For those who don’t remember or are just tuning in, this story all begins last year when a rich Paraguayan rancher was kidnapped by a fledgling terrorist group based in the rural region outside my (now former) site of Concepcion. They held him for a couple of months and made a few demands, including a sizable ransom. The family paid, but no one acquiesced to the other, broader demands. Eventually he was released, unharmed but sporting a rather scraggly beard. The group seemed to be fading into obscurity for the first few months of this year, but when a confrontation with police left a few officers dead, the government declared what basically amounted to a “State of Emergency.” You may recall that I was pulled out of my site while the military moved into the region. I returned to site when the military ran out of gas money (seriously), but the EPP remained at large.

Two weeks ago, another shootout with police made the news. The EPP members discovered that their phones were being tracked by police, so they left a phone in a house, sat outside in the surrounding forest, and waited for a few officers to enter. That ended up being a surprise party that ended in tears. Following the incident, the group released a video of women who live with them in their forest hide-out sitting around some sewing machines making them their very own intramural-softball uniforms. (Actually, they were camouflage sniper uniforms, but it just didn’t seem all that intimidating. Honestly, these guys have a lot to learn about making threatening terrorist tapes. They didn’t even have a machete).

The final straw was the discovery that the group was planning on attacking American military doctors in the region who were doing humanitarian work in the rural regions of the north. PC wasted no time after receiving that news, and sent a vehicle to pick us remaining volunteers up. Unlike the last evacuation, we were informed once we reached Asuncion that this time was permanent. We would not be able to continue our work in our sites.

So what does all this mean?

We were all given the option to take what is known as “Interrupted Service,” which is like an “Honorable Discharge” from the military. I rejected the offer, and PC set about finding a new position for me. When the first wave of volunteers were permanently evacuated last year, they were given new sites in other regions of the country. Unfortunately, at this point I have less than 10 months left in my service, so going somewhere to start from scratch would be difficult, considering how long it takes to get your community up to speed on what PC is and why you are living there. Rather than stick me in another remote site, I accepted an offer to live in Asuncion, (after all, I am an Urban Youth Development volunteer). I got to tour a few potential sites in the city last week, and will be moving permanently to a new one very soon.

Other volunteers are considering accepting the Interrupted Service option, but I didn’t need much time to reject the offer. I feel like leaving at this point would give me no closure to my service, and would leave me with too many “what ifs” to fester in my mind for the rest of my life. I’ve spent the last 18 months working with a population that is so inured to their lack of aid that every project, every class, every tiny gesture that I do is rewarded with the gift of instant gratitude and clear signs of progress. No other volunteer experience or job (including AmeriCorps) ever offered me that sort of positive feedback in such a tangible way. That’s not something that I can walk away from so easily.

My work for the rest of my service will be somewhat unique, considering that I will not be in a traditional site, nor will I be there for the next two years. I will essentially have five months of work, considering that the final three months of your service is spent closing projects and preparing a site for any follow-up volunteers. This will be a challenge for me and limiting for the people and resources in my new site to have such little time.

The most unfortunate part of all this is that my old site was abandoned so abruptly. I had less than 12 hours between getting a call from PC and my evacuation. It felt terrible to have to tell all the schools and community leaders over the phone that I worked with that I would be leaving. It was like dating someone for more than a year, then doing a phone breakup. Harsh, to say the least. Hopefully I’ll be able to go back to Concepcion to visit my old family and all the friends I made there, but that doesn’t appear to be happening any time soon.

Lastly, as you might imagine, my mailing address has changed. Do not send anything to my old mail box in Concepcion, as I will not be able to grab any of that. My phone number will remain the same.

I came home later that day to an interesting smell wafting out of the kitchen. Apparently everyone had been invited for some pizza. Alarms went off in my head when I saw cheese and open cans of tomato sauce sitting next to an open aluminum can with something written on it in Sharpie. They clearly didn’t understand that the word “pizza” in “dessert pizza” is used rather loosely, and doesn’t actually mean pizza. The improv section of my brain had not turned on yet and I found myself unable to come up with a good excuse to get me out of eating the Frankenstein of a pizza that was nearly finished cooking in the oven. I sat down to eat a slice of my apple-cinnamon, tomato, onion and cheese pizza.

I had some time recently thanks to a “rain day” here, (think “snow day,” only with biblical-flood amounts of rain being responsible for shutting down an entire city). I threw together a little flowchart of eating in Paraguay. Enjoy.

Paraguayan Food Flowchart!

In my searching, I came across an article about the usage of school gardens as a teaching tool which surprised me. I know that this blog about Peace Corps and my life here in Paraguay isn’t something I traditionally use as anything other than a personal diary, but the article I read sparked a personal response that I wanted to put into words.

The article, entitled “Cultivating Failure” by Caitlin Flanagan, was published in the January/February 2010 edition of The Atlantic. The author attributes many of the failures of the public school system in California to the widespread use of gardening in the curriculums of many of the state’s schools. Flanagan argues that the primary job of any high school in California should be to prepare kids for the exit exams required for graduation, and in turn, for college. This means using every minute of the school day for English and Math. It is an extremely pragmatic approach which many educators undoubtedly agree with, and considering the constant budget cuts to music and physical education programs, likely one that politicians and administrators agree with as well.

She asks readers to imagine how inappropriate it would be for the child of a family from Mexico to find himself in a new country with a supposedly better quality of educational system, only to be taught more manual labor:

He will lead a life entirely different from yours; he will be educated. Now that child is about to begin middle school in the American city whose name is synonymous with higher learning, as it is the home of one of the greatest universities in the world: Berkeley. On the first day of sixth grade, the boy walks though the imposing double doors of his new school, stows his backpack, and then heads out to the field, where he stoops under a hot sun and begins to pick lettuce.¹

I can appreciate what she is intending to say, but she ignores the facts of the programs which she herself spells out. Specifically, that these gardens are not manual labor. They are projects which are used as a way to tie in Math and English lessons in the form of soil-bed geometry and recipe-writing. Science is introduced in the form of biology. History explained with hands-on re-enactments of traditional food preparation methods.

Perhaps what bothers me most about her argument is her claim that Math and English are more important than anything that could possibly be learned about a garden, simply because standardized tests say so. This is where I begin to think about my project, and start to get defensive. Earlier, I described her point of view as being pragmatic, and when you consider that her criticisms stem from the inapplicability of these gardens to standardized testing, she is correct. She only wants to know how these gardens help a student pass an exit exam:

Here is the essential question we must ask about the school gardens: What evidence do we have that participation in one of these programs—so enthusiastically supported, so uncritically championed—improves a child’s chances of doing well on the state tests that will determine his or her future (especially the all-important high-school exit exam) and passing Algebra I, which is becoming the make-or-break class for California high-school students? I have spent many hours poring over the endless research on the positive effects of garden curricula, and in all that time, I have yet to find a single study that suggests classroom gardens help students meet the state standards for English and math.²

It sounds like I could have saved her all those hours of research; Knowing how to grow vegetables will not help you understand Iambic Pentameter or what the difference between sine and cosine is, period. However, what our society needs to start considering is whether or not what we ask public school students to know in order to graduate is valuable to them in the real world.³ It is rather obtuse to assume that the only fulfilling careers that exist are based on math and language skills.

She is rightfully critical of the way the public school system is essentially designed without any attempt to lower the 20% dropout rate in California. What she doesn’t understand is that of the remaining 80% who do graduate, only a small fraction go on to ever use Algebra again, or find Shakespeare’s works to be useful beyond anything more than fancy cocktail chats. My own personal experiences in high school with these lessons have served to only make me a slightly more formidable contestant on Jeopardy. High school did prepare me for college, but only in the sense that it helped me get accepted. I don’t think I learned much about myself during high school, but only because I went to a public school in the state that she is so critical of (and possibly because it was one that didn’t have a garden). I graduated before exit exams were ever required, but the curriculum my classes used were not radically different from what is being used today. What made college vastly more rewarding to me was both the choice and the scope of what I learned. I attended a liberal arts college with requirements for a wide variety of coursework. I certainly won’t be using anything I learned in the Intro to Archaeology class I took junior year, (apparently Indiana Jones portrays a slightly more exciting side of the field), but I am glad I had the opportunity to decide whether or not that is something I was interested in and would want to pursue. The same is true of just about every other class I took, whether I enjoyed it or not.

Ultimately, what makes America great is choice. Living in Paraguay has really reinforced that fact, as I see how limited the choices are for people here. I am saddened that there are such conservative perspectives on education right now in a place like the US that should be taking advantage of the inherently better resources the society has to offer. Flanagan and those who share her views on what education should be don’t want kids to have choice and be exposed to something they might otherwise never experience. They want schools to be government-funded test prep centers (for tests that the government itself wants you to pass). I don’t think anyone has ever walked out of Kaplan with a fresh new perspective on life – Just a mnemonic or two for remembering SAT words.

My argument here isn’t just in defense of school gardens, but for diversity of curriculums in general. The US – and Paraguay to a much greater degree – suffers from a lack of creativity when it comes to educating young people. Its no surprise that so many people hate their jobs, considering that we train people in things that don’t interest them with the cold rigidity of a automated factory line. Those cliches regarding our individual uniqueness (”we are all snowflakes!”) ring especially true when you step back and look at how many careers choices exist, and how often we change careers. To claim that high school is only for language and math preparation is unfair to the photographers, chefs, musicians, painters, graphic designers, and yes, even farmers, that so many of us end up becoming. Perhaps our society’s endemic fickleness with regard to our careers is simply the result of us learning what we want to do well after high school. Why not help more people find the right job earlier in their life by putting up a better display of what the world really offers?

Fly back to Paraguay with me for a moment. In this country, education consists of four-hour days (about half of what it is in the US), spent in hot classrooms full of kids mindlessly copying notes from a teacher standing at the chalkboard. There is no participation, no group work – and to what I assume would be overwhelming approval from Ms. Flanagan – nothing but math and language being taught. As a result of almost no group interaction outside of unstructured recess time, the kids I work with have very undeveloped social skills. Fights break out among groups of kids which escalate to somewhat severe violence.⁴ The dilemma I face everyday is this: What is the value of teaching these kids new subject matter if there is no job market for them? My site here in Paraguay offers just a handful of possible career options. So what comes first, creating a job market which demands an educated workforce, or creating an educated workforce which creates its own industry? I cannot create jobs, so I have to take the latter approach, despite some reservations about how well this works.

The universal question we ask kids, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” is already filled with fanciful answers back in the States. I myself changed my mind between inventor and astronaut every few minutes as a child. The answers you get here are very limited. About 95% of kids I ask say either teacher or police officer, simply because those are really the only two visible careers in my site. My garden project is meant to be an introduction to different careers here. Carpentry will be needed to build the soil-beds. Lessons on nutrition will introduce students to the idea of health matters, (which is a topic that is sorely needed here). Science lessons about the weather will tie into rain vs. manual watering.

In a place where choice and social movement (debatably) define a large part of the American Dream,⁵ I can’t imagine people agreeing that school gardens are counterproductive to education. If you are averse to the idea of gardens, replace it with some other program which offers students a chance to be social and learn about the world outside of Shakespeare and Trigonometry (unless of course that’s what you want to study). My high school began offering a media-centric set of classes for students interested in computers, design and other electronic media. I can’t speak for the Mexican family she is concerned about offending, but I know that a Paraguayan family would love to see their kids getting the full experience of such a comprehensive program, whether it be a gardening program or otherwise, in a country with an exponentially better school system.

My opinion on education in general looks a lot like a financial advisor’s opinion on how to invest safely: Diversify, diversify, diversify. If high school is about prepping for college, help kids get an understanding of what they want to learn in order to make the most of what is certainly the most expensive four (or more) years of our lives. If high school is about prepping for life without a college education, help kids see the myriad of paths that they can take to lead productive lives in careers that they probably don’t even know exist.

Flanagan’s article then degenerates into a non sequitur mix of lauding the free market for providing low-income communities with fresh fruit and veggies, and then to turning her nose up at expensive restaurants in Berkeley. She explains that teaching gardening in an inner-city is pointless, as the students there won’t be able to find the lessons to be applicable to their lives. (If she thinks that kids in Compton will have a harder time relating to a garden than to The Canterbury Tales, she may want to consider trying out that theory on in a school before jumping to any conclusions). She describes her experience shopping in Compton, California, first at a large chain, then at a smaller, “ethnic” wholesale market. Her point is that low income areas comprised of minorities already have access to wholesome food; She claims that her observation of a crowded market selling fruits and vegetables to this population clearly demonstrates that health problems in the United States among low-income demographics is not due to a lack of access. Poor people are stressed, which makes them want tasty junk-food. She quotes George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier:

The peculiar evil is this: that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food… When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don’t want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit “tasty.” There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let’s have a three pennorth of chips! Run out and buy us a two-penny ice cream! Put the kettle on and we’ll all have a nice cup of tea… Unemployment is an endless misery that has got to be palliated.

Not to say Orwell’s 80-year-old book focusing on unemployment in England during WWII isn’t relevant to our discussion or anything, but I do think she may be confusing apples and oranges, (or chips and ice cream). Let me quote the less prestigious – but equally relevant – comedian Jim Gaffigan: “Its hard to eat healthy, its expensive too. Should I have this salad for 12 bucks or these eight hamburgers for a nickel? Sorry salad.”⁶

Flanagan is lacking some perspective if she believes her Orwell quote is defending her point. First, it is more expensive to eat healthy.^{7 8 9} Fast food offers more bulk for the dollar than a fresh fruit or vegetable. Second, to assume that poorer groups of people choose unhealthy food simply as some sort of coping mechanism is a pretty big leap. Schools do not teach nutrition. The problem is the same here in Paraguay, and I imagine it is true in most of the developing world. It is immediately clear to anyone who visits Paraguay that the standard diet is far from well-balanced. Most people here don’t know what fiber or calcium or vitamin C are. We can assume that many of the immigrant families that she is interested in saving from the awkward situation of having their kids taught more agricultural labor at school probably don’t have any education about nutrition either. Furthermore, just assuming that the families she sees at the wholesale store in Compton are buying those fruits and vegetables on a large scale is not exactly the soundest of statistical evidence I have ever come across.

The fact is that exposing kids to gardens in schools has several beneficial effects. On the surface, it teaches them about the things they are growing, and gives them skills that they can choose to use in a job, or more likely, as a hobby. It creates a great forum for lessons about nutrition and healthy-living in general. But more broadly, it expands the role of education from Scantron testing to what education, at its core, should really be doing: Expanding the mind.

Update: Apparently I’m not the only one who vehemently disagrees with Flanagan. Check out this post from Garden Rant for further reading.

After spending Christmas with some host-family relatives in Asuncion, I headed back to Peace Corps’ training community to spend the rest of the weekend with my first host family. I learned on my way out there that my host-mother’s sister who lived down the street passed away on Christmas night. Her funeral was all set to take place right as I was getting into town. The rest of the afternoon was, as one would expect, extremely emotional for my family in Guarambare, and I found myself learning a lot about a new aspect of the culture that I had previously never been so closely exposed to here.

She passed away on Christmas, and was buried the next day. According to my family, this was done for several reasons: Few people pay for embalming; there are not good facilities for refrigeration while preparations are made; and families generally all live very close to each other, so time is not needed for everyone to travel. She was put into a casket and family and friends came to see her in their house. After a few hours for viewing, we brought her down the street to the local church for a religious service. From there, she was carried to the cemetery. The cemeteries here are all above ground and crowded. To get her to the grave with her family, six of us had to climb like monkeys over headstones to bring this heavy coffin to where it belonged. The custom here is to put the coffin outside the tomb while they unscrew this decorative piece off the top to give to the family. While they did this, all the women of the family ran up to the coffin and screamed, banged on the coffin, and cried. The one positive thing, I guess, is that since families all live near each other here, they all got to say goodbye. It was strange to see a few members of my family there who have always been so happy and laid back all of the time actually show such raw sadness, which is not an emotion I had ever seen from them.

I rejoined my family from here in site on New Years Eve, and together we drove in the family car back to Concepcion. My host father here is really a rural man at heart, and his driving skills don’t really translate well to the hectic city driving necessary to survive in Asuncion. We had more than one roundabout experience that caused Chevy Chase’s voice to sound off in my head with “Hey look kids, there’s Big Ben!” The trip by bus is about seven hours, but we made it back in the family car in just over 12.

New Years Eve seemed like it was going to be a normal celebration until about four minutes before midnight. We were seated outside with some extended family having dinner when a ruckus at the end of table caught my attention. One of my uncles had had a few too many, and decided that the time for talk had ended in his current discussion of which company makes the best motorcycle parts. A host cousin of mine who is about three times my size had to restrain him while things calmed down. The next day, as my host mother and I were discussing the incident, I realized that it was actually the most normal part of the night. If there is one constant in New Years Eve experiences, its that someone has to cross that important threshold between normal alcohol-induced merriment and a decidedly less entertaining level of belligerence or loss of control over their digestive system or forgetting the fact that the laws of gravity do in fact continue to apply you even while you’re inebriated. So all in all, I can report that here, just like in the US, one your friends also becomes a problem because of booze on New Years.

Where things started to stray from normal for me was after midnight. Someone from my family explained that everyone goes into the streets and finds a baby Jesus doll. I assumed that I had had one too many glasses of classy Paraguayan champagne which caused me to incorrectly translate “baby Jesus doll” in my head. I couldn’t have been wrong about walking in the streets, though, and that sounded harmless enough, so I headed out with everyone. As we approached a street corner about five blocks from our house, I started to think I may have been right about the doll. Sure enough, a crowd had formed around an old woman who holding a doll. Each person took a turn having her place the doll atop their heads while they made a wish for the New Year. I got pushed up to the circle and soon found this doll, who could have given Chucky a run for his money as the scariest doll, standing on my head with the lady whispering a prayer under her breath. While I was supposed to be making my wish, all I could think to wish for was for fewer dolls finding their way to my head in 2010.

Speaking of 2010, no year-end post would be complete without a list. And so I join such esteemed company as VH1 with their lists of best rockstar-haircuts of the ’80s, Cosmopolitan Magazine with their lists of top ways to catch your boyfriend talking to another woman at work, and Jeff Foxworthy’s lists to help you figure out if you are a moron redneck.

Moment that made me rethink dairy: Drinking milk taken straight from the cow.

What reminded me most that I’m in Paraguay: Using an outhouse with a door on it and thinking “Wow, this is a nice bathroom.”

Most surprisingly tasty food: Rodent.

Favorite thing to find being recycled by other volunteers who have recently returned from The States or had a friend come visit: Zip-Lock bags (the only way to protect your stuff from all this dirt).

Most entertaining adventure: Getting stranded in the middle of nowhere on a broken-down riverboat.

Moment that made me realize no bug experience could ever get much worse: Killing 64 cockroaches in a single house in a single night.

Favorite thing to do on vacation: Use air-conditioning .

Moment that made me stop and say, “Where am I?”: Playing volleyball on the lawn of the US Embassy.

Most shocking information I have given to a Paraguayan: What veganism is, and that it does, in fact, mean no animal products either, and that yes, butter is an animal product, and that yes, eggs are too, and that yes, whatever else you are about to ask and get increasingly blown away about is too.

Most entertaining question asked by a Paraguayan: Do they have dogs in the US?

Something I would never have done if I were not living here: See a country’s national soccer team qualify for the World Cup, in person.

Favorite new culinary technique: Squeezing lime on everything.

Funniest Guarani word learned: “Chivivi” (diarrhea), which, incidentally, was also the first word I learned.

Most uncomfortable charla moment: Demonstrating how to put a condom onto a vegetable

Favorite American topic that Paraguayans like to talk to me about: US really did land on the moon, right?

Longest running joke in my host-family: Some form of a joke relating to how fast I must have run when the muggers chased after me, as in “Look at that defender chase the ball. He is almost running as fast as Jonathan!”

Moment that almost gave me a heart attack: Having a run-in with a snake.

Strangest thing I have seen being sold on a city bus: Complete set of butcher knives sold as a packaged deal with some socks.

Hottest day: 46 Celsius.

Thing that makes me feel like a lot tougher than I am: Sleeping with a machete next to my bed

Favorite book read in site: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

Most unusual injury sustained when considering I am a Peace Corps volunteer: Injuries to both knee caps after an accident on an inflatable bouncy-castle.

Funniest cultural thing in general: The “Jakare,” which is when a lady leaves her window open in the middle of the night as an open invitation for a guy to come in and have sex. A lot of rural female volunteers have interesting stories about how they learned that one.

All of this after just one year. I’m about halfway through my service, so there seems to be plenty of time for more interesting experiences. Happy 2010 to everyone!

For all these reasons, I was extremely surprised the last time I tried to take the riverboat down to Asuncion to find that it had left half an hour early – Nothing in this country leaves or starts early. On my second attempt, months later, I would be determined to get on that boat, regardless of what it took. In the end, that meant facing snakes, melting heat, running through the streets of my city in flip-flops, and really drunk deck-hands. I arrived back in site a week later with bug bites, a broken cell phone, and a vast collection of bruises (but those are from another boat story, which we’ll get to later).

It was all worth it.

Some background information is probably in order. Paraguay is split in half from north to south by Rio Paraguay (Paraguay River). The river runs conveniently past my site, as well as the capital city of Asuncion. There is not a great deal of traffic on the river from day to day, except for small canoes manned by local fishermen. Every Sunday morning, however, a large, rickety ferry runs from Brazil to Asuncion, carrying cargo and people. It comes into port at 4:30 in the morning at my site and leaves half an hour later. Well, at least it should on paper, but as you now know, that is written very lightly with a pencil and with large erasers close at hand. When three other volunteers and I arrived at the port a few months ago at 4:30 in the morning for our first boat ride attempt, we had a very hard time believing the guy standing at the edge of the water telling us that the boat had left half an hour before. We ambled back to my house dragging our cooler full of food and our broken spirits. Right before I passed out from fatigue and dejection, I promised myself that I would never miss the boat again, (at least not literally).

Fellow VAC members Danielle and Liz were also interested in heading to the capital at the same time I was last week, and were open to exploring the river route with me. The boat takes about 24 hours (on paper), and Danielle was cutting it close since she had some important appointments to get to in Guarambare the following day, but decided to roll the dice and come along. I got a call from a guy at the dock the night before letting me know that the boat would be running late the following day, and would not be taking off until noon on Sunday. That was actually good news, because it meant that we could stay up late and sleep in the following morning. If you have been paying attention to the running theme here about schedules, you shouldn’t be surprised that I was awoken by a call at 4:30 from the port telling me that the boat would be leaving earlier, and we now had about half an hour to get there before it took off. Still half-asleep, I ran into the other room to wake up my companions in an admittedly merciless manner (I flipped on the lights and told them we have to be out of the house in the next five minutes). We ran through the streets of the city leaving a roadrunner-cartoon trail of dust in our wake. Once at the dock, however, we saw no boat.

We were informed that the boat was out of contact with the office, and that it may be lost. Getting lost on a river with no run-offs seems as mysterious to me as a train getting lost, but stuff happens, and we were prepared to wait. After five hours of waiting (about 10:00 for those keeping track at home), hunger was starting to set in. We had rationed 24 hours worth of food, so breaking into that appeared to be a poor idea. Danielle and I agreed to walk to the nearest empanada stand, which was about 10 blocks away. Liz was charged with calling if the boat showed up. Shortly after buying some breakfast in another zip code, we get a call: The boat is here, and it doesn’t have any cargo. It looks like they will be leaving really soon. So Danielle and I took off running for the second time since we woke up, and we were both still wearing flip-flops, but they didn’t slow us down. The last time I ran so quickly in flip-flops, I was being chased by a mugger.

As we get back to the dock, it becomes clear that something is wrong. There were two boats, one in front of the other. The back boat, which was ours, had a rope tied to the boat in front. Ours apparently broke down and was pulled by the other. The rope attaching the two was about as thick as an electrical extension cord. It looked proportionally as big as using dental floss to tow a car. Danielle and Liz moved down to the water to ask if the boat would be fixed today or not, while I guarded the stuff. Some backpackers from Europe had just gotten off another boat and were talking to me. I had my feet hanging down off the side of the concrete dock when one of the backpackers shouted “snake!” Sure enough, a big green and white one was making its way towards me. I could either jump forward and probably get very hurt, or do a Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon flying back-flip. I opted for the latter – Something which I didn’t think I was capable of (or anyone, for that matter), but when I see snakes, I guess there is a lot I can do in the name of self-preservation. He was pretty interested in our stuff, and even after I watched him slither away, I checked our bags a few times out of a fear that he would be brought on board with us. This country has yet to cure my fear of snakes, but I guess if Indiana Jones could be trapped in that pit of hell with a million snakes and it not cure his phobia, what chance do I have?

After my heart rate returned to human levels, Danielle and Liz came back with good news: The boat would be leaving soon. The problem was with the rudder, and would be fixed quickly, (quickly by Paraguayan standards). We got on board, scoped out a few empty hammocks on the main deck, and waited to hit the river. A deckhand, who readily shared with us that he was nursing a nasty hangover, also shared some Terere then got busy fixing the rudder, (Terere takes priority over everything except driving a wife in labor to the hospital and, well, that’s actually the only thing I can think of that would take priority). I looked at my cell phone to see how late we were, only to discover some bad news. Unfortunately, my snake-evasion karate move didn’t end in a gold medal-winning landing, but in an awkward roll on my side. My cell phone was crushed against my hip bone, and now had a ruined screen.

The waters are calm on the river, and the boat moves pretty slowly, so the comfort level was definitely high. The scenery is great, and you get to see parts of the country you wouldn’t otherwise. Parts of the trip made me think of Heart of Darkness, because the setting can have an ominous feel. At around 1:00 in the morning, I woke up and things felt too comfortable, almost as if we weren’t moving. Sure enough, we weren’t. The rudder problem flared back up, and we were stuck near the shore. Frankly, I was surprised – The hungover deckhand who had trouble standing really looked capable of fixing complex machinery. After sitting in the same spot until morning, the crew informed us that another boat would be along to pull us into Asuncion, but that wouldn’t be until later that afternoon. Danielle had appointments to keep, so we weren’t able to wait around until then, and we talked a passing boat into giving us a ride to the next port. I wasn’t completely disappointed to see the boat trip cut short, since being idle meant no breeze on the deck, and no breeze meant bug bites. After breaking down the night before, mosquitoes had a party on the boat, and we were the guests of honor.

The little motorboat left us on the shore of a town none of us had ever heard of. In fact, most Paraguayans have probably never heard of the town either. I’m not even sure if its on a map. It consists of a single road, with four buildings and a “bus terminal,” which was really just a little hut. We got some tickets to Asuncion on the next bus out, but had some time to kill. We walked into a local establishment which was clearly not accustomed to seeing anyone not from their own country. The only thing missing from our entrance was the sound of a vinyl record scratching as the music stopped.

When the bus arrived, I sat in a window seat and hoped to catch some shut eye. Since the main road between Concepcion and Asuncion is not really near the river, we had to take back roads the whole way there. Something like 95 percent of all roads in Paraguay are dirt, and our trip seemed to have traveled on all 95 percent of them. It was too hot to leave the window up, so I was left with no choice but to face eight hours of constant waves of dust hitting me in the face. I awoke a few hours after leaving to find that I had been sweating the whole time, which had laid a nice foundation for the red dirt to settle. On top of all that were the bug bites that covered us like chicken pox. You can only imagine what that looked like, (sadly, I have no photo of it).

There was a time when trips to Asuncion were exciting because you got to see your friends whose sites are in the far corners of the country. Now, it’s really all about air conditioning. It was about 110 while were there all week, and Asuncion is really the only place in the country where people even know what AC is. I generally head into the city once a month for a couple days, but I extended this last trip by a couple days to soak in my hotel’s cool air.

Earlier, I mentioned that some of the other party favors we walked away with from the month of October were some colorful bruises. Those too were the result of a boat, though not directly related to this story. Those, in fact, were from an unfortunate experience aboard a pirate ship.

Just a few days before leaving on my riverboat trip, a town nearby had an annual festival which resembled a county fair back home, complete with fried food and vomit-stained ride exits. One such ride was one of those giant, upside-down pirate ships. One volunteer and I agreed that while we shared a passion for thrill rides, we better not to try our luck at a ride whose safety record was undoubtedly not spotless. We had both seen a similar ship at Expo Norte, and were less than impressed with what we saw. The other volunteers we were with clearly didn’t notice the same missing screws and decades old rust patches, and bought us all tickets. I begrudgingly agreed, and got into a seat. The first warning sign of a bad experience to come came in the form of the safety harnesses’ apparent lack of padding. It dropped down over our shoulders, and all six of us searched for each other in the different rows, hoping to confirm whether our row was the only one which the ride manufacturer blatantly forgot a seemingly essential part. Our eyes all confirmed that shoddily-soldered scrap metal was actually the norm for this particular design. The boat began to sway back and forth slowly, and the prayers in Spanish from Paraguayans in front of us started to get louder. If I knew some of the prayers, I probably would have joined them. On the first vertical trip, the boat managed to stay upside-down for what felt like ten minutes. The aforementioned restraints proved to not only be lacking padding, but also any semblance of strength. Every single passenger fell forward and down, stopped only by the steel cage surrounding the seats. The shoulder restraints did manage to at least slow us down on each vertical pass so that we slammed into the cage more slowly. We did about ten passes around, which we all learned the next day as we got out of bed to be enough to make our bodies look like we were all in extremely abusive relationships.

As I rode an overnight bus back to my site last week, those bruises were just about healed and the bug bites all but gone. But, as fate would have it, I had room for one more bruise.

The road between Asuncion and Concepcion falls under that 95 percent dirt road statistic that I mentioned earlier. Dirt, though more economical, is also more prone to enormous pot holes the size of small cars. Consequently, buses and cars have to swerve to avoid them when driving quickly, and this is more difficult at night when the holes can sneak up on the drivers. It was about five in the morning and I was in a deep sleep when I was awoken by what I initially thought was a really unhappy person who I must have offended in some way. I felt a punch to my face that would have have Mike Tyson cry. I jumped and threw my fists up in a way that probably would have made it very clear to any would-be attackers that I had zero self-defense training. After the stars disappeared from my eyes and the cartoon birds flew away, I realized that a sharp crater-avoiding turn had knocked my full gallon water jug from the overhead storage right into my face. I am starting to believe that there is some sort of rule that states that you cannot live here without have at least one cut, bruise, bite or burn on your body at all times.

October was certainly full of bodily harm (bruises and stings), property damage (ruined phone) and psychological damage (that snake haunts my dreams). A common motto around Peace Corps is to “do it for the story,” and the boat ride certainly offered a fair share of them. Nevertheless, the abrupt end halfway through the trip left me wanting more, so I have penciled-in another attempt in 2010. Hopefully my next set of boat stories will not include a pirate ship, have fewer bruises, and actually make it all the way down to Asuncion. Then again, I fear for any country where Murphy’s Law flourishes more easily than here in Paraguay, so we’ll just have to see.

I was fortunate enough to attend a great game between Paraguay and Argentina last week. Cerro and Olympia fans stood side by side to share in their hatred of Argentina. Everyone in my section of the stands spent the whole game chanting extremely vulgar things in Guarani at the visitor section. The chants were all the funnier considering that none of the Argentinians would understand a single word of Guarani.

My Paraguayan friends at the game explained to me that they only act like this when they play Argentina. Many people here have told me that most South Americans feel kinship with other countries on the continent, and generally like everyone else. Brazilians, in particular, are seen as very happy and kind people. But everyone I talk to here agrees that Argentina is the exception, since they are seen as arrogant and see themselves more as Europeans than South Americans.

The national stadium is very large, though a somewhat plain setting. There are only wide concrete steps in lieu of proper seating, which doesn’t really matter when the crowd simply stands for the duration of the game. The mawkish smell of cheap beer and burning trash permeated the air and added to the gritty, no frills atmosphere. Beer isn’t actually allowed inside for reasons which are obvious to anyone who has ever seen how rowdy a soccer crowd can get. Nevertheless, it is sold surreptitiously under the pseudonym of “leche,” (Spanish for milk). This leads to the amusing scene of vendors shouting “Leche! Leche! Leche!” Such a sight could likely cause some confusion amongst tourists. As is common in soccer matches around the world, some people decided to bring flares to light on fire. However, one fan a few meters away from us had a little too much milk beer, and accidentally set some trash on fire. It turned into a fairly impressive blaze, but burning trash is nothing new to Paraguayans, and I appeared to be the only one concerned about this growing hazard; they all just shifted away from the fire, maintaining their attention to the game.

Paraguay scored a goal in the first half, and insanity in the stands ensued. The game turned brutal in the second half, and there were several yellow cards issued, as well as on red card (for Argentina). Chants of Albirroja (the nickname for the red-striped jersey of the national team) erupted, along with polite suggestions about where the Argentinian fans should stick their own jerseys. Paraguay held onto the 1-0 lead for the rest of the game. Their victory meant that they officially qualify for a spot in the World Cup next year, and that Argentina remains waiting for their own ticket to South Africa. To put into perspective just how big of a deal this was, consider this: Immediately after the game, President Lugo canceled work for all public employees the next day and declared it a national holiday.

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After the two days of IST, we all went into Asuncion. I spent more time in the capital than I had originally planned because of the exhaustive process of acquiring a new bank card. I lost my original one during my last trip to the capital for the Fourth of July. If you lose your bank card in this country, you cannot get money out of your account regardless of how much ID you bring to your local branch. I am talking about drivers licenses, passports, birth certificates, vials of blood, etc. You have to go to the capital; phone calls do not suffice. Its like living in Boston, losing your card, then having to go to New York for a new card, all without being able to get money from your account to finance your trip.

Asuncion is simply a strange place. Nowhere else in the world have I seen such a striking fusion of affluence and poverty. Any large city in the world has its filthy rich areas and its devastatingly impoverished areas. Asuncion has almost no separation between the two. A fancy shopping mall full of clothes that 99 percent of the population cannot afford may sit next to abandoned buildings. A mansion that looks like it belongs in Beverly Hills can be flanked on either side by low-income apartments. One of the nicest hotels in the city is located across the street from a plaza which is currently occupied by hundreds of people who are forced to use black plastic garbage bags for makeshift tents. The city just may be the one exception to the old real-estate adage “Location, location, location.” The stark contrast between development and stagnancy is striking as well: You can see a brand new Mercedes with a driver who is holding an iPhone to his ear, driving behind a horse-drawn cart full of fruits and vegetables.

Every trip into the capital offers its share of interesting new experiences and usually adds a good anecdote or two to your ever expanding repertoire. The funny stories almost always share the common setting of a city bus. Every bus I get on has a vendor selling something that I would never expect to be sold on a bus or a performer doing something that is made more difficult by the fact that they are on a crowded bus moving down a horribly uneven and busy road. I used to think the New York City subway was a weird place, until I saw the veritable QVC that is the Asuncion bus system. Passengers can shop from the comfort of their seats, and choose from a wide selection of leopard-print men’s thong underwear, pirated movies, candies, back-scratchers, yuyos, pastries, umbrellas, perfume, fruit, and kitchen knives. The kitchen knives guy was one of the scarier salesmen – First I didn’t realize he was selling the huge butchers knife that he put in front of my face. The original thought that I was getting robbed quickly gave way to the realization that we were driving on one of the more seriously potholed roads in the city, and he didn’t seem to have the best balance in the world.

On Sunday I met up with my host family at the airport. My sister found a family to live with as an au pair and study english for a year, and my enormous family was there to see her off. She had never left Paraguay or been on a plane, so the culture shock that she is going through is probably immense. She arrived in New York, a city whose population is greater than that of Paraguay, and will be living with a family in New Jersey. As I had expected, my family here was extremely emotional when the plane took off. There are only a few flights in and out of Asuncion’s rather small airport, and you can go up to the roof to watch these flights take off and land. As the plane taxied to the end of the runway, took off, and disappeared into the clouds, my host mom started weeping.

Life in Barrio San Antonio has become very busy of late. I am now juggling a hand-full of different projects here at my site.

Youth Program
I am working with a local supermarket to create a home where youth who have parents that work all day can get a meal and learn some life skills. Students in Paraguay do not attend school all-day like in the US; they go either in the morning or the afternoon. This means that they have nothing to do for whichever half of the day that they aren’t in class.

Leadership Class
A local high school has a class of kids that are all pre-med, and I am working with them on leadership activities so that they can, in turn, do these activities with the rest of their school.

English Class
There is a ton of interest in my site to learn English. Paraguay has been trying to become a more tourist-friendly country, and having the ability to speak English will certainly help in finding a job with decent pay.

Parents Workshop
Teachers in some of the schools I work at complain about truancy and behavioral problems among their students. I am starting a parents workshop where I am using the experiences from my job with AmeriCorps to teach some basic parenting skills, since many parents that I have spoken to feel they have absolutely no control over their children.

Self-Esteem Initiative
Teachers have also complained about the lack of self-esteem in many of their students. There is almost no creative thinking or group work done in these teachers’ lesson plans, and I have started to do charlas and group activities to get kids to start doing creative thinking.

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One day last week I was riding a bike to one of the schools in the area where I work. I say “a” bike, because I was using another volunteer’s, (I was waiting to get the seat on mine raised). I was running early, so I decided to take a longer route to burn some time. I live near a river, and there is a great path that runs along side it which has incredible views. I stopped for a moment to check a text message which I had just received. The next thing I knew, there were two guys standing on either side of me, as I straddled the bike. The guy on my right held out his hand for a handshake, and offered me a casual Guarani greeting. Up to this point, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Having strangers in the neighborhood walk up and shake my hand is a daily occurrence. He asked me, in Guarani, something about my phone, which I had already placed back in my pocket. Since my level of Guarani is not very good, I asked him what he had just said in Spanish. He did not speak Spanish, and repeated what he had said before, in Guarani again. After looking down and seeing the knife which he held in his hand, I needed no translation. I handed over the phone, and turned to leave. Except it was clear that they still were interested in something else. I hopped off the bike and backed away. When the other guy started to walk towards me, I had a thought run through my head that, in retrospect, seems rather funny. I thought, “I wish I hadn’t worn sandals today.” I spun around and took off down the road. The second mugger chased after me for a second, but gave up after less than a block. Had he caught up with me, I realized later, I would have to explain to him with what little Guarani I have, that I did not bring a wallet with me, which is likely what they wanted.

My family here was horrified when I walked in the front door and explained to them that I had been robbed. After speaking with the Peace Corps office in Asuncion, I was informed that a police report needed to be filled out, so we headed over to the local station. The police here lack many of the resources you would expect them to have, such as a computer. Consequently, a crime like this has practically zero chance of leading to an arrest. I felt tempted to ask the officer taking the description if there was any chance of catching these guys, but I stopped myself after thinking of that scene in The Big Lebowski when The Dude asks whether there are any leads regarding his stolen car, and gets laughed at incessantly by a police officer.

All in all, far worse things have happened than this mugging. I escaped unscathed, and I don’t believe they were interested in hurting me. I only lost a cell phone and a bike, both a which can be replaced. The volunteer whom the bike belonged to was actually glad that it got stolen (after hearing that I was alright) since that bike was about ready to fall apart, and he’ll finally get a new one. The only real downside to all of this is where it happened. I jogged over by the river almost every day and now I can’t. People around here know that the area is dangerous, but everyone has been surprised when they find out that this happened in the middle of the day and not at night. I felt far less safe in many of the neighborhoods that I worked in while I was with AmeriCorps than I have ever felt around here.

It is, of course, a tad ironic that Peace Corps volunteers are targets of crime. We are, after all, here to help out the very people that cause crimes like this. I am not the first, nor will I be the last, Peace Corps volunteer to be mugged here, or anywhere else in the world. I think incidents like this only serve to strengthen the resolve that so many of us bring to our sites to affect the change that we recognize is needed. If nothing else, this incident serves as a very clear and direct message about the importance of our work.

This incident fits somewhat comically into a pattern that I now see concerning time that I spend over by the river. One day early on in my time here in Concepcion, I had stopped during a jog along the shore and was looking out across the river as the sun went down. I stood there, thinking about how happy I felt in my site, and ruminating on my experiences up to that point and those that had yet to come. All of a sudden, a guy who lives in a hut near the river walked up beside me and chucked a huge, unsealed bag of trash onto the shore just a few feet from where I stood, exploding into a heap of some of the vilest smelling waste I could have ever imagined. It was like a poetic Jack Handey “Deep Thoughts” quote that ends with a fart joke. A similar thing happened just a couple weeks ago as I was standing in another spot on the shore, having another experience in my head like the first time, when I looked down at my feet to find a muddy pig, eating trash and making some crude snorting noises. On the day I was robbed, I had started to think about how lucky I was to be able to take a route like this to work just before I met the thieves. Clearly, the lesson here is that you should refrain from having happy thoughts when you are near a river.

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The week after my birthday was Semana Santa. Paraguayans take the Thursday and Friday before Easter off from work, and spend Wednesday cooking a traditional food called Chipa with their extended family. Since you don’t work on these days, you eat the already prepared Chipa since cooking is considered work. I had eaten Chipa here before, (it is rather ubiquitous and tough to not try within your first few days), but had never seen it made. I had been at my future site of Concepcion until Tuesday night, but promised my Guarambare family that I would make it back in time to spend Chipa-making Wednesday with them. I took the night bus back and got to Guarambare at 8 o’clock, right when their extended family was showing up. I didn’t sleep on the bus, since the road between Concepcion and Asuncion has pot holes that the drivers swerve around while traveling at highway speeds. Consequently, I was in a fog during the Chipa-making, and don’t think I absorbed any recipes. But I did manage to take some good photos.

For the rest of training, we all suffered from pretty severe cases of “senior-itis.” We knew our sites, and were all just ready to get there for good. We took trips to the Peace Corps office for formal paperwork and information sessions on health and security. On our final day of training, our trainers performed some sketches to roast some of us trainees. The Rural Health trainer did a vignette about me, poking fun at what my experience being the only guy in my UYD group has been like. It wasn’t exactly PG rated, so I won’t share it. It did get quite a few laughs though.

During last week of training each group received gifts from their technical trainers. We sat down with our trainer in a circle, and he put a box down in the middle. Many of us had already suspected that the rumors of our group receiving machetes were true, and the size of the box confirmed it. We each randomly selected a machete that was wrapped in newspaper. When we unwrapped them, we found words written in marker on the sides. We were then supposed to go around the circle and talk about how we would implement the lessons on the machete. The topics ranged from the environment to career prep. Mine was “sexual education.” When I got home, my host brother and host dad were playing cards and I joined them. When I mentioned that I had received a machete for a graduation gift, my host father told me that he would be able sharpen it, since he has a special tool for it. I handed it over to him, forgetting that sexual education was written on it, and in Spanish no less. The next day, I realized at breakfast that no one was looking at me in the eye. I explained the nature of the exercise that we did the day before, and they got a kick out the irony of having sexual education written on a weapon. I do plan on using the machete a lot, (although not for any sort of education). Other UYD volunteers tell me that they use theirs for gardening, security, and of course, killing snakes and prehistoric-sized spiders.

Two days after my uncomfortable machete situation, my G-29 group swore in at the US embassy in Asuncion. After three months of training, no one had ET-ed, (a Peace Corps term that simply means to have decided to go home). Apparently, it is pretty rare for a group of our size to not have at least one person decide that two more years in this situation was not for them. All 31 of us sat down at a small ceremony with the PC Country Director and Ambassador, listened to a few speeches, then took the oath. I was surprised that the oath wasn’t PC specific and did not even mention volunteerism. Instead, volunteers take the same oath that most US employees take, (the one about protecting the constitution from enemies, etc.). Supposedly, even the Vice President takes the same oath. I am not sure how many enemies of the US constitution I will have to fight off, but I promised I would all the same. After the swearing in, we had a small reception with the Ambassador. I had a chance to speak with her for a few minutes about her job, and how she feels about the PC. She talked about her background in various parts of the world, and how she came to be Ambassador here.

After the ceremony, we headed back to the office for some administrative stuff, like getting our bank account information, and of course, our cell phones. When I made my first call to a fellow volunteer, I realized that I had forgotten the luxury of cell phones. We don’t have the world’s best plan as you might imagine, but it is actually possible to call me from the states. I would probably not try, as the cost for you to call a cell phone in a developing country would likely be catastrophic on your next bill. But if you are feeling brave, have a calling card or have an emergency and need to speak with me ASAP, my number is 0971.233.673. The directions that I have been given for calling me from the states go as follows: dial 595.971.233.673.

We spent the following weekend celebrating in traditional fashion for graduating PC groups. We all stayed in a hotel in the capital, (one with hot, running water!), and ate at some ridiculously nice restaurants. Ok, ridiculously nice by Paraguayan standards. But honestly, your standards change drastically after just a few months here.

I spent a few days prior to leaving for my site with my family in Guarambare. They made me my favorite meal for lunch on my last day, which is a soup made with corn and chicken. On my last night they began negotiating when my first trip back will be. I said my goodbyes the next morning, and my brother gave me a package of my favorite Yerba, (the herbal mix which you use for Terere). Ironically, my favorite brand is from Argentina, so he told me not tell many Paraguayans that it is my favorite. I lugged my suitcase onto a bus and headed to the terminal in Asuncion. I met up with some other volunteers who will be living in the north and traveled with them. Its about a six hour trip on the bus, so when I got there I was pretty exhausted. I dragged my bag a few blocks from the bus stop to my contact’s house. My contact, Esteban, is currently getting over a very bad case of Dengue, which is a serious disease that gets spread by mosquito. Its something that I am hoping to avoid, but the chances of catching it are much higher here in the north because of the climate.

For now, I am spending time here in Concepcion learning my way around and integrating into the community. Most of the people are very interested in what I am doing here, and I have become very good at giving my Peace Corps introduction / monologue. The rest of my language skills are coming along pretty well. I scored Advanced-Low on my exit interview from training in Spanish. The levels are divided as Novice, Intermediate and Advanced, with Low, Medium and High subcategories, so that means I’m at the bottom part of the top level. In three months, I have probably quadrupled the Spanish that I learned from three semesters of Spanish in college. I owe this quick improvement to spending time with a bunch of patient and accepting listeners back in Guarambare. Having the opportunity to speak to people who gently corrected my mistakes helped me gain confidence. I probably learned more, though, by listening. Being placed in a situation where all around you people speak a different language, (or in my case, two different languages), forces you to pay closer attention. Of course, I have learned the bulk of my current Spanish and Guarani from mistakes. I can’t imagine a faster way to learn the subtle difference for the Guarani words for “penis” and for “food” than by having a room full of people laugh out loud when you tell them you enjoyed the penis.

Aside from these dangerous similarities, it’s frustrating that instead of using several words to convey a message, Guarani takes a single word and adds several prefixes and suffixes. This makes dissecting what someone just said to you a much slower process. It is an interesting language though. Rather than give original names to something, the language often just names something by describing it. An outdoor oven isn’t an oven, but a “fire hole.” It is also a fun language to curse in, since a lot of the translations into English are quite elaborate. If someone tells you “Terehona ejapiro tunare,” be offended. Be very, very offended.

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I didn’t sleep particularly well as a result of the immense anticipation, which would only end up exacerbating the fatigue of the following 48 hours. In the morning, the group met as a whole for what is known as “staging.” We went over basic safety tips, and other generic information about the PC. There are 31 of us in my particular group, but we all learned each others names and general backstories very quickly. We have only known each other for a few days, yet everyone is already relatively close. I imagine it is the same for all outgoing PC groups, since you suddenly meet dozens of people who have shared similar experiences getting to where you are now, and everyone feels the same mix of nervous excitement. My group consists of people from just about every area of the country – California to Maine to Iowa to Texas.

We flew first from Miami to Sao Paolo. I, like most, did not sleep on the plane. Sleeping on planes simply is not a skill which I have acquired yet. The group was herded through the airport by a Portuguese-speaking Airline employee that none us could really understand. Our second flight was a brief one into Asuncion. You get a very accurate sense of Paraguay the second you land. Two hours earlier, we had taken off from an airport that is an international hub in a developed country. Now we were landing at an airport where 20 yards to the left of the runway stands a wire fence with roaming cows behind it.

When we landed, it was about 10 am local time, and after meeting some PC employees at the airport and loading our bags, we were whisked into vans and driven through the city to a small community called Guarambare (gwar-AHM-bah-rray), where we will all be living for the next three months. We were dropped off at the main training center where we had a chance to meet with our training staff. The training center is a walled-in complex, with several outdoor meeting areas, all of which are under straw roofs. We split up by the field in which we will be working, (Urban Youth Development, in my case), and met our groups’ technical trainer. Technical trainers are the people who will be giving lessons that pertain to the work that we will individually be doing once training is over and we become actual volunteers. Then my Urban Youth Development (UYD) group, which consists of seven of us, was shuttled out to a nearby school, where we met our families. My new sister, Selva, and her six-year-old daughter, Soledad (aka Sol), were there to pick me up. Selva and Sol both hugged me and hurried me down the street and back to my new house. She explained that I would be living with her parents (and now my parents as well), Mario and Clotilda. Selva lives next door, and my new brother Oscar lives behind her. Clotilda smiled widely as she waited for us in the doorway of their house, (which doubles as a store in the front). She and I spoke for quite sometime, occasionally running into roadblocks in our conversation where I was either unable to understand her questions, or I lacked the ability to translate my response into Spanish. She, like everyone I have spoken to in Guarambare, is very eager to learn about the United States, and asked me several questions about the weather, the people, my family (which they refer to as my real family), etc.

She showed me my new room, which is 100 times better than what I had envisioned in my head. Their house is actually a collection of several freestanding structures with a shared patio. My room has a couple of windows – which is to say holes in the wall, since they have no glass. I have a dresser, a desk, and a bed, and most importantly, a ceiling fan. There are rarely any bugs in there, but curious geckos do occasionally come in to say hello. The family chickens also wander inside sometimes looking for a handout. I actually have my own bathroom, which is all-tile with a sink and toilet. A shower head hangs from the ceiling, so the shower and bathroom are one in the same. Other volunteers have not been so lucky – some others have outhouses, and must use buckets for showers. As an funny side anecdote, I’ll share a joke that we heard in our staging meeting in Miami: An optimist looks at a glass that is filled halfway and says it is half-full A pessimist says it is half-empty. A Peace Corps volunteer says “Hey, I could take a shower with that.”

Selva and I then sat outside on the sidewalk, which is essentially the pastime of choice in my neighborhood. Groups of people sit in folding chairs, talking and drinking a popular drink called terere, (which is like a cold herbal tea). They greet all those who pass by on the street, which is used by pedestrians since very few cars drive around the neighborhood. There are often unattended horses, cows, and chickens ambling down the stone and dirt roads.

Selva and I were talking about California when she and Sol quickly stood up and pulled me across the street. When I looked to the left I realized why they were moving me so quickly: A cow was galloping, at a speed I did not know cows were capable of, down the sidewalk. It was being chased by two dogs that appeared to be more interested in playing with it than biting it. The cow then galloped past where we were sitting. They explained that it is not uncommon to see animals like cows or horses running freely in the streets. Selva walked me around town where I met other extended family members, and then she showed me a horse in her friend’s backyard. She pointed to its eye, which had what appeared to be a recently inflicted wound. She tried to explain what happened to it, but there was a word that I didn’t understand that she kept using. When I asked her to explain, she said that it was ice that falls from the sky – which I then understood to be hail. We went back to the house and she showed me pictures of the hail that she had taken. One photo showed a piece of ice the size of an American football.

We came back to the house where I met my brother, Oscar, who had just returned from work. He works in Asuncion in a government office. He loves American movies and we managed to talk about movies for well over an hour. When he learned that I was from California, he pointed to a poster he had of Terminator 2 with our governor – I came back from training the other day and found that he had placed it in my room. Now I have a poster of Arnold on a Harley holding a gun, right next to a poster of Jesus. The rest of that first evening was spent sitting and talking with the whole family. Sol seems very fascinated by me, and is always running off and bringing back something that she wants to show me, like her bike or her cat, Celeste. The whole family is very patient with me and my mediocre Spanish skills. I can understand most of what they say, since they speak slowly. Mario sometimes is difficult to understand since he speaks in what is known as Jopara, which is a combination of Spanish and Guarani. I apologize when I take an extra moment to remember the words I need for a whole sentence, but they laugh and tell me that their last Peace Corps guest came to them unable to say anything in Spanish. After just one day I could already feel my Spanish improving, as I rapidly fill in the missing gaps in my vocabulary. They themselves speak no English at all, so I often have to resort to an elaborate game of charades when I can’t come up with a particular word. When discussing my previous job, I couldn’t explain that I worked in juvenile hall and forgot the word for jail, so I had to walk to the window, hold a bar look out woefully and they immediately understood.

By the time midnight rolled around, I hadn’t slept in days. I fell into bed passed out. I awoke to the loudest thunder I have ever heard. I could tell the power had gone out since my ceiling fan was not spinning. I heard my parents running around outside, moving things under the awning. They were not concerned, and explained that when it rains they have to move things since it often floods. The roads here are all dirt, and it causes problems with their property. I normally walk to class, but my dad drove me to school, as the area experiences horrible flooding when it rains.

My initial impressions of this country are all great. The people here all lead lives of simple pleasures. They enjoy sitting in front of their houses, drinking their tea, listening to the radio, and walking around the neighborhood. They are interested in the United States, but do not envy the lifestyle. Selva explained that she has a friend there, who has to work every day to pay rent and buy food, and has little time for any fun. The people do stare at you when you walk down the narrow streets, but their stares seem to be out of curiosity rather than suspicion.

Training will continue for three months, where most of the focus will be on polishing our Spanish, but also learning Guarani. It is difficult to explain what Guarani sounds like, but there are a lot of guttural sounds. For instance, the word for water sounds basically like someone’s indifferent answer to a question – It sounds like “ugh…”. Reading it is even more difficult, as the letter “Y” can sound like “Y” or like “OO.” Add on top of that confusion the fact that consonants that have no place next to each other in English or Spanish find themselves standing together. There are lots of M’s preceded by B’s to start words. The rest of training will consist of medical information and safety tips. We received our medical kits, which are full of first aid types of things. I don’t have a mosquito net yet, since my ceiling is too high for one. There aren’t really as many bugs as one might expect, but there are lots of little geckos and frogs, all of which seek shelter in your house when it rains. I have yet to see a snake, but apparently that is an inevitability. The only bug problem I have run into so far is finding butterflies in my bathroom, which is the least bothersome bug I can possibly imagine.

I will post my mailing address the next time I make it to the internet cafe. I’ll post pictures as soon as I get a chance.

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