So Saturday May 14th was the day-Paraguay’s big bicentennial celebration, 200 years free from the Spaniards. VERY big news. There were parades and dances and concerts and chipa being prepared all over the country but then….it rained. In fact, it POURED (at least in Limpio) for most of the morning. So all the parading and what not was cancelled
Luckily, it stopped raining in time for the Patron Saint Parade in Villa Madrid so I made my way down to the church, stopping at the hamburger sale to raise money so that all of Villa Madrid will have running water-a cause I FULLY support. The parade was to be followed by what was described to me as “a small festival”, which lasted about three hours, and I left early.
The rest of the week I continued to run around doing things in la villa. My english class is filling up so that should start en seguida. I brought “mobile libraries” to a couple of classes and read to the kids which they all seemed to enjoy. I had a meeting planned with the Director of the prison but we went out there and he wasn’t there-majorly Paraguayan but also a major bummer. To be continued….
At my house this week, my task was to puppy proof my yard. He is getting bigger, and more curious so I needed to find a way to not only keep him in, but keep the other variety of animals that wander around my barrio out. My first thought was to simply train him to stay inside the gate. I had little success with that and quickly got tired of chasing him into my neighbor’s store. So, I decided to stack some extra buckets I had laying around against the fence. This worked for a couple hours, until he realized he could knock over the buckets. The third time is proving to be the charm, I have no assembled a very sturdy structure made of buckets, boxes, and very heavy rocks I gathered from the yard. It’s worked for almost a whole twelve hours now-please stand by. And yes, he still pees on my floor.
Since they suspended the festivities last Saturday, they decided to re-do it all this Friday-cancelled school, the whole nine. The parade was really really really long and all the schools in Limpio were in it. After that, it was site presentation time for me. Your site presentation is when your coordinators from your sector (for me, education and youth development) come and tell the community a little bit about Peace Corps and what the volunteer is in the community to do, and not do (motos, drugs etc). There was a decent turn out to the meeting, mostly kids but I guess that more or less reflects the population of people I’ve been spending my time with thus far. I made some really rico guacamole and bought cookies and soda and all went pretty smoothly. Afterwards I went back into Limpio with Ruben and Juan, the guys who work at CAMUANI, to watch the dance festival which was really beautiful and probably one of the more cultural things I’ve done since I’ve gotten here. Also, por suerte, I happened to mention to Juan and Ruben that I wanted to paint the outside of my house and without skipping a beat they offered to come over the next day to paint for me. So, Saturday consisted of me feeding them terere while they painted my house a lovely orange color. Not a bad deal, terere for a free house painting.
Saturday night was my new german amiga, Tina’s, birthday. We had a really delicious asado and chatted a bit. The director of the school they work at is very involved in Habitat for Humanity Paraguay so hopefully we will do some work together once I get more involved with the youth groups around here.
Sunday I got my sorry self outta bed at 730 because I had been invited to the mass to get introduced to the Sunday school classes. It turns out there are a TON of kids involved in the church in this community so my tiredness proved well worth it and my Sundays became charla-filled for the next couple weekends. Also, they are having a volleyball tournament next weekend that I am VERY excited about.
Seems like all for now.
Missing and loving you all, as always.
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