Che avy´a terei Paraguipe

Translation from Guarani: I´m very happy in Paraguay!

Bailey replaced Niko

                I had Niko for one day until I was told the family had changed their mind and I was not allowed to have him.  I was sad at first, but it’s for the better.  He has his other dog friends at his house, and I had a hard time keeping him at my house.  I still see him around the neighborhood a lot and when I yell Niko he comes running to me even though that’s not his real name.  But, the day I came home from class and told my family I wasn’t allowed to have Niko anymore they said don’t worry, put on your shoes lets go.  I listened, and we went to Lily’s house.  Lily has a boxer who just had 4 puppies.  They were all adorable and only about 40 days old.  They were born on February 5.  Lily wouldn’t let me leave without taking one of the puppies; apparently the momma was refusing to breast feed anymore.  I picked the little black one with white paws who was hiding in the shower.  She’s absolutely adorable.  I’ve never used the word precious in my entire life, but that’s the word I would chose to describe her.  So I got her on a Friday and we hung out and played all weekend and I had to leave for a 4 day trip (Long Field Practice…which I will talk about in a minute) on Monday.  My family told me they would take good care of her, but I was still really sad to leave her.  She was crying when I left.  I decided on a name during my camino…Bailey.

                I returned on Thursday afternoon to my sister and my mom telling me Bailey was not doing well at all, and at first I thought they told me she died…but then I realized they were saying she almost died.  Apparently she didn’t eat or drink or play or do anything but lay under my sister’s bed the entire time I was gone.  My mom told me the vet came and checked her out and said everything was fine she was just really sad because I was gone which  makes me feel absolutely awful.  I dragged her out from under the bed and we took a little siesta in the hammock together and then I gave her a bath (which she was not a fan of).  I got her to eat and play a little bit, but she has close to no energy and she looks like a little drunk when she’s walking around because she’s so weak.  She looks so thin already, and I’m really nervous about her.  Hopefully she pulls through within the next couple days.  For those of you who pray, please keep her in your prayers for me.

Long Field Practice

                On a happier note, we went on a trip called Long Field Practice this week.  We were split into small groups and sent on our way with a technical trainer and a language teacher to stay in a volunteer’s community.  My group went to Solano Escobar in Paraguari to visit one of the most wonderful people I’ve ever met, Aaron.  We arrived at about 11:00am and were immediately shuffled to host family.  We each had our own host family.  My host family was super nice, but spoke very little Spanish…mostly Guarani…and my host brother was hottttt.  I especially enjoyed the day when I came home and he was not wearing a shirt.

                Anywho, after lunch the first day my dad brought me a bag of oranges.  It’s citrus season here.  I’m really sad Mango season is over because I think Mangoes might be my new favorite fruit.  They are so big (like the size of my head) and so delicious here.  I hear the large one are actually originally from Brazil…wherever they’re from I can’t wait until Mango season next year.  So my dad brought me some oranges and described to me that they were a special kind of orange.  So when I met up with the other trainees I had the bag of oranges and exclaimed I have these special “belly button oranges if anyone wants one.”  Everyone laughed at me and Lauren replied “…you mean navel oranges?”  Ohhhhh that’s what he was trying to say.  Oooops.   When we got to Aaron’s house we split into two groups of two and had language class while the other group prepared a dental charla.  During language class, the teacher asked me if I had mosquitoes in my house.  I said yes, a few, to which she replied is that what happened to your face?  No, I just have some zits.  Fail.  Then we all went back to my house and made some homemade yogurt.  I sat at the table and talked to my host brother, Estilvo, and his cousin, Junior for hours.  They were teaching me Guarani and asking me a lot of random questions.  At about 9:00pm a moto was driving by the house without a headlight on.  Everyone was staring at it, and I was like why doesn’t he have a light. They all replied that it was the town crazy.  He turned around and drove in to talk to us.  Greaaaaaaat.  He hopped off his bike and just stared at me.  I don’t mind the attention for the most part, but I hate it sometimes.  I wish I could just blend in like a Paraguayan woman so I didn’t have to talk to the crazies, but my white skin and blonde hair interest all.  He asked me like a 1000 questions.  I answered as best I could then he started talking to my host dad and unbuttoned his pants to pull his rifle out of his pants.  WTF?  He wasn’t able to get the towel off of it so he jammed it back in.  Then he started yelling at me.  I had no idea what he was saying.  At first the boys were laughing, but then they got real quiet so I figured he was legitimately mad; however, I can’t understand much Guarani, yet alone when someone is yelling at me quickly so I just stared at him and tried not to laugh.  I’m pretty sure he was saying he wanted me and all the other Peace Corps people to go back to the U.S. and he was pretty unimpressed that I’d been in country for a month and learned little Guarani.  I wanted to tell him to take a month of English classes and see if he could understand what I was saying to him when I was drunkenly, yelling at him quickly.  Doubtful.

The second day we went to the school and spent the entire day building a Fogone…it’s an oven and a stove thing built entirely out of bricks and mixture of red dirt and water as the cement.  It’s pretty sweet.  I’ll most likely be building myself one when I get back to the states just because I can.  At about 5 we headed back to Aaron’s house (which is super chuchi…the first house I’ve seen in Paraguay that had tile floors…something other than cement) and made banana bread and whole wheat cake.  Superrrr rico.  We headed back to our host families.  I had mandio cheriri for dinner.  At first when they gave it to me I thought they said Mandio Chevivi…and I thought  Mandioca diarrhea does not sound pleasant for dinner.  But, then I realized it was cheriri which means fried…and fried mandioca is delicious.  It’s like French fries, and I get really excited when I get to eat it.  After dinner, another crazy came over.  This man’s name was Lino and he came to get some cogna (whiskey…aka leche or milk haha) and Lino fell in love with me.  He even wrote a love poem for me which he made me write down in my notebook.  I had Marisol translate it for me the next day…I should have written down the translation…it was pretty hilarious and very creepy at the same time.  He told my family he was going to visit the next night to sing me some love songs.  Luckily, he got sidetracked at the neighbors house drinking some more cogna.

  The next day Jeff and I finished up the Fogon in the morning while Liena and Lauren finished preparing their Charla.  They gave their dental Charla to the 4^th grade kiddos and we all headed back to our houses for lunch.  After lunch Jeff and I gave our dental charla to the 5^th graders.  It went really well.  We had them play some games and we gave them popcorn.   Jeff read a little story and I gave the hard facts.  I decided to wing it and improvise rather than reading the script on the back of my prop so I’m not sure how much they actually understood of my incorrect broken spanish…  but oh well.  Afterwards we gave them all tooth brushes and made them brush their teeth.  I was actually surprised by my lack of nerves mainly because I had none.  I guess I’m just used to being on display here and I’ve made a fool of myself countless times that another mess up will just add to my collection of funny stories.  After the charla we went to a women’s committee meeting and I have no idea what happened.  My brain was done at that point and I didn’t have enough energy to try to translate so I just sat there in Casey land.  Thursday morning we all met at the house Liena was staying at and we made detergent and fabric softener.  Then we were picked up and on our way home!

On the way home we stopped in Carapegua…the hammock capital!  I bought myself a rainbow colored hammock for the equivalent of 10 bucks, a shirt of ao poi…it’s a certain kind of stitch very popular in Paraguay, and a shawl with this lacy design that I forget the correct term of also known to Paraguay.  Then we went to this buffet place for lunch, and I loaded up on the veggies!  After lunch we walked next door to get some ice cream mmmm hmmm.

               

My growing Vocabulary

                My new favorite Guarani phrase, which I’m sure I’m not allowed to say because I’m a woman and women aren’t allowed to do any of the fun things, is teruho ejapiro.  It’s probably in my best interest that I leave the translation off my blog.

Love and miss you all mucho.  Keep all the updates coming!

Half Way There

It´s crazy, but we are already halfway done with training!

Casey Crazy

 My family has started calling me “Casey Crazy.”  I’m not entirely sure why.  It all started one Sunday afternoon while we were asado-ing (BBQing).  They know “loca” significa crazy in English, and they thought it was hilarious to say Casey Crazy, and they haven’t stopped since.  I asked my 7 year old niece why I was crazy and she replied because I like to sleep and drink water…I’m quite the hooligan.

Work

Peace Corps training takes me back to my kindergarten days.  I consistently feel like a 5 year old because of my language skills and the absurd amount of games and icebreakers we play, but at the same time I’m really enjoying the technical stuff we are learning about.  We have learned a lot about breastfeeding, nutrition, the three most common parasites in Paraguay (Giardia, Hookworm, and Round Worm…there is almost 100% certainty I will contract at least one of these parasites at least one time during my two years here….So excited), latrines, modern bathrooms, trash pits, compost piles, gardening etc.

My favorite thing we’ve learned about so far is the composting latrine.  It’s a nifty little latrine that has two sides.  Once you fill up one side with your chivivi (Let’s face it, waste is always diarrhea here) you close up the hole and begin defecating in the other side.  After 6 months the first side is fully decomposed and sterile and ready to be scooped out and used as fertilizer in your garden.  What’s better than being able to put your own pooh to good use?  It’s kind of hard to wrap your mind around at first, but I think it’s a very cool idea if you are able to get past the idea of playing with your own excrement; however, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I have a modern bathroom in my house in site…if not I’m planning on building one.

Anywho, we have started putting what we’ve learned to practice.  A couple weeks ago, or maybe it was last week..I’m not really aware of time here; we split into groups and invited our families to come watch us give charlas about parasites.  It was very humbling presenting on a topic we really don’t know that much about in a language we aren’t able to communicate in very well.  The little kids were correcting just about every other word that came out of our mouths, but our parents were very proud of us and told us we were guapos (which means hardworking here…although it’s another word for pretty in Spanish in most other Spanish speaking countries)

We also made a losa, the sanitary floor of a latrine, sometime in the recent past.  We had to make cement in the street and then pour it over our matrix of rebar.  It’s currently drying in the other health group’s community.

One day, we made homemade soap from cow fat and dish washing soap from a kit.  My mom was super excited when I brought home the dish washing soap.  She didn’t even mind the dead bugs stuck in it.  “No hay problema.” Sweeeeeet.  I’m not really sure what happened to the bar of soap I brought home, but she was pretty excited about that bad boy too.

Future Site

We find out our future sites in about 3 weeks.  I’m so excited!  So far, we’ve had two interviews with Don Pedro, the director of the Rural Health and Sanitation Project, and his team.  We had the second interview on Friday, and I told them my preferences about my future site along with projects I’m currently interested in working on.  I told them I wanted electricity and running water, I liked communities that weren’t too spread out, I want a Puesto de Salud in my community, I want a community that speaks more Spanish than Guarani, and I’d like a site with a high school in the community.

The two project ideas I’ve come up with/am most interested in working on are: A modern bathroom project using recycled plastic and glass soda bottles as materials for construction.  And, I’d also like to try to put a program together to help interested high school students get to college.  I’m not sure if I’ll be able to do either of these projects because I’ll have to see what my community wants and needs, but I’m glad my mind is already coming up with some project ideas.

Machismo Culture

“A Woman is to a man as meat is to a cat.”

-real quote from a Paraguayan Woman in the campo, and the perfect explanation as to why I currently have no interest in dating a Paraguayan man; However, 2 years is a long time, and I hear they can be trained…

Hammocks

There are hammocks everywhere here, and they make me so happy.  I’m planning on furnishing my house with hammocks only (and a real bed).  We have a hammock in our backyard.  I decided to lay in it for the first time the other day.  I was pretty much in heaven taking a little siesta in the hammock until I opened my eyes and looked around to realize all the trees above me decorated with ALL my underwear.  My family had done my laundry for me, and I had over a month’s worth of underwear air drying in the trees.  I was slightly embarrassed for 0.2 seconds, but then I just thought it was awesome.

Birthday Party

I walked into my yard after class one day to find my brother in law and all of his friends tying up a pig in the back yard.  My sisters explained they were slaughtering it for my niece’s birthday party the following night and asked if I’d like to watch.  I said yes, but then I got squeamish and decided I couldn’t watch the actual killing and walked away.  I came back a couple minutes later, and the pig was dead and they were draining its blood.  Then they shaved him, cut off his head and hooves, and skinned him.  That’s all I saw.  I didn’t eat any pig at the party the following night.

Victoria, my niece, turned 7!  There was a pretty big crowd that came out for her birthday party.  I wore my skinny jeans with the rips in them and my entire family told me my jeans were broken, and my 11 year old cousin told me I was hot…Thanks?  All the men were in the back drinking beers and roasting the pig.  My sister told me to go get my flabongos.  You don’t have to ask me twice.  I brought them out and was immediately given a chair in the men’s circle.  I raced a Paraguayan man and I won because “Soy la reina” (I’m the queen).  I’m not shy about announcing my claim to fame.  Leina, another trainee that lives next door to me, and I were sitting in the men’s circle and they kept trying to speak to us in Guarani but we weren’t able to understand anything.  We both felt super uncomfortable especially because we were the only women around so I finally exclaimed we weren’t able to understand them and we were going to talk to the ladies.  Not too long afterwards we ate and everyone started going home.  I told my family I was tired and I was going to bed.  On my way in to my house I had to pass the giant circle of men again.  They all did their cat calls to me so I turned and said I’m tired, and I’m going to bed.  The guy I raced against asked “with me?”  To which I replied “no, alone.”  Bet that sucks getting your butt whooped by a girl in a drinking contest then shot down by the same girl in front of all your friends.  I’m awesome.

50^th Anniversary

Last week was the 50^th anniversary of the Peace Corps!  We had a small fiesta for our families in our satellite training center on Friday.  We invited all of our families, had a couple of speakers, showed a slide show of photos, did some arts and crafts with the kids and had “a small penis for everyone to enjoy outside.”  Ooops the Guarani words for food and penis are a little too similar and Matt, our MC, chose the wrong one when he tried to tell everyone we had a little bit of food outside.  Luckily, our families just laughed and replied that they wanted a big penis.  Awkward.

Niko

I officially have my own Paraguayan puppy, and he is absolutely adorable.  I named him Niko…it’s a brand of Paraguayan soda and kind of a weird/long/hard to explain story behind it so I’m just going to leave that part out.  He lives in the neighborhood and lately he’s been coming to our satellite training center every morning.  It was love at first site.  I have permission from the neighborhood to take him…I just have to find him again….