelson’s field that we are taking care of together and I recently obtained a bunch of Moringa seeds for my old host family that I will help with in directing the planting and maintenance (Moringa is currently a huge deal in PY and is mainly used as a medicinal herb in terere but in other parts of the world is described as the miracle tree as it acts as a green manure, cures all sorts of diseases and provides an excellent source of nutrition). The price of seed in Paraguay has skyrocketed from about $60 to $300 for 2 lbs. Just insane but since the seeds are so hard to come by people are willing to pay that price and the current potential for income is huge with people raking in lots of money from trees they planted only a year ago. I just hope that the moringa bubble isn’t on the verge of popping for the sake of a lot of people. I am also working with a women’s group who is about to receive a bunch of special egg-laying chickens that will produce a high quality egg that can be sold to local markets. The other project coming back into the picture is bee-keeping which I am sure my family will be super excited about. I have about twice as many farmers who want to start working with bees now and need help capturing a wild hive. Hopefully, I don’t have any incidents as bad as last year and if I do I will be sure not to post pictures on facebook. My first one will be tomorrow and possibly 2 more next week. At least I will get some free honey out of it!

In Paraguay, Thanksgiving is an unknown holiday that we crazy Americans celebrate.  Yet at the same time one that they can appreciate as for us it is a time of sharing with family and being thankful for what we have and the people that we have in our lives. So to celebrate a bunch of Peace Corps volunteers congregated in a small town called La Colmena (a town with a large population of Japanese) and celebrated Thanksgiving first by going to a beautiful waterfall way of the beaten path and spending the day cliff jumping and lounging around drinking wine and sharing with friends and then going back to town and having a Japanese food feast provided by the hotel. The next day we all travelled to another volunteers site and prepared our own more American style feast and spent most of the day chopping, baking, grilling, and drinking. The result was more food than 40 Americans could eat and an opportunity to share Thanksgiving with the community and going to various neighbors houses with heaping plates of food. It was a great time and a wonderful way to pass a holiday where all of us were missing our families back home. Tragically, after another Thanksgiving gathering in a different part of the country another volunteer was killed in a car accident. This terribly sad event has shocked all of us who knew her as well of those who did not and all of our thought and prayers this past week have been with her family back home in the States. 

Buenos Aires

October in the US is a time for pumpkin carving, raking leaves, football, and playoff baseball; in Paraguay October means that school is wrapping up, the temperature is getting hot, and people are planting their cash crops. For me this past month has brought a vacation to Buenos Aires and a security situation that created a lot of uncertainty about the future of my job. It all started around the end of September when rumors were going around about a State of Exception in some areas of Paraguay. Initially these rumors were determined to be unlikely but a week later, in the midst of my time in Buenos Aires, a State of Exception was put into place. The cause of this state of martial law was the killing of some Police in my state of San Pedro and growing political unrest in the northern States of the country. The State of Exception allows the police and military to rule with more or less a free hand, they can search anyone at anytime and detain whoever they like. So with such an infringement of legal rights Peace Corps was just about ready to evacuate all volunteers in San Pedro to Asuncion. But before this happened they put in place a standfast in which it was necessary for volunteers to stay put in their communities. The justification for this procedure is that we are integrated within our community and our neighbors will help and protect us in case of trouble. About 2 weeks into this standfast, after seeing no problems coming from the State of Exception, we can now travel again and life is pretty much as normal as it gets here in Paraguay. So a slightly stressful situation resolved itself with few repercussions and life will go on normally.

When the State of Exception was put into place I was in the middle of my vacation to Buenos Aires in Argentina. Five other volunteers and myself traveled down via an 18 hour bus ride to the 2nd largest city on the South American continent. The reason for our travels at this time was that half of our group was running the BA Marathon and the rest of us tagged along to support them and have as much fun as possible in the process. We stayed in a place called Giorgio's House in the heart of Buenos Aires and were within a subte (subway) or bus ride of everything that we wanted to see. The house itself is an apartment that is rented out on a day to day basis on the top floor of an office building. It has a kitchen that we utilized several times, several patios that we enjoyed for grilling and chilling whenever it was not raining, and high speed internet that allowed us to fall back in love with youtube. The house concierge, Anastasia, was extremely friendly and helpful and guided us through our options in order to enjoy her city as much as we could during our stay. The first day she informed us that everything happens in BA at night and almost nothing happens in the morning as people generally start to head home from their late night activities at 4 or 5am. So us campo kids from Paraguay had to go through a crazy transition of our normal bedtimes of 8pm and waking up at 5am to staying out out night and sleeping in until 11 if not noon. It was a rough transition (even rougher coming back) but a necessary one so that we could enjoy the nightlife that BA had to offer. While in BA we did everything from exploring the bar diversity (from a reggae club to freestyle hip-hop), going to the zoo that was full of free ranging animals, learning to tango, drinking a lot of wine, seeing the dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum, eating a lot of footlong hot dogs, exploring the architecturally beautiful parts of the city, seeing Real Steel, watching a Marathon, drinking some more wine, and thoroughly enjoying the Argentine people that greeted us with nothing but friendliness. The people in Buenos Aires are largely of European descent unlike the largely mestizo population of Paraguay. As a result we encountered the phenomena of people thinking that we were from Argentina and people asked us for directions on the street. For some reason the people of BA get a bad rep for being stuck up and prideful, which may have some truth, but in our personal encounters in a city comparable to NYC, we found nothing but genuine friendliness. On one occasion as we were walking though the rain looking for the dinosaurs we asked an older gentleman for directions and he then insisted on taking us to the museum himself and in the process he spoke some pretty good english to us considering he had been only to New York once and spent almost all his life in BA. The man literally walked a mile out of his way to bring some tourists to their destination. We continued to experience this type of hospitality throughout our trip.  Upon leaving we were all dazed and enamored by the city of Buenos Aires and agreed that we had to go back and for me personally I decided it could be one of the few cities that I could live in on a long term basis.

Once vacation was over it has been back to work. But due to a teachers strike my computer classes has been put on hold only to resume this week. I am now teaching 11th graders english as their teacher is on maternity leave and currently I am spending Monday through Wednesday entirely in the schools. This leaves me Thursday, Friday and the weekend to interact with the rest of the community. This past Thursday I spent the morning with my friend Karai Nelson cooking up breakfast and working in the field a bit with me planting some watermelon that we will hopefully sell to help boost his income. Additionally, I am now working with a recently formed Women's group that is working towards obtaining a chicken project from the government as a way to improve household income. So things have been fairly busy and I am almost to the halfway point of my service which blows my mind. November promises to be an exciting month with Thanksgiving and a wedding to attend. But we will get into that next time around.

Thank You For Your Patience

The first thing I need to say is that I apologize for not writing in nearly 3 months. I do intend to change this trend as I finally have a functioning computer. I also would like to thank everyone for reading about my life and what I am doing here in Paraguay; while I was back in the States I was amazed as to how many of you are actually reading my posts! So thank you for caring enough to keep up with what I am doing and I promise to be better and give updates more often. As a result of not writing in so long I am sure I could go on forever about my life in Paraguay over the past 3 months and the very cold Paraguayan winter. But I will keep it fairly brief and hit the highlights.

My home life here in 8.000 Bertoni has not changed all that much but I do have a few new things going on. First off I have a new cat (mbarakaja in Guarani which also strangely means biceps) that I was gifted by the despensa owner. He is a little black thing that I have appropriately named Lobo (wolf to go along with my Lion of a dog) has recently been super obnoxious. When eating he will yowl even while choking down food and any time I go near the refrigerator or kitchen table he will start his yowls. He also is an avid body climber which has brought me many painful moments as he jumps on bare skin to get to my shoulder. My ultimate goal for this little kitten is that he becomes big enough to eat the two giant rats I have living in my house that raid my kitchen looking for crumbs on a nightly basis. So he has a little way to go in order to reach that size. My other house pet, Ears the goat, had her baby while I was in the USA but unfortunately the kid died that same day just before I got back to my site as a result of being born weak and Ears not wanting to nurse it. So after all that hype and waiting my goat milking scheme just did not pan out. I am hoping to get her knocked up soon enough so I can try again. I did not practice milking goats at 3am for nothing! My dog Leon is still doing well and has started to really grow into the role as a Paraguayan Campo dog. He now excels at defending the house at night and chasing cows out of the yard. Unfortunately, he also excels at scavenging for food and has that grossest habit of raiding garbage pits for diapers. But asi es la vida in the campo.

Here in Paraguay my work continues to be rewarding. Back in July I had a training session with the Amigos de Las Americas, a group of American High School students who volunteer and live in Paraguay for 6 weeks. I trained 50 or so youth on how to plant trees that go along with their fogon building. I did find the work to be extremely rewarding and it was a good exercise in reflection to watch how these kids were reacting to their first few days in Paraguayan culture. The other volunteers and myself had the opportunity to talk with the Amigos in small group sessions and answer their questions and hear their excitement and preoccupations about their 6 weeks in Paraguay. Their thoughts were not much different than mine when I first got to Paraguay. It is amazing how fast things that were once shocking and inconceivable become part of daily life. And even in their 6 weeks in the country they developed that acclimatization as well.

My computer class continues to be a strong point and while I was away I gave my students a project about the Paraguayan Myths in order to celebrate the National Folklore Day. It was a two part project that consisted of a typed description of one of the mythological characters and a drawing of that character using Paint. I was worried what would happen over my 3 week absence but now that I have received their projects I am very impressed with their work and creativity. Today I have been working  on compiling all of the students  work from my time there in order to present to their parents and other teachers. The school has a functioning projector and a new community meeting room that I hope to take advantage of to the end of showing off the kids' work.

This past weekend I also hosted another volunteer in my site that is working on his thesis for his masters back in the States. His project is focusing on small farmers who have planted Eucalyptus on their property. My community actually has a fairly large number of families who have planted this exotic tree on their land as a result of the tobacco drying facility in town. Eucalyptus is an appealing tree to plant as a result of its very fast growth rate and in my community is used as firewood and for making fruit crates. It is also now being used for light construction as some of the bigger trees are being harvested. However, there are drawbacks to planting this non native species as some of the farmers commented to us. One is that it supposedly dries out the soil, one man said his well actually dropped a considerable amount, another drawback is that it has a tendency to affect the soil chemistry and stunt the growth of other plants around it (an allelopathic effect). But the growth rate tends to outweigh the negative observations and it is an important tree in reforestation efforts as it can be harvested earlier than the slower growing native trees that can be left to grow. My counterpart focused his research on these issues and through his questions we learned the above information from the farmers themselves. In the future he plans to submit his thesis to the State Organizations and other NGO's  that deal in Eucalypti in order to improve their knowledge of why producers in Paraguay are planting these trees and what further resources they need to be more successful at it.

A little over a month ago I celebrated my 24th birthday here in site just before I left to go to the States for a 2 week vacation. So essentially I threw myself a party. I invited all of my closest friends from the community, found some Caballito Blanco (White Horse a good scottish whisky), and bought about 15 lbs of meat. Unfortunately, my birthday in Paraguay takes place in the winter time and we ended up with a very cold night and were all huddled around the grill all night. But it was a success and we all had fun and were able to share some good conversation and good company. The only bad thing that happened was my favorite person in site cut his finger open while slicing up the meat and I had to do some first aid to stop the bleeding. Then early the next day I got on my local bus and headed to Asuncion for a few days of relaxation before my flight back to the States. After nearly a year of nothing but bus travel I was surprised to find how bad I was at air travel. I first ended up in the wrong line when checking in and waited there for 30 minutes in a very long line only to realize it was the wrong airline and my airline had nobody in line. Then I found myself struggling to speak straight spanish with the airport and security attendants and got crazy looks from them. Then of course the time zone changes gave me some serious scares as my flights were generally an hour between arrival and departure. But overall it was not a bad trip, 16 hours of airplane travel all with window seats which afforded beautiful views of the Andes on our approach to Lima, Peru. The next stop was San Salvador, El Salvador and then JFK in NYC. It was absolutely awesome to see my family again and we spent a great couple of weeks together. My time home included a Yankees game in which they won, a couple of family reunions, time at the horse track, the beach, six flags, and a lot of quality time with the people I care about the most. And then it was time to come back to Paraguay and ended up being an extremely long trip that was made seemingly longer as a result of a head cold and stuffed up ears that made my head feel like it was going to explode every time the plane gained or reduced altitude. Then after backtracking my layovers I got into Asuncion around 2:30 am and spent a couple of very cold hours in the Peace Corps office then jumped on a bus at 6am to get back to site. Essentially, ended up being around 28 hours of travel time and took a hit on my immune system as I was laid up with a flu for the next week. The more tragic things that have happened since that return journey have occurred back in the USA. That same day I left a minor earthquake hit the east coast and then Irene hit upstate NY causing my family and neighbors to be evacuated from their homes. Luckily, thank God, my family's home avoided devastation, but barely as the flood waters reached within 20 feet of my house. My community and neighbors were not so fortunate with many losing everything they own and their houses have become condemned. Then to add even more stress the river flooded again this past week as another tropical storm made its way up the east coast but no additional damage was done to houses only severely damaging a bridge and cutting off the gas supply line meaning that my family will have a bit more of Paraguay in their lives; line drying their clothes, cold water showers, and no heat. But all joking aside, my prayers continue to be with all those affected by this tragedy and bless all those that are giving their time to help those families in their time of need.