I can now proudly call myself a Peace Corps Volunteer. On Friday December 7th we had our swear in ceremony. Both the ambassador and his wife talked, along with the Peace Corps Country Director and we elected a "class speaker."
The last couple of weeks of training leading up to swear-in were hard because we all knew our sites and just wanted to get there and start working, but needless to say there are a lot of logistics that had to be taken care of before swearing in; money, emergency contacts in our site and creating maps of where our houses will be. Also, we had to pass our final language interview and well as our technical test.
Fortunately it wasn't all business the last few weeks of training. One day we had what they called "Buen Día Paraguay." We spent the day doing different rotations like learning how to make candles out of oranges, how to make paraguayan tortillas or games for kids. Another day they showed us some traditional dances and taught us some traditional songs.
A project we did in training before swearing in was planning a one day camp for kids. The theme was biodiversity. We decided to be creative and called the camp "Biodiversidía". For those of you whe don't speak SpanishIt is sort of a play in words using biodiversity and day. The activities were making animal masks, making binoculars out of toilet paper tubes and a few games. We also planted two trees. We weren't sure if we would have a very good turn out because it was threatening to rain and no one goes out in the rain, but the rain thankfully held off about we had about 20 kids participate.
We are going into summer here so the schools are letting out for summer vacation. At the end of every year the school where my host siblings go has an end of the year festival. Luckily I only had to go to one festival because they are all at the same school. The festival consisted of each grade doing a series of human pyramids, and then each grade did a dance. Also, the upper grades all did science projects. Melissa's was about organic gardening and Fabio's was about the density of different liquids.
The weekend after we swore in we stayed in the Asunción because Saturday was the day of the Virgin of Caacupe. It is the biggest holiday besides Christmas and there aren't very many buses running. On Sunday they had primary elections for the Colorado party which also restricts travel because many of the buses get rented out. While in the city we took advantage of the commodities that many of us won't have in our sits, like large grocery stores and movie theaters.
Monday morning I headed to Gral. Morinigo to get settled into my home town for the next two years. The first three month of service we have to stay with a host family, or various families depending on your preference. The family that I am staying with now has two daughters, Ybanna and Soledad, and they are both members of the youth group I will be working with. My host parents' names are Mirta and Derlis. The house is pretty small. I share a room with the two daughters as well as Ybanna's daughter, Milagros. The house is basically in the yard of Mirta's mom's house. They own land a across the street and they eventually want to build their own house there.
My first week here I spent a lot of time sitting and drinking terere and trying not to get too sweaty. The first few days the temperature was around 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) and possible even as high as 43 degrees with about 90% humidity. I haven't started any projects yet, I am just tying to get to know the people in the community. A few afternoons Soledad and I have been walking around and I have been introducing myself. The first few houses I felt a little weird just going up out of the blue and saying I'm a Peace Corps volunteer, but the more houses I went to the easier it got. Also, there have been a couple of volunteers here before so quite a few people know what the peace corps is which is helpful.
