Every four months, a new training group swears in, and their arrival spells the departure of the oldest group. G-30 recently swore in, and G-24 swore out. There were two G-24ers in our VAC, and per Peace Corps regulations which require all volunteers to seize upon any opportunity to throw a party and cook asado, we all went to a despidida for PCV-turned-RPCV Rachel. The party was at her place, and much of her community came by to eat, drink, dance, and say goodbye. It was a giant party, complete with a DJ, 50 kilos of meat (roughly a whole animal, by the look of it), and even a “globo loco,” also known as one of those huge inflatable jumpy-things.
I wrote a little Haiku about how much fun the globo loco was:
Gracefully I fly
The winter air on my face
Then I break my knees
Ok, ok. I didn’t actually break my knees, but it sure felt like I did.
I had vaulted myself up incredibly high in the air, and bent my legs under myself to prepare for an awesome move that I had mastered back in my backyard trampoline days where I land on my knees, bounce up and flip forward. The one factor that I failed to account for was our friend Liam, a guy who is a good three inches taller than me, who had plans of his own. As I am in the air, time slows down as I see Liam land a belly-flop, which manages to deflate this entire apparatus. I assumed before I even hit the rock, which the globo loco was resting on top of, that I had shattered both knee caps. All that went through my head as I curled into a fetal position to avoid the other jumpers was, “Crap. I am going to be Medically-Separated. What a lame story to tell people about why I had to leave the Peace Corps early: I fell while jumping in one of those bouncy castles and broke my knees.” Luckily, the damage was not as bad as I had originally thought, but walking was painful for a few days.
Besides the globo loco, the party was a bunch of fun. We also bid farewell to Mary from our VAC. Both will be missed. I have yet to meet the two new volunteers from G-30, but we are planning on getting everyone together soon.
I have started to give my charla for parents at a local school. I wasn’t expecting more than two or three parents to show up on the first morning, but about 15 ended up coming. The theme was keeping kids engaged in school by boosting self-esteem and helping with homework. The directora (principle) was there to help me when I hit a roadblock in Guarani. I got away with speaking mostly Spanish, but some of the parents have only a basic foundation of Spanish, and needed her to translate some of the more complex concepts into Guarani. Some of them seemed very relieved to have a forum to vent some frustration, and were genuinely pleased to leave with some new parenting tips. I was asked to give the same charla at a different school, and it will be taking up most of my time for the next few weeks.
The only other big news around here is that “Expo Norte” is coming. I’ve obviously never been to it, but from the way locals describe it, it sounds like a big county fair. It apparently is a pretty big deal, since no one will stop talking about it. Most people are especially interested in the animals that are shown and sold there. I am often called over to a neighbor’s house to see commercials for the gigantic cows that are going to be auctioned off at the expo. There are some that look like they may have been born near Chernobyl. The folks around here are completely transfixed by the animal auction previews and have told me more about cows than I have ever wished to know.
They started running ads on the radio for the expo when I got to site (in April), and have not stopped. There are only a few businesses near me that can afford to advertise, so you hear the same ads every ten minutes. The Expo Norte ad is a really bad song in Guarani and I’m looking forward to the fair for no other reason than the fact that it means an end to the ads, (although I imagine they will start running again for Expo Norte 2010 a few short months later). There was a real old-fashioned circus that came to Guarambare once, complete with animals and people with strange deformities. I saw some of the rides which I hear are used in this expo, and as I recall, they didn’t appear particularly safe. Honestly, there is really only so much you can use duct tape for, you know?
Loading ...
{ 0 comments… add one now }