A Dam Good Christmas and a Happy New Year

This Christmas was anything but a white Christmas. It was so hot even sitting in the shade. I traveled with my host family to Ciudad del Este to visit my host mom's brother, Julio, and his family. It was about a five hour bus ride. Here in Paraguay they celebrate Christmas at midnight on the 24th. For dinner we had a huge BBQ, which is typical for pretty much any special occasion. We also set off fireworks. We had dinner at about 11:45pm and at midnight we all gave each other hugs and wished everyone a Merry Christmas.

Photo: Julio and me BBQing.

Julio works at a dam called Itaipu. It is the largest dam in the world in terms of the amount of energy it produces. The dam is on the Paraná River which divides Paraguay and Brazil so it is shared by the two countries. Paraguay has three huge dams but electricity is very expensive here because most of the electricity they produce is exported. To give you an idea of the amount of money the dam company has, everyone who works at the dam get a house. Also, they run a zoo and have a little runway and a plane for the directors. On Christmas Day Julio took us on a dam tour. Although is was Christmas the visitors center appeared to be open, but there were no other dam tourists there. I think that normally you have to pay a dam fee but they just let us in. We got to see the dam turbines and the machine they use to do repairs. We saw the dam security workers as well as the dam control center. We took a lot of dam pictures. Ok, enough with the dam jokes.

Photos: Top left-Me, Mirta, Soledad and my little host cousin Maria Paz in front of Itaipu. Top right-Itaipu dam. Bottom left-Control room. Bottom left-Me in front of one of the pipes that carry water.

We took the bus back home on the 26th. I thought I had been on crowded buses here before, but this bus ride beat them all. For the first few hours I was standing, smashed between a seat and other people in the isle. Then I traded spots with my host sister so I was sitting. At one point I had both host sisters on my lap. Just when I was sure that no one else could possibley fit on the bus, a lady selling chipa got on the bus with here huge basket. Some how she managed to make it down the isle and sell her chipa. Fortunately we left Ciudad del Este at 7am so the ride wasn't too hot.

For New Years all of Mirta's siblings and their families were at our house. She has two sisters and three brothers. All together there were 22 of us. Once again we had a BBQ and they roasted a whole baby pig along with sausage and beef. They wanted me to make a typical food from the United States so I made an apple pie. It turned out alright; a little dry because they apples weren't very juicy. They don't do gifts here on Christmas, but they gave out a few little gifts on New Year's Day. I don't know if it is a tradition everywhere or just in my host family. A few members of the family brought gifts that and they put all the names in a jar and they choose a gift and a name. I got a comb set and a shirt with some random English on it.

Photos: Top left-My New Years apples pie. Top right- New Years dinner. Bottom left-My host family. Bottom right-The writing on the shirt I won.

In the evening on New Year's Day I went for a walk with my host mom and her sister. On our way home a little kitten started following us. It followed us for a long time and my host mom said I should pick it up at take it home. I carried it for a little bit and it started to struggle so I put it down figuring it would run off, but it kept following us. It followed us most of the way home so I figured it was ment to be. She is a tabby with white paws. As of now she is nameless.

Just after Christmas we had some rainy weather and a cold front moved in. I use "cold" in relative terms. It has been around 65-70 durning the day and cooler at night. I have occationally used a blanket at night. It has been a nice change from the extreme heat. I don't know how long it will last so I'm enjoying it while it is here.

I, Tirtza Dibble, Solemnly Swear

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.

Gral. Morinigo

Bienvenidos a Gral. Morinigo

For the next two years I will be living in a little town called Gral. Morinigo, which is in the department of Caazapa. Here in Paraguay they have departments instead of states.  We found out on Wednesday afternoon.  Luckily we didn't have to sit through class all morning to find out. They took us on a cultural excursion.  We split into two groups and I as in the group that went to Asunción.  We went to the Plaza de Los Heroes.  There is a monument to honor soldiers from past wars.  We also went by the cathedral, but it wasn't open so we couldn't go in side.  We went to a museum about the independence of Paraguay as well.  While we were out on our excursion the staff back at the training center were busy decorating.  We were welcomed back with a lot of cheering.  They had marked all of the places we were going to go on a map and one by one we pulled names out of a hat and they told us where we were going.  I was one of the last five to find out my site so there was a lot of suspense.

Plaza de los Heroes

Cathedral

Friday morning Peace Corps took us all to CAFASA, which is the same place we spent our first night here in Paraguay, to meet our contacts and go visit our sites.  They didn't have a formal introduction to our contacts. Instead we all went out side and we had to mingle until we found our contacts.  We were all waiting out in the lawn for our contacts to get out of their meeting.  My contact was the first one to come outside.  Her name is Raquel and she is the president of a youth group in her community.  One of the main projects they  have been working on has been getting the library in the community back up and functioning so I will be helping with that.  Also, they want to do some classes in the schools about waste  management and other environmental topics.  In addition to working with them I will be looking for other projects throughout the community that aren't associated with the youth group. During my visit to Gral Morinigo Raquel showed me around the community as well as took me to the local swimming whole which will be nice when I get there in December and it is really hot.  Also, I went to the 15th birthday party for one of her family friends.

15th Birthday Party

The birthday cake

Park in Gral Morinigo

River to swim in near my site.

 The community is right on the highway so at first glance it seems like it is a pretty good sized town, but once you get off the highway it is pretty small and rural.  The house that I stayed in had running water for part of the day.  It was on until about 11am and then from about 5pm to 8pm.  I'm not sure what the situation is like in other houses in the community. I have three more weeks of training until I swear in and become an actual volunteer.  I can't wait!  I am really excited about working with the youth group and all the projects they want to do.  Also, the town it self is nice so I'm excited to get to know it better.

The day after we got back form out site visit was Thanksgiving.  Our training class was one of the few fortunate training classes to be invited to the ambassador's for Thanksgiving.  While I'm sure most of you back home were bundling up for cold weather I was lounging by one of two pools.  One for "public" use and one is the private pool for the ambassador but they let us swim in it as well.  This was the fanciest Thanksgiving I have ever had.  There was so much good food.  In addition the the classics turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, and stuffing, we were asked to bring a salad to share.  A lot of people brought fruit salads because there are is a lot of fruit in season including watermelon so that was a fun change to Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving feast at the Embassy

Embassy Pool

We have a few additions to the baby animal farm here in my house; three new kittens and a new puppy.  One of the kittens belongs to another trainee.  He rescued it from the street and his family is allergic to cats so it is living at my house until he goes to his site.  

Me with the puppy Luna

Three little kittens

Mud, Trees and Worms. Oh My!

Things here are getting exciting because in tomorrow we will find out where we will be working for the next two years.  There are so many emotions.  I am both excited to finally be done with training and start working, but at the same time it is a little scary to move again to a new place and be more or less on my own.  Unfortunately this doesn´t mean that training has slowed down.  We are still having class 8 hours a day 5 days a week plus half day on Saturdays.  The technical classes have been about agro-forestry techniques and different types of trees here in Paraguay and how to prepare the seeds for planting.  Our tech trainer brought some little trees that we transplanted into larger pots to practice transplanting.  We had a week that was about working in schools and making recycled crafts like wallets out of Tatra Paks which are a type of plastic/cardboard/aluminum package that 90% of milk and juice are sold in.  Also, we learned how to make cups out of wine bottles. Various times current volunteers who have had a lot of experience with a specific topics have come and talked to us as well.  Between classes we had interviews about what type of site we would like and what type of work we would like to do.  The can´t make any guarantees, but they like to have as much of our input as possible.  There are a lot of factors that go into site selection.  If a community wants to have a volunteer they have to fill out a request form stating why they want a volunteer and then the Peace Corps goes and visits the site and talks with the people there to find out what is in the community, what types of projects they want help with, weather or not it is a safe community and so on.

We have had a few field trips and other activities which are always fun and a nice way to break up the everyday routine.  One Saturday all of the trainees in the environment sector (we have general training with the agriculture sector as well) went to a health clinic and planted about 50 trees.  We planted some along a couple of paths for shade and we also planted about 25 citrus trees.  Hopefully they don´t all get eaten by cows.  The health post doesn´t have cows, but the lawn has grass and because the gates are open people bring their cows to graze.  The director promised us that he would take care of out trees so we´ll see.

Citrus trees

  Another field trip we took was to the botanical garden in Asunción.  They have a section of decorative plants that they use to plant along streets, a section of medical plants and herbs and then also have a tree nursery. It is a good resource for us because they donate a lot of trees and as Peace Corps volunteers, if we are doing a tree planting project, we can get trees from them.      

National flower of Paraguay

 In Paraguay they don´t really celebrate Halloween, but they know what it is. We had class and some of the trainees decided to dress up.  There was an informal recycled materials costume contest.  A few people got pretty creative.  They also had a few plates of candy and cookies in the training center for us.  Pumpkins are really hard to find here, but watermelons are in season so a few people carved watermelons.



Recycled materials costume contest



Us presenting our mini lesson

As part of the preparation and training we have to opportunity to visit volunteers before we are sent out on our own.  Last week we had what they call ¨Long Field Pratice¨  It was similar to the first volunteer visit, but this time we went in our language groups and with our language teachers.  It was a little more technical because we had to prepare an activity for a classroom.  We went to a very small community way out in the county or ¨campo¨ called Apyragua.  Apparently means from the extreme It is about 11 or 17 kilometers from La Colmena, for those of you who want to look for it on a map, depending which road you take.  We visited a volunteer name Rachael.  She will be finishing up her service in December so she had a lot of projects and was super integrated into the community.  Because we were a large group we all stayed in separate host families.  We ate all of our meals with the host families except for the last night, Rachael cooked for us.

The first afternoon we went to a kind of open house for the school.  It was an opportunity for the students to present all the projects they had done through out the year.  The fallowing morning we presented our activity which was about garbage; the different types, what can be recycled and what can´t. Then we did a time line activity with them so show how long things take to decompose.  Rachael started a recycling project in the school and they are going to sell it at the end of the year to either Brazil or Argentina because there are no recycling facilities in Paraguay.

Some students preforming at the open house

The little tree I grafted

In the afternoon we went to a women's group meeting.  Recheal´s main project was grafting.  Earlier they had grafted a bunch of trees and that afternoon they were distributing them between the women.  Now is the season to graft citrus plants so she showed us how.  We grafted to lemon trees.  Who knows if they will take.  She also showed us how to graft peaches, but it isn´t the season so we didn´t actually graft any.  The meeting was on the other side of the community from Recheal´s.  There is a road that makes a circle which is about 4 kilometers long.  Instead of walking back the way we came we walked around the rest of the loop.  It was a very nice walk with beautiful scenery.      

Tamara and Grace cutting a bud to graft

The walk home

The third day Rachael took us on a hike up a small mountain to a neighboring community to see a tree nursery and the health clinic that serves about 12 of the surrounding communities.  There is a ¨campo bus¨ that goes through the community three days a week so we took that back instead of walking.  That afternoon we  watched a lesson Rachael did on making recycled paper.

Making recycled paper

Our group at the top of the mountain

On the morning before we left we were supposed to plant some trees with a farmer, but it rained the night before and was raining in the morning so that was cancelled.  Here in Paraguay pretty much everything shuts down because of the rain.  The majority of the roads are dirt so they get really muddy.  The soil is all clay so it sticks to everything.  The Peace Corps drove us in a large van and we were driving out in the morning and the roads were pretty good until we got to the main road.  A large truck had gone up it before and torn it up.  We tried and got stuck.  Luckily a tractor passed and pulled us out and we were able to take another route out of the town.  

The trip was really fun and it was great to see what projects other volunteers have done and how they live.  I got the full experience because I got my first pica.  I say first because I´m sure I will get more during my service.  I don´t know what you would call a pica in English but it is a little worm like thing that goes into your skin, usually in your feet and lays eggs.  My toe hurt a little yesterday but I thought it was because I must have hit it on something. This morning my host mom took one look at it and knew it was a pique.  She got a needle and dug a little bit and sure enough out came the little guy.

I don´t want you all to think that all I do is got to class, although sometimes it feels like that.  I do have Sundays and evening free to spend with my family or doing other things.  Last Saturday night my host sister and I went to a little bull fight.  One afternoon when the power was out so my family couldn´t watch TV we went to a play in a large puddle.  My host brother swam but my host sister and I just took pictures.  Also sometimes we just watch my host brother do silly things like ride the cows.  One weekend a bunch of other trainees came over and played soccer.  Unfortunately I couldn´t play because Tyler(another trainee) and I were doing our ¨Aspirantes en Acción¨ (trainees in action) project...making cups out of wine bottles.  

Bull fighting ring

Melissa and I on the island of the large puddle

Fabio on the cow

Making cups

Aspitantes en Acción

My host siblings using the cups we made

Some trainees after playing soccer