Home Sweet Home

I apologize for the lack of pictures in the last few posts, but this one should make up for that.

I have moved into my own house! The first few days I spent cleaning and organizing the furniture. It is a wooden house so it makes it very easy to put nails into the walls wherever I want to hang something up. The house, to put it eloquently, is well ventilated, but that also means water can get in too. The first night I spent in my house it was raining very hard and I watched as the wall got wetter and wetter. I have talked to the owner about replacing some of the boards on that wall. Fortunately the roof doesn't leak. I have also done a lot is sweeping. The floor is brick so you could sweep forever and still gather dirt. Along the edges of the room, and sometimes in the middle of the flood, there are the beginnings of ant hills. It is amazing how quickly the appear. Over night there can be a circle of dirt a couple of inches in diameter around their hole. I think that I am going to be a typical Paraguayan women and sweep my entire house a lot.

The man who came to do the inspection was talking to my neighbor and asking if the neighborhood is safe and making small talk. He asked her how many kids she had and she said "now with Tirtza I have three." She has taken me under her wing and helped me out a lot. She doesn't so much as invite me over for meals as tell me they were ready and to come over and eat before the food gets cold. I was joking with her saying I don't know why I spent money on a stove. The other big appliance I bought was a refrigerator. Another volunteer who lived in my region just finished his service has sold it to me. It is still practically new. The house came furnished with two beds, a wardrobe, and a cupboard for dishes and things. The cupboard was missing a couple of shelves so I went to the carpenter around the corner to see if he could cut some pieces of wood. After seeing it he took it and said he would fix it up, the were a few other parts that were old. I didn't think it was that bad, but I guess since I will be storing food and dishes in it, it is better to be sure there aren't bugs living in the wood.

The last things I moved from my host families house were my pets. I must have been a funny site to see. It was raining so I put my cat inside my rain coat with just her head sticking out and the dog was on a leash, but he doesn't know how to be on a leash so we kept getting tangled up. The dog was my host sisters, but her parents don't like it so I said I would take him to be my bodyguard. Things didn't quite go as planned. After almost killing the neighbors chickens I decided he couldn't stay here and I took him back to my host family, but the next morning I was making breakfast and he showed up. It turns out that there are some other neighbors a few houses down who want him. They have a fenced yard, but he is really good at getting out of fences. He may just end up living between the two houses.

Next to my house there is a small field where the neighbors grow, corn, cassava, squash and the are a few citrus trees. Pretty soon I will be able to pick mandarin oranges and lemons from my back yard. I am also welcome to as much squash as I can eat.

Most towns here have their own patron saint. The patron saint of Gral. Morinigo is San Jose and his day is March 19th. Because the 19th fell on a Tuesday they had all the festivities the weekend before. Friday night was the cultural festival. There were 16 different groups who preformed typical Paraguayan dances and played music and sang. After all of the performances there is a dance. I didn't make it the dance. They started at 9:30pm and by 1:30am I was pretty tiered so I headed home. On Saturday night and Sunday morning, after mass, there were bull fights. To finish it all off on Sunday afternoon was is a horse show. The show consisted of anywhere between 4 and 6 horses at a time running around randomly in circles while a live band played Paraguayan music. Each group of horses was from a different club from one of the surrounding communities. This went on for about 3 hours. There was also a big raffle, but unfortunately I didn't win anything.

Worms on a Bus

After a lightening trip to Asunción I was able to bring some worms back with me. The main reason I went to Asunción was for a planning meeting for the Paraguay Verde camp. Once I decided to go my list of things to get done there got longer and longer and I only wanted to stay one night. In order to make to most of the trip I took a bus that left my town at 1am and got to the city around 5:30am. It made for a very long day, but it was ver productive. In a way you could say I was in three countries in one day. I met with the people at the US Embassy who donated the books to the library here. I also went to the Argentinian Embassy to put in a request for a book donation.
While I was in Asunción we were informed that there might be a bus strike the next day. Fortunately it was suspended. Apparently the bus companies strike a couple times a year. The city buses are subsidized by the government, but the government is threatening to take away the money because many of the buses aren't being maintained properly. They aren't safe for the riders and often break down. The bus ride home from Asunción I had lots of company; all of my worms as well and another volunteer who was returning from vacation. I hadn't seen her in a month so it was nice to catch up and made the bus ride go by very fast. The morning after I got back from Asunción I woke up freezing. I found out that it was only 62 degrees Fahrenheit. I think I have finally adjusted to living in a hot climate and now we are going into fall. In the past week we have had mostly overcast and rainy days. It is nice to have the break, but it makes it hard to do things like wash clothes, no dryers here, and leave the house.
The older of my two host sisters, Ybanna, moved to a town called Villarica. This year will be her last year and she has class six days a week so it makes more seance to rent a room there rather than take to bus an hour each way every day. She left her daughter here with us. It is pretty common here that kids are raised by their grandparents, especially in smaller town where there aren't many jobs or universities. I also learned that Paraguay has the highest rate of teenage pregnancies in South America.
My other host sister, Soledad, turned 17 on the 12th. She asked me to make her a banana bread cake. I made it in a bunt pan and I frosted to with dulce de leche and colored sprinkles. I thought it looked like a giant doughnut.
Although I have been here three months now I am still meeting new people. I met a girl who is part of a volunteer group in town. They are planning a tree planting project and I met another man who is part of an agriculture group. He invited me to one of their meetings. I was intimidated when I walked up to the house where they were having a meeting because there were 15 men I didn't know. Once I started talking to them I wasn't so intimidated. They are interested in green manures. I don't know too much about them so I defiantly have my work cut out for me doing research and talking to other volunteers and my bosses in Asunción.