Tierra del Fuego

The temperatures kept rising here in Paraguay so I decided to escape the heat and head to Tierra del Fuego, Argentina.  I went to visit a couple of friends, Javier and Ciro, who I met while I was on exchange on Buenos Aires in 2009. I flew into Ushuaia, which is the southern most city in the world and then headed to Rio Grande, where Javier lives.  The temperature never got over 50 degrees and there is a constant wind of a least 30 miles an hour and its not uncommon to reach 50 miles an hour.

Most of the time I spent in Rio Grand at Javier's house.  We went to a beach just outside of Rio Grande called Cabo Domingo, checked out an old pier, went bowling with some of his friends, brushed up on my truco (a poker like game played with Spanish cards) skills and went out for pizza and ice cream for another friend's birthday.  I also made chicken fajitas with home made tortillas and lasagna.

Cabo Domingo. It was very windy.

Abandoned pier.

A night on the town in Rio Grande.

Chicken fajitas and lasagna.

Mate on the beach in Rio Grande.

Javier is a contractor and has a project in Ushuaia so we headed back there for a couple of days. While he was working I hung out with my friend Ciro.  Ciro has his pilot's license and is a member of a flying club so he showed us all the planes. Unfortunately he isn't licensed to take passengers yet, but we did get to sit in the plane he flies and look at all the knobs and gages.  

Ushuaia

Flying club of Ushuaia.

The little plane Ciro flies.

In the afternoon we headed out to a park just outside of Ushuaia called Playa Largo (long beach) and strolled along the trail for a bit and then scrambled down the rocks to look at tide pools.  

Playa Largo Park.

Javier and I camped in Tierra del Fuego National Park.  Being that far south the sun doesn't set until about 11:00pm which is nice for getting the tent set up, having dinner and taking an evening stroll around the lake, but it also means the sun comes up around 4:00 am which isn't so nice when you are in a tent.  

Lago Roca inside Tierre del Fuego National Nark

At 10:45pm and the sun just disappearing behind the mountains.

The second day in Ushuaia Ciro and I hiked to glacier, or what's left of it, called Martial Glacier.  There is a ski resort there in the winter, but in the summer they have a few hiking trails.  To get to the glacier you can take to chair lift up about 1/3 of the way and then you have to hike the rest.  All tourist activities in Tierra del Fuego are twice as expensive for foreigners so we decided to hike the whole thing.  It took us about 3 hours round trip.

Base of the ski hill, just starting our hike.

The chair lift we didn't ride.

We finally made it to the top!

The last day I was in Rio Grande, before flying back to Paraguay, we had an asado because, after all, it wouldn't be Argentina with out one.

Lake Fagnano, located along the boarded between Argentina and Chile, and the Pipo River.

The trip was a much needed break from the heat and Paraguay in general.  It was nice to live in relative luxury for a while.  I don't know exactly what the best part was, but the front loading washing machine is defiantly in the running.  Now that I'm back in Paraguay I'm readjusting to the heat and the frogs in the bathroom while trying to figure out what to do this coming school year.

The Holidays

I don't know if I will ever be able to get used to the idea that it is 95 degrees on Christmas.  All the years spent sledding, skiing and playing in snow banks over break are hard to erase.  But on the other hand I could really get used to eating watermelon for Christmas.  

I spent Christmas with my friend Raquel's family.  Instead of decorating Christmas trees here they make "Pecebres" (nativity scenes) and decorate them with palm tree flowers, chipa, watermelon, pineapples or  other in season fruits, and lights.  On the 23rd I went to help Raquel make the pecebre.  First we had to go cut some pieces do sod for the base and then we trimmed them into a more or les rectangular shape and put all the figurines in place.  On Christmas Eve I headed over to her house  in the early evening to help prepare dinner.  We ate around 10:30 and then waited around until midnight, listening to fire crackers and the neighbors blaring music, so we could say Merry Christmas. At midnight everyone sets off tons of fire works, mostly pretty small ones, but a few people set off what look like professional ones in the states.  No regulations on fireworks here.

New years was fairly similar to Christmas.  I spent it at my neighbors.  Every year there is a huge town party and my neighbor, Mirian, and I had been talking about going for a while, but by about 11:00pm we were both pretty tired and didn't feel like going to the party.  We stayed up until midnight to wish everyone happy new year and I was in bed by 12:30am.  

Last week I organized another day camp for the kids in my community.  I had about 12-15 kids each day which was such more manageable number than the 25-30 I had at the last camp.  We made shakers from toilet paper tubes, wallets from milk cartons, collages using sticks, leaves, flowers and mud, and pencil holders from tin cans.  There is no trash removal service here let alone a recycling so I save pretty much all my garbage in hopes I can use if for something.  I was so happy to  get rid of a lot of the garbage that had been piling up.  

In the beginning of December we had our Mid-service training.  We just had a few meetings and a medical and dental checkup.  It happened to work out that my host brother from training was having his graduation ceremony the day our training ended so I decided to go because I was in the area.  It was much different than a graduation in the states.  I think a good way to describe it is a very fancy picnic.  We arrived around 8:30pm and we brought our dinner with us.  Each family has a table reserved.  The principal of the school spoke along with a couple of students and then they presented the diplomas.  Then there is a presentation of the graduates.  All the girls are in formal dresses, usually escorted by their fathers and the boys in suites with their mothers as escorts.  Then they dance.  Once everyone has a chance to dance with the graduates and take pictures, the party begins.  The disco lights come on, the cumbia music gets cranked up far to loud and the place becomes a club.  We left around around 3:30am, which apparently was early.  I think that was mostly because my 7 year old host sister and I were falling asleep.  

Graduation ceremony 

As it turns out December was the month of parties and celebrations, apart from Christmas.  The 8th is the Day of the Virgin on Caacupe.  There was an appearance of the virgin near the river just out side my community so they built a shrine there.  They decorate it and everyone goes there to pray.  After Christmas on the 28th a friend celebrated her 15th birthday.  It went very late. I left just before 2:00am and they still hadn't cut the birthday cake.  

Samantha and me

Some of you may remember from a while back I was working on making a chair out of old tires.  We got something that is suitable, but still needs a lot of adjustments, all of which require power tools.  I don't own the necessary tools and after many failed attempts to barrow some I decided I was going to try to make a chair that didn't require power tools.  After a few minutes on YouTube I found just the thing.  The chair, with out the arm rests only took about 20 minutes to construct and after I figured out how to attach the arms, the chair in the video didn't have arms, they took about half an hour to put on.  I attached them by poking holes in the tires and threading wire through them.  Believe it or not the only tools I used were a pocket knife and some pliers.   

Now for just a few house keeping items.  I finally finished the flower bed in front of my house and planted a few flowers.  I also hung some plants outside to green the place up a little. 

Paraguayan Thanksgiving, Take Two

This year's Thanksgiving had much different feel from the very extravagant feast at the US Embassy last year.  My friend Cara decided to host and be in charge of finding the turkey.  Thursday morning I, along with three other volunteers headed over to Cara's friend's house to kill, pluck and gut the turkey.  Turkey feathers are much harder to get out than chicken feather, but finally we got it clean enough to eat, with a lot of help form the women who sold it to us.  There was a lot of discussion about how to cook the bird.  If people have ovens at all they are usually little electric ones.  Or they have a traditional brick oven, tatakua, which you build a fire inside and when it burns down to coals you either sweep them out of just push them to the side.  The problem with this method was that we didn't think we could keep it hot enough long enough to cook the, what we guessed to be, 10-12 pound bird.  In the end we followed the advice of a few Paraguayans and boiled the bird until it was cooked, took it out, stuffed it and put it in the tatakua to crisp and brown it.  None of us really had high expectations for how the turkey would turn out, but to our surprise and delight it was delicious.  I was in charge of making rolls because there was a consensus they are an important part of the Thanksgiving meal.  Another volunteer, who inherited pumpkin pie spices from another volunteer, made a pumpkin pie.  We even managed to make a cranberry sauce from craisens and "dulce de guaiava" which is guavas boiled for a long time with sugar until it becomes a jam like substance.  We made mashed potatoes, green beans, corn, potato and beat salad and brownies as well.  

Turkey preparation

Food preparation

The feast

At some point on Friday, while we were all chewing the last bits of meat off turkey bones, the idea came up to climb the tallest mountain in Paraguay.  I said any one who wanted to climb it was welcome to come to my house.  Two volunteers, Corey and Porter, ended up coming.  The weather was was  iffy and I don't know how many times we went back and forth on the decision to go, but in the end we made it up the mountain.  We were just sitting down to our little picnic lunch when black clouds started to move in. We decided we should get down off the mountain before it started raining because the path is very steep and you can see the water runs right down the trail.  We made it to the base of the mountain before the rain hit and as we were walking out on the road it started to rain.  Fortunately a truck passed and they gave us a ride to the town where we had a ride waiting to take us back to my house.

Now that school has ended I was wondering what I was going to do to fill my days, but fortunately I was able to meet with Teko Porã.  Teko Porã is a governments program that gives money to women who don't have any other income.  In order to receive the money the women are supposed to have gardens and other things that help them become more self sufficient.  Also as part of the program they offer classes and talks.  The women who workes with the women in my area contacted me months ago to ask if I could teach some classes.  I was very excited about it because it was the first time someone had come to me for help, rather than me trying to initiate a project. Unfortunately nothing more came of it and I never taught any classes.  When Brook left, she gave me a bunch of trees seeds that she never used.  I decided to go to one of the Teko Porã meetings and ask the women if they would be interested in planting trees.  They all seemed fairly interested so we set a date to make starter "pots" from old news paper.  I wasn't sure how many, if any, women would show up, but in about an hour we made 50 or 60 pots between seven of us.  The following week the same women came over and we filled about 30 of them with dirt and manure and planted three different kinds of native trees. We ran out of manure so we made plans to fill the rest the fallowing week so we'll see if the weather holds out. I'm hoping this project will lead to other projects with this group of women. 

A Race and a Goodbye

Throughout my service I have done some running, but nothing too serious.  At the end of September, my host sister invited me to run a 10 kilometer race that her university was organizing.  I hadn't been running lately and I figured I had a month to do a little "training”.  Things didn't go quite as I planned.  There were a few days of rain which makes the roads too muddy to run on and then I took a trip to Asuncion for some meetings and a training so I ended up only running about four times the week before the race.  I didn't have any doubts about being able to finish, but I wasn't sure how well I would do.  According to the information I received, the race was supposed to be on Saturday the 26th of October.  So early Saturday morning I got on a bus and headed to Villarica, where the race was going to be.  I wasn't exactly sure where the park was so I asked the bus driver's assistant.  He said not to worry just sit back down and he’d let me know when to get off.  After leaving Villarica and passing though the next little town I was pretty sure we had missed it.  I got up and asked the guy again and said oh yeah…we missed it.  Fortunately, at that moment there was a bus coming down the highway heading back into Villarica and I was able to catch it.  When I got off at the park where I thought the race was supposed to be it seemed a little weird that there was no one there.  I called my host sister and she said the race had been rescheduled for the following day…I didn’t get the text she sent.  The part that made me even more frustrated was that I had talked to her the day before and she didn't mention anything. In the end it worked out because I was able to go the final day of praying for my friend's father-in-law.  

Here in Paraguay when someone dies they pray for them every day for nine days.  On the final day they have a big lunch and then pray.  The other eight days they just serve soda and candy and cookies after praying.  They pray for nine days when the person dies.  They pray again for nine days six months after the death and then again on the one year anniversary.  After that they pray every year on the anniversary of their death.

After being very frustrated about making an unnecessary trip to Villarica I felt better about everything when I ended up winning the women's category of the race.  I wasn't going to mention there were only about 18 participants in the entire race and three of those were women, but I guess I will.  It doesn't say any of that on my first place trophy. The overall winner won 1 million Guaraníes, which is about $250.  Now that I know the prize, I'll train harder for next year. 

While I am very excited to meet the new group of volunteers who are in training, it also means that I will have to say goodbye to the other volunteers who are finishing their service and heading back to the US.  The majority of them will be leaving in the beginning of December, but a few of them have chosen to end their service a month early, and unfortunately, my neighbor Brook is one of them.  On November 3rd she had a going away party and invited her whole town.  She asked me if I would help make cakes and then lead some kids' games at the party.  I headed out Saturday late morning after my book club.  I told Brook I would help her, rain or shine, with her party and as luck would have it, it was pouring rain.  I thought about waiting for the rain to let up, but it didn't look like it would happen any time soon.  I knew that either way it would be a wet and muddy ride so I put my things in a bunch of plastic bags and headed out.  I got some crazy looks, but it was actually better because the mud was so wet it wasn't sticky and made walking easier.  Also, the rain helped rinse me off as I went.

I would have been able to avoid the rain, but I had my book club in the morning. Not even thinking about Halloween, we decorated masks we made the week before from paper-mached balloons.  There were only three girls there and they only came because I passed their house on the way to the library and they happened to be playing outside.  I think there were two reasons for the low attendance.  One, because there were some dark clouds looming over head and also, the 2nd of November is the day of the dead and everyone went to the cemetery.  They go and clean up the graves, pray, and give out candy to all the kids.  After arriving at Brook’s the rain stopped (figures) and we spent the afternoon making lots of cakes which we frosted on Sunday morning.  In total, we had eight cakes we could serve.  A couple of the thin ones we layered together and one was eaten by the dog.  When things were were ready for the party, the neighbors invited us to go swimming in the lagoon, which is basically a large puddle filled by the recent rain.  At the party we played Simon says, had an egg toss competition, had a piñata, Brook raffled off some of her things, and then we had cake.  I was really sad to say bye to Brook, but as she pointed out, now I get the be the "wise" one who helps out the next volunteer.  It's all part of the cycle of Peace Corps.  I'm excited to find out who will be my new neighbor.  

Mask making at book club

Playing in the lagoon

Piñata and egg toss

There is about a month left of school before summer break and the students will soon be taking their finals.  So this past week I did my last recycled art sessions.  The 9th graders made recycled paper and the 7th graders made cups from wine bottles.  Also, one of the classes I was working with in the garden planted tree seeds.  We made biodegradable pots from old newspapers.  A personal project I just started is building a flower bed in front of my house.  My timing isn't great because it is getting hot and isn't much fun to be out digging, but fortunately, early in the morning it is cool enough to work semi-comfortably.  I am using old bottles, that I found in an empty lot near my house, as the border.

Making paper with 9th graders

Cutting glass bottles with 7th graders

My flower bed in progress

Ameriguyan Birthday

I turned 26 on October 6th and I wasn't sure if I wanted to have a big party or not.  My neighbor's birthday was on the 5th so we talked about celebrating together.  In the end I decided to have what I thought was going to be a small party at my house.  As I started inviting people I thought of more people who I thought would be upset if I didn't invite them.  About 25 people ended up coming.  A friend of mine made a cake and two other volunteers came over and helped cook.  I call it an "Ameriguyan" birthday because I made pizza, which they eat here, but I made Hawaiian pizza and pizza with sausage and green peppers which they don't do here, and fruit skewers. The Paraguayan part were the empanadas and sopa Paraguaya which is kind of like corn bread.  In total we made 8 pizza, 50 empanadas, and 25 fruit skewers.  My neighbors gave me a dish of sopa Paraguaya.  Everybody thought it was very strange that I put pineapple on the pizza, but they ate it and liked it.  

Preparing for the party.

Pizza and all the guests.

Cake and presents.  It isn't uncommon here to get underwear.

Now that I am almost half way through my service it means that there is a new group of environmental volunteers who are in training now in Guarambare, just like I was a year ago.  The trainers asked me to come and talk to the trainees about doing recycled art and show them a few things they can make.  It was a lot of fun to teach them and meet the new volunteers.  It was interesting as well to be "on the other side" in the sense that I have already gone through training and been a volunteer for almost a year.  While I was back for trainig I visited my old host family and my friend Lorena and her daughter Monce came over to see me as well.

My host mom, Carolina, and Lorena, Monce and me and my host sister Lujan with Monce.

Another part of training is visiting a volunteer in order see what their life is like. Last week I had two girls come stay with me for four days.  I showed them around Morinigo and they came with me to teach the 7th graders to make recycled paper.  I showed them how to make bread, banana bread, and cinnamon rolls as well.  The last full day they were here we took a little trip to Pindoyu, which is the little community where my friend Brook lives.  It is about 10 kilometers from Morinigo.  We took the bus the first 5 kilometers and then we had to walk to rest of the way.  Pindoyu is very different from Morinigo because it is a very small community and the girls wanted to see what it is like.  Brook and her visitor came with us back to my house to spend the night so they wouldn't have to walk out in the morning and also so her visitor could see Morinigo.  

Here in Paraguay all of the schools have Olimpiadas (Olympics). All the grades compete against each other in soccer, volleyball and a few other games.  They even have an opening ceremony with a torch.  Also each grade has a queen.  During the opening ceremony each queen presented themselves and then each grade did a little routine.  It didn't start until almost 9:00pm.  By 11:00pm they were only to fourth grade, it went up to 9th grade, and I was tired so I headed home.  

Opening ceremony

Presentation of the classes and their queens

As environmental volunteers we are encouraged to have gardens.  Mine was never very big or good, and then it frosted and killed my biggest tomato plants and my huge basil plant so I kind of gave up.  But recently my broccoli plant produced some nice heads and my little string bean plants have a few beans.  The tomato plants that survived even have a couple little green tomatoes.  The other day I planted 12 watermelon plants so I'm excited to see if those do well.  

I'm doing my last few classes in the school because in November they will have final exams so I won't teach.  I'm still having book club when I'm in town and there are rumors that I will be teaching English.  I'm not super excited about doing it, but I might do a short course over the summer. We'll see.

Teaching the parts of a plant

Book club

Recently there were a bunch of kinds who got confirmed in the Catholic Church.  I didn't go to the ceremony but one of my friends invited me over for a BBQ.