So life has been a weird mix of slow and fast. I’m mostly settled into the house, although I haven’t gotten around to painting yet. I’ve been kind of meandering my way through the schools, the comedor, and the community center having meetings and seeing what type of work people want to do with me. The percentage of awkward interactions has gone down significantly, thank dios. I had a meeting with all the professors and they seemed interested enough in working with me so I went back and made a schedule with them to bring books from the library into each of their classes to read with the kids. The idea being that the kids would later come seek out the books at the library-vamos a ver. I had offered to teach an English class at the community center and when Fulvia, the director, went to the municipality to talk to the director of local development, she not only approved the class at the community center, but asked that I teach on at the municipality as well-so my days may end up being filled with a lot of teaching at least for the time being.
The time I don’t spend working has been very relaxing and tranquil. I usually go to the cantina at the school every day to spend time with Elvira, Nilsa, and whichever of the daughters has come to help that day. Yanina hasn’t been around this week though because she has dengue (yikess!) so she has been at her aunt’s house who lives closer to the hospital.
This weekend Johanna and Ian came to visit and we had a nice afternoon of wine, coke, and delicious avocado sandwiches. Sunday I went to Altos, where Sherita lives, to watch a soccer game that her brother was playing in. It’s a beautiful city and the ride from here to there is scenic and lovely and made me really fall a little bit in love with this country. It was one of the “holy shit this is where I am and this is what I’m doing” moments that I’ve had occasionally since I’ve been here. They’re really great to have and especially to reflect back on especially when for example, my water doesn’t turn on for a day or so and my dog pees all over my house and I want to eat cheese other than queso paraguay and I can’t, and my frustration approaches critical mass. The “this is where I am and this is what I’m doing” moments are really great, and keep it all in perspective.
The water has been super unreliable this week which originally was VERY annoying but I got over it and have more or less accepted bucket bathing as a way of life now-check that one off the life to do list.
I bought rice from the dispensa next door the other night and soon realized that I had never made rice without following the directions on the box but luckily with some Peace Corps flexibility and quick thinking, I made myself a nice rice, corn, and pea salad. And the puppy liked it too.
Meli, Claudia, Rugger, and I embarked on a journey to the vet this week to get Rugger vaccinated. We had to get on a public bus (the list of weird things I have traveled with on one of those is growing rapidly) which the puppy was less than thrilled with but after some writhing and crying we finally got there and got him all fixed up by a very nice Paraguayan vet. Luckily on the way home he was too tired to continue writhing so we made it home without any casualties. Now if I could just get him to pee outside!
So we got a lot of warning about “la hora paraguaya” and the “abiss of service” and things like that. Basically they were warning us to NOT expect an American standard 40 hour work week once we got into site. Despite these warnings, I still am finding myself with anxiety/guilt over the relatively small amount of work that I have been doing on a day to day basis. I (naturally) have been making a mini schedule for myself every day, most of the time involving one task in the morning and one task in the afternoon. While this does help me feel somewhat accomplished at the end of the day, each task doesn’t really ever take more than an hour or two. Going to the comedor- two hours max, meeting with the teachers at the school-solid 20 minutes no mas, going to the community center to get a phone number/check on the enrollment in my English class-about 7-12 minutes depending on how fast I walk/how much small talk I make with the guy at the front desk. These have been some of the tasks I’ve been doing on a fairly regular basis these past couple weeks so, as you can see- there is NO such thing as 9-5 around here. They waves of guilt come and go but I try and use my down time as productively as possible (which my internet modem does NOTHING to help). There are several dirt roads that run off the Ruta just north of my community that I hope to explore in the coming weeks, and I also have not made it down to the river yet.
Another volunteer who lives close to me, Amy, and I went to the jail a couple km up the road from my sight to see if the director was interested in working with us. We trekked the twenty minutes in from the ruta and handed our IDs to the guards at the front gate. The director greeted us and we sat and chatted for a while about the improvements he was interested in making in the prison and how we could possibly help. He is super friendly and open to us so hopefully we will be able to do some interesting things with the prisoners. Definitely add this to the list of things I thought I wouldn’t be doing in the Peace Corps.
I met some German people who are volunteering as English teachers in a high school in Limpio. We met them on a bus and of course their rubia-ness and short and t shirts immediately stood out to us. As soon as we figured out they weren’t Peace Corps volunteers we were VERY confused and decided to see what they were all about. There are five of them here, all working in the same school. We went and had dinner together and got to know each other a bit-it was so nice to have social interaction in English again!
Well, I think this is all for now. I will report on all the bicentennial activities after the weekend!!
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