I Do What I Can

The temperatures have dropped and the rains have begun, which has made it hard to get anything done, but I do what I can between rain storms.  

I have extended my English class to include two classes on Saturdays.  One for kids under 10 years old and one for 11 and up.  It is more popular than I thought.  I have just over 50 students between the two classes. Thankfully they don't all come every week, but they are still a lot to handle.  I have kept it very basic, just teaching vocabulary.  Maybe the next session will be more advanced to include grammar.  I had planned for it to be a six week course, but with the rain it keeps dragging on.  

The school garden had started again.  I wasn't sure it would happen because of all the problems last year.  I didn't know it at the time, but there was a huge fight between the teachers.  They accused each other of stealing vegetables and putting poison on them.  The area supervisor had to come into the school to mediate the problem.  Hopefully this year things will go smoothly.  I am also teaching recycled art again this school year with a few more teachers so that is exciting.  

Unfortunately the soccer team here fell apart.  The coach, who told us he was serious and doesn't do things half heartedly, stopped showing up and the girls lost interest.  On the up side I have been invited to play on the girls team José Fassardi.  They are pretty good, but they aren't so good as passing the ball. They all want to be the one to score the goal.  I sometimes get frustrated about this, but it is still fun to be able to play and use my new snazzy cleats.

My tire chair design has become quite popular.  The environmental department at the Yacyreta dam in Ayolas wanted to put on a recycled art workshop at one of the high schools in town.  They asked a volunteer who lives near there to organize it.  I was invited to teach a session on making tire chairs.  There were about 80 student in total.  We had six different stations the students rotated through.

My host cousin, Sandra, from training, who I have kept in touch with, had a baby  in the beginning of April and I went to visit her in the beginning of May.  I knitted a little hat for the baby and Sandra said she wanted one too.  Since then, she has been calling me with more hat requests.  On rainy days my house converts into a little knitting factory.  

Yesterday I climbed the tallest mountain in Paraguay...again.  The mountain is called Tres Kandu, which I learned yesterday means three knuckles in Guaraní.   The volunteer who lives in the neighboring town of José Fassardi had a Peace Corps trainee visiting for a few days.  They wanted to climb the mountain and they invited me.  Because of all the rain the trail was pretty muddy and a portion of the trail had converted into a stream.  Just as we were leaving the reserve, there was a man leaving his fields for the day in his ox cart and he offered to give us a ride.  I realized that after a year and a half here I still hadn't ridden in an ox cart.  We probably could have walked faster than the cart, but it was a well needed rest and a nice way to relax after the strenuous hike.  

Patron Saint Festival

Every year around the 15th of March is the Patron Saint Festival here in Morinigo.  Every year on the Friday night of the celebration there  is a big concert with many different group performing.  This year there was even more talk about the show because a singer named Marilina would be performing.  She is one of the top pop artists, if not the most popular, in Paraguay.  She was the winner if a reality show called "La Acedemia".  I would describe it as a mix between American Idol and Big Brother.  It was a singing competition and all the contestants lived together in the same house.  I'm not a fan of her music but it is cool to say that I have seen her live. 

Marilina

Oasis

Folkloric Groups

Saturday evening of the festival there was a bull fight and then again on Sunday morning.  After the bull fight there is a horse show.  

On March 25th a friend and fellow volunteer passed away.  He was a member of my training group, we spent this past Thanksgiving together and climbed the tallest mountain in Paraguay together.  He, along with a couple other friends, were planning to come stay with me and climb the mountain in the beginning of April. On April 2nd there was a very nice memorial service held for him at the Peace Corps office in Asunción.  It was a rough couple of weeks getting thought the initial shock of his death but with the support of fellow volunteers we are staying strong. We will all honor him through our service. Here is link to an article about his life and service in Paraguay. http://www.peacecorps.gov/media/forpress/press/2354/

After much refusal I finally agreed to help a teacher with her English class.  When I told her I would help I should have know that I would be teaching the class by myself, but I was hopeful.  We have only had one real class and another partial class, but so far it has been more fun than I thought it would be.  It is only 1/2 hour once a week, which isn't enough time to really learn a language so my plan to make it as active and fun as possible with lots of games and activities.  

They have finally started a girls soccer team here in Moriningo.  The age range is 13 years old to me being the oldest at 26.  We practice Saturdays and Sundays but I have offered to practice during the week with any one who is interested.  We'll see if anyone takes me up on it.  We still need to form an official commission to be able to start fund raising for uniforms, travel and other expenses but so far everybody seems pretty enthusiastic.  Hopefully we can keep up the momentum.

I recently took a day trip to a waterfall that is in a fellow volunteer's site.  There two falls and they have built stairs with hand rails down to the lower falls. Also there are a few benches and even garbage cans which is almos unheard of in here.  Even the Paraguyan I was with was impressed.

Here are a few random pictures that don't have a whole lot of explinication, but I wanted to share them.

The owner replaced the fence around my house.

This is what happens when it rains for three days straight.

My lawn mower.

The Toad Family

My cat has found her new sidekick.

Adventures With Kendra

Over a year in Paraguay I finally had my first visitor from the US.  I know it may seem like I have just been vacationing for the past month, but we did do some work while she was here.

After something like a grueling 27 hours of travel, where almost everything that could go wrong went wrong, Kendra finally made it to Paraguay.  We spent the first couple of days in Asunción and we also went and visited my first host family before heading to my little town of Gral. Morinigo.  

Something that Kendra brought to my attention was the name of my town.  I realized for those of you who don't speak Spanish you may not know that Gral. is the abbreviation for general.  So just to clear things up the full name of my town in General Morinigo. Sorry for any confusion I may have caused.

We spent a few days in my town checking out the sites, meeting my friends and eating typical Paraguayan food.  

I am cutting frozen cheese with a saw to make chipa guasu.

Before Kendra arrived I had made plans to make a tire chair with another friend, but because of bad weather I never got the chance, so while Kendra was here we went and made a tire chair.  My friend was really excited about it and said that she was going to get some paint the next day and paint it.  From many experiences I know that this isn't always the case so I was extremely excited to see the next day, when I passed her house, she had not only painted the chair we made together, but made and painted a second chair.  Unfortunately when I went back to visit after Kendra left the chairs had already fallen apart.  We modified them a little from the first one I made and it turns out they weren't as sturdy.  

Unfortunately we had a rainy day and weren't able to do much. We really wantded to climb the mountain near my house and the forecast wasn't look good; 90% chance of rain for the next three days. We woke up Friday morning and there wasn't a cloud in the sky.  We decided to ignore the forecast and chance it climbing the mountain.  Fortunately we did because it was a beautiful day an not a drop of rain fell.  I have been up the mounting a couple times before but this time was extra adventurous.  Every 50 feet of so there was a huge spider web with a huge, mean looking spider in it blocking the trail.  It slowed us down a bit to have to duck and weave to avoid getting tangled in the webs but we made it to the top.  Kendra wanted to eat sugar cane.  We cut some from a field at the base of the mountain but it wasn't very good.  I found out later it was a different variety, not the sweet kind they use to make sugar.  They just grow it to feed cows.

The following day we had lunch at my friend Raquel's house and then hopped on a bus to Villarrica to check out Carnaval.  The night consisted of listening to samba music, watching very scantily clad women and men dancing and getting sprayed with foam.  I had imagined that things would be really crazy with tons of people in the crowd, but it wasn't so bad. I learned later that we weren't in the "hot zone" where things do get a little crazy.  We still got a good show with out all the craziness.

From Villarrica we headed to a nice little town called La Colmena.  It is a Japanese colony and we stayed an a cute hotel run by a Japanese family who cooked delicious Japanese food.   In the morning we headed out to Salto Cristal, a waterfall near La Colmena.  To get there we took an hour truck drive through huge sugar cane fields.  We could drive almost all the way to the falls, we only walked a few hundred feet and then scramble a few hundred feet down over boulders.  They put in a rope to hang on to.  We were the only two there which was really nice.  It looked like it was threatening to rain, but we waited a bit and the clouds blew over and it warmed up enough to swim. 

On our way back home from La Colmena we went back through Villarrica. We had some time before our bus left so we went to see some carpinchos.  My friend said you can pat them, but when Kendra tried it ran away.  

When we returned to my house the next day we stocked up on food and supplies for Kendra because I had to go to Paraguay Verde camp and she was going to stay in my house by herself.  Kendra doesn't speak much Spanish, let alone Guaraní, so my neighbors had fun trying to communicate with her while I was gone.  With the help of a dictionary and a few texts they managed to inviter her over to help make empanadas and bean salad.

This time Paraguay Verde camp was in a town called Ayolas in southern Paraguay.  Because of the bus schedules I, along with another volunteer and two youth, left at 1:30 am.  We got into asuncion around 5:30am and were planning on taking a bus to Ayolas at 6:30, but being typical Paraguay it turned out that bus doesn't run anymore so we had to wait until 9:00am.

Near Ayolas is a dam called Yacyreta.  It is located on the Paraná River, which divides Paraguay and Argentina.  We stayed in the housing they built to for the workers while there were building the dam.  They aren't used any more except for a few offices so they have an old abandoned feeling.  Unfortunately they were doing repairs on the dam so we didn't get the full tour, but we did get to walk around the dunes which formed naturally after they built the levy.  

The huge pots they used to cook for probably thousands of workers.

While we were planning the camp my bosses saw my tire chair and loved it.  They asked my to teach a session on making one during the camp. Because of the bus delay I missed the session,  but fortunately there was time in the evening to teach it.   I also taught a few people during free time the following day.  I invited two girls from my town to go to the camp, but they couldn't got.  Because of this, and the fact that Kendra was visiting, I only stayed one night at the camp instead of two.  

Kendra took the bus by herself from Gral. Morinigo to Asuncion and I met up with her in the terminal in Asuncion.  It was nice to have one last full day in Asunción before she flew back home.

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.