A Day in the Life...

I have almost been here a month now.  I can´t believe it.  The days seem to pass slowly, but the weeks fly by.  It is a very weird phenomenon. 

I just returned from a three day trip to visit a current volunteer named Tom.  I went to a town called Juan E. O´Leary which was about a 4 hour bus ride plus the 40 minutes to the terminal.  The visit was basically to see a day, or in my case three days, in the life of a volunteer who is in my same sector: Environmental Conservation.  In order to get there I had to take a city bus to the terminal where I could catch the long distance bus.  It is always fun getting on city buses with a big back pack and even more so when it is very full. 

Tom´s house

I got to O´Leary around noon and met Tom and we walked about 20 minutes to Tom´s house down a very dusty road.  It was pretty hot so the first thing we did when we got there was drink the obligatory terere, which is the official drink of Paraguay.  Terere, for those of you who don´t know it is yerba mate, but with cold water.  In my option it is better than mate. His house is pretty basic with only two rooms, well three if you count the bathroom which was added later.  He also has a little garden in the back.  After we rejuvenated with terere we headed over to the school where Tom has done a few projects including painting a world and teaching English.  We showed up during the break so we were able to talk to the teachers.  

Bedroom

Kitchen

The first night was pretty exciting.  A big storm came through.  The wind was very strong and it rained very hard.  With just a sheet metal roof the rain was really loud and the wind howled through the little cracks in the walls, but we survived.  The power went out sometime around 10 that night.  When we left the houst the fallowing morning to bring some carrot cake we made from carrot from the school garden the power still wasn´t on.  By the time we got back we had power, which was actually pretty fast.  After having lunch and a siesta I helped him dig a raised seed ben in his garden.  Apparently gardening is the number one hobby for volunteers in my sector.  Also during my visit Tom introduced me to the President of the youth group and I talked with her about what they do and some of the projects they have done.    

Road to the Lake

¨Cow Pie Beach¨

On my last day, after having lunch with his host family we walked about 3 miles to a reservior created by a dam, go swimming.  I was surprised at how clean it was, aside from a few cow pies here and there.  To get there we had to walk through the owner´s cow pasture. There was a little thatched roof gazebo and a few randomly placed benches.  We spent a few hours there and then headed home and made pizza.  The trip home unfortunately took me 6 
hours.  

















Mean while back at the ranch...

The most exciting news at my houses here was that one of the pigs had piglets.  There are nine of them.  They are VERY cute.  I told some of the other volunteers and the came over to see them as well.  we also have chick running around.  It is quite the baby animal farm here.  

Apart from the normal 
classes we have taken a couple of field trips.  The first one was to an agricultural high school.  It is a boarding school and most of the students only stay 5 days a week and go home on the weekends.  There are some that live further away so they go home less frequently. They grow everything from corn to eggplant to tomatoes to green peppers.  They just finished digging three ponds to raise fish.  They have a few chickens, ducks, pigs and rabbits.  The students take the produce to the market to sell and they use the money for the school.  The school is also subsidised by the government and is free for the students.  The other field trip was to Asuncion, but we had to get there on our own, in pairs.  Each pair had a list of NGOs or parks we were supposed to visit and some brief directions.  We didn´t make it to all of out destinations because one of them was on a very small street and everyone we asked had no idea where the street was.  In the afternoon we went to the Peace Corps office and had a couple of classes and talked about where we went and how the trip was.  There there was the ¨Mentor Mixer.¨  Before I left for Paraguay they paired me up with a mentor who I talked with before I left.  It was nice to finally meet her in person.

My host mom taught me how to make chipa.  It is a very common snack here tha is made out of flour made from cassava and corm meal as well. Normally it is sold in circles, but we made some non traditional shapes like hearts, snales, and Mickey Mouse.