Real World: Paraguay

Why my podcast isn't an official Peace Corps Publication

2010-11-24T22:56:00.003-05:00

Actual e-mail. Names changed to protect the innocent.

Hi (Peace Corps Paraguay Official),

I began to review the Guarani materials. The visual portion looks really good. However, as I started to listen to the podcast, there were certain expressions that I would be uncomfortable sharing including: “it could drive me to drink,” “jerk face” and other frustrations regarding learning the Guarani language. I think this may be better for a less formal channel.

Cheers,

(Peace Corps Headquarters Official)

My podcast is on hiatus but I plan to continue to produce episodes and more info will be on the site at letstalkguaranime.blogspot.com. See ya jerk face.

2010-11-10T23:42:00.000-05:00

“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the "Universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

-Albert Einstein

An interview with Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Paulette

2010-10-05T22:43:00.002-04:00

So, you’re still writing on this blog, huh?
Yep.

Wasn’t your service over in, like, August?
Yep.

Isn’t that a little, I don’t know, pathetic?
I just moved in with my mother and I’m unemployed. This is the least of my worries.

But you’re not really ready to let it go, are you?
No, but I’m working on it.

Do you feel the need to write some grand, summing-it-all-up masterpiece blog entry?
Yes.

Do you think that’s possible?
I guess not.

Was the Peace Corps wonderful?
Yes.

Was the Peace Corps terrible?
Yes, at times.

Well, there you go.
...

What?
I know, it’s just, I have something to say to the people who are thinking about joining.

Go on.
I just wish I could explain how much of a DO IT! I would give them. Someone called the Peace Corps a "cool job" the other day, and it sounded like such a silly, empty word for it. It’s this entrance into another world, from which there is no return. The difference between doing it and not doing it... It’s... It’s... Had I not gone, it would have been the worst mistake of my life, and I never would have even known it. I was so, so scared to go. Immense amounts of Googling was done, trying to predict the future of how it would be. Peace Corps teaches you to let go. The world is wild and you just have to let it be that way. I’m still neurotic as hell, but I’m not the same person I was.

Is that all?
I still want to thank everyone so much. So many people talked me through it. So many people bought extension cords for their love that reached me all the way in Paraguay. So many people bought my favorite candies for $2 and spent $15 to ship it to me. So much complaining was distributed to so many patient ears via the crackling connection of Skype. I never felt forgotten in my impossible quest to have the best of both worlds -- roots and wings.
Thank you everyone.
And thank you especially to my mother, my amazing amazing mother. If my service were a book, the dedication would be to her. Love you, roomie!

Feel better now?
Yes

Will you have more to add later?
Maybe, even at the risk of being pathetic. I’ll move on soon, I swear.

Integration tool

2010-10-03T16:17:00.005-04:00

Attention anyone going to the Peace Corps who owns a Mac.

One of the best tools you have for integration is the Photo Booth program, with all of its fun effects. Over the two years, it's helped break down barriers with adults and kids alike. Best of all, you don't have to speak the language. Here are some of my favorites.

From my first host family:

To friends along the way:

To my very last visit with my host family:

And sometimes, the picture is just right as it is:

Relief and Confusion

2010-09-29T08:42:00.005-04:00

Hello everyone,
I have left Paraguay. I'm in Colombia, looking for a job teaching English. It has been an intense time, so much to write about, but so little time to write. This below is something I wrote while getting ready to leave Paraguay. If I had more time, it'd be more edited, less rambling. The TANGENT is optional reading. More later.

Relief:
Let’s be honest, there’s a certain relief of not being in the Peace Corps anymore.
I realized I could stop wearing this stone on my back, this huge, heavy stone called All The Sufferings of a Third World Country. Deforestation, pollution, diabetes, poverty. We’ve been worried sick about Paraguay. For two years! Peace Corps is kind of like an intervention. Paraguay is our little brother who can't seem to get his shit together. We say, "Paraguay, you really shouldn’t cut down all your trees. You really shouldn’t steal all the money from the people. You really should brush your teeth a little more often." We somehow feel responsible for Paraguay, although we can only control what we do, we cannot control what Paraguay does.
But we try.

What is it they say is the biggest mistake a woman can make? Thinking that she could change a man. One man. Here we are, as an organization, thinking we can change an entire culture. It’s exhausting. And some of us, yes, thinking we can change one man, as well.

We go to change a culture, but then the culture changes us. We change our names. Our names. For two years, I was Pauli. Part of Pauli’s job was to get people to like here. Professional People Pleaser. Pauli didn’t tell people she was ridiculously full and ate until she was in pain, just because it was part of the culture. Pauli got told constantly that she was fat, because that’s how they do it here. When people told Pauli they would help her, and they didn't, Pauli just kept on smiling, and tried again the next day, even though it was them she was trying to help in the end. This is why I decided not to extend. I didn't like the person Pauli became. I didn't like how Pauli let some people treated her. She deserved better.

You’re told to act like them, talk like them, live like them, to make friends. Nobody likes a weirdo. All this trying is just sad, like when parents try to use the lingo of their kids. We are entirely weird. I kept trying to picture us, and the best I can do is the foreign kid from the classic movie “Can’t Hardly Wait”. He walks around entertaining party-goers by totteringly repeating the phrase that someone has taught him: “Would you like to touch my penis?” Laugh laugh laugh. That’s us. I can’t even tell you the things I was have said in Guaraní.

We have to get people to like us, even if it means screaming obscenities into the campo night air. We did other things too. Vegetarians ate meat. Gay people hid their gayness. Atheists found themselves in front of a statue of the Virgin, in a group reciting something, more times that they would have liked.

We attended parties where they arrange the chairs in one large circle around the room. This arrangement is a formula for the most awkward parties ever, and that’s why I’m saying this, we suffered.

TANGENT: You walk in these parties, and it’s like everyone’s in a line, just looking at you. Once you sit, you have no choice but to talk to the person on your left or, OR, your right. This constricts conversations to two people, max. And when you turn to someone, you have to turn away from the person on your other side. It’s like you want to make sure you’re giving them equal face time. So you’re sitting there, and you are either talking currently, or you looking to your right and your left, and you’re stuck looking at the back end of two feather-covered scrunchies as both your neighbors are talking to others. You’re in a social vacuum, if both sides are turned away. That’s why it feels like everyone’s starting at you when you walk in, because everyone’s so bored with their two-person conversation, the only entertainment is those people entering.

And then they serve meat and everyone eats it slowly. People leave immediately after dinner and then others gossip that they’re rude. A drunk guy gets drunk and dances sadly. Maybe there’s a cake that looks like American birthday cake. But it sure ain’t the same once you taste it. You wait 25 minutes to get the guts and the language skill and the pause to add something to the conversation. You start talking, in a foreign language, a new one you didn’t know a year ago. You look each of the listeners in the eyes, as you start talking, to see if they’re looking at you like a human or like some toy they’re about to break. Then you try to complete just one whole sentence and someone just starts talking, interrupts, T-bones the conversation and runs off in the other direction. You resume just sitting there. No one seems to remember that you were talking. If you think about parties in the United States, with your friends, you might just tear up and excuse yourself to go to the latrine. :END TANGENT

We attend these parties, because we want to be liked. We love them in their own way, after a while. There comes to be people we love. And they love us. But there are things expected of you, as a member of their community.

Then you leave Peace Corps. You think about that person you were two years ago, leaving home. You’re not that person anymore. If you saw that person, you’d trip him and give him a nuggie and laugh. You think about the person you’ve been the last two years. Were you Pauli or Paulette? Were you a normal person or some exhalted stereotype of the Americana with golden hair? Were you hard-working, or lazy? Were you rich or were you poor? It depends on who you ask, where you are. None of them stick anymore. Nothing just is.

So now you’re not who you were in the United States. Putting your name back on feels like putting on an old dress that feels stiff and baggy. More importantly, who are you now? Am I a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer or just another unemployed 20-something moving back in with her parents.

You set out. Where to? What matters anymore? Is it money or freedom?

Now I’m packing to leave, to start again. Making two piles, one for the person I’m leaving behind, and one for the person I want to go and be, as if I were a costume designer. This belt says everything about how New Paulette views on the world. Into the suitcase. This t-shirt says that I went to Paraguay. Suitcase. This shirt is too stained for New Paulette. It would have been fine for volunteer Pauli, but this is New Paulette. Give-away pile.

We know tree as tree, but then in spanish it’s arbol, then in guaraní its yvyra raka. Then you have the funny realization that these are all just sounds me made up to mean the same thing. We must sound like cavemen, just a step up from grunting. But the thing is that the tree stays the same. The word doesn’t touch the thing.

All these labels I have for myself: Volunteer, College-educated, Money Retard, Young, Old, Big, Smart, Clutzy, Pretty, Ugly. They change every day, have changed with the space I'm in, the people I'm around, the look in their eyes. They don’t touch me, they don't touch me. I have to remember.

Black face: Always inappropriate

2010-09-14T16:24:00.002-04:00

If the racial sensitivity of Paraguay were to be expressed in one image, it might have to be this ad for the upcoming Reggaefest.

On a happier note...Paraguay continues to amuse with Emos!

2010-09-03T12:39:00.005-04:00

I've meaning to mention emos. Yes, there are emo kids in Paraguay. (Emo, if you haven't heard, are those kids who dress in all black and wear tight jeans, etc. Pronounced E-mo in English but Eh-mo in Spanish.) Here they call indie kids floggers. I had no idea what they were calling me an indie kid until they Googled "Characteristics of flogger" for me and pictures of indie kids popped up.

So, anyway, there are also these message services you can sign up for on your phone. You can get a daily message with the weather report, your horoscope, etc. Once I got a new number and kept getting an Aquarius horoscope, and I'm a cancer and someone who's not the kind of person who would get a bite of my phone bill taken out to know my horoscope anyway. I just didn't know how to cancel it.

I got a new number for this month, and it turns out the person before me, again, signed up for a message service. This one, it seems, is the daily informational message about emos. Every day, I receive information on how emo kids dress, who music they listen to, how they do their hair. Every day in the office, I get a message and say, "Quiet down guys, it's time for the emo fact of the day." I saw some emo kids walking down the street and said, Hey, now I know those are emos.

Thought I'd pass along some of the wisdom:
Los colores que llevan los emos son negro con rojo, verde, y a veces marrón.
The colors emos wear are black with red, green and sometimes brown.

La musica emo se caracteriza por un sonido medio punk o pop-punk complementado por letra introspectiva y vocales agudas y desesperadas.
Emo music is characterized by a quasi-punk sound or pop-punk complemented with introspective words and high-pitched and desperate vocals.

Los temas de las canciones emo generalmente se trata un amor imposible, lo cruel que vida, como quiere morir, etc...
The themes of emo songs generally discuss impossible love, how cruel life is, how they want to die, etc...

Pasa sus ratos libres en MySpace comunicandose con otros Emos y posteando entradas en sus blogs donde describe su terible agonia.
They pass their free time in MySpace communicating with other emos and posting entries en their blogs where they describe their terrible suffering.

The Post Script, after Peace Corps - Random Notes from a Random Time

2010-08-13T20:16:00.005-04:00

Sometime in August...
I think I´ve seen myself before, years ago. I saw her while I was in training, lost, unable to speak, curious, overly camping-style dressed, full of questions. And I saw this girl across the room, and I heard her joking in Guarani, mixing in Spanish words to her English as if they were a part of her family, while to me they were still strangers I was trying to get to know. She had a confidence I had left in the United States. She looked comfortable in the strangest country I´d been in.

I feel like I was that girl today. I went to the training center to teach the trainees how to make ao po´i. I got a warm welcome from the trainers, I knew the coordinator and sat off to the side of the group, as if with the actors in a play. I even made the language trainers laugh. Those trainers who had seen me come in with the Spanish of a Paraguayan 18-month old. I told them that if I didn´t get the job I applied for in Paraguay, I was going to run around Bolivia "opapeve che plata", (until my money runs out). They laughed and laughed. Two years ago I was the butt of undecipherable jokes in Guarani. Now I´m telling them.

Other things have happened that seem like they should happen on my last week in town, as if they would be written into the last scene of a movie. Some people who listen to my Guarani podcast were really complimentary, which is nice. Plus Angelic bought me these earrings that only Paraguayan women wear. I feel initiated.

It occurred to me. "I did it." I was a Peace Corps volunteer. Done. Check. "I've always wanted to do that" became a careful "I´m thinking about doing that" which became "I think I'm going to do that" to " I'm going to do that" to "I'm doing this" to "I did it."

Where do you go from here? We wandered out of here as the longtime jailed wander out on parole day. Were you trapped, or were you freer in there than you are on the outside? Some went home and just laid down on their parent's couches. Some are traveling aimlessly until money runs out. Some are extending in Paraguay. Then there´s me.
=========================================================

Some time later in August...
You spend these two years changing and growing, becoming more Paraguayan. Integrating. By the time you've lived here two years, the culture has taken hold. You catch yourself in the mirror, bra straps hanging out, legs unshaven, wearing spandex shorts, and get some sense that you used to find these things offensive, yet you can't muster the feeling like before.

You see something, a green pepper, but the sound in your mind, the one that wants to come out of your mouth, is locote. When you have to do something, you want to say you'll do it si or si. When shit goes wrong, you just want to say Asi es la vida, and to say that same thing to your mother, you can't think of the words. This is the way it is for two years. Then you get on a tube with wings, and you wake up, and no one knows what Asi es la vida means, and furthermore, they think you're kind of an asshole if it slips out.

You aren't from Paraguay, and suddenly, you're aren't from America, either. We can't go back, and we don't know how to go forward.

All Peace Corps Volunteers leave the country with vouchers to see a psychologist.
I'm still in Paraguay. After the Life Plan Implosion and my unexpected not extending, the world shook under my feet, and I just needed to sit down a second. I realized that my culture is this tiny cult: Peace Corps Paraguay volunteers past their two year service. The ones who call delicious food heterei. The girls who know what it's like to have dated a Paraguayan. Those who know what it's like to fall out the other end of the Peace Corps machine and not know exactly what they've been made into.

I spent two years outside my culture, and now I don't know where to find a new one. I'm in this tiny twilight zone, ephemeral in both space and time, so I decided to give myself a minute to breath in it. I rented the apartment of a volunteer on home leave for a month. A month to sit still and say, "Ok, what the hell am I doing?"

I arrive at the Peace Corps office every day just in time for terere. The guard at the front makes sure to tell the others that I'm an EX-volunteer, and I get a red pass instead of yellow. I sit in the office with the coordinators, waiting for someone to suggest that perhaps it's inappropriate that I'm still there, but no one has, yet, instead support me and tell me everything's going to be ok. I prepare the terere, to earn my keep. They make fun of my red pass, and I pretend to sob, instead of really sobbing, which I save for later. Volunteers come in on their trips to the city, and they say, "So...what are you doing?" I have a variety of witty answers that I rotate. The most accurate being, "I have no idea."

I'm just another unemployed person. Suddenly I feel thrust into the world that I saw through the plexiglass of my protective Peace Corps container. My insurance, my paycheck, my plan. Paraguayans live in a scarier world, a world Americans know better, these days, where work is scarce and life is uncertain. I open 92 internet tabs of possible job leads. One involves wearing a costume on the side of the road and waving in customers. I close it with a shudder. I work on my computer until my head hurts from eyestrain.

People complain about their service, their sites, and I want to grab their little faces like Billy Madison grabbed that elementary schooler, and I want to shake them and say "Stay. Stay as long as you can."

I’ll move on, I will. Just give me a minute to focus my eyes, to remember English for Asi es la vida. I think it's something like, "That's the way life goes."

The end

2010-08-09T21:57:00.001-04:00

Long story short: I decided not to extend.

So as of Friday, I'm not a volunteer anymore. I have no home. I have no job. I have no responsibility. I have no keys. Not one.
I'm in a hotel room, and I can barely move for everything that's around, as my friends pack up to go to Bolivia. My friends. My community. It's now like a town where everyone's packing up and moving out, as if there was a nuclear contamination. I'm sitting here, writing up my resume and a cover letter, trying to stay in Paraguay as a trainer, just for 4 months, just to have a little warning sign that my life is about to decompose before it decomposes, like it is now, suddenly. More like imploding.
I have whatever I could carry from my house, which technically is more than I can carry. Seven bags in all. I could ship stuff home, but I don't know where that is exactly. I don't know what country I'll be in next week.
"We're not Peace Corps volunteers," we kept saying outloud last night, when the conversation died down enough to have a thought. It's over.
Although I wish I didn't have to leave like this, hustled, I have to look at how the service itself was. It's over, and all the drama falls away, like water from rocks. That chick who gossiped about me, I don't really care. Those talks that didn't work out, I can barely remember. But the times remain. All the memories. We really did this.

It was amazing. Amazing.

What if I had chickened out? It would have been the worst mistake of my life, and I would have never even known it.

Hello from the Twilight Zone

2010-07-09T03:35:00.002-04:00

It's really just Bolivia. 3:35 a.m. I'm in the airport.

Here's what's going on: My official Peace Corps time is up. I'm staying longer, of course, but almost everyone arrived with, the PC equivalent of my high school class, will be leaving on August 6. It's the opposite of moving away, but to the same effect.

Due to the timing of a family vacation, I decided to take a trip home and them come right back for our close-of-service ceremony. But some of them will already be gone. In Peace Corps, you have two lives: You're in-site life and your capital, hanging with the other volunteers life. I'm losing half of my life in Paraguay. (Although I have made new friends in other groups, of course. But no friendships are as battle-hardened as those that were formed during training.)

All that is adding to my Twilight Zone effect, but also, there's this nervousness about this trip that I've never felt for a flight before. I realized flying is the opposite of living in Paraguay. Paraguay is show up when you want, there's plenty of space, there's no forms you have to have in hand. With a flight you have to get there early, cram in, having your passport, your boarding pass, your customs slip. It's a word you hear a lot from Peace Corps volunteers having contact with the American world again after two years: overwhelming.

I forgot to fill out the official form for my vacation and had to rush to the PC office to write it out at 4:40 p.m. It was supposed to be approved 10 days in advance. The people at the airport tried to tell me I had to pay the $135 visa just to pass through the Bolivian airport. No no, I said. I'm waiting until the 5:30 a.m. boarding of my bottom-dollar frankenstein flight. My eyes and nose are burning from the altitude of Bolivia, at more than 13,000 feet. I'll be in a box with wings all day, trying to sleep. Then I just want to fall into the arms of my best friend in Miami, and let her take me away to another place were tranquility rules: Key West.

See, I'm fine.

2010-06-28T11:50:00.000-04:00

Angelic has put proof on her blog that I sometimes smile. Click here to see. (Family: I'm ok! Stop worrying.)

2010-06-20T22:12:00.001-04:00

There's a race of men that don't fit in,
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin;
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain's crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don't know how to rest.
If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they're always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.

--Robert W Service

2010-06-20T22:12:00.000-04:00

Trip Home

2010-06-13T22:00:00.003-04:00

I'm taking a trip home in July, and when I come back I'll have just 9 months left. It's costing, well, a lot. But it feels something like necessary.

I've changed in Paraguay. As much as we like to think we are strong enough to be who we are, no matter what, the truth is we are where we are, we are the people we're with, we are others' reactions to us. In most cases, without realizing it, we become who our environments tell us we are.

People treat you just a smidgen less than human, or more than a smidgen. You can only laugh it off for so long. You think you're still laughing it off, until you realize you've become introverted. You want to stay home. You want to be with the few people who treat you, fully, as if you're another person. You don't want to be among the stares, anymore. You don't want to hear their voices, talking to you in the same voice as you would a child, then repeating your responses loudly and have a jolly round of laughter, minus you.

I've grown tired of it. I don't want to be out, listening to someone else's music, speaking someone else's language, sitting there, unintroduced. When I do go, I usually just sit there, the only one not laughing at the jokes said in speedy Guaraní, hanging on to Oscar's arm, and I want to sleep before it's even 11.

There are six Paraguayans who treat me like I'm a real-live human being. They make it alright. Other than that, I am the joke. I am that girl. Unless I'm in my house, alone, which has become my preferred spot. I didn't used to be like this.

The old me comes out over Skype, talking to my sister, my mom, my old friends. I have a distant memory of being the funny one. Of course I've provided a lot of laughs for Paraguayans, but there's that crucial "laughing at" versus the "laughing with" component.

In a way, I'm going home to visit my old self, seen through the faces of the people who are glad to see me. I'm a true friend there. I'm a sister. I'm a daughter. I'm an aunt. I can leave the foreign kid behind, go home and, for 22 days, be myself again.

The Web Page!

2010-06-07T13:20:00.001-04:00

Now that I've had a few days...

Presenting, dun dun du na! The culmination of my Peace Corps service, our new web page!

www.yataityaopoi.com.py

The Web Page!

2010-06-07T13:02:00.000-04:00

Crash and Burn and Smile

2010-06-05T16:01:00.003-04:00

It's safe to say the web site presentation was set off to be a crash and burn, so I can't say I'm surprised. I'm so used to them by now, I just let it happen.
The day we picked to have it was today, the birthday of Yataity. There would be a festival in the plaza. Who of our socias would want to leave a festival to come to a talk about a web site? But The Boss could not be convinced. Although there was no reason not to do it next week, she was set on this week.

It was supposed to be a tranquilo gathering. But then The Boss heard that the governor was going to come through. Hell ensued. We could not just serve the governor (and his flock) coke out of plastic cups. We needed glass cups, blah blah, etc. She was worried that we needed food for all of them, plus for everyone we invited, should they ALL show up. This is about as likely as a tsunami hitting the co-op. This was my event and it was making life tough on the girls who worked in the co-op. Not good.

Nameless Peace Corps Higher Up was going to come, adding some prestige to the event, and bring the projector so that we could project the computer screen on the wall for all to see. Mariela and I worked on a PowerPoint of what the internet is and why our web page is important. We did three practice runs. Everything was set.

8:30 I arrive for the 11 a.m. meeting. I'm surprised to see that everyone is there, hustling. Making sandwiches, putting up decorations. I'm nn a common situation: I want to help, but I don't know what to do and worried about just getting in the way. I printed the business cards we needed and added last touch-ups to the PowerPoint. I began chatting with Mariela and one of the girls yelled at me, "It's already time and we need to get the sodas here now! Where are they?" Woah. It was my job to order the sodas, and I asked them to come at 10. We still had 2 1/2 hours. What's the big deal?

I found out later that The Boss had been calling people since 7 a.m., yelling at them to get over to the co-op, do this and that. She had injected anxiety into everyone.

At about 10 we were asked to go to the plaza. I wanted to stay, but I went. There was the governor. The Boss announced that we would be showcasing our web page. I left.

10:40: I call the Peace Corps Higher Up, and he's lost, but he'll get here soon. At 11 a.m., just Mariela and I are in the room for the presentation. This is normal.

Then come in The Boss, pulling by the arm important people. The Priest and the Mayor's people. All coming toward me. No projector.

I ask The Boss to say a few words, which she's more than happy to do, about all the work she's done for the co-op all her life. She introduces me, says I have 2 years in Paraguay, and although she still can't really understand what I say, they should all try to understand me.

I step over my ego on the way to the computer. We use just the computer screen to give the PowerPoint. He'll be here any second. I talk about why the internet is important, all the things Mariela and I have practiced, until The Boss stands up and tugs my arm and says, "That's great. Just show us the web page." She also says, "Why didn't you tell me your Peace Corps Higher Up wasn't going to be here, we could have just used my son's projector." Why didn't you say your son had a projector?

I begin talking about the web page, and just then, the Higher Up walks in, but nothing is in his hands. "And the projector?" is the first thing I say. He puts his hand to his forehead. He'd forgotten.

During the next 15 minutes I went down flaming. Is it the two years in disaster-prone Paraguay, or a study of spirituality based on accepting what is? Whatever it was, there was a calmness about my crash. The internet worked as slow as a snail, or not at all, please try again, in front of a squinting crowd. Sputtering sentence fragments, saying "cosa" (thing) when I wanted to say "window", "cursor" or "screen." I remained fairly calm. The words formed in my mind: Crash and Burn. I could feel the redness in my face, the physical reaction to humiliation, as natural to a Peace Corps Volunteer's bodily functions as sneezing.

The parade started outside, and to my relief, they all left. The subject of all this preparation and anxiety had passed in 15 awkward minutes where little was accomplished. The parade went by (at least there was a fat kid on a pony) and they ate a small portion of the food we'd painstakingly set out. I talked to the Higher Up, who was red in the face and couldn't stop apologizing. Was I just so used to things going horribly wrong? The governor and his flock never showed at the co-op.

A reporter from ABC Color did come by. The least curious reporter in the world. Mariela and I provided him with facts. "Our web page will be the first in inner Paraguay to accept credit cards." "Uh-huh," he said, perusing the snacks. "We won a grant from Peace Corps for 10 million Guaranies." "Hmm," bite of empanada. He took a picture of me at the computer.

That was the answer, Jeopardy players. And what was the question?

"What's it like to be a Peace Corps Volunteer?"

What's wrong with this picture?

2010-05-22T16:12:00.002-04:00

Before, I would have said nothing was wrong with this picture. I found it in my Apple dictionary, looking for synonyms for beef. Here's beef. Now tell me, what's wrong with this picture?

What's wrong is exactly what Oscar said when he walked up behind me. "It doesn't show the feet," he said. Or the tail. Or the head. It's American beef, the prime cuts. But it's left out all the parts that I can tell you are certainly considered beef, considered food, down here. This photo should be reclassified, under A, for American Beef.

The Doors that Close

2010-05-20T19:02:00.002-04:00

I was looking through these Fulbright Scholar things, maybe you’ve heard of them -- and I saw the word Finland. It made me smile.

I had Finland on the mind when I was 13 years old. Somehow I’d gotten my hands on this exchange program brochure. Without the knowledge of my parents, I applied to one of the only ones that didn’t cost thousands of dollars and was a scholarship, to Finland. What did I know about Finland? Nothing. I just wanted to go, somewhere.

I can still remember how important it felt. The careful filling out of all the forms with the nice pen. The wanting. I got down to the finalist, and my mom, who now knew her daughter wanted to spend the summer across the Atlantic, drove me hours away for the interview. I’d never before been so nervous as I was, sitting at the head of all those people who got to decide if I went or not. I did get one laugh out of them, so I thought there was hope.

Then a thin little envelope arrived, that relieved my parents greatly. I didn’t get it.

It seems so funny now, but I was so crushed by that that I literally thought I’d missed my chance. I didn’t even look, really, for other opportunities. It reminds me of this quote:

“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”
-Alexander Graham Bell

I was blind to everything else. In my dramatic 13-year-old mind, Finland was it, like a boy who had dumped me who'd I swore I'd never get over. Luckily I didn’t stay that way, and I couldn’t really tell you what snapped me out of it. But here I am, putting Peace Corps Volunteer on my resume, looking at this program I used to think was just for people who were smarter than me. From now on I'll try to turn away faster from those doors that close.

Chicken Sex

2010-05-19T19:05:00.006-04:00

Chicken sex comes darting out across the yard. Your eye will be caught, whether you like it or not. A chicken making a run for it, head forward and legs crisscrossing exactly like they draw in the cartoons. A rooster behind, gaining on her.

Uh oh, that chicken’s gonna get it.

Few get away, flapping their wings, bobbing their heads as they walk away as if to say, “That’s what I thought, mister.”

But for most of them, the chase only lasts but a few moments until the rooster is upon them. Without even a “Hello, good day to you,” he hops on and bites the back of her neck to hang on. Then it’s just a shake of some feathers and a flap of the wings. He hops off, and wanders off clucking as if she were just yesterday’s bucket of thighs, leaving her to face the judging eyes of the rest of the farm animals. Tisk tisk tisk.

So ladies, if you’re ever thinking about hanging out with a rooster, I’m telling you: Don’t do it.

Click here for disturbing footage:

Ñandu Guazu! (aka Tarantula!)

2010-05-16T11:24:00.004-04:00

So yesterday morning we're just outside in front of the house, and I look over and see something I've only ever before seen in a movie, a giant tarantula, only it's walking in real life, my real life, black and hairy but cruising across the walkway three feet from me as if it were just another chicken.

OSCAR!!!!

Oscar brings a pitcher.

They kind of think I'm crazy because I'm so hyped up and freaked out. They've all, as children, fished tarantulas out of their holes with gum on a string and played with them.

Pali, my host dad, just comes out and says, quietly, "Oh yeah, that's a tarantula." like it's a cricket or something.

Then he just picked up the pitcher and I'm squealing that he's crazy.

Once it was dead, Oscar put this fork tong under its fangs to show them off. Tramtizing! But we all survived. At least it wasn't in my house. That's what happened to Sasha!

Why I'm Staying Longer

2010-05-03T18:40:00.003-04:00

Monday morning. 8:30, alarm clock goes off. I hear rain. I turn off the alarm clock. I go back to sleep until 10:30.

So maybe today is a good day to explain why I'm extending my service. I have asked for, and received, an extension until June of 2011. Nine extra months, a full 3 years of Paraguay fun times.

I think about how hard it was, that first year. How much I didn't know. All the confusion and frustration. Living in Paraguay is just so much better now. I'm good at it.

I know now, for example:

Which buses will enter my site and which will leave me 2 km. away, on the routa.
That when I ask for vegetables at the store, I have to ask by kilo and not by number, so I don't ask for 2 anymore and get a look like I'm crazy.
That when someone says, "And Oscar (or whoever)" They mean "Where's Oscar?"
When someone asks me if I know how to eat something, they just mean, Do I like it?
When someone says, Moogui reju that means "Where are you coming from?" (and a growing number of other Guarani phrases.)
You have to wash your bombilla every time, unless you want a mouthful of ants

There are a million things (at least half of them words) that I know now. Information I have crammed into my head that will be mostly useless as soon as I leave this place. I've worked damn hard, and now I'm coasting down the other side of my efforts.

Then there's the general benefits of Peace Corps:

I work whenever I feel like it
I do whatever I want to do
My podcast is kickin' ass
My Guarani is finally coming around
I love Yataity
I have a pony
I don't have to work when it's raining
I get my lunch cooked for me every day
I get asado every Sunday
There's also this boy next door...
And, for the first time in a long time, I feel like I finally have a home. Isn't that weird? All the way down here?

It is not all pretty, I can tell you that right now. Some people I work for are real jerkfaces. I'm helping jerkfaces. Who don't appreciate me, at all. I miss my family. I can not wait to have a car again.

But the good outweighs the bad. I'm happy down here. Life is balanced, something it is not in the United States. This is the best thing I've ever done in my whole life. I took a big risk and it paid off. I think, then, that I'll stick around a little while longer.

Missing My Invisible Stuff

2010-04-22T21:29:00.000-04:00

Not only do we Americans have a lot of stuff, we have a lot of stuff around our stuff. Invisible stuff that other people can’t understand, and that I miss.

For example, those ladies shirts that criss-cross on top over the chest, and then have a horizontal seam underneath. This whole criss-cross top area is like a boob nest. That horizontal seam, that’s the bottom of the boob nest. Here, they have no respect for it. None. It goes straight across the boobs. It looks like the boobs are falling out of the boob nest.

And don’t even get me started on bra straps. I want to buy a mega phone so I can yell: "That's a strapless dress honey! You need to find its friend, Mr. Strapless Bra."

No respect.

I say no respect, but respect for what, our made up rules? It's just that those rules are so ingrained in us, evolutionarily stuck in our brains as fact, that you just can't help but be appalled when people do not have respect for the things you were taught to have respect for.

For instance. Dinner Time. It's dinner time. Set the table, forks on the left, knife (facing in) on the right. Turn off the tv. Turn off your cell phone. Wash your hands. Sit down. Wait for everyone before you start eating. Ask to be excused from the table. Don't tell the person who cooked how not delicious the food is. (This last rule was never taught, nearly implied.)

In Paraguay, it's the opposite. Every one of those things.

Movie time. Turn off the lights, Get your snacks ready. Don't answer your cell phone. Don't be in the other room and yell, "Just start it without me." It's movie time.

No movie time in Paraguay.

Same thing with class time. Can’t you see we’re having class?

There's also unspoken invisible image that we value in America. I see this especially with clothes. An old lady wearing a Quiksilver shirt. No, you don't understand. That is not only to clothe you, it's to tell the world you are young and a surfer/skater type and are cool. You cannot wear that shirt, silly old lady.

And there’s this other, somehow from nowhere, fad where people are wearing those GAP t-shirts that were popular 10 years ago in the United States. They’re trying to be American with shirts that say GAP Authentic, but anyone authentically American is just kind of left confused by the sight.

Lastly, I miss my invisible stuff of tradition, wrapped around our food, for example. When my Paraguayan boyfriend puts ketchup on the indian food I just made. Part of the anger that rises in me is a Joy-Luck-Club-mother-esque indignation that anyone would alter the food I just slaved over. But the other side is an outrage on the part of culinary tradition. Chefs everywhere who join me in a common cry: You don't put ketchup on indian food. And the’re with me on the fried rice too. You don't put ketchup on fried rice!

Today I made tuna casserole. It's expensive. A can of mushroom soup from the American aisle in the special Asuncion grocery store. Two cans of tuna, also pricey here. The time, the effort, and I go next door, and they're cooking cuts of beef, even though I said I would cook. They're cooking it, as usual, in an oily bath of oregano and cumin and salt salt salt. Just in case, they say.

Then at the table, they scoop out the the tuna casserole, which came out really well. And then, they scoop out the oily bathwater of the beef, and pour it all over. And they place a big chunk of meat, right on there. And I say no, no thank you. To their surprise, I'll eat it like this.

Some of my invisible things I’ve been able to let go. I’ll let some bra straps hang out. I’ll put my elbows on the table. But I will not put beef on tuna casserole. That, my countrymen, I promise you.

Fun Fall Times Outdoors

2010-04-15T18:52:00.011-04:00

Howdy! The sun is shining on a nice breeze, it's finally cooling off, and instead of being cooped up in my air-conditioned cell, we've been outside enjoying the fall. Here are some pictures.

Mateo & Sasha's Visit

Taking the horse for a spin

Mateo rockin' it as he does

Campo sky

Sasha's turn

Giving pony rides to the little children.

Making Gyros Happen
I got this idea to make gyros, and Oscar knows a guy, so we had a lamb killed on a farm across the routa and in the campo town of Potrero. Instead of sending O-town on the moto, we made a trip of it on Bigote and bikes.

Leaving the paved streets of The Yat

The Road to Potrero

Vanessa riding a horse for the first time.

We stopped to take some pictures

Vane and me

The nice lady and her half of a lamb.
The gyros came out delicious and the host fam loved them!

Salto Cristal

Following the carefully placed signs, we headed to Salto Cristal.

In the campo of La Colmena

Oscar and sugar cane

We went in a car. I love a car! It's my dream to one day have one.
This is Oscar's buddy from the big city.

The climb down is steep and scary!

Oscar carrying the heavy stuff.

The falls are worth the climb.

The Partridge Traps

This started when Oscar brought his slingshot out to the campo, and he got hooked on trying to kill these partridges that are all over. We did some Googling, and next thing you know...

In the backyard earning our Boy Scout Badges

Just eat that corn little bird, I dare you.

Looking for a good spot

And now, we wait.

More views of the campo

Cactus, or, in spanish, tuna.

I feel like everyone's staring at me

Takin' some t-ray along

Cow

I have a dream...

Little cow at the pond

Smoke from a far-off fire

Back Home

Memories of my childhood fort-building give me an idea
while washing my sheets, then I turn around for one second and...

Can I watch a damn movie already?

2010-04-12T20:33:00.006-04:00

Let me tell you what that's like, just two people, one from the U.S., one from Paraguay, trying to sit down and watch a damn movie already.
Movies in Paraguay come from various places. Most Peace Corps volunteers carry their external hard drives to every Asuncion weekend, clicking and dragging from their friends' computers the movies their friends back home saw months ago, or seasons of The Office, Lost, True Blood or 30 Rock. I don't have a hard drive, so my computer, stuffed like 100 gigabytes of sitcoms in a 50-gigabyte bag, is constantly warning me that if I cram anything else into it, it will explode.

Sometimes we pass around DVDs, left in each others' lockers at the office or passed around at meetings. These are usually just the C-grade ones people are willing to pass on.

C-grade is good, I'll take C-grade. On television there's strictly D-grade. When my host sister asks if I've seen Miss Congeniality 2, I try not to act too offended when I say no. And I don't correct her when she says, "Oh, it's so awesome."

There's also a usual D-grade level on these DVDs Oscar brings, up to five movies on one DVD in a poor man's ziplock, with a cover printed on some computer, probably in Ciudad del Este, with the images of 5 normal DVD covers on one. They might be a collection of Jackie Chan movies, , bad Argentinian comedies, gory horrors of varying quality, whatever. I can now claim that yes, I have seen American Pie 6. Oscar's only seen an orginal disk once, in my house. He opened it like it was a treasure box lighting up his face and said, "Ooh, original." Those others, making us Americans look like idiots, are $100 worth of DVDs, one on disk and available at your local street corner for 10 mil (2$).

You put that disk in your computer and there could be anything. We once started "2012" and it began with a shot that looked like someone's volcano vinegar/baking soda experiment. Even if it is the movie you wanted, there could be Spanish with Russian subtitles, or Portuguese, especially with all the movies taped in the Brazilian theaters. I always hope for spoken English and Spanish subtitles.

I also hope it's a DVD rip, and not taped in the theater. When's it's taped in the theater, the sound comes out like you're trapped in a box and the movie is from 1942. Oscar and I were just watching Night at the Museum, and some subtitle came on that was on the real screen in the movie theater, only in the tilted camera, it just dove diagonally off screen, cut off into black. Sometimes people will cough, laugh, or their shadows get up to go pee. On my friend's copy of the New Moon movie, girls in the theater squeal at the part where Jacob takes off his shirt.

So many times we put the disk in, and it just doesn't work at all, or it's in a language that neither of us understand. Sometimes, there are just subtitles, in the doodles of Russian. Or, worse, there are too many choices. Audio in both English and Spanish, subtitles in both English and Spanish. So then, who gets to listen, and who has to read? To me, it is an injustice to take a film that was recorded in my language, change it over to Spanish that doesn't go along with mouth movements, and have the English words written on the bottom. But that's just me. Oscar does not share that opinion. We recently had a little bilingual lovers' spat over the fact that I didn't want to watch Avatar, again, in poor theater-taped quality, in Portuguese, which only understands, and only partly.

There are a hundred web sites to download subtitles, should I find something that otherwise works but doesn't have them. So you Google the movie and "subtitles" and "spanish" and you dig around on slow internet, and then you find them, and then you wait, in the dark because you thought you were about to watch a movie, for them to download. Not perfect, but it made possible the sharing of my love of The Office with Oscar.

Sometimes the subtitles don't work and Oscar makes me translate the whole time, which, for the record, is The Worst. Sometimes the subtitles work, but the movie talks and then the subtitles come on 5 seconds later. You have to play with the delay until you get it just right. We watched one movie where we had to pause it every 10 minutes and set the subtitles back. They kept moving too fast, like they were on a different treadmill. When Inglourious Bastards turned out to have two discs, I figured out how to make the subtitles roll over by setting the delay forward to 4374. Worked like a charm.

Photo: me with a pirate dvd of 5 movies, including 2012, New Moon and, yes, a movie called American Poop.

Our New Catalog!

2010-04-07T07:54:00.013-04:00

Hello All! So I finally finished the catalog for the coop! If you click on the images you´ll be whisked away to a bigger view.
In other good news, we just got a big order (100 shirts) from a woman in Argentina who saw the little web page I made. Suddenly I´m working hard for the money over here. Everyone is. No more drinking terere and making ao po´i. We´ve been getting lots of e-mails, actually, just from the other blogspot page I made. And checking e-mail, making up price lists, organizing the embroideries and making up codes and names for them. I´ve been plopping these huge tablecloths on top of the scanner to put there patterns into digital form.

A history of Ao Po´i and information on the cooperative.

Clothes and patterns for the ladies.

Clothes and patterns for the menfolk. And ao po´i ties too!

Things for the household, including and ao po´i toilet paper holder!

Tableclothes, their patterns and borders in crochet or the locally made lace.

Information on special orders and our price list.

All the pretty colors

How I am Who I am

2010-03-23T12:41:00.002-04:00

Life with my dad

Only a month after they called me out of class to tell me that my dad had been in an accident -- and that he didn’t make it -- I realized I’d started to forget little things about him. I wrote my journal then that soon it would be six months, a year, then 10 years, and my father would be reduced to a just a feeling I’d miss having.

It’s been 10 years since March 23, 2000, and I’m trying to feel that feeling I miss having. I’m thinking about how a father like that, and his death, just like that, put me on the road that led me to Peace Corps.

I’ll start, as I always do when I talk about him, with the fact that he was 6’6”, 300 linebacker pounds set on legs of a bear. People knew him, as Big Pete, not just for his size, but for the way he could make the world change when he walked in a room. I became Yetter-Yets or Little Dee, names of which neither had a logical origin. My mother was Mother Machree. My brother was Captain and my sister Whamos. The floor became a stage where he would whistle and sing while getting ready for work, twirling two black work socks in unison like propellers as he danced back and forth as if he were auditioning for The Drifters. We laughed until the sports came on the news and he said, “SportsCenter, nobody speak,” in a stern voice that maybe other fathers used for real, but only made us giggle.

Sunday morning pancakes were a performance as well. He would would flip each one high, punctuating each throw with noises like a football team -- “Hup, hub, hibby, hup!” -- Even at his size he could flip one under his leg like a baton twirler. He’d set my plate down in front of me and say, “Here you are Little Dee,” and then fill up my glass of milk. I’d look up at him and smile that smile that said, “Aren’t you going to cut them for me?” And he would.

I was the youngest and remember being told at the dinner table, in that voice you use when instructing children, that once I turned 12, I would have to cut my own pancakes. The birthday came and went, and for all the time that I had a father, he cut my pancakes, buttered my toast, tied my shoelaces and even tucked me in at night. Needing to make a joke of it as I got older, he’d dramatically pat the covers, sitting on my bed and doing this silly little giggle that, yes, I can still hear. As he left, he would look back and, one hand on the light switch, say, “Good night, Little Dee,” in a voice that’s like a star, growing dimmer when I try to look right at it.

I try to picture his face now. I remember his skin was smooth and cool, darker than the rest of ours. He’d let me cuddle while we watched tv, perhaps Law & Order or whatever else he’d deemed The Family Show. He’d guess what would happen and then hold up a finger and say, “Prediction!” in a high-pitched voice, and later, if he turned out to be right, it’d be followed by, “Brilliance!” If a sex scene started, he’d say, “Trouble Brewin’,” and cover my eyes.

There were those few times where my dad could take me to school. For him probably a small chore, for me precious alone time. Sometimes my best friend was in the car with me, in his brown towncar he called The Hoopty. There was this one corner with a collection of restaurants, bars and a Burger King. As we approached the corner with the deciding turn lane, we’d beg, “Please can we stop for breakfast? Please?” “Please Mr. P,” my best friend would say. “Not today girls,” he’d say in his fake stern voice. Then, at the last minute, he’d sigh and put on his blinker and say “I’m too good to you.” And he’d pull into the drive-thru to get us french toast sticks, or take us to the little café where he knew the owner, of course, to get us strawberry creamcheese croissants and himself a coffee. I’d lean on his side as the cash register rang and put out my hand and my best smile and he’d put the change right there every time.

It’s a cloud of confetti, all the moments, hard to get a look at just one. There are just the stories I’ve told over and over.

I tell people about the time our L.L. Bean-ish cousins were visiting, and we went to Adventure Island Waterpark. Dad put all of us in one of those big round tubes at the top of a huge waterslide. He went to get in then, and the attendent said, “No sir, that’s too many!” But my dad just said, “Hup, too late!”, then jumped in and shoved off. We soared off the slide’s bumps in a way that was clearly meant to be avoided by the set weight limit. My cousins went whooping back to their parents, saying, “You would not believe what Uncle Peter did!”

And Oh, yes, The ostrich. Another theme park. Drive-through safari. Of course, there were practically more DO NOT ROLL YOUR WINDOWS DOWN signs than there were animals. “Pass me a cookie,” he said to my mother. An ostrich was walking up to the car. To our amazement, he rolled down the window and passed the cookie to the bird, who pecked at his hand too fast. He jerked his hand back in the car, the bird followed into the car, to bite the cookie and my dad’s hand.

He taught me to drive, on I-275, yelling “Malfunciton Junction! People die out there!” while I tried to keep my eyes on the road. Driving over the bridge on 60, I’d be getting passed, my eye on my speed. And he’s sigh and say, “Step on the foot speeder, Yetter.”

On road trips, either up North or to the grocery store, we were nothing short of secret agents on a mission. “Road Warriors!” he’d call. He’d take my stuffed animals and act like they were driving, even bending down their little padded paws to flick off other drivers.

He was always breaking rules, social or otherwise. When I felt bad once because I was the only one in a group who’d never been to a real play, he made me feel better by saying, “Eh, that crap’s too artsy fartsy for me.”

I still think about that, any time I’m on the verge of taking life or myself too seriously. It’s in the same mental drawer as the time we went to Aragatos Restaurant and he told us he’d be ordering the Who Flung Poo.

When I got him alone for a few minutes, he would call me, again in the dramatic voice, “Paulette Perhach, cub reporter for the daily planet.” Because I’d joined the yearbook. Or he’d sing, “I love you, you love me, we’re as happy as two birds in a tree.” Or he’d say I had too much make up on and follow it up with, “You’re naturally beautiful,” again, in a joking, high-pitched voice.

When I was in elementary school I taught him one of those hand-smacking games little girls play at recess. Even until I was 17, he would stop me passing in the hallway, clap his hands together and dramatically say, “Ready?” He’d put his left to my right, his right to my left with a look of intense concentration. We’d play faster and faster until we were just smacking at each other and we’d laughed and he’d hug me and say, “Ya crazy cracker.”

My father never fully made that transition in to the father figure who pretended he never used a cuss word or got out of line himself. Many of his fatherly sayings included a word that would have gotten me in trouble had I repeated it in school. These included, with “stuff” filling in for a word I’d have to bleep: “If I need any stuff from you, I’ll squeeze your head.” “That looks like ten pounds of stuff in a 5-pound bag.” And, “If you throw enough stuff against the wall, some of it’s bound to stick.” This last one was repeated to me posthumously on his behalf by my mother years later as advice on meeting Mr. Right.

His finger was pulled upon request numerous times throughout my childhood, setting off the predictable physical reaction. If you’re face was burned, bruised, swollen or anything of the like, he couldn’t resist but ask if your face hurt, just so you could say yes, and he could say, “It’s killin’ me.” If you were excited go anywhere, he would talk about how just saw on the news that that very spot had just burned down. When my sister was about to leave to join the Marines, Parris Island was, according to him, a pile of ash.

In recollecting these scraps, I get that feeling. That feeling I miss having. There’s one memory where it’s strongest. We were walking through a department store and I started twirling a lazy susan of silver charms. There were flowers and hearts. He saw me looking and, like I hoped he would, he asked me if I wanted one. Out of all those beautiful trinkets, the one that caught my eye was a solid little piggy. He saw my choice and laughed this laugh, this “I don’t get you sometimes, but I love you anyway” laugh. Maybe that’s it. Of all the people in the world who laugh at you, that there’s one who’s always laughing with you. You can be as weird as you are.

On Valentine’s Day when I was 17, he got me this big card that had a bunny on the front. It said, “You know what I like?” Then I opened it up and it was a pop-up of three hearts that said Y-O-U, strung between the now popping open arms of the bunny. Under it he’d written, Little Dee, Will you be my Valentine? Love, Dad. I laughed and said, like a teenager, “Did mom pick this out for you?” He said, “No, why?” He had no idea how adorable he was. He hugged me and even at 17 I felt like a little girl wrapped in an entire world made up of him, and it was a world sweet and loving where even a trip to the grocery store is an adventure and all my little quirks made me just the much more perfect, the way I am.

Then he died, that next month.

There was so little left. A few clothes. So few pictures. So few notes with his all-caps writing I loved. Just, that’s it.

In ways I’m sure he wanted to, and in one big way he would have never wanted to, my dad taught me about freedom. In moments when other people would have been tense, wrapped up in whatever task they were doing, my father was relaxed, playing, with the freedom to choose his mood and to make life into the experience it was. He showed me freedom to reject the rules of people who wield whistles, or who tell me who I should be or what I should have done. In dying, he showed me how quickly all that we build up can turn to dust and just blow away. How little it all matters in the end. The only thing that matters is now. It’s the kind of attitude that might make someone say, “Screw it, I’m joining the Peace Corps.”

My dad’s gone, but his spirit is so present in my family. My little nephew, named Peter for my dad, has picked up, through osmosis, some of the habits of a grandpa he never knew. When he gets an answer right, he sticks up his index finger and says, “Brilliance!” in that high-pitched voice my dad used to use. We still yell “One down!” when someone drops a plate, just like he used to. He is scattered about us like his ashes in the sea, in our jokes, the mischievous turn of a grin, or any time I turn life into the silly game I know it can be.

My dad, Peter Perhach

Update, Nice Fam, Web Site, Parties

2010-03-03T15:28:00.008-05:00

Hello. Long time no talk. It's been a long, long, lazy, lazy summer. But I'm out from hibernation and in Asuncion, armed with good internet and with so much to share of what's been happening. I'm supposed to be washing my clothes in the tub, but Waterworld is on in English. I know it's sad.

Carnaval. Feb 19th

Carnaval was last night. So many people have asked me why I wasn’t going to dance this year. I decided last year, in the middle of the parade, that I would not. I was dancing, and this guy called me over to take a photo. Then he grabbed me around the shoulder, pulled me in, and gave me a kiss on the cheek, pressing his Paraguayan-summer-sweating face onto mine while his friend snapped the shot. Well, I thought, this is not to be repeated.

This year, I watched the queen come dancing down the street. She was in high heels, a sequined bra, and something like a large belt over a thong. From behind, it just looked like her naked ass.
She stopped for a moment, dancing in place, and this part came in the music where you take it down, rolling your hips around and dropping as sexily as possible into a squat. Right as she was about to descend, a shot of foam came from the side, covering half her face and body. This looks just like when someone gets hit in the face with a pie on tv. But still, pie on face, she girated her bare ass and dropped it, like someone who couldn’t decide if she wanted to be a stripper or Lucille Balle.

Me, happy in the stands

I also had to show you this CLASSIC Paraguayan dance move. This is us dancing in the street after Carnaval. 'Bout to put out a knee!

About the fam...

My host mom, Ña. Conchena, is a nut. She's a nut and also she loves me, which is just great. The other day she, Sandra and Vanessa and I were walking, and she reached out and took my finger in her hand and just held it. Then she said, "Mbohapy che memby." (I have three daughters). Being so accepted and loved by her and the family feels like, after months in a social blizzard, being warmed in a blanket, placed by the fire and given hot chocolate with marshmellows.

Also, she just cracks me up. She is constantly exasperated by how much work she doesn’t around the house. I think she has lost the ability to sit still. Even at parties, she will be in the kitchen helping with the dishes.

She makes that Paraguayan face, the big frown with the shaken head, as if it’s all such a shame. "No dormi nada," she says, (I didn’t sleep at all.) She may have gotten up at 4:30 to iron or wash the ao po’i she makes. And these lazy kids? Where are they? she asks, then answers. Sleeping. “Chejukata!” (It’s going to kill me.)

Then she makes this frustrated sound like a clogged filter and says, “Ay Pauli!” The rant can continue in one of several ways. How messy the house is, how much work she still has to do, how much her leg is still bothering her. It’s funny how, when you’re desperate for any kind of social acceptance, what a pleasure it is when someone genuinely complains to you. I could listen all day.

If I did something bad, like leave dishes out back or buy the wrong kind of chicken, she says, “Roinupãta Pauli” (I’m going to beat you.) You have to be careful, because sometimes she is a hitter! When I make a joke and she laughs really hard, she punctuates it with those slaps on the back that hurt! She comes in my house and calls me Puerco de Paz, which rhymes with Cuerpo de Paz (Peace Corps) and kind of means Piggo of Peace.

When she passes me in the street sometimes with Sandra, she grabs Sandra’s arm and pulls her close, and they both look the other way with their noses up as if I’m the town outcast. Then we laugh and I say, "Moõ pehota?" (Where are you going?) They’re usually on their way to pick up the ao po’i shirts she had sewn so that she can pack them up for her weekly trips to Asuncion to drop them off to her clients.

She makes fun of how lazy I am. At those parties where she’s in the kitchen cleaning, she’ll say, “Please, Pauli, rest for a moment, you work too hard. Sit for a moment.”

But it’s the kind of joking that I know is rooted in love, so it doesn’t bother me. Because sometimes we’re just sitting there and she just puts her hand on my shoulder and leaves it there.

This is where you can usually find Conchena.

I´m making a web site!

So I´ve been trying to get the co-op some nice product shots, for our soon-to-come web site and it´s been tough. On the mannequin was lame, the flash was too bright, etc. So I googled some stuff and found out that I needed softboxes, those light box things you see in photo shoots on tv. I finagled some mils out of the co-op to buy lights, covered them in cardboard boxes, way ghetto-style, and this is what we got. I think it´s coming along nicely. (I´ll put up some shots of the studio later!)

Makeup...

Oscar helping me test the light.

Mariela assisting

Our professional studio

And Ta-Da!

Isn't she lovely?

Thirteen year old´s birthday

It was my host sister Vanessa´s 13th birthday recently, and we tore it up. I might have to say it was the most fun I had at a Paraguayan party. Oscar had a flashlight and was scanning the crowd for maker-outers. I showed them how I´d memorized the dance to Bad Romance. Good times.

Putting out the little food plates. Oh so important. One empanada, one sopa, one milanesa, one triangle sandwich.

Breakin´it downBad Romance Lady Gaga Style

That´s all for now!

Hey, alright, some good stuff...

2010-02-10T19:46:00.002-05:00

Hi friends. Just stopping by with some good news.

-There was a slight gossip situation which made me feel really kind of crappy. Oh no! But then it kind of turned around with my friend told me how she was giving this chick who was talking about me the evil eye. It just showed how much this friend loved me to see how mad it made here. Then someone else said that this person talks about everyone anyway and to not worry, that she is just a horrible horrible person. That made me feel great!

-I bought the third book in the Twilight series in Spanish, because now my Paraguayan friends have seen the first two movie versions and they're dying to know what happens next. "Ha ha! I will trick them into reading for pleasure," I thought. I bought the book, which was damn expensive if I do say so myself, or $20 in English. I used a twenty my aunt sent me. It was worth every penny as soon as I showed it to Mariela and Leidyd. They love it and swoon every five minutes talking about Edward Collin. Mariela told me she didn't sleep last night because she wanted to stay up reading.

-I upgraded my podcast service to include stats, to see how many people are using it to learn Guarani. Guess how many downloads I have? Almost 1,000! Holy crap, I said to myself. That's about 5 times more than I would have thought. It makes me feel good that I'm creating something people will actually use and something that will make service that much easier for other volunteers. However, it kind of makes me want to say: In my day we had to learn Guarani by overhearing it on our way to the river to wash clothes, 10 miles, uphill both ways, without virtual flashcards.

Can you buy a book for Yataity?

2010-02-03T12:05:00.003-05:00

I always go to the co-op and tell my friend Mariela about whatever I'm reading. Mariela is so great. She's curious about the world, has great ideas for the co-op, and is learning English. When I talk to her about the books I'm reading, so always gets kind of a sad face and says, I wish I could read those books.

Or any books. There's no library in Yataity. And the price of a book is maybe half a month's rent. Can you imagine wanting to read and not being able to?

There's a new movement to start a library in Yataity, and I'm helping. But in the short run, I want to get some books in Yataity. I made an Amazon Wish List of some of my favorites and some other books that are needed here. It was fun looking through all my classics. Where would I be without Dr. Seuss, Roald Dahl or Shel Silverstein?

I really want to be part of introducing a reading culture into Yataity. Can you be part of it too?

If you'd like to donate a book (used is great), the link to the Wish List is at HERE. If anyone can add on a book for Yataity the next time they're ordering from Amazon, it would be awesome. I'd love to have some books to read to little kids!

Thanks on behalf of Yataity.

(And thanks to Mateo for some inspiration. He's reading Anne Frank's Diary with a girls group and will be passing the books on to me next. To think that I'm going to help some girls (including my host sister) read their first book ever just for fun!)

So hot...

2010-01-30T11:21:00.002-05:00

I talked to Mateo and Shola in the last few days, and both said exactly what I've been thinking.

"I just don't feel like doing anything. I don't know what my problem is."

I remembered, and reminded them, that it's 96 degrees outside. At least it is today. Mateo swears that's nothing, that it gets up to 110. Anyway, it's hot. You shouldn't want to do anything.

Clothes come off in twisted ropes, sticking to your body. Your hair mats down anywhere bare skin is. In the summer, "Haku," or "It's hot," becomes the greeting. I can't imagine that any babies are born in September in this country.

In the afternoons I retreat to my fortress of solitude, a.k.a. my air conditioned bedroom with my Snuggie hung in the door frame to keep the cool air in. I'm too ashamed to pay my electric bill to my friend who collects them, so I've been waiting to go to Villarrica to do it. I don't want them to know how much I'm willing to pay for some cool, sweet relief.

Once I'm in my room I have to stay. Going in and out of a 20 degree temperature change can make your head explode like a deep-sea fish brought up to fast. So I stay in and Oscar's happy to stay in with me, breathing out heavily and saying "Haku che ra'a," something like "Man it's hot."

I still work, here in the fortress. I'm on the 12th episode of the Guaranime podcast, which I can do from home. But other than that, my sweaty roped clothes pile up high, my dishes that I have to wash outside wait in a potential avelanche, the porch needs sweeping.

I'll be here on my bed, the slats of my magic cold box turned right on me, until March at least, available via e-mail, if anyone needs me.

Happy Birthday Mom!

2010-01-25T06:08:00.003-05:00

For my mom's birthday, I made her two ao po'i placemats with crocheted edges. They literally took me a month and a half to finish, causing me to be the shame of Yataity. But I had to learn to make Ysypo'ity, this stitch below.

And I had to learn to crochet.

Oscar would like it to be stated that these gifts are half from him, because he had to serve the terere for the whole month and a half that I was working, instead of switching on and off like we normally do.

Happy Birthday mom. Hope they arrive in the mail soon! Thanks for teaching me to be crafty and adventurous!

My Pig Head, My Pig Head

2010-01-20T18:32:00.003-05:00

My Pig Head, My Pig Head, wherever I go, you're gonna go...

Shh, he's sleeping...

Brazil!

2010-01-18T08:25:00.011-05:00

Brazil. Roll that "r" and get real excited on the "i".

Brazil is a green land of wonder. They speak Portuguese, which is almost like Spanish until every other third word, which is nothing like Spanish. It was almost a little too much fun to watch Oscar struggling to speak with people. Ha ha! Now you know how I've been feeling for the last year and a half.

Brazil is also noted for its ladies. A place where I plummet to a 2. Here are some little-know facts about Brazilian Women.

Brazilian girls are born with a thong tan.
At womanhood, Brazilian women sprout coral-colored nail polish and three-tiered dangling earrings.
Brazilian women sleep hanging upside-down by their stiletto heels in a sub-zero anti-gravity chamber.

Our trip was with a college friend of Oscar's. Forty-five Paraguayans and one Americana, coolers packed with meat and beers, sheets and pillows. In Brazil the land became green. It became huge hills and houses stacked nearly one on top of the other. We all saw the beach at the same time, on our left and glistening.

We rented a house near the beach for 50 or so people and got out on the sand as soon as possible. We were in Camboriu, which is more crowded with buildings right up to the beach. There are vendors that come around with portable stores of beach cover-ups, necklaces and hats piled high on their own head. There are also churros filled with dulce de leche, chocolate or sweetened, condensed milk. Yum!

Then we headed to Florianopolis...

Me with my new Brazilian regulation-size sunglasses, purchased from my
trusted Prada dealer on the beach for 10 Reales.

At a Brazilian phone booth, tracking down our CouchSurfing host.

Florianopolis is a more natural part of Brazil. While the group went back after just one day, Oscar and I stayed for CouchSurfing! CouchSurfing is a web site where people from all over the world open their homes to host travelers. There is a reference and verfication system to make sure the people you are staying with are not ax murderers. We were not ax murdered but instead had a great time with a guy named Marcos. He spoke English and Portuguese and just a little Spanish. I speak English and Spanish and two words of Portuguese. Oscar speaks Guaraní and Spanish, a little Portuguese and English curse words. Between us all, we managed to have a conversation into the night. At one point, I was making Paraguayan rice salad and the guys were in the kitchen and we started talking about the differences in all of our cultures and it felt like what CouchSurfing should be.

Marcos told us about this awesome beach that is almost empty, because it takes an hour hike over a mountain or a boat to get there. I made Oscar try the hike.

At the entrance.

The scene going up and looking back.

Up Higher...

Arriving...to the left

To the right

Here's Oscar with a celebratory beer after the hike where he almost fell on me and killed us all. Notice the change in facial expression from the entrance to here.

On this beach there was hardly anyone, just some people enjoying the waves and some campers.

On the beach, we found the biggest bug ever, dead piranhas and crabs.

We rode the waves a bit, then opted to take the boat back.

I started to get a little sea sick going backwards.

They told us to look up at the rocks.

Please don't puke, please don't puke.

At least we didn't end up like this chick, who puked and then fainted. Oscar asked me to take the flash off so he could take this picture escondido, but I didn't understand and put it on instead, so everyone knew he was insensitive.

It rained on us on the way back. We were freezing and not sure if we would vomit or not. We got to shore really dazed feeling and I went into the first restaurant I saw to change into dry clothes. The restaurant owners took pity on us and warmed up a shot of liquor to warm us up.

This is a picture of the picture on front of the menu. It made us laugh because...

Here's how it looked that day.

While we were there, we ordered the Frutas del Mar (Fruits of the Sea), and Oscar tried his first oysters and fried shrimp and crabs.

Luke, I am your fa-ther.

Back in Camboriu, we took a tour in one of these bubble-like contraptions.

The view. Still a little cloudy.

Camboriu.

We rode this crazy two-person rollercoaster.

Then back for one last terere in the ocean before we left.

We returned like tourists, all of us in our Brazil/Camboriu/Florianopolis shirts. I hope to be back one day!

Lessons on being happy from The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz

2010-01-03T12:51:00.002-05:00

Before Peace Corps, I was in Florida and working and kind of a little miserable at times. Worse, I was so angry at myself for being miserable. “You are American!” I’d say to myself. “You have enough food! Air conditioning. A good job. Friends. Family. What is your deal?”

Part of the reason I joined the Peace Corps was for a good “Alright young lady, let’s see if you can’t appreciate your life when you get thrown into poverty.” Obviously, that didn’t happen. But I did happen to read this book. It talks about something called Adaptation. Basically this is the idea that anything externally that happens to you, you get used to, for better or worse. Win the lottery? You’re initially happy, but you get used to it. Lose your hand in a fireworks accident? You’re initially miserable, but you get a nice hook and you get used to it. In a year’s time, people in both these situations reported being just as happy as they were beforehand, no more, no less.

We’re the richest people in the world. We know we don’t appreciate it and we hate ourselves for it. But it’s not our fault. It’s nature. Whew.

We enjoy our pleasures while they’re novel, our shiny new things. But the pleasure wears off, which still surprises us every time. This is called hedonic adaptation. (hedonic: of, characterizing, or pertaining to pleasure)

“As society’s affluence grows, consumption shifts increasingly to expensive, durable goods, with the result that disappointments with the consumption increases. Faced with this inevitable disappointment, what do people do? Some simply give up the chase and stop valuing pleasure derived from things. Most are driven instead to pursue novelty, to seek out new commodities and experiences whose pleasure potential has not been dissipated by repeated exposure. In time, these new commodities also will lose their intensity, but people still get caught up in the chase, a process that psychologists ... labeled the hedonic treadmill. No matter how fast you run on this kind of machine, you still don’t get anywhere.”

The hedonic treadmill. What a great name for how we live our lives.

Schwartz goes on to talk about another thing called the satisfaction treadmill. Let’s say that you get you’re life going good to where you are feel good about your rank in society, the comfort level in your home, the way you look in your nice clothes. It will feel good climbing the ladder at first, but you get used to the rung. Soon you want to move up to the higher rank, the bigger house, the more expensive clothes. You work your ass off at a job you’re starting to hate, thinking these things will make you happy, you get into debt buying newer, shinier things, (and more chained to that desk), but the thrill eludes you every time and fades farther into the distance. We expect to get to some level where adaptation won’t take place, but it always will.

That’s good. Now I know I don’t have to be rich, I’ll just get used to it. What I really need to work on is knowing that I'll be just as happy if I do have a lot of success with my work. (We all have our trophy we strive more. Mine is more success than riches. Although come to think of it, both would be nice.) I can accept where I am and accept that I’m pychologically incapable of really appreciating it. Yet I’ll appreciate it in practice. I won't sell out thinking it will make me happy. I'll remember to give back and not grab for more. I'll remind myself that I'm rich and should be content.

We slam another nail into our happiness's coffin with social comparison. It used to be that people lived in tiny villages and compared themselves with 100 or so people. Now we live in a world where we are fed with info about the lives of the most rich and famous of 6 billion people. We invite this information into our lives via gossip magazines and the E! chanel.

Advertisers tell us: “If you use this product you will be happy” and provide us with photographic evidence of people using their product and looking very happy. We buy the thing and we’re no more happier. Dammit. Of course none of think that we really fall for this, but why would companies spend billions on advertising if it didn't really work?

The Paradox of Choice suggests we limit our exposure to unrealistic social comparison. Stop reading women’s magazines. Stop watching so much tv. Dip your feet into reality and see how real people live.

By exposing yourself to too much advertising, too many gossip magazines, too many hours of shows like “The 100 Wealthiest Celebrities under 25,” you’re conciously stepping on that hedonic treadmill, choosing to remain forever unsatisfied with your own life.

***

And because I love that you find the truth where science and spirituality intersect, an excerpt from the Tao Te Ching:

If you look to others for fulfillment,

you will never truly be fulfilled.

If your happiness depends on money,

you will never be happy with yourself.

Be content with what you have;

rejoice in the way things are.

When you realize there is nothing lacking,

the whole world belongs to you.

White Lies, Where are you?

2010-01-03T08:07:00.002-05:00

I miss my American white lies.

Against my better judgement I went to the hair dresser to get my hair done for New Years. It is straight and thick and doesn't do well in curls. It didn't turn out well and I didn't want to come home. I knew what waited for me.

True to form, my host mom said: "Ivai kariay", which translates to: super ugly.

(Sigh)

Also, there's this rule where they ask you really personal questions and you pretty much have to answer or risk seeming rude, and then they make judgements on your personal life that you didn't want to share in the first place. It's like being strip-searched and then having the strip-searcher say: Wow, your thighs are so thick!

Like: "How much did you pay to get your hair done like that."

(Internal sigh) "15 mil"

"Oh my God, that's so expensive! Why did you pay so much when she doesn't know how to do anything?!"

All this on top of a bad hair day.

The ironic thing is that Paraguayans are at the same time timid and yet brutally honest. If you invite them to a party or a meeting and they know they won't go, they'll say "Sure, I'll be there," and then just not show. But if you're fat, your food isn't good or your hair is having a bad day, they have no problem telling you and everyone else.

Just yesterday I was wearing a dress and my friend said I looked pregnant. They other friend who was trying to help jumped in and said, "Oh no, she just needs a little exercise, right Pauli?"

Right.

The worst was a while ago when I spent a month on this ao po'i with a beautiful dress in mind. I had the dress made with the fabric I had embroidered, and it came out too short and too not-cute. Oscar did not spare me.

"Yep, it's really ugly," he said.

I got upset, mostly at the situation, but also at him.

"What?!" he said, genuinely confused. "It's an ugly dress. If your dress is ugly, I'm going to tell you. Why is that a bad thing?"

I wanted to say: Where are all the women in America when I need them to be on my side?

I want to say: It's RUDE! It's rude when he tells his mother her food sucks. It's rude when my host mom takes one bite of a cake at a wedding and says, "Ndahei" (It's not good). It's rude when they tell me all the time that I'm fat or I'm too skinny or I've burned my skin again and it looks really ugly. It's rude!

But it's not rude. It's just not acceptable in my culture. And although I know this in my mind, my heart can't seem to catch on to the spirit of it: It's just hair. It's just food. It's just your body.

Why do we lie those little white lies, in our culture? To spare feelings, we say. I'm in a place where those feelings are not expected to exist. Yet I can't help it, I packed them anyway.

Che kaigue but here's an update.

2009-12-29T17:50:00.011-05:00

Merry Cross-Eyed Christmas
Hello Everyone. Mary Christmas. Che kaigue means I'm feeling lazy. It's pretty much the official motto of the Republic of Paraguay.

So I will express myself with photos and caption.

Perhaps the best way in which I can explain cultural differences
I'm dealing with here is to say that the women at my coop think
this shirt is just beautiful.

These are the owls I see out in the campo.
For some reason Oscar walked in my house with one.

Peppers from my garden from which I made a rockin' hot sauce.
Anyone know what kind they are?

Angelic and I. A fellow very tall person who likes to write. She's the best.

Making sushi in my house with Mariela and Leidyd. Mariela is also the best.

In the Campo
I take it out to the campo just about every day before sunset.
This is funny only if you know the horse is walking very slowly.

There are about 5 little baby horses out there. They run around and play like puppies.

Wildflowers

The thing I like about wildflowers is that they're just supposed to be pixels in the picture of the countryside. But they're equally amazing close up.

Oscar with a catch from fishing. Gross!

The sunset in the campo with horses. I counted more than 30 out there the other day.

Back at home...

This is what a perfect Sunday looks like to me.

Stable man Tito and Bigote.

In other news:

My money came in for the coop. Nearly 10 million big ones. Or little ones, as I suppose we would call a currency of which it takes one thousand to buy a piece of gum. Anyway. We're getting a new computer, new camera, and a new web site. I'm sitting back and taking the afternoons off to spend more time with my air conditioner.

This other cool thing happened where I sent an e-mail to Barbara DeMarco-Barrett. She's a writer and I listen to her podcast Writers on Writing. And she just randomly was nice enough to send me a free copy of her book. So I sent her this photo as a thank you.

Also, I'm planning on going to Brazil. Back home at my Going-Away Garage Sale, a woman said to me, "If you ever get the chance to go to Florianopolis, you have to go." I got the chance to go, and although it might be a financial stretch, both my mother and my friend Fodor said the exact same thing: "You only go around once." Plus my grandparents threw me enough cash to cover my visa for Christmas. Score!

Ok, that's all for now...

Survival Bandana

2009-12-10T17:45:00.004-05:00

So I had this big shame had that I bought all the outdoorsy stuff before I came. I basically had a panic attack via credit card and ended up with a bunch of ugly quick-dry clothes and outdoor gadgets that are still under my bed in mint condition.

My big shame was this one thing that I bought. I never even showed anyone to make fun of myself. I needed to come out of the closet, and so I cleansed myself through the power of the spoken word, and hence I read the following to the other volunteers at our Thanksgiving Day Talent Show. When the picture is is where my lovely assistant Sasha revealed the item. Thank you.

Survival Bandana

Thank God you’re here. This just might be the talent show that saves your life.

I have with me tonight a purchase I made in my preparation to leave my suburban life for the dangers of the deep South American jungle. Thankfully, I had the smarts to acquire this item just days before I left into the uncharted, unforgiving wilderness. I discovered it in the same outfitter where I purchased no-water camping soap and two pairs of $18 quick-dry underwear because the package said all the smart travelers used them, the same place where I almost bought a personal hand-held alarm, until the man at the counter said, “But who will be there to hear it?” At that very place, I had the fortune of spending $15.99 on a companion that has been the key to tipping the scales of life and death in my favor. To increase your own chances making it out of the Peace Corps alive, I advise you to listen up to some tips from this, The Survival Bandana.

The Survival Bandana is 2.5 square feet of orange knowledge that one day might just save your keister down here. As you can see, the Survival Bandana is complete with charts, tips, and basically the entire contents of the mind of a highly decorated eagle scout. Here’s one on how to find south and locate the North Star. Oh, that only works in the Northern Hemisphere, so ignore those, ignore ‘em, there’s lots of other good stuff to save your life.

For example, when you’re in the internet cafe and Facebook is taking forever to load, the Survival Bandana says to stay calm. In any situation where you’re lost of just don’t know what to do, the Survival Bandana offers the acronym STOP.
S! Stop and take a break, possibly to drink terere.
T! Think about what you have as tools or can use for survival, such as your cell phone, Google, Wikipedia, Skype, etc.
O! Observe your surroundings and look for a street sign or someone selling maps on the side of the road.
P! Plan your actions; make a distress signal to get Help, or just send a text message.

Or for example, if you want to drink terere but the water tap is dangerously far, there’s a nice little diagram here of how to build an underground still and suck water from the earth. The Survival Bandana would like you to remember that the human body can only go 3 days without water, so if there’s no terere, water can be collected from vines, dew on leaves, grass or by melting snow.

Your body can also go just 3 weeks without food. So, if Bolsi Bar (an expensive Asuncion restaurant) is taking too long on their delivery, the Survival Bandana says that all healthy mammals, birds and insects are edible. You can cook them over a low fire, along with the marshmallows your family sent from home. A fire can also provide warmth and a signal for help.

In extreme weather conditions, the human body can only go three hours without shelter. When selecting a shelter, you don’t just want to look for places close to the clubs in Asuncion. The Survival Bandana says you should also avoid water, wind and low-lying areas. And, should the Chaco Hotel be all booked up, the Survival Bandana says you can make emergency shelter by tying a line between two trees, draping a tarp over it, and staking the four corners to the ground. You can see this methods being used by the natives in Plaza Uruguaya (where homeless live).

If your cell phone battery dies and you get separated from your friends, perhaps at the bar, the Survival Bandana says that staying in one area increases your chances of being found. If you have to move, such as to get another Brahma, you should leave a trail of rocks or sticks.

You may want invest your own Survival Bandana, because the bandana itself might just save your life. It has on here a list of its uses, such as an ice pack, splinting, tourniquet, distress flag, or for something to carry beers from the fridge to a party. I think I might even be able to tie it up into a tube top if I need something to wear to Killkenny’s.

And to make sure everyone survives this year, I offer you one last piece of advice on this wilderness survival trip we call Thanksgiving. The Survival Bandana says that overall, staying dry is the key to survival, so please, don’t forget to bring a towel to the pool.

Yo se cocinar, yeah! (con recipes)

2009-12-05T20:46:00.003-05:00

Today I was in my kitchen, speaking Spanish and cooking Chicken Scarpariello, and I honestly can't say which one is more amazing.

You might have had to have known me, before, and known what a fire hazard I was in the kitchen.

I had this full feeling: I was proud of myself, dammit.

After 24 years of non-cooking, the Peace Corps has finally forced me to learn. I think it's the boredom as well as not wanting to have to rely on a family to feed me. That means more fried meats and mayonaisey salads.

As a former restaurant junkie, I was used to thai, sushi, pizza, burgers, vegetarian hippy feed, etc. I still like that food.

So I'm like a recipe sleuth. It starts in one of two ways. Either I think of something -- Mmm, remember pad thai? -- and I look up the recipe to see if I could make it. I usually get to the third ingredient and say, nope, no way. Or, the second way is that I find something I've never seen before in a big, chuchi supermarket in the city. I go to Allrecipes and search and search for how I can use it. I found dried seaweed and successfully made sushi. I found plain yogurt in Oviedo and it's opened up a world of Indian. One of these days I'm going to translate all the cheese names in the Villarrica supermarket and figure out what I can do with them.

Today I felt like experimenting and tried a frappachino recipe. (Fail). And I made rosemary tea out of the rosemary in the back yard, which also lead to the chicken.

I never thought that if I went to a country I'd learn recipes from all over the world except that one place. (Although I am now, unfortunately, an expert fryer.)

But here are some of the recipes I love, with stuff that it is possible to find in Paraguay:
Chicken Scarpariello I made with rosemary growing in our back yard. For white wine I used toro viejo. Only the best!

This Aloo Phujia I made once I figured out that curcuma means tumeric. It is simple and so good and Oscar called it my rice from India and asks me to make it every third night.

This Thai Eggplant recipe is awesome, of course I just use regular eggplant and basil growing in the backyard. So good, even with low-grade soy sauce.

Better

2009-11-24T07:16:00.002-05:00

I wasn´t sure if I should publish that last blog. But a few friends have said, "Ugh, I know exactly how you feel."

But I´m better now. It´s good.

The thing that bothered me was quitting the radio show. It felt like quitting, failure. My show sucked and I let it suck and they wither up and die. That´s not how I want to be.

I hadn´t told the guy at the radio station yet, as I was bothered by this feeling. I mentioned it to Angelic, and she invited me to come to Oviedo every Thursday to do their show with them, her and Melissa. Yay! That feels a lot better. This is a move up, bigger market. And the show will reach the Yat. So I will now be a part of Rojapo Radio in Oviedo.

On Sunday I went to Oviedo and we went around visiting Chuchi people. One of the women said, Oh, I always listen to your show. Every thursday at 11. I learn a lot. That´s nice. More on chuchi people later...

Disintegrating

2009-11-19T21:37:00.004-05:00

I tried to integrate, and I've been feeling the frustration of grasping at a life that wasn't appearing where it should be. I didn't trust people I wanted to trust. Behind so many smiles I heard the faint rattle of a snake. People around me were so gossipy it was statistically impossible that they were gossiping about me too. I felt like I could count my real friends on one hand that had suffered a horrible table-saw accident.

My radio show was sucking. I got a message that said, "You know we can't understand what your saying, right? And could you please play the song Somos de la Calle?" Then my friend(?) at work said she heard my show. "How was it?" someone else asked. "I liked the music," she said. (Meaning not the talking) and then she laughed one of those laughs where they put the camera right in the laughing persons face and the laugh just gets louder and more menacing.

Then I found out that another friend(?) was gossiping about my porch floor being dirty. What a funny straw to break my back, but then I was crying and Oscar had to give me yet another run-down of Paraguayan policy.

So fine. I get it. You don't fan out in Paraguay, make a million friends. You stick to your kin. The one person I actually know is a true friend to me, just stays at home with her family. You don't have a radio show.

I have Oscar. I have my fireworks-blast-damaged-hand finger-count of real friends. I can live with that. My podcast is going really well, so screw the radio. I let it all go, all that wasn't there to grasp. I'm quitting the radio show. I'm letting my friends with question marks be acquaintences, period. I'm not worrying about pleasing everybody.

I caught myself having these thoughts: You just can't trust anyone besides _ and _. You just have to worry about yourself.

These are almost the exact words that came out of a Paraguayan's friend(?)'s mouth about a year ago. Back then I had been shocked and tried to convince her that it's ok, you can trust people.

Maybe I'm integrating better than I thought.

Sacrifice

2009-11-19T21:29:00.003-05:00

I overheard this conversation a while ago, and it's been stuck in my head ever since. I was at an event with my little host sister, going to watch her do the traditional Paraguayan dance with the big Ao Poi skirts.

Afterward, I was waiting for her to change in the back area. Two girls come in, about 10, looking like little women in their make-up. They stopped to change into their street clothes, looking a bit frazzled. One huffed: "What work it is to dance!"

The other one agreed, and then, pulling at her uniform, she said the line that sticks with me: "Our dance is our sacrifice."

It just tells you everything about a people who have maybe struggled so long that all they have left to cling to are their struggles, that a little girl would say something such as that.

The Shock of a Thing like TP Disposal

2009-11-15T07:10:00.002-05:00

Have I mentioned that, in Paraguay, you don't throw your toilet paper in the toilet, but in a little trash can next to it? Probably not, because it's just a little life detail. But it was a big adjustment for us volunteers, a reflex we never even thought of, but had to change.
How did we ever get on the subject last night, me and my Paraguayan friends at a little dinner party to make sushi? But, somehow the conversation landed on me saying, "In the U.S., we throw the paper in the toilet."
Oscar's face jerked into his "you're lying" face: tweaked to the side, eyes squinted, lips pressed -- as fast as if I'd said, "In the U.S., we fold our used toilet paper into origami frogs that come to life and hop away."
I laughed and laughed, just at his face. "En serio?" (Seriously?) he asked. "Ndejapu!" (You're lying!)
Mariela and Leidyd had the same shocked faces. Oscar said, "In the toilet? But it would clog up! It would just float there when you tried to flush it!"
It was as if I had suggested we throw our paper in the toilet, and not as if 300 million people already did it, and they were dismissing my new idea as stupid.
Also, they still didn't really believe me. "Call Sasha," I said. So we did. She corroborated my story.
But, but, Oscar had seen in movies that there are trash cans next to the toilets. But, but, where does the paper go?
After I answered all their questions, it was still, "En serio? En serio?" from all of them.

There's something about the little differences that hit you most. Not the languages, the different religions, we've all read about those. It's the tiny things that you never even think about and assume as constants, like breathing. I had never imagined that nobs on a sink would say C and F, but of course they do. Or that Christmas would be celebrated with watermelon, but it makes sense, now that I think about it.
It's the shock of finding out that those rock-hard constants are really variables, ingredients in life that can be substituted, that really shows you how small your own corner of the world is, and all the possibility that's out there.

Choice and Staying Home

2009-11-08T21:46:00.004-05:00

November 7: From “The Paradox of Choice” by Barry Schwartz
"In the 1960s, psychologist Martin Seligman and his collaborators performed an experiment that involved teaching three different groups of animals to jump over a little hurdle from one side of a box to the other to escape or avoid an electric shock. One of the groups was given the task with no prior exposure to such experiments. A second group had already learned to make a different response, in a different setting, to escape from shock. Seligman and his coworkers expected, and found, that this second group would learn a bit more quickly that the first, reasoning that some of what they had learned in the first experiment might transfer to the second.

The third group of animals, also in a different setting, had been given a series of shocks that could not be escaped by any response.

Remarkably, this third group failed to learn at all. Indeed, many of them essentially had no chance to learn because they didn’t even try to escape from the shocks. These animals became quite passive, lying down and taking the shocks until the researchers mercifully ended the experiment.

Seligman and his colleagues suggest that the animals in this third group had learned from being exposed to inescapable shocks that nothing they did made a difference; that they were essentially helpless when it came to controlling their fate. Like the second group, they had also transferred to the hurdle-jumping situation lessons they had learned before -- in this case, learned helplessness.

Seligman’s discovery of learned helplessness has had a monumental impact in many different areas of psychology. Hundreds of studies leave no doubt that we can learn that we don’t have control. And when we do learn this, the consequences can be dire. Leraned helplessness can affect furture motivation to try. In can affect future ability to detect that you do have control in new situations.”

The scientists then sent in on of the group two animals to help the group three animals. At first, she was quite astonished that they were just sitting their being shocked away, while freedom was just over a small hurdle.

She made a big sweeping motion with her paws toward the hurdle, as if to say, “Jump! Jump already!” By this time they had already laid down, and they just shook their heads, as if to say, “It’s no use.”

And the Group 2 animal wondered why they wouldn´t want to escape the shocks. The Group 3 animal thought the Group 2 animal was quite odd, and that shocks were just part of life.

November 8: No, You Should Not Have Stayed Home
Before I joined the Peace Corps, I pictured the two years abroad as some kind of detour to the rest of my life, some kind of time out that I would take and then get right back on track, jump back in where I left off.

Now, it’s hard to remember that this is not my real life, that I’m in a foreign country. Sometimes it feels as easy as living. Other times when I wonder why it’s so damn hard, I have to remind myself that this is supposed to be the toughest job I’ll ever love.

Then the memory comes in a jolt that I’ll leave this place. My Guarani will become a party trick. I won’t have time to make Ao Po’i anymore. I won’t have a horse. Worst of all, Oscar will not always be right next door.

If I thought about all that too much, I’d go insane.

Between the jolts, I get too comfortable. I forget I’m a representative of the U.S. Government, a volunteer, 24/7 and just go on being Paulette, instead of Paulita. I don’t feel like trying to make more contacts. I don’t try to get out in the community more often. I don’t keep social norms in mind.

Saturday I was in bed reading one of my non-fiction books I’ve become obsessed with, perhaps seeking at least a book-learning understanding of society if not a real one. Sandra, my host sister, invited me to play volleyball. Though I wanted to stay on my butt, I said, No, I should go.

I walk, slump shouldered, to a bunch of crazy kids, mostly boys about 12, playing over a net tied between two twisted tree limbs sticking out of the ground. Most were barefoot.

It’s been a year since I touched a volleyball, so I spent the first few games embarrassing myself. The rotations were like a shame cycle, peaking at when I had to serve, and the ball went everywhere but over the net. The children have no problem expressing themselves, meaning they laughed their asses off at me.

I should have stayed home.

When we sat out, Sandra showed me a game played with the inside of a flower, with the little stems that have a head on them, trying to knock the other’s off.

We played another round of volley, and I finally remembered how to serve and everyone cheered, because when I can serve, I can serve, overhanded. I cheered up and began to notice all these photos around us: boys sitting in a doorstep. Two chickens, one after the other, walking up the steps of bricks left of a half-crumbled wall.

During the next break, I talked with this kid Pablo, who’s studying English. We talked almost all in English, with this other little kid just looking on. Pablo told me that he learns all his English from watching movies, every night.

We got up to play another game. The sun was gone, and the sky was blue with pink cotton candy. Pablo was first to serve. He held the ball up, and paused. He looked right at me and said in his English, “Stop this Mother F*ckers.” Then turned back and served.

Dear Santa

2009-11-04T18:57:00.006-05:00

I was asked by an aunt to put up a new list of things I could use for a possible Christmas package. So I will so ever tackily do that here:

Clothing catalogs for Ao Poi ideas for the co-op
Magazines: Writer's Digest, Psychology Today, anything interesting that doesn't mention 50 new ways to make my hair shinier.
Coconut milk (I have all these recipes...)
Aerosol sunblock
Tester tube of Chanel Chance if you can find one (I've used one in a year, shows you how much I need it)
Goodwill/used super-light long sleeve shirt for horse-riding and being outside
Light face lotion with high SPF
Just any old cotton double sheet if you have one lying around. (My sheets are made of polyester. Great idea in a country with 100-degree summers)
Red Kool-Aid or Gator-ade packets
One of those dish washing brushes with a handle. (Why did those never catch on south of the equator?)

I love you guys and as I've said I'm really fine and don't need anything. However, I am a struggling single horse mom, so I'll take any kind offerings.

IGUAZU Vacation

2009-11-02T05:40:00.007-05:00

IGUAZU

"Big Water" in Guarani

Our arrival was a little rough. We weren't sure if the guy who sold us our tours was ripping us off. The Full Moon tour that we'd scheduled our trip around was sold out. I wasn't sure if the ATM would work, then I had no idea of the exchange rate for pesos.

At our hotel, they told us there'd been a mistake and they didn't have a room for us. They tried to get us to stay with the lady who lives across the street who had a monkey in a cage in her driveway. Yipes. But we just ended up staying in a bunk bed a dorm-style room that first night, with two chicks from Columbia.

We went to the falls as soon as we could, which was already the afternoon. Anyone who gives you advice first says, "Go early." By the afternoon it's hot. Good thing we had the terere. The falls curve around in kind of an upside-down U, the bottom of that U is the most famous part, the Devil's Throat. For the first day, we went up the side.

When we first came over the threshold and I saw the waterfalls, I just ballooned up with emotion. It's like all that water flowing over everywhere just fills you up with the wonder of the world. It's amazing. There are rainbows everywhere in the mist, with birds looping through.

That day we went for the boat ride. You go through the jungle down to the boats, then ride through the canyon of the river until the falls become visible in the distance. Then they loop you through the mist, which feels like someone spraying you from a fire hydrant. Oscar really loved it and did a great Paraguayan laugh that ends with "Woo Hooooo."

Quite the shower

***

Iguazu is like Disney, where it attracts people from all over the world. I love to hear all the languages. Oscar and I talked a lot in Guarani. I realized how much I know. If I want to tell you about the time Aunt Norma broke her arm, it's Spanish. But "Let's go eat lunch," "Where'd I put my money," "Did you eat the last of the Cheetos?" That kind of stuff I can do in Guarani. It was like we had our own little code language and could easily gossip about those around us.

It also brought up another depressing point. There were hardly any Paraguayans. This used to be part of Paraguay. In fact, Iguazu means Big Water in Guarani. But now, just outside the border that got shifted by a big war to exclude this resource, Paraguayans didn't even enjoy it. "Isogue" said Oscar. "They're broke."

We were not yet broke, so we went to dinner at a very nice place. However, we almost fell into our asado we were so tired.

DAY 2
We got up early to go on a forest adventure. The first part was rappelling. I had to tell Oscar the story of how I tried to go on a rock climbing trip then remembered I'm dizzily afraid of heights. There were these five little girls who went like brave campers before me. Then I went screaming all the way. I finally tried to look up and jump like the pros, and right when I did that, I came swinging in and landed on my shin bone.

Oscar Rappelling

We almost tried to fit in another trip to the falls in the afternoon, but instead decided to enjoy the tv and the air conditioning. Too bad in our awful hostel, if you turned the tv on with the air, all the power went out.

That night was the Luna Llena, the Full Moon tour. I had been wanting to do this forever. It goes on for 5 nights around the full moon. We finally had the weekend planned, then I went online and saw that it was $80 a person. You probably read that as 80 dollars, as I did. So for days I thought we couldn't go. Then I realized I'm blond and that they use the same symbol for dollars and pesos. So it was 80 pesos, just 20 bucks. We did finally find a space, and it was a magical wonderland. They take you to the Devil's Throat, the part we had yet to see, and it's amazing. The water is falling all loud, then these plumes of mist rise up slow and silent. Unfortunately, they also soak you. Then you go to a nice dinner in La Selva restaurant in the park, where a man was playing smooth jazz covers on a harp.

The Falls at Night

Day 3
We were planning on leaving early but decided we needed to see the Devil's Throat in the light of day. I really loved watching the birds. There are these birds that have evolved to live in the falls. They can fly through the water and make their nests on the rocks. They fly, black against the white of the water, in big loops.

We also saw tucans, monkeys, iguanas and all kinds of tropical wildlife, which Oscar fed Cheetos as I yelled at him. After the Devil's Throat we went on the Macuco Trail. Being very lazy we complained about the heat and acted as though we were dying the whole 3 km. But then we came upon a very gorgeous waterfall with a natural pool underneath. When we got in though, it was freezing and it was like a crazy rainstorm with the wind and the splash off the waterfall.

***

Then it was time to go home. But we stopped in Ciudad del Este to get me a router for my computer. CDE is like the if Sam's Club were run by the mafia and was a whole city. It's pretty dangerous -- volunteers aren't allowed to go alone -- so Oscar walked in front, then me, then his friend Jorge behind. Things are super-cheap there, like computers. So businesspeople go and buy up 20 computers. There are these huge ware-house type building with lots of levels, all over echoing the sound of packing tape and boxes thudding on each other. We got my router and I found Heinz ketchup and Jif. The kid at the store tried to explain to me what creamy and crunchy and extra crunchy meant. Kid, I've been eatin' extra crunchy since before you were born.

More Pics Here

Chisme 101

2009-10-22T17:12:00.002-04:00

The story is that I got a horse for 1,900,000 Guaranies, a decent price. I’m learning to ride it well. I go out in the countryside to let the tension in my body release, to remember that there are tadpoles and wildflowers and the whole world isn’t ao po’i and irregular verbs.

The story is that I got a horse for 2,500,000 Guaranies, that I got totally ripped off. The story is I was thrown from the horse. And the latest story is that I go out in the countryside to meet men, that people have seen me out there with them.

That’s the story, and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it. As soon as a hear it, my helplessness spread from my chest all through my body, fight or flight. Gossip is a ghost that has a life of its own, so I can’t just punch it. And to fly away from everywhere that people whispered is to never stop fleeing. So I sit here with it. My little nature walks, perhaps the thing in which I am most innocent, turned into something so seedy.

Oscar gave me one of his talks, where he says, “Let me tell you how it is.” He said that any little spark, a girl stopping on the corner to talk to her classmate, for example, could light the chisme fire. The next day, the corner is his bed and talking is another verb.

A widow who goes out in the countryside to collect branches to make brooms is said to go out there to meet men. When someone gets new shoes, people say he stole to something else. When Oscar was younger, people said he was a drug addict. Though he’d never even smoked a cigarette, his mom beat him anyway.

Any woman walking alone can be a target. Hadn’t I ever noticed that his sister never went out alone? I hadn’t. It’s sad, really, he said, to be a woman here.

At what level now do I give in? Another volunteer suggested I bring a little kid with me every time I go. That seems silly. I like to be alone.

I guess I have my people who know me, and the rest will talk. Though it makes me crazy to think how those groups might overlap. Providing something to talk about in terere circles, my service to the community.

Dreaming of an Ao Po´í Christmas

2009-10-20T08:22:00.005-04:00

Hello there one and all. This is your niece/daughter/sister/friend/stranger, Paulita. Today I´d love to show you this beautiful craft of Ao Po´í, and guilt you into buying some for Christmas.

Ha ha, just kidding. But seriously. I thought I´d take some photos and see if anyone was interested in getting a tablecloth, placemat set, or some nice bathroom towels you can yell at your children for using.

These make the perfect gift for a crafty wife or mistress, older people who remember a time when everything was made by hand and they liked it that way, or perhaps as a gift to yourself to have a reason to mention your niece/daughter/sister/friend that´s in the Peace Corps, of whom you are burstingly proud.

All tablecloths come with matching Ao Po´í napkins:

They come in whatever color, with matching or contrasting stitching, in square, rectangular or round. We also accept custom orders!

Here we have some designs:

All items are finished in crochet, with a variety of styles available.

Here are some more items and designs.

Tablerunner

Bath towels

Very Christmasy indeed!

As for prices, they depend on the size of tablecloth or number of items, but here are a few just to give you an idea:

Tablecloth, 6 feet, with 6 napkins included: $60

Table runner, 3 feet: $10

Bath towel: $6 each

Placemats: $5 each

Shipping extra. In the past I´ve shipped a shirt and it was $7. I´d guess the most would be $20 for a big tablecloth.

Have I told you lately that I love you? Any questions just email me at guaranime@gmail.com. Thanks!

One-Year Group Hug

2009-10-13T19:31:00.003-04:00

Today I had my one-year visit from my boss, Elisa, and Betsy, a former-volunteer-turned coordinator. I had been using this date as a deadline to get our SPA Grant proposal ready. SPA grants can be up to $5,000, and can increase that amount that Paraguayans give a crap about your presence up to 5,000%.

Auxi and I wrote up our proposal for a prize package to get the co-op online. New computer, internet service, web design, digital camera. More than $2,000. Yipes.

We presented the proposal today and it went well. Also, I presented certificates in basic computer skills to Mariela, Auxi and Rossana. The presentation was a little sentimental. They told my bosses I was doing a great job and I was really involved. I said I was proud of them and that they are all my students and my teachers. It was almost as if I wasn't laying across Oscar's chest a few weeks ago, sobbing about how no one cares that I'm there or wants to work with me.

My boss had to ask Auxi all these questions about me, which was weird because I was there. For that reason or because she really meant it, she said I had a good rapport with my students and I was really helping. Then she asked what they needed to do if they wanted me to stay longer. That's nice.

But when the empanadas are all eaten, the coke has been drank and the meeting's over, will they actually form the committee, show up, not text? It's my job to keep hoping, and to hold out a $2,000 carrot.

PICS TO COME

Moral Animal?

2009-10-12T22:33:00.004-04:00

I read this book that’s technically about Evolutionary Psychology, but in the end I think it also has everything to do with the business of World Saving.

It’s about how all our little funny quirks, all the seemingly different cultures of the world, are really just a product of the process that promoted those habits that made us more likely to have babies who had babies. It’s about how natural selection set the rules for the human brain to be played out on an entirely different board. “We live in cities and suburbs and watch TV and drink beer,” says the author, Robert Wright. “All the while being pushed and pulled by feelings designed to propagate our genes in a small hunter-gatherer population.”

These habits are from back when, for example, any rise in power could mean more influence in dividing up meat after a big kill. More for your kin = they survive longer = your genes get passed on. Hence those who had more drive for power had more babies, and now we are all their decedents, feeling some mysterious need to be the one holding the remote.

You can see how this might cause problems.

When politicians rise to power, they tend to have lots of sex with young, attractive women. This still surprises us. But when the rules were set in our brains, the entire point of having power was to convince as many young women as possible that you have the means to take care of their offspring if they wouldn't mind just letting you get some action. These women, on the other hand, evolved to swoon at men with power, as “emotions are just evolutions executioners.” That's true because if we’d never developed birth control, more sex would equal more babies and more genes. But we’re still surprised with every politician caught, even though, as Henry Kissinger said "Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac."

What efforts can we put forth to thwart the errands of evolution that clash with our current morality? I thought of how we do it in Paraguay, of all the problems we’re sent here to fix.

There’s something we now call corruption. When resources were tight and there’s just not enough for everyone, our genes drove us to find a way to provide for our own family (who carry our genes) and our friends (people who seem to have the same genes). Taking a bit more for your own, sounds like corruption to me. But remember how we all decided we were going to be fair and call it democracy? Unfortunately, we never evolved an off switch for this desire to help our own. We continue beyond helping our own survive to helping our own take vacations to Tahiti with government funds. Come to the rescue, anti-corruption slide presentation!

How about hypocrisy as well? We’ve all heard leaders stand up and say, “I do so much for the community,” while knowing that they take money in one way or another. Why shouldn’t they, really, use both the rise in status from their bragging and eat their money too, if they can get away with it? Now, investigative journalists!

There’s also the matter of gossip, which, as it turns out, not only exists wherever you go in the world, but follows the same outline. Says the author, “Knowing who is sleeping with whom, who is angry at whom, who cheated whom, and so on, can inform social maneuvering for sex and other vital resources. Indeed, the sorts of gossip that people in all cultures have an apparently inherent thirst for... match up well with the sorts of information conducive to fitness [to reproduce]. Trading gossip is one of the main things friends do, and it may be one of the main reasons friendships exist.” Go, team work seminars!

What we’re really doing is wrestling this animal, trying to figure how to cage something that’s inside of us. But I have another idea. This evolved animal has striking similarities to Eckhart Tolle’s ego, which strives to be special and have power and be rich, is never really satisfied, as Wright says, “We are designed to believe the next goal will bring bliss, and the bliss is designed to disintegrate shortly after we get there.” And if we just take a step back and look at that, we can see how silly it is, how silly we are to be obsessed by it.

If someone thinks they want to save the world, do they really mean to create more wealth and productivity, or do they really mean peace and happiness? Because, unfortunately, our joy was not factored into evolution: “Our happiness was never high among natural selection’s priorities, and even if it had been, happiness wouldn’t naturally arise in an environment so different from the context of our evolution.”

If saving the world means finding peace and happiness, then here the science and spirituality climb both sides of the problem to reach the same conclusion: The only way for us, the puppets, to free ourselves, is to look up and see the strings. After that, they’re quite easy to clip.

The answer, to me then, is not one more anti-this committee or anti-that seminar. It’s education on the fact that we are animals competing with each other to feed not our bodies, now, but our egos. And others are starving so that our egos may live large. It’s so animalistic. And, I think now, only after we see the animal in us can we find the human.

Horses in the Campo

2009-10-08T18:13:00.003-04:00

No Trust in Paraguay

2009-10-07T21:25:00.002-04:00

There's no trust in Paraguay. My host mom just yelled at me for having a lot of money on dining table. "I'm going to put it here on your desk," she said, as I laid in bed, sick. "Watch how much I'm putting," and she counted out the bills. I rolled my eyes. Not only do they not trust anyone, they don't expect you to trust them. They carefully count my money back to me anytime I threw them some cash to pick me up something while they were at the store. I roll my eyes every time. "I trust you," I say.

Isn't it said that all relationships are built on trust? It's not surprising then that Paraguayans stick to their kin. It's not surprising that romantic relationships are clingy and jealous.

It's hard for me, just coming in from the sunny states, where we can afford to take a man on his word. When people don't trust me, I take it personally. When my boyfriend can't see why I can't see that it's a terrible idea for male volunteers to crash at my house, I feel like it's a reflection of my personal devotion.

But it's just the way it is here. You count your change. You don't take chances.

I remember one female friend talking about all the other girls she worked with. "And her, I don't trust her, because she's too quiet and you don't know what she's thinking," she said. "And that other one, I don't trust her either." I kind of laughed, but she looked at me and said, "Seriously, Pau, you have to look out for yourself. You can't trust anyone but yourself."

And I wanted so badly to tell her that that's not true. That I trust people. But how much weight could my words have against someone who's lived under a dictator who tortured his own people, a bishop president with three illigitimate children, a place where honesty is the exception, and not the rule?

Crazy for Babies Are We?

2009-10-06T17:27:00.001-04:00

I made the mistake of being in front of Oscar while checking my brother and sister-in-law’s new The Baby is Coming photos on-line. Whereas babies here are made room for, rooms are rarely made for them.
Ok, so they're chuchi and their baby will be chuchi. “Dios mio,” said Oscar, looking at the pink room, the lovely furniture. “We could live for two years on the money for this.” His tone was not bitter, just amazed.
“And what is that?” It’s a lay-z-boy and the baby’s own little bathroom. “Never in my life... You all are crazy.”
“And what is that?” It’s a crib. “The baby’s not going to sleep with them when it’s young?” No. He’s shocked.
“But what if the baby cries and you don’t hear it?”
I thought of my answer and didn’t want to say it.
“There’s kind of a... walkie talkie ...for the baby.”
A walkie talkie!? For the baby!? Dios mio.” He rounded his hand around his mouth. “Ckherrrrk. This is the baby. Wake up. I’m crying. Copy.”
He dropped his hand and looked at me like I was crazy. “You all are crazy. Dios fucking mio.”
He put his hand back up to his mouth. “ Ckherrrrk. Does anybody hear me? I pooped. Copy.”

You'd think I hang with the Mob

2009-10-05T13:11:00.003-04:00

My host mom came back from honoring the dead in the graveyard this morning, shaking her head and wrinkling up her nose like she does whenever there’s a displeasure of some kind. We drank mate dulce together before I went to work, and these sessions are usually a good time for her to complain.

"La gente," she says. The people. All of Yataity is talking about the fight. From the cemetery all the way back was a line of people to complain about, talking badly about her sons friends, who are like family to her.

It was there at the cooperative, too. Everyone was gathered around the radio. No one said hi to me. I ignored whatever was clearly going on, kissed Mariela on the cheek and waited to hear what they were talking about. This was a program where they talk about the police report every monday. They were saying my friends' names, then, Age 25, single, like that. With this big ticket item on the list, people were calling in, sending in messages about how terrible it all was.

What do you do when people are talking about your friends? One of my coop friends was talking about the fight, and the way she snarled her lips at the mention of my other "criminal" friend hurt me. It was so ugly. I stayed blank. No one spoke directly to me. Of course, my name had probably come up earlier.

You'd think the moon had exploded, the way the topic was so excitedly and ubiquitously discussed. Everyone who came in the coop to pay their electric bill in the back talked about the fight, talked badly about my friends. That they were looking to fight, that they’re criminals, sin verguenza! On and on, all morning long.

My personal reputation is damaged already, probably, because I drink terere with them. Should I be concerned that this will affect my already-struggling work? I thought about this as I walked to the plaza, and passed a little boy with a realistic-looking toy gun in his hand.

I came back to Oscar’s house and they were all the, drinking terere inside though the weather was beautiful. “The problems,” I said as I put my bag down and looking at the brothers. “I’m surprised I’ve survived this long as your friend, the way people talk about you.”

They all laughed their silly laughs.

I wouldn't tell them who talked about them or what exactly people said, just that everyone was talking about them and saying lots of bad stuff.

We drank t-ray, laughed some more. Not once could I imagine any one of them actually hurting another person. I told them they'd f-ed up, but they were still my friends.

I thought about how the majority of gossip is to put labels on people: slutbag, jerk, good-for-nothing, etc. Reducing someone to just one word like that could possibly capture everything. It's not what Jesus did, he was right down in there with the slutbags, telling them it's alright, he still loves them. For a town that's so all about the J.C., I could use a little more forgiveness for my friends right now, those criminals I've come to love.

Rumble in the Campo

2009-10-04T19:35:00.003-04:00

The big fiestas are held in what is called a poli, an auditorium that is strung with lengths of fabric to make it look festive. It's too big and grey and concrete, and the fiestas always look too empty. But there's nothing better to do, so people go, drink and, every time, they say, fight.

This weekend was the Fiesta Patronal, and on the radio I heard the DJ invite everyone to the fiesta and say, "And please, let's have a chill party to celebrate the Virgin. No fighting please."

Oscar's friends have a history of fighting. It makes me think of the '50s, when no one thought anything of letting two boys go outside and have it out. Oscar never gets in it, according to his mom, unless one of his friends is getting beat up. He can't just sit there and watch, he says.

Last night it started early. I heard one of my guy friends yell in some kids' face. And even that, I was like, whoa. I know, I'm so sheltered. I've barely seen a handful of schoolyard fights. As the other kid walked away, another friend smacked him up side the head. Whoa.

Then the police, who were there anyway, came to take one of my friends outside because someone had said he had a gun. Of course the whole group goes outside, everyone's yelling. I have my arms around Oscar, in pain thinking about what it would feel like to see him punched. His mom was hitting and tugging at my arm, saying, "Don't you let him fight!" She can't afford the stitches.

We all go back in. My accused friend is fuming with his back against the wall. His girlfriend is crying. His brother is spit-spew yelling at another friend about the situation.

We all try to dance. Luckily Oscar is physically and mentally more with me than them, and we have a good time. At 4, I'm tired, and beg to go home.

At five there's a knock at my window. It's another friend. He's running from the cops.

The next morning I got the full story during the morning t-ray. Apparently, these other guys from "el otro lado" (outside Yataity) had been sending my friend's sister messages all night, inviting my friends to the plaza after the party to fight. Like I said, the '50s.

And they went, so it's their fault. As they approached, rocks start hailing down on them. Big rocks that these other guys had been collecting with the purpose of raining them upon my friends. Unfortunately, they soon ran out of rocks, said my friend with his goofy laugh the next morning. Looking a the big smile of the guy I knew to be a sweetheart, I could hardly imagine what he was telling me they did next. "Les matamos," he said. (Figuratively: We killed 'em.)

He had just one scratch on him. His brother nothing. Our other friend, who's a total goof but has the misfortune of a drinking streak that gets him in trouble, was not so lucky. His wounds from his last fight were just starting to heal, but this time someone caught him across the back a few times with a piece of bamboo. He ended up in the hospital with five stitches in his head.

But the euphemisms flowed at t-ray time, the laughs. They had pants one guy and beaten his bare butt with a stick.

It was all anyone talked about all day long. Vannessa had slept over with their younger sister that night and saw their parents furious reaction in the morning. They're good people who don't understand why their boys can't leave the house without fighting. Later, drinking more terere with the women of the house next door, we all wondered what the hell it was all for.

It's the horse I've always wanted and now I have it

2009-09-29T11:55:00.002-04:00

I bought the horse, yes I did.

Something inside me feels not quite right about using the words “my” and “horse” together. There’s some part of me that still says, “Wait a minute, you can not afford a horse. You are not of the horse-affording class.” But the math says I can, I am, in Paraguay. So it fell under the once-in-a-lifetime rule, and so I had to do it.

The best part is that my host uncle Tito has been caring for horses all his life, and so Bigote McGregor, my horse, lives over there. I’ve been at home searching YouTube for things like “how to horseriding”, “horse trotting.”

I ride my bike to Tito’s and he brings Bigote out for me. I help him put on the saddle, still learning how. Tito yells at Bigote in Guarani when he doesn’t want to hold still. “Epytama Aña memby!” (Hold still devil child!) I can’t help but laugh behind him.

Foot in one stirrup, hand on the mane and reins, and I’m up and I’m off, eight-feet-tall and fast. We go past other horses grazing and pigs snorting and these little gerbil-like creatures that run into the same bushes every time I pass. (“Oh, those are so delicious,” says my host mom.”)

There are more horses and cows grazing in the countryside, which stretches out like a ocean of grass around the island of Yataity. I used to be stuck on that island.

But on my new legs I can go out and explore, past the pond where Uncle Tito bathes Bigote, where little tadpoles swim with their legs out. I can go past the cows, where one is hiding her calf in the bushes. I see birds that would have been in style in the ‘80s: neon yellow and black. I see lines of ants so undisturbed they’ve cut a path in the grass. I see wildflowers, yellow, white, dark pink in the center then spreading out to a light blush. I think of Tom Petty, “You belong, among the wildflowers...”

I can look out and see there was a time before all these things had little nametags pinned on them by humans. I can see the foamy eggs of the toads, the breeze spreading seeds, birds tending nests, all those parts of this world you forget are amazing after you leave elementary school.

On the way home I trot a bit to feel that speed. I’ll wait to gallop until I’m more comfortable, more advanced in the YouTube School of Horsemanship. At Uncle Tito’s I say bye to Bigote, stroking that smooth horse neck, then my bike is waiting outside. I never realized how lame it is to ride a bike, until I got off a horse first.

Does Anybody Here Speak Spanish?

2009-09-28T13:27:00.001-04:00

This woman entered the co-op, where Auxi collects the money for the electric company. She had dyed black hair, heavy black eye liner, a lip ring. She walked in with a reluctance I recognize.

I’m not really listening, once she starts talking to Auxi in slow Spanish in a German accent, punctured by Ums and looks to the side to think. It’s painful. I remember that pain.

Once she’s got her question out, she looks at Auxi while she replies in her quick Spanish, and I know that look. It’s: Should I just pretend I understand, or ask for more clarification, expose my ignorance more? I’ve had the look as I listened, I’ve seen the look as I’ve tried to speak.

“There’s someone else you have to pay,” says Auxi to the look in foreign language. “Another person. Not me.” With a finger pointing away from herself to the other invisible person. “A man.”

Maybe this woman speaks English, and I can save her, but there doesn’t seem to be a moment when I can cut in. And maybe I just want to ignore this live haunting of my painful past.

But Ña. Celia walks into the doorway and suggests she might know English, so I ask. Yes, she does. I ask Auxi what she wants to tell her, then explain in English. She asks me questions in English, much better than her spanish. I explain in my language. Auxi looks between us as we speaj English, laughs and says, in Spanish. “Somebody translate please!”

The woman thanks me and smiles. Ducks out and huffs, back in her own world, having survived another encounter with Spanish that will make her dread the next, as I know. Ña. Celia comes in and starts in Guaraní. “Che aimo’a....” And they recount the story in Guaraní, and I want to laugh and yell “Somebody translate please!”

I’m sitting here with a little pride, having saved, if not the day, a small desperate moment. Being a writer, I’m not used to being “needed.” I don’t think anyone has ever screamed, “Is there a writer in the house?” But now I have one skill that I can use for good, when someone in the future, if not yells, asks loudly and with some urgency: “Does anyone here speak Spanish?”

A Study of the Degeneration of Prior Standards of Various Nourishments Considered Fit For Human Consumption Over Peace Corps Service Duration

2009-09-23T08:24:00.002-04:00

Depressing Day in the Neighborhood

2009-09-21T08:50:00.002-04:00

My friend got kicked out. If I were to make a list of my friends starting with the most likely to get kicked out going down to the last, I might hope to have enough room at the bottom to put this friend, code name Dudesy.

It's a big b.s. story that ends with Peace Corps finding out she rode a moto. That's it.

You know, we're brought here and told to integrate. Part of that integration is to forget all the rules you've learned your entire life. Like, be on time. Don't wipe your mouth on the tablecloth. Don't tell other people they're looking fat today. And we learn. We learn to live this mas o menos lifestyle, where police can be paid off with $5. Where ex-bishop presidents have secret kin running all over the place.

We get a little too comfortable. We forget about that other foot that Peace Corps expects us to keep in America. Some people forget more, some less, some outright pick that foot up and dance out of bounds. Certainly some other volunteers might be feeling a little guilt that we most definitely forgot it more, much more than Dudesy. It's like when your health-nut friend gets cancer, and you think of all the hamburgers and couch hours of your life, and feel even guiltier when you're glad it's not you.

At this point it's not just "Peace Corps," this is your life down here. Your work, your friends, perhaps the person you're in love with, if you're Dudesy. What if suddenly someone banned you from the place where you're living? That's how I imagine it'd feel. So it feels a little like a funeral, in memory of Dudesy's life down here. We made a slideshow of photos, bought her a new termo, ao poi and a hammock, bought her dinner and ice cream. Giving gifts and bringing food, exhibiting all the signs of people at a loss for how to help a sad friend.

We'll miss you Dudesy.

MYOB

2009-09-19T18:51:00.002-04:00

Me, grown-*ss mf-ing woman, as Sasha says, just had a craving for one of those little chocolate things and a can of coke. I went to the store, walking carefully past the open door of the family next door. Surely, if they saw me, there'd be a "Moo reho?" (Where are you going?)

I went to the store, got my can of coke, my chocolate thing. I gave the guy who's name I should know my 5 mil. He said thanks. I looked down and said, "Could you put this in a baggie?" He did, but it was useless, as the bag was thin, cheap and see-through. Last week I smuggled a can of coke past the house rolled in the side of my shirt.

I walked back home on the other side of the street, a wary eye. Because if anyone saw me, there are several offenses for which I could be chided. That I didn't buy the witness a chocolate thing. That that stuff will make me fat an/or I am already fat and this is why. Or, if my host mom saw me, that I bought the 3 mil can of coke, when a whole bottle is just 5 mil.

My new friend Angelic complained to me about what from our cultural view we would call the nosiness, the all-up-in my businessness of Paraguayan culture. She sounded down, so I didn't have the heart to tell her to get used to it.

Sitting here, enjoying my chocolate thing and Coke, O-town texts to say he'll be over in a minute. I chug and push the wrapper and can in the trash. I put the lid on tight.

Meaty Curve

2009-09-17T19:06:00.004-04:00

"Right in that meaty part of the curve, not showing off, not falling behind." -George Costanza

That is how I described my service today to a friend. I keep trying to find out if this is normal. If there are other volunteers leading a mob of enthused, tool-wielding public to a barn raising for the new library that will be named in their honor. It's hard to know where I stand. There's no Peace Corps valedictorian.

So I've been probing, a little. I made a joke about how my service is going slow to a volunteer on her way out and she said, "Well, apparently I just came here to make soap." I asked another volunteer about her youth group and she said, "It's going so-so. It's hard." I'm sorry to say their disillusion gave me reassurance.

But like a man religiously using his Rogaine, I'm starting to see sprouts. I got two very nice e-mails from people who are listening to the Guarani podcast. Yesterday during my computer class my friend typed and sent me her very first e-mail. We're starting to get orders over the internet at the co-op, and the secretary there said that people are impressed when they see we have e-mail.

The truth is I'm really just teaching five women to use the computer. That's it. But I'm teaching them to use it well. They're even writing formulas in Excel. And I can see that it's changing the culture of the co-op to include computing. I can't be more than a drop. The hope is that it will ripple out.

Guarani Radio Intro

2009-09-15T19:18:00.003-04:00

I did the radio show solo today and since I wasn't with a non-Guarani-speaking friend I thought I'd bust out a can of Guarani. It went so-so.

"Hey there Yataity and how's it going Villarrica. This is "Mba'e la Porte Nortes." I'm Paulita and today I'm here alone and so I'm going to speak more in Guarani and you all can laugh at me. (Here I almost say 'and you all can explode', because the word for 'to explode', kapu, is kind of like the word for 'to laugh', puka. Then I break up into nonsense for a few words out of nervousness.) Today I'm going to talk about the 7 Habits of People with Success (is how I phrase it) but first I have some music."

Thank God for Loopholes

2009-09-13T16:11:00.004-04:00

Core Expectations For Peace Corps Volunteers

In working toward fulfilling the Peace Corps Mission of promoting world peace
and friendship, as a trainee and Volunteer, you are expected to:

1. Prepare your personal and professional life to make a commitment
to serve abroad for a full term of 27 months

2. Commit to improving the quality of life of the people with whom
you live and work; and, in doing so, share your skills, adapt them,
and learn new skills as needed

3. Serve where the Peace Corps asks you to go, under conditions of
hardship, if necessary (*), and with the flexibility needed for effective
service

4. Recognize that your successful and sustainable development work
is based on the local trust and confidence you build by living in,
and respectfully integrating yourself into, your host community
and culture

5. Recognize that you are responsible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
for your personal conduct and professional performance

6. Engage with host country partners in a spirit of cooperation, mutual
learning, and respect

7. Work within the rules and regulations of the Peace Corps and the local
and national laws of the country where you serve

8. Exercise judgment and personal responsibility to protect your health,
safety, and well-being and that of others

9. Recognize that you will be perceived, in your host country and
community, as a representative of the people, cultures, values, and
traditions of the United States of America

10. Represent responsibly the people, cultures, values, and traditions of
your host country and community to people in the United States both
during and following your service

(*Ha! Bam in your face! Now if you'll excuse me, my manicure is trying to dry.)

I'm in the market for a horse

2009-09-11T19:51:00.003-04:00

I want a pony. Fine, I'll take a horse. It's not that I need a horse, as in my host sister asking me, "Why do you need a horse?" It's that I want a horse, like any other 10-year-old.

Now before you start lecturing me, let me just say that since it was proven that I'm too irresponsible to care for three fish or a dog, I think a horse is a much better option. You should hear how Paraguayans talk about it. Just throw it in a barn and sprinkle a little hay on it.

At first I thought it was crazy. Plus, people who have horses in Yataity are the Need Horses kind of people, wrangling things in the field. No one goes trotting through the countryside with the wind in their hair, silouetted against the wild flowers like they're posing for the cover of a romance novel.

So I thought my own fantasies were silly.

But then my host mom said I could just keep the horse at her mother's barn. And Oscar said the horse (Cloe?) could just eat the sugar cane they grow and graze in their field. Then I just happened to hop on the same Asuncion bus with my friend Nate, and, with a twinkle in his eye known only to the pony-owning, described the joy of taking care of the horse he'd just bought and how it's not even that much work or that expensive and it is instead "awesome."

And then, my host uncle told me about his horse who he used to ride and then sold, and that the guy who bought it now wants to sell this pretty, tame, riding horse (Princess?). Two million Guaranies ($434) for a horse with all the little horsie accessories and a "guarantee", which I don't know exactly what that means in Paraguay horse-talk, but it sounds good.

Part of me is grown up, and says, "No, you can not have a pony." To which the part of me that is still 10-years-old replies: "Says who?"

But I promise to think about it for at least two weeks, like an adult.

Paraguay to South Africa

2009-09-10T11:11:00.004-04:00

There are so many things on the line when Paraguay plays Argentina. A return of some pride from lost wars. Some respect from the country where so many Paraguayans go for work. And specifically last night, the chance to go to the World Cup.

The whole city was in red and white shirts, and as we walked toward the stadium in a group, Sasha in a Paraguayan flag cape, the venders lined the streets selling shirts, hats, flags, tickets. As the weather worsened, men thrusted ponchos in our faces. "Diez mil. Diez mil." The two swarms, those selling and those passing toward the stadium, like two currents swirling against each other.

In the stadium, we unknowingly sat in Barrio Bravo (the rough neighborhood). My friend who lives in Asuncion told me the whole group surrounding us were fans of the Olympia team (from the inter-Paraguay league) who lived in the poorer parts of Asuncion.

There was some kind of dynamic I could not figure out, lead by a curly-haired man standing on the railing of the exit below. Before the game started, he was leading cheers. "Argentians eat cats," we shouted, jumping up and down. "Argentinians do other things I can't put on my blog," we shouted. Behind us, a small band of drums beat. Men waved flags of Paraguay, flags of Coca-Cola, one flag with Jim Morrison on it. Why Jim Morrison? "Porque me gusta" (Because I like it) said the man waving it.

The curly-haired man, who I took to calling The Conductor, was yelling until his lips where wet. Dale, dale, (Let's go!) he said, starting the cheers. He raised his eyebrows up to the drums and they beat. Sometimes he would hold a hand up and they'd stop, and we'd continue a cappella at his command.

The Conductor continued on. As he chanted, his head shrugged toward his left shoulder, as if he had a violin clenched there. His mouth opened wide to the side in a 5-day-beard with every word, his eyes squinted shut. His right arm pulsed up and down, flicking his hand out on every beat and bouncing it back as if calling the whole crowd over.

This is all fine and fun, until the game starts. I wanted to watch, but with the waving of a flag in front of me, it's like Coca-cola. Game. Coca-cola. Game. Coca-cola. Game. The hopping up and down to the beats threw shoulders in my face if I didn't jump with them.

If the cheers die, The Conductor furrowed his brow and shook his curls, as if he was trying to get a middle school choir in shape for all-county, and we'll never make it if we kept just staring off into space like that.

For the entire two hours, this man was faced toward us, not even watching the game, waving his arms and yelling commands and cheer prompts. He seemed to be the commander of all these boys around us. Some kind of renagade crew who took it upon themselves to keep the south end of the Asuncion stadium rocking for the entire game without fail. As if the most important thing on the line was showing spirit and yelling obscenities and throwing the bird at the Argentinian side.

"My arms hurt, 'cause that scary guy was next to me, making me clap the whole time," says Tessa, today. "It's really bad."

For those of us facing the game, we saw that Paraguay got a goal, Argentina did not. So in the end, we had something to cheer for.

Apparently I'm in Shape

2009-09-04T19:23:00.003-04:00

Today I jogged, a habit I developed to balance out all the pig fat eating and frustration. Here's a following conversation:

Paraguayan: "Where did you go to?"
Me: "The routa."
Paraguayan: Did you walk?
Me: No, I jogged.
Paraguayan: Four kilometers!
Me: Yeah.
Paraguayan: Without stopping?!
Me: Yeah.
Paraguayan: Pauli, you're crazy!
Me: Some say crazy, some say in shape.
Paraguayan: Crazy

Yes, like many other distortions of Paraguay, here I get to be rich, famous, and, for jogging a mere 2.5 miles, crazy in shape, or just crazy.

Reporting live from my room

2009-09-03T18:39:00.005-04:00

We have strung a blue cord from the host fam's house into my house. I'm typing here in my room. I even took that picture as proof, and also so that you can see that I'm still using my sheet as a curtain.

So yes, now that using internet won't be an total pain in the butt, my blog entries can be more on-the-spot, daily, and Doogie Howser-ish.

The food situation is killing me, so today I went and dropped 150Gs (30 bucks, more than half my rent) at the supermarket in the big city. I got canned black beans because my hankering for black beans doesn't make a reservation the night before. I got lots of fruit, including kiwi because O-town has never tried it before. I got expensive cheeses for an attempt at making lasagna. I got cream cheese and jelly and this great bread from Argentina that's filled with sunflower seeds and costs about 4 times what normal bread costs. I got all these things and didn't really think twice about it.

In the grocery store, they give you you're change, then if there's leftover, like pennies, they give you gum instead.

Labor Blossoms

2009-09-01T12:55:00.003-04:00

27 August: Labor Blossoms
I fully acknowledge the cheesiness of this, but on my radio show, we’re discussing the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, one habit a week. I changed “Highly Effective People” to “People with Success.” I translate the highlights of every chapter, putting it into words they might actually use here. Some people here think Americans are smarter. But no, we just read books like these. If it only gets people to think about the fact that there’s education available on the topic, that there’s some kind of way out, that there's more to be done than just complain about circumstances, that’s good enough for me.

We’re on week three: Put First Things First. Mostly it’s about doing those things that are overall important, but not urgent, so you don’t do them. Maintaining your lawnmower, for instance. Flossing. Exercise. Study your flash cards. These kinds of things.

The chapter sites a study that tried to find the one thing that all successful people -- Olympic athlete successful -- have in common. It’s this. They do the menial little tasks that no one likes to do. Because they have their higher goal in mind.

So maybe that’s why today was such a good day. Besides the fact that all the orange trees are blossoming and it smells like a Yankee Candle along my walk to work, my tedious little tasks are blooming too. My flash cards have turned into little Guarani conversations. My hours of sitting there feeling like an outsider have bloomed into little friendships. My computer students are getting it, and proud of themselves, and quite competitive about the typing game I downloaded. I feel like a doin’-ok volunteer.

30 August: Fun Photo Time.

It hailed like crazy. From the way it sounded, I would have thought it was a drive-by if I wasn’t in Yataity, Paraguay.

People collected the hailies and we used them later for ice in our terere. They’re a juyo for pain. Se dice (So they say).

I was attacked by this thing! It’s dark in the corner right by my door at night. I went to open it and this thing flew in my face. I thought it was a bat. I screamed, but I think my neighbors are by now so used to my bug scream that no one was alarmed.

I’d guess this thing is about six inches long. So they say, if it lands on you and you don’t notice (not that I think that’s possible) it will lay it’s eggs in your skin. Then a big bump will form and you’ll pop it and a worm will crawl out. That is so disgusting that I just had to share it with you.

This is the cathedral in Villarrica that is about a gazillion years old. Heta ite (a lot a lot) guesses Oscar. Or about 200.

Inside the cathedral.

At a chuchi party. When the meat was ready, they brought it out on this large sticks and stuck them upright in the middle of every table. So there were all these people in suits and curls hacking away at a stick of meat.

Not that hungry? How about just half a pig’s head?

This is the road side marker for five guys who died in an accident a few years ago from Yataity. You see these a lot along the routas.

Vacation’i!
(putting ‘i on the end of things is the way to say a tiny something and I just love using it.)

Sunday we went to Salto Pa’i. Me, Oscar, Julio and his girlfriend Claudia. We brought a bunch of meat (naturally) and had an asado and swam. Good times.

Salto Pa’i is up in Independencia, where I went to help build that school. It’s actually a German Colony, so you go up in the hills and all of a sudden start to see blond people and signs in German. I even saw a VW and then, randomly, a castle.

I miss the beauty of water.

A beautiful day it was.

31 August: Progress Report
On the day I got my site assignment, learning that I would work at a crafty co-op that needed a web site, I predicted my future. After a year in site we would have an informational site up. After two, an on-line story rivaling that of The Gap.

Let me tell you why, just after that year mark, we have yet to even buy the web address.
I get things done through Auxi, mostly, the secretary of the board of the co-op. Auxi works there in the mornings, but also tutors twins while she’s there and collects payments for the electric company and makes ao poí to sell. I peek in at times to see if she’s free, remind her of that thing I needed help with like someone reminding someone else of that five bucks they loaned. Not today, not that I blame her.

She and I were going to buy this web address together. There was a time, months, that it took me to figure out how you could buy the .py addresses. And then how much it cost. I found out through a call that there are .coop.py sites, which I thought would be good marketing, and they also told me that those are free for the first six months for co-ops. I took the good news to the board with the suggestion that we go with www.aopoi.coop.py. They approved.

Probably about another month goes by until I can get me and Auxi in front of a working computer with working internet. We fill out the form. We wait.

Denied.

I call and they said cooperatives need an authorization from INCOOP, the head Co-op of the co-ops. So I bug Auxi again to make a nota for me to take there on my next trip to the capital.
I get lost on the way but survive long enough to turn in the note. We wait.

Three months pass.

I call. They take down our co-op’s name and promise to look. A week and a half later I happened to be there again, turning in papers for the co-op, when I decide to ask about the authorization. I find the office and ask the man behind the desk, who is visually annoyed by my presence. He asks, “What’s the name again?” and then looks through two foot-high stacks, finds ours, stamps it, writes the date and signs and hands it to me. Victory is mine.

Auxi and I sit down again to fill out the five-step on-line form requesting the site address. We fax in the authorization. We wait. In a bout of desperation, I make our blogspot page. We wait more.

Denied.

I call again. Oh, explains the man, you can’t put the product name in the web address of a .coop.py. In fact, you’re not allowed to put stores up with those addresses. They’re solely for the administration of a cooperative.

Oh, thank you. I said. I did not demand that they explained why that hadn’t been explained the last time, when we clearly put on the form that we wanted to put up an on-line store, but they just asked for the authorization.
I just moved on.

This is a long and boring story and I’m sorry you had to read it. But I want you to know what it’s like. Multiply that by five hundred and know that I wrote this story on receipts and scrap paper while waiting an hour for a bus, which never came.

********

When I was at Salto Pa’i, I stuck my foot in the running water. The water had not planned on my foot being there. It shattered apart, freaked out, but came back together again as fast as possible, flowed around and got to where it was going. I sat there and thought about living like water.

First day

2009-08-24T18:36:00.003-04:00

So officially today was my first Guarani slip. I was talking to a friend over Skype, didn´t hear right and said, "Mba´e?" (What?) That´s funny.

Another friend also enjoyed making fun of me. "Guarani, good, because that will be so useful when you come home." But I have faith, mark my words, that there will be one event that makes me say "Ha! Now it was all worth it!" He suggested Guarani might save a life. I was thinking more along the lines of just really telling someone off in Guarani who said something creepy they didn´t think I´d understand.

Proceeding in a language comes in growth spurts, and I´m having one of mine. I´d say I speak about 20 percent in Guarani now. At lunch, I was almost surprised, like I was in the twilight zone, that I understood what people were saying. Little things like "Go go more water" or "Where´d you put my cell phone?" I understand. Long conversations, I´m still lost.

Some things come to me easier in Guarani. The word "to laugh" is hard for me to conjugate in Spanish and easier in Guarani. Sometimes when I´m trying to write, I ask my brain for a synonym and it gives me a Guarani word.

I also have this fantasy. I hear there´s a pretty big Paraguayan neighborhood in New York City. So yeah, it´s the future, I´m just walking down the street, blond white chick. I walk into a little store with a Paraguayan owner and just start going off: "Mba´echapa. Che vare´a ha aheka hina chipa. " (Hello, I´m hungry and looking for some chipa.) And then his head explodes. Or he just laughs and we have a good conversation. Maybe if I move to New York I can move to this mystical neighborhood. Or I´ll just continue the current plan of convincing people I speak in tongues.

My Every Day Life

2009-08-23T16:50:00.002-04:00

Recently I was asked to write a description of my every day life to be included in the welcome packets for new volunteers. Here it is:

I am a Peace Corps Volunteer, I sometimes have to remind myself. This is Peace Corps.
You imagine it’d be like a movie, before, so here’s mine.

What’s different is that I don’t have a car. My life is serenaded by rooster crows and cow moos and the Paraguayan polka. I speak Spanish and am slowly started to speak Guaraní. I’m trilingual, which I never thought I would be. I also never thought I’d enjoy fried pig fat, but here I am.

What’s better than life in the states is so many things. I get to pick my hours at work. I get to sit around and drink terere with my friends and call it work. I get to write my own job description.

What’s the same is that I have friends who make fun of me, and I them when I can find the words fast enough to be witty. I have my own little house, but live next to a family that’s almost like my own. I eat lunch with them every day. I have a boyfriend, who’s great and funny and just happens to be Paraguayan.

What’s depressingly the same are some things. I still drink a lot of Coca-cola, a habit which I had dropped in the states. A lot of people are into computers now, the new thing, and I spent my morning working on Excel.

What’s worse is that it’s cold, when it’s cold. It’s hot, when it’s hot. There is no Google, just what the guy on the corner said, that the bus would come soon, against what the guy on the other corner said, that there are no more buses today.

You want a regular day, stay in the states, but I can describe about what might happen daily, without surprises.

I decided to set regular hours at the cooperative where I work, so I get up at 7:30, make my coffee on my gas stove. Or maybe my host mom is up and she calls between the banana trees to see if I want to drink cocido with her. I go to the coop, two stone-road blocks over and two blocks up. Maybe all I’ll do is sit around and make ao poí, the local craft. Or maybe I’ll work toward setting up our web site. Maybe I’ll get the secretary to sit for a computer lesson. Mostly I’ll wonder if the thing I’m doing right then is the best thing, if I’m a bad volunteer or a good volunteer, if I’m learning Guaraní fast enough. When I can, I remind myself to just relax and enjoy the experience, please.

I have a Guaraní class twice a week. At the beginning, I wanted to kill my tutor out of frustration, but lately we’ve been chatting in Guarani, and I’m feeling better. It’s a lot of work to learn Guarani, and my American brain says, “What’s in it for me?” but I think it will pay off in ways I can’t quantify. Or I hope.

I drink terere at 11 with my teacher or go home where my friends are gathered around the front of the house next door. My neighbor just got a computer and we’ll be sharing internet. Technology is coming fast here. All the girls are on Orkut, their version of Facebook.

I pretend I’m going to make my own lunch, then my host family invites me to stay, and I say, “Oh, I guess, if there’s enough food,” which there always is.

I’m able to rest after lunch, the way God intended. Then I can go back to the coop or do other things around the house. There are meetings once a week of the board of the coop, during which they speak mostly Guarani, and I mostly try to listen. On Tuesdays I do a radio show where we play music and take breaks to talk about an educational theme.

In my spare time I’m making a podcast to teach Guaraní, because I really would have loved lessons in English. Also, I like the idea of leaving a legacy of something to help other volunteers.

Then there are the surpises, where someone says, You want to come, and you have no idea where you’re going. Suddenly you’re at a protest or you’re at a party, watching men flip the pigs’ heads on a grill.

Life can feel insane, and, the more time passes, it can also feel just like life, like you truly understand that this is how the world is for your friend.

When it still just all seems crazy, the first year or so, is the hardest part as far as personal struggles are concerned. At first, losing my independence was really hard. Acting and speaking like a child, being treated like a child, being laughed at, it’s hard on the ego. The way the military beats you down to build you back up, that’s what Peace Corps does. Only instead of yelling and exercise, they do it with mistakes and helplessness.

And the work, you can’t do it on your own, so that’s hard. I have so many projects that I’ve started and nothing came of. Ideas that I thought were good, but died because no one wanted them, or there wasn’t time, or people just stopped showing up. You feel like you don’t know why you’re here or what you’re doing.

But then, you grow out of the dust of your ego. You learn Guaraní. You learn the bus routes. You learn how to drink terere. The people who laughed at you become your friends.

At this point, I don’t know how I’ll feel by the time my service is up. Did I do enough? Should I have done less and taught more? Should I have pushed more, or relaxed more? There’s no right answer in Peace Corps. But at the very least, I will have climbed the twin peaks of Mt. Español and Mt. Guaraní. I will have survived two years of an unknown that almost scared me into staying home. And, most importantly, I will have come to love people who were before to me just an idea inhabiting a blank area on a map.

And if I sometimes take for granted that I’m here, when it all becomes kind of normal, isn’t that a kind of victory in itself?

Computers are Annoying...When the World Becomes Real

2009-08-13T19:38:00.004-04:00

July 27. Computers are annoying

It’s Sunday morning. My host family has a computer. I’m trying to drink terere.

I’m all alone outside, with the guampa and the termo.

“Pauli, veni un poco,” (Come here a sec) is the call from inside, to read some kind of error message or tell them what they’re doing wrong.

Vanne is outside with me. She’s 12, and has been bugging me for months to make her an Orkut page, which is kind of like Paraguayan Facebook. I keep saying no, though I don’t really know why. I think it’s because I want her playing in the street, rather than hunched over a computer, uploading photos of herself posing in that sexy head down and tilted to the side way that all the little girls already know how to do.

I’m about to send Oscar an annoyed text to get his butt out here and drink some G.D. terere when he’s suddenly outside, sits down fast as if he’ll need to get up again soon.

We don’t get one round in without getting up. A neighbor friend comes over and asks to use their internet for a second, to check her Orkut. “Pauli veni un poco.”

At all the parties, people whip out cameras and say, “For Orkut!” We were walking one day, in the morning, and my host sister said, “I haven’t checked my Orkut yet today!”

Hypocrite

And yes, I had been on the computer all morning, typing my blog. But me, I’m ruined already.

It reminds me of something I didn’t like about this Peace Corps book I read. The girl was in Africa, and she loved the sound out the women working, a kind of bok! bok! sound. Then they got a machine to do the work, but then there was no more bok! bok! Then the machine broke, and no one could fix it, and she was happy, because she liked the bok! bok!, thought it was quaint.

And I thought, Isn’t she putting her own entertainment ahead of the good of the people? Her site isn’t some kind of Epcot village to visit. It’s not a spa. These are these people lives.

Am I doing the same? I don't know.

Sometimes we joke that Paraguay is just the 80s. Computers are new, cell phones are new, fanny packs and mullets are popular. If that’s true, then I am from the future. I see where their headed, just as we were, are, so excited with our shiny new little toys, which overall have just made us a little fatter and disconnected to each other. I can’t help but watch, a visitor from outside the walls of Eden, as they take big bites from the tree of knowledge and think, “Don’t.”

There’s a fear in me, that there will be no sunset left uncrossed by wires. No sky free of antennas. No conversation uninterrupted by the electronic jingle of cell phones.

But here I am, hypocrite, a huge, ugly air conditioning unit installed today, myself hunched over a computer, waiting for my friends to get off the internet, so that I can update the continual existence that I live online.

August 11: When the World Becomes Real (I actually wrote this a while ago, just found it)

I just got done watching the HBO Special “White Light, Black Rain” about the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the atom bombs.

Hearing the Japanese, I didn’t just tune it out as “foreign”. I listened to it. I think learning Guaraní has taught me that behind even the strangest sounding sounds, there are normal words, normal life. "Ahata almacenpe sapy'ite ajogua haĝua kamby" is just "I'm running to the store to buy some milk." Behind the funny words, the funny clothes, the weird food, it's all the same. When you break through a cultural barrier once to see what’s on the other side, you recognize that behind everything that used to just be “the others” and strangeness, there are humans who are just like everyone you love.

Maybe that’s why I just can’t stop crying, seeing the damage to these people. Everything’s a bit more real to me, now. If that blank spot in the middle of South America can become like home, if its strange people can become like family, then, hey, maybe all those skeletons on the tv from Africa are people too. And those Jews in the Holocaust, let’s take the label off and just call them six million people. And the fathers, mothers and sons and daughters dying right now in Iraq.

It’s all much more intense.

I just feel so helpless to stop it, the war and violence, and I’m worried it’s coming much closer to home. Like if it can happen to them, real people, why can't it happen to us. Sometimes when I want to talk about peace, I hear some jerk-face in my head, saying, “You damn hippies with your heads in the clouds. How else do you suggest we solve the problem?”

The word that comes to mind is education. The more educated I am, (a process I resisted for the first 25 years of my life), the more I find I’m less afraid, I’m understanding, the more I see myself in others.

But all I know is, we can only get so good at killing each other before we succeed once and for all. And I understand more now the "Peace" in Peace Corps. Once you know, for sure, that all people really are people, you'll never say "Nuke 'em" again.

“I do not know how the Third World War will be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in the Fourth... rocks.” -Albert Einstein

Photos As of Late

2009-08-12T19:51:00.004-04:00

(*Return in Peace!)
*R.I.P. Brennan

May 2007-July 2009

Brennan has left me to go back return after two years of grueling service living in a compound in a city. Who will I ask for bus schedules?

Betsy and me at Brennan's despedida. She's our new coordinator.

This is the asado for the birthday of my host dad's dad. 99 years!

Fork on a stick

Me and the meat. Or the meat and I?

Two kids from next door drooling over our chicken.

Can we get a close up on that punum?

Cochena washing dishes at the well.

Big meal

Little Nancy, my next door neighbor

Putting in my heat/ac (It's not my fault! I was pressured into buying! Arm twisting and everything, though very light before I caved.)
Starting to make the hole

Pali

Oscar workin'

The crazy mess in my room.

Instructions (That I Don´t Follow) for a Successful Project

2009-08-02T16:45:00.001-04:00

Um, yeah. Just thought I´d send along these tips that our country director passed on to all of us.

It is a note from a currently serving Volunteer in Ecuador to a group in training that he just had a training session with - Enjoy.

Instructions to trainees from a crotchety PCV:

Nobody is going to like this part. Many people ask for the secret of our success, but nobody seems to pay much attention to the answers, yet they are simple and basic.

You must make yourself a part of your community in every way you can. You will always be an outsider and never be fully trusted, but you can go a long way towards being accepted. The key is to make your entire world your community. Live as your community lives and make your community’s concerns your concerns, your only concerns. Here are some specific suggestions:

§ Avoid as much as possible Peace Corps events and organizations. ...For the most part, these groups tend to be about us and our problems as volunteers, not about our communities’ problems. Stop worrying about yourself. When tempted to join, ask yourself what it has to do with your community and how it will affect your relationship with your community. Remember that your time here is not about you, but about your work in your community. It can be very rewarding to completely abandon your self-importance. Don’t indulge yourself in your concerns and worries about your privacy, your future, your romances, your life in the States, and your comfort, but open yourself up completely to life in your community. This can be extremely rewarding.

§ Break or at least loosen as much as you can all your ties with family and friends in the States. Tell them you are entering two years of service in Ecuador and they shouldn’t expect to hear much from you. This can actually be very liberating.

§ Don’t let family or friends visit you here if you can at all help it. Their visit will start you thinking about your life in the States and not about your life in your community. It can be a big distraction from your work and can turn you into just another rich gringo in the eyes of your community.

§ Don’t let other volunteers visit you in your site. The exception to this is an ICT with both volunteer and counterpart visiting. Hosting other volunteers creates a life for you outside and separate from your life in the community. Not only that, but your community can see that you have other concerns foreign to them. The point is not to get a life, but to lose all lives that separate you from your community. Visits from other volunteers tend to augment Peace Corps’ Fiesta Móvil reputation and make you appear frivolous in the eyes of your community. You need to develop an intensity directed toward your work. Don’t dilute it by hanging out with other volunteers.

§ Don’t take vacations or weekends away. The people of your community can’t take weekends away from their lives and neither should you. You should try to keep in mind that you are here for two years of service (and sacrifice, if need be), not a working vacation. Staying in site will let you come to know your community deeply and this is a privilege. You don’t need shallow glances of other parts of your country of service at the expense of your work. You can be a tourist after you COS. Let’s try to dispel the Cuerpo de Paseo reputation we have acquired.

§ Don’t check your e-mail except once a month or so. The longer the better. E-mail only involves you in the petty day-to-day concerns of your family and friends and, once again, removes you from the concerns of your community. Also, e-mail is a mysterious process to many people in many campo towns in Ecuador and, as such, is mistrusted. It is a good idea to do your banking chores, check your mail and your e-mail all at the same time. It is an even better idea to take a community member with you when you do all this. They can then see exactly what you’re doing and this will dispel the mystery and mistrust.

§ Don’t hide. Your community needs to see you every day, preferable working (the dirtier and sweatier, the better). They need to see what you are doing all the time to even start to trust you.

§ Always remember that you only come to know someone thru action, not talk, and action under pressure is even better. Do whatever you have to do to actually work with people. Don’t just visit a family for lunch, but go help them plant corn or harvest rice. One minga is worth a hundred conversations.

There, I told you that you wouldn’t like it. Yet these are the best instructions I can give for a successful project.

Happy...Paraguayan Birthday

2009-07-22T10:20:00.009-04:00

Neighborhood kids all usin´my playground.

Hello. I´m up this morning to mate dulce (sweet yerba and milk and sugar) with my host mom. The light from the window coming in on the rising steam from the kettle, the guampa, the exhale of her laugh. Oscar wakes up, they have funny Guarani family fights that I now understand slightly and love. It´s been a great week.

I heard again the expression, "This too shall pass." And thought, "One day I won't be in the Peace Corps. I don't want to spend all my time here frustrated. So I´ve been happy, even when things are crappy.

But things have been good.

I had my first good charla (talk) last Saturday. If no one showed up, this was to be my last charla, I swore. I'd do something else, classes on a weekly schedule. Nothing too fancy, just computers, or something.

The theme was designing new clothes. A few people have complained that we don´t have cute stuff in our store. And it´s true, most of our clothes are for older women. Even I bought from the place next door for my going-home shirt.

I'd been handing out invitations for weeks, approaching socias who´d come in just to hand in ao poí, get their money and leave. ¨Hi,¨I´d say, only it was ¨Mba´echapa¨ and they´d look at me with a little surprise that I was even talking to them, then look down at the little invitacion in my hand and I´d say we´re having a charla. And they´d smile and politely take it. When I said, ¨Please come,¨some said ¨Puede ser¨, which means ¨Could be¨and which means ¨No¨. Some said of course they would come, but of course they would not come.

The invitation said the charla was to start at 8:30. I was there at 8. People were in the coop, handing in work, getting money. If you´d asked any of them if there was anything special going on that day, they would have said, ¨I don´t think so.¨ My friend who was going to help give the charla showed at about 9. We roped in the women who were just there to get paid. At 9:30, we started.

I even did an ice breaker, which is frightening. You stare at a bunch of people staring at you, and you tell them we're going to get up and make this all less awkward.

We talked about what we could change in Ao Poí, the color, the embroidery, the sleeves. Then we talked about why we should change, be creative. How much it costs us a year to lose sales because we don´t have cute clothes for teenagers.

Then, using magazines and catalogs I´d brought from the states, they designed new clothes. And they really got into it. And, my God, they seemed like they were having fun.

Workin´

This went on to be the winning design

That was Saturday. My birthday was to be Monday, so a few buddies came over for a mini-celebration. We made a fire and put my couch on my porch and grilled meat and made ´smores.

Oscar with the meat!

Ña. Maria (Conchena) trying her first ´smore.

Will on my porch

My birthday, I just wanted a quiet dinner with the Paraguayan fam. But...

In Paraguay, parties are a sign of wealth. I guess it´s the same in America, but there´s just levels here. If you´re poorer, you just have a little snack birthday. Everyone gets a square carboard plate with a piece of sopa (cornbread), and empanada and a piece of mandioca. Higher on the level is chicken. The rich folk do an all-out asado with beef. And the birthday girl or boy pays for everything.

So it´s like, Happy Birthday, you get to buy us all dinner.

I couldn´t do one more day, after Saturday night and Sunday lunch, of beef. So I wanted chicken. Then we made a list of people I´d have to invite, and suddenly I had 25 people.

It just so happened that there had been a baby shower recently in the yard of my friend Julio´s grandmother, and all the decorations were still there. So, suddenly, we decided to have the party over there. Oscar and Julio and all these little kids were stringling lengths of fabric, orange and blue, all around this shelter in the middle of a garden. There were balloons and two grills brought in. Then there was a Dj.

Oscar asked me about my quinceñera, the huge party they have here for every 15-year-old. When I said we didn´t have them, he looked incredulous and said, ¨Que triste tu vida.¨(How sad is your life.) Here, every girl dreams of their ¨quince¨.

At the last minute my little host sister made a cake and everyone just was working all day long to make the party awesome. And it was. They called it my quince´i (my little quinceñera).Vannessa and a friend making my cake

With sisters Auxi, the secretary at the co-op and Rossana, my Guarani teacher

With my cake

The way a birthday goes is that they put a big circle of plastic chairs around, which to me is like the worst set up in the world. If you talk to the person on your left, you turn about from the person on your right. Most people just stare straight ahead. To me, it looks terribly boring.

After a while of this, there´s a dinner. Then there´s possible dancing. It all feels pretty formal to me, but I liked mine. I think about last year, when I couldn´t wait to get away from my host family, get with my other Americans, be in the city. Now here I have 25 friends who I love to hang out with, all who just happen to be Paraguayan.

Ña. Maria, Vanne and Oscar setting up dinner

Dinner of chicken, rice, sopa and madioca, of course

Eating it up!

Me and the girls

Me and the fam minus host dad

Speaking of parties...

I forgot to mention this festival called San Juan. Especially coming right back from the states, could there be a better demonstration of the difference between U.S. culture and Paraguayan culture? I was just standing there laughing, thinking of the news story on CNN the next day.

"A local school thought it would be a good idea to have their students play with flaming balls. Concerned witnesses say the students were encouraged to kick the flaming balls at each other, or to pick them up and throw them. The sounds of whooshing flames filled the air as students screamed and ran from the path of the flames.

"Other festivities included a fake bull with flaming horns running through the crowd and the burning of a life-size doll from a tree. Students were also encouraged to climb a 30-foot lubricated pole baited with candy and soda at the top."

I´m not in the Peace Corps anymore. Just tell people I work in Paraguay.

I broke down and got my house cleaned. Guess how much it cost. The equivalent of $3. Getting my house cleaned is my dream. If I can make my dreams come through for $3, why not?

I bought a heating-air conditioning unit, kind of as a favor to a family who needed to sell it. But mostly as a favor to me.

I'm also getting internet. My host family got a computer and we're going to split it.

I'm also having a pool installed.

Ok, that last part´s not true, but life is not rustic. I accept that.

Che roga...Our Website

2009-07-15T11:05:00.004-04:00

Hello everyone, sorry it´s been so long. I´ve been a little distracted (see last post ;)

Lately, I´m lost. What else is new? I set regular hours at the coop, 8:30 to 11 a.m. It gets me out of bed in the morning and gives me a little direction. My podcast is finally up! My radio show is pressing on every week. For me, I think, the key to my sanity is to do my own thing, and do it regularly, and not look behind me to see if anyone is following.

Making encajeyú, a kind of lace, one stitch at a time.

I spoke with this woman yesterday, after walking past her house and stopping to take her picture. ¨Revy´a nde rogape?¨she asked me. Are you happy in your house?

That is one thing I must say I am so thankful for. I love the family next door. I call the mother, Conchena, ¨che sy¨, my mom. I lucky for all the moms I have. My real mom whose voice lights up my day, even over Skype. My half mom, Jeri. My Paraguayan mom, Conchena.

Every day I come home from the co-op at 11. I drink terere with Oscar, then the food is ready. Sometimes I just go home and make something. But other times we play this game. She says, Are you going to stay? I say ¨Is there enough?¨ She says ¨Of course.¨I begrudgingly take a seat at the table, as if I wasn´t hoping she´d ask anyway. Her home cooking is far better than my sandwiches.

Every day a white dog waits outside the open kitchen door, and we throw him the scraps and bones. I say, ¨Dios se lo pague, ¨ a form of Thank you, and I go home to read or rest. In the afternoon I have my radio show, a coop meeting, making my podcast or whatever else that could happen in Paraguay.

I discovered that the house across the street, where all the boys hang out, is really a little arcade. It´s just three tvs and three Playstation 2s, with pirated games with names like NedforSpide. I´ve been playing Rally with the Guys. I really want them to get a Wii.

Oscar's turn at Rally

My group of friends is mostly guys. I can´t hide it, even in this gender-divided culture. I love male culture. The crude jokes, the laughing, the honesty. I hope it doesn´t look bad.

That´s all for now.

Our web site!
I made the co-op a web site, just to do something. They liked it so much they didn´t even look at it. Asi es. (That´s how it goes)

I plan on making an English-language version soon.

The Dangers of the U.S., Soldier of Joy, Your Hypothetical Relationship

2009-06-30T14:34:00.010-04:00

June 26: Survived the dangers of the U.S.

So I survived. Survived being beamed from the Ross Dress for Less, Tarpon Springs shoe aisle to the Ross, St. Augustine knick knacks section. Forgot where I was in Target, Leesburg, Va. but came out alive in Target Palm Harbor, Fl. Ordered a latte in Starbucks, Sebring and came out from a pee in the bathroom of Starbucks, St. Pete. Good thing I had my GPS.

The thrill of driving was somewhat dampened by the view through the glass encasement. Wires, gray, gray, gray, signs, flashes, numbers, letters, faces, tips of young trees fighting for a spot on the horizon, all of it as ugly and indescribable as a mountain in a landfill.

I participated. I bought till I had two of each thing I before hadn’t needed, being careful not to convert the dollars to Guaranis, not to compare life here with life there, while I purchased the equivalent of the shopping spree in Pretty Woman. There was this mania about it I couldn’t control and didn’t like. It felt just like when I was leaving the first time, buying way too many quick-dry pants with innumerable pockets.

I ate until I was full, waited until the pain went away and ate more.

I paid brief visits to reality. Week Wachi springs, where the beautiful trees were stapled with orange signs asking that we please not murder the manatees.

I learned about strangers. Did you know that there are two people who have eight children who will soon be divorced? If you need more information, their pictures, including those of the toddlers, are available on several magazine covers.

I discovered I have no patience for being physically restrained, via lines of people or cars or forms that need filling out.

What was real was the time with old friends, those with whom you have that micro-culture that you all evolved together. Time when my nephew told me I wasn’t allowed to use the internet anymore, and I got down and played legos with him. Time with my family.

Ah, the United States of America. What am I going to do with you? I love you so much, but you’re just not good for me, like a Bacon, Egg and Cheese McGriddle. Can I bring my new life home? Will it translate? Where will I hide?

(Later note= My trip, overall, was awesome. I was surrounded by a bubble of love, coming in from all directions. I love everyone and this post is more about the opporunity of America that sometimes gets trapped in plastic culture. But you, family, friends, you´re a dream. Thanks for a great trip.)

June 29: Soldier of Joy

A while ago there was this girl on the bus in Asuncion. I keep telling everyone about her, so I think I should tell you too.

She got on, young and cute, in jeans like a girl who watches MTV, and just stood in the front. This is the sign of someone selling something. At times it’s like a live infomercial, for medicine, clothing, books, whatever. She seemed like a rookie to me, standing there silent a bit too long, holding a folder to her chest, looking around, high eyebrows and a self-conscious smile.

“How is everyone?” she asked. We stayed facing forward, strictly adhering to the roles of apathetic bus passengers.

“Too cold to smile, eh?” she said. Even the creaky bus seemed too quiet after the question, and people looked out the window.

“Ok, well, I’m going to give you something, and if you don’t like it, I’ll take it back, ok?”

She kind of waited for an answer, bounced on her toes, then just walked down the aisle, passing out a beige page of something to those who would take it.

It was a poem. This was a little Paraguayan poet.

I support the arts, on Paraguayan buses, so I gave her a mil and said “suerte” (good luck).

She walked to the front of the bus, collecting some money and some returned poems. She was about to get off when she paused and turned around abruptly. Now wearing a red clown nose, she waved wildly before ducking out.

Others on the bus held on to that role, that miserable bus passenger who just wants to get on, not talk to anyone or admit any humanness, who wishes only to avert all eye contact so we can just get through this and get off as soon as possible. But she got me. I had turned human, and I smiled, laughed, despite the cold.

June 29: Your Hypothetical Relationship

Let’s say, hypothetically, you got yourself a Paraguayan boyfriend.

You may decide it best not to tell anyone in site just yet, especially if you are committing some kind of host-family incest.

You’d be communicating by text message, because it’s too expensive to call, so you’d learn all the Paraguayan text speak, the xq for “por que“ and the necessary TQM or “Te quiero mucho.”

“Te quiero” literally means “I want you,” which may make you uncomfortable at first. But to Spanish speakers it’s “I love you.” There are other ways to say I like or love you, but they have a funny way of turning it around, so that when someone says they like you, they put it on you, as if you’re doing something. For example, “I like you” is “Me gustas,” which literally would be translated to something like “You please me,” which to me is a lot more complimentary. Another way to say “I love you” is “Me encantas,” which comes from the same root as “to enchant”, and it’s pretty romantic when it comes to your American ears as “You enchant me.”

You might hear any of these way sooner than you would in an American relationship, prompting you to freak out and explain to your novio about all the planning and stress that goes into the first “I love you” where you come from. This might prompt him only to chuckle and shake his head and hug you. There’s no one better than a Paraguayan to quell a freak out.

If communication was an issue for you in English male-female relations, then a Paraguayan-American, English-Spanish-Guarani threesome is bound to be a special treat. You may find yourself having to explain entire ideas for which there is no word in Spanish, like “to cuddle.” It may lead to arguments over exactly what time the afternoon starts, or the merits of the common Paraguayan pet name “Mi gorda” (my fatty).

But then, yes, something might happen, some joke or some little moment, when the humanity of this person who was to you just an idea before, the member of some nationality, comes through, and you see yourself in them, you forget that you were born in these lines, and they were born in those lines, where the wearing of fanny packs is just fine. At any rate, the world disappears. And yes, that happens in every good relationship, but this time the world is much bigger.

Notes from home

2009-06-13T19:09:00.008-04:00

June 4: Arriving home
I was waiting for this big Wow moment, waiting for a realization, an appreciation of the enormous difference in quality of life, hitting me like an air blast at the border.

But that didn't happen. Little things were strange.

People movers, those large conveyor belts that cost God-knows-how-much money to run, just so we can walk a little faster. That's funny.

And then, at the tiny airport in Montevideo, Uruguay, there was an upstairs cafe and waiting area, and while I walked around it, looking for a plug that didn't look like a pig's nose, I stopped in front of this sliding glass door. It was frosted, all for but a clear strip at eye level, for looking in, and for looking out, perhaps, at those looking in. There was an etching, something like "VIP Club."

Through the clear glass strip I saw a man in a leather chair reading a newspaper (he must have been very important), another watching CNN on a flatscreen. I saw two young woman behind a beautiful wood welcome desk. I saw sculptures set on cut-in shelves. Behind the glass it was calm as an aquarium.

I had this impulse to set down my bag, walk over to the glass, and shove my face against it until it mushed up and gave all the important people a good look up my nose. Then maybe I could blah blah blah my tongue on it, the way I saw this little Paraguayan baby doing to a bus window, that made me laugh. Then, right when I had everyone's attention, I could make a big raspberry fart sound on the glass.

It would at least give everyone in there something to talk about, and a bond, beyond just being important, of having survived this brush with the outside world. But I didn't set my bag down, or leave saliva on their very important glass. I just went to the non-important person cafe, and sat in a plastic chair.

It's not that I'm better than them, or that I wouldn't have sat in there if I was a person with the cash to do so. It's a protest against those status symbols we all accept as normal. For instance, if the etching had said "The people with an extra 500 bucks club," I bet it would have been empty. These things are not real, and you will never be safe from maniacs with funny faces and farts noises, I want to say. The glass isn´t even made of glass, it´s made of a make-believe wall that separates the rich and the poor and keeps them from realizing they are exactly the same. Well, what will happen if we stop believing in it?

So I'll just be one person who doesn't play along anymore, in the Status-for-Sale game, who doesn't believe that people with more money should be glass-encased and labeled as more important than others.

June 5: Where's my medal?
I keep feeling this urge, how embarrassing it is really, to reap that promised benefit of Peace Corps service: recognition. When I got my first Starbucks frappachino, I almost said, "Oh, I'm so excited, I haven't had a frappachino in a year." And then the woman at the counter would surely play along, saying, "Oh really? Why not?" And I'd play it down maybe, just saying I've been living abroad or something, and she'd ask why or where and drag it out of me, that I would say, "Oh, I've just been in the Peace Corps."

And then maybe she'd call her co-worker over, to meet this real-life Peace Corps Volunteer, and they'd put their elbows on the counter, their chins in their hands, and ask me to tell them tales of my adventures, while a line of non-awesome people formed behind me.

"Will there be anything else?" they ask, after I've resisted. "No," I say, "thanks."

June 11: My Indie Home
I had this moment at a Paraguayan party a little while ago, where I just longed to be in my own scene. I wanted my own dancing, my own music, my own culture.

I danced around my Asuncion hotel room when I got tickets to Bon Iver, my favorite new band whose music has been filling my little house all year while I cook. And the show was everything I dreamed it would be.

Indie kids! There they were, lined up outside, just like back in Gainesville,when I'd go see my musical buddies play. Indie kids, with their ironic mustaches and tight jeans and thick-rimmed glasses and tendency to make me feel like maybe I, too, should have a sleeve tattoo. Indie kids. How I've missed you.

At the show, I drank Coors Light (not as ironic as PBR, but close). There were two women, one with a bull ring nose piercing, canoodling next to me the whole time. The musicians were not pretty boys with dance moves and light shows, they just played beautiful music and made jokes. The place was familiar, and it's good to be home.

My Order...Metaphor...One-year

2009-05-31T22:28:00.002-04:00

(Headed to the states soon, hence...)
May 22nd: My order
I'd like the start with the french toast with bacon and home fries....and....um... a bowl of Lucky Charms, a strawberry creamcheese croissant, two powdered donuts with that white filling, the bacon, egg & cheese croissant and an everything bagel with chive and onion.

I’d like the sweet potato burrito, the chicken fingers sub with wing sauce, the cuban, a gyro, a chopped Greek salad, mall Chinese, the beef supreme with guac, the six-piece chicken nuggets with Polynesian sauce and the waffle fries, and three slices of Hawaiian pizza with ranch dressing.

I'd like the spicy tuna roll, the Tampa roll and the Mexican roll. The miso soup too. And the mussels. And crab wontons. And wasabi-seared tuna steak. A big bowl of pad thai, then the crab legs.

To drink I'll have a Grimbergen. Iced tea. A venti mocha frappachino, extra whip. A Coors Light. A mojito. A margarita.

I think there's still a little room for a slice of Carvel ice cream cake, bananas foster, apple crisp with ice cream, brownies, seven-layer bars, a black and white cookie and a Haagandaz chocolate shake.

I only have three weeks, but I think I can do it. I’ll bring the stretchy pants.

May 27: My metaphor about what my service is like
Take a mother of three. Ask her if she’d like some help organizing her house. Of course she would. Send someone to live in her house, someone foreign who kind of talks like an idiot, though this mother feels bad for even thinking this.

While the mother is feeding babies, changing diapers, chasing naked children toward the bath and breaking up fights, foreign person follows her around, saying, “Well, how could we organize your house?”

The mother, kind of over her shoulder while she’s stirring a boiling pot and keeping an eye on the baby rocker, says, “Um, I don’t know, the garage is a disaster.” And the foreign helper says, “We will organize the garage.” But the mother thinks for a moment and says, “Eh.” “Well, what else?” “My closets are overflowing,” she offers. And the foreigner says, “Great! I’ll go for some pen and paper, and we will list all the ways you and your husband might be able to organize the closets and keep for them clean. Then --Are you having time this weekend?-- I will show you some charts about why it’s better to keep your closets clean. I will teach you alphabetizing.” (only the way the foreigner says alphabetizing, it’s more like alpibitizing.) But then there’s a child’s scream from somewhere down the hall, and the mother stops to give a pained look toward the foreigner and say, “I have dishes to wash,” before rushing off down the hall. And this foreigner is starting to wonder if this woman wants her closets organized or not.

A few days later, as the mother backs in with groceries, pulling a stroller and yelling for her son to close the van door and get in the house already, she turns to see that the foreigner is waiting for her just inside the door, the pen in one hand, the paper in the other. The foreigner raises his eyebrows and says, “Have you today time?”

“Look,” says the mother, putting the groceries down on the table and unstrapping her now-sniffling baby from her cart, “Why can’t you just organize the closets? It would be a big help.”

“Then how would the closets stay organized, after I’m go?” asked the foreigner. To which the mother just lets out a heavy breath, and wonders why she ever let the foreigner, who was supposed to help organize the house but as of yet seems to have done nothing, into her home.

May 29th: One year in country
Yes, a year has passed since I boarded a plane as a responsible adult and was born again in Paraguay, unable to speak, requiring constant supervision, shooed away from electronics. I forget how far I’ve come, and get sucked into the need to quantify everything, as if this had been just another year of working.

You want to add it all up, put it in a spreadsheet (and it doesn’t help that Peace Corps actually makes you do this). The numbers seem embarrassingly small, of how many people you’ve helped, how many charlas you’ve done. I caught a glimpse of my work plan from a few months ago and would have laughed if I hadn’t found it so depressing, to read all my hopes that were never realized. A year is when you grasp how fast a year can go, and you only have one more, so you wonder, Will I get anything done?

Our “sister group” arrived today, the people we will be mentoring, going to their training to give advice. I remember when the G-24 people, our “big sisters” came to face us, bright-eyed world savers in brand-new North Face jackets. I could sense their exhaustion, their annoyance at our enthusiasm, their skepticism, and I swore it’d never happen to me.

After a year, you have to admit that you are more human than hero. Just like they said, it did take you a year just to figure out what the hell you’re doing here. And yes, just like they said, the shiny gloss of the experience wears off, and your just left with a cold shower and a job that can feel just like a 9 to 5, if you don’t keep your eyes open.

You admit that no, you will not be building a library. No, you will not _. And no, you will never get that photo with you, looking happy in a baseball cap, surrounded on both sides by children smiling smiles that you put there with your hard work and dedication.

But as I was complaining about this today to my friend Mariela, I said, but look, I’m complaining in Spanish, to a friend that is from South America. That wouldn’t have happened a year ago. And sometimes I say stuff in Guarani. And, ya know, I can cook now, kind of. And this shirt? Oh, I made it, out of Ao Po’i. And I sambaed, in a gold sequins bra in public, and I modeled, and I peeped my head outside of the United States and found this whole other world that I now walk around in freely.

And one might wonder, who are you yelling at?

I’m yelling at myself. That person who joined the mythical Peace Corps a year ago, and even after all this time in the real Peace Corps, won’t just let herself enjoy what comes, without grabbing it and trying to shove as a puzzle piece into the life picture she thinks she should be living.

So all I can do is make a sentimental video, go to bed tonight, and wake up tomorrow, trying not to count.

Highway Charity...reminders to smile...Peace Corpsiffic

2009-05-21T10:30:00.003-04:00

May 13: Highway Charity
My host mom is what someone with a questionable upbringing might call a pisser. Here’s a story about her.

This was about 10 years ago, Oscar was 13. They were on a bus to Ciudad del Este, carrying a lot of cash, a few millon Guaranies, about $1,000, which Ña. Conchena had tucked safely inside her bra. It was the madrugada, or early morning, when four men with guns got onboard, threw the driver to the floor and yelled “¡Manos arriba!” (Hands up!) This did not wake Ña. Conchena, but it did wake her son.

Oscar woke, saw the men with guns, and elbowed his mom. She then also woke in the daze of the bus snooze. While the men were yelling for everyone to not look them in the face, she pretended like she was bowing her head, and sneaked the money from her bra to the pocket of the seatback.

The men came by and grabbed her purse, finding just 30 mil Guaranis (about 6 dollars). They patted down the pockets of a shaking Oscar.

Then, to make sure they really believed that’s all she had, Ña. Conchena said, “Excuse me, sir” to the armed gunman standing next to her in the aisle, while her son was elbowing her more, this time to get her to shut up. She said, “May I please have some money for the passage to my town?”

The man took out the wad of cash stolen from the rest of the passengers, peeled off a few mil and gave it to her. She said thanks.

May 17: Reminders to Smile
Life has been nice and random and Paraguayan these last few days, reminding me not to take things so seriously or for granted.

On Mother’s Day I was peer pressured into drinking caña and coke (“No, more! You barely drank it!”) by an 81-year-old woman. After eating, they said “Jaha” (Let’s go.) and I followed them to the back fence, where we spread the barbed wire to duck through. Suddenly I didn’t recognize at all where we were.

We were greeted by neighbors who took us past their ostrich pen. And I say “ostrich” so easily, but, looking at one, especially after the caña, you forget the word. You’re just looking at these eerily human legs, emaciated and grey, a feathered pillow that left all the upward evolving to the neck, which runs up like an elephant’s trunk that grew a head and a long open beak. Ostrich's stare at you eye-to-eye.

We walked past two parrots on a wooden wheel hanging from a tree, to where the party was at: about a dozen people surrounding a metal frame over a fire on which laid three sizzling pigs’ heads. Their crisped ears still flopped every time someone reached down with a fork to pierce the fat and turn it the head on its other cheek. Partygoers cut off pieces and ate them standing around, staring down at the heads. I said I’d have the cornbread.

Some woman I had seen around stood next to me, looking at me sideways with a little smile on her face. She had her hand in a flat front pocket of her coat, and she pulled it out, showing me her palm. In it was cupped the shiny wrapper and circle outline of a condom. I looked at it. I looked at her. Her eyes said something like, “Ever seen one of these before?”

With its silvery packaging against the brown jacket, dirt, wood animal pens, it did look a bit like something alien. I judged the look I would give back to her, realizing anything that could be mistaken for, “Oh, big deal, I see those all the time,” might send the wrong message. So I went more for, “Oh, look whatcha got there.” I guess I raised my own eyebrows, because she responded with the same before sliding it back in her pocket like a hidden ace. Later I saw her showing it around to others in a similar fashion.

Another social fun time was the other night at my timid but sweet friend’s birthday party, at the dinner table with her sisters and mom, she said, “There’s been something I’ve been wanting to ask you for a long time.”

“Ok.”

“What does this word mean?”

[Sorry but it just wouldn’t be appropriate to write out, but feel free to say it out loud in the privacy of your own home]

And so she said: “F*$#.”

Then her 16-year-old sister popped out from behind her and said in her sing-song voice: “F*$#ing!”

I looked back at my friend, and she said: “F*$# me!”

They were just parroting sounds they had heard, in movies and music, but it still made my face red with all the meaning, especially as I looked at their mother across the table.

Finally I wrote it in my cell phone in Spanish and showed it just to my friend, and she said “Ooh!” and turned red too.

May 19: A Peace Corpiffic Day
I recently had a success. Then I had another, and a few more, which is odd.

We were going to have a party at the co-op for Mother’s Day. Usually during these things, we just sit around and stare and eat empanadas from paper trays on our laps. They raffle off some giftbaskets of yerba and groceries. Then everyone shuffles home.

I thought we needed to liven it up a bit, so I wanted to do an ao poi relay race, where each woman on two teams does one line of embroidery then passes it to the next woman for the next line. So there was lots of doubt and trying to explain this beforehand and fearing that people would just stare at me and not volunteer to participate.

But, after much planning to make sure it wasn’t going to be another huge embarrassing failure, the ladies were actually laughing and having a good time, with me going between the lines yelling “Dalé! Dalé!” (Go! Go!) to win those bags of American candy I had made from my care packages (thanks Aunt Janice!). I stood there in the middle and just took it in, the sound of people having fun they would not have had if I had not been there. Ah.

I also started a podcast to teach Guarani, which has turned into another project to sink my teeth into, staying up late-night to tweak. I finished my first episode the other night and sent it off, happy with the results. And at my Guarani classes, I no longer want to kill my tutor after fifteen minutes. We’re chatting in Guarani!

This morning I was in the co-op, which has been buzzing, preparing for a little charla on the computer. I’m rarely in the front store anymore, just making ao poi and drinking terere and watching the Spanish soaps. I’m in the conference room, on the computer.

I organized a little mini-charla, inviting my friend Brennan from Villarrica to come explain how organizing his co-op in Excel had helped. I could have told them myself, but for some reason the socias like looking at Brennan more. I also made a little mini-sheet example of how we could organize our socias. I wrote formulas, which for me carries the same satisfaction of solving a crossword puzzle, because I’m a big huge computer geek.

We got a Paraguayan late start and one person didn’t show, but the president was all about it. I was talking, and they were interested! Listening! Not walking away or beginning to speak to another person or staring at me with a wrinkled brow. Leaning forward, absorbing, getting it.

Now they are all about putting the business into the computer, starting classes to teach the socias. It’s like, suddenly, I figured out what I’m here to do. That sounds like another year’s worth of work.

Then Brennan and I went and did our radio show, on estres (stress) and played hits of the 80’s. My friends texted me to say they were listening and it was very interesting and thanks for playing Guns ‘N’ Roses.

Teaching computers and marketing to a cooperative, keeping a podcast, having a weekly radio show to educate people, learning two languages. Right at the point of despair that it would never happen, feeling like an actual Peace Corps volunteer just kind of snuck up on me.

Look...At the futbol game

2009-05-11T09:02:00.003-04:00

9 May: Look
If you can’t feel inspired while you’re in the Peace Corps, well then what the hell is your deal? This is what I might ask myself. Sometimes I just feel dead.

So I say, look, you idiot. Playing Frisbee today with my host siblings, I didn´t look twice at the horses strolling by. Wait, no, look: Horses walking by, the glorious palm tree with all the parrots flying in and out, the cows that look like their made of cookies and cream. Now I’m sitting outside because my lights won’t come on. I discovered there is a bat living in my front tree, flying and out of its hole.

These are known as the one-year bleh blehs, or something like that. That shiny new gloss has worn off the experience, your work feels like work, you have your friends and don’t feel like meeting any more new people. There’s a depression in your bed where you sleep, and you just want to stay there.

It’s when you know it’s time to flip the mattress.

I’m going home for three weeks, in June, and when I think about it I get as excited as I was a year ago, thinking about going to Paraguay. I need to juxtapose. It’s like when you lose weight, and you don’t realize it until you have a before and after picture. When I go back home, I’ll realize how much I’ve changed. I’ll remember what an awesome thing I’m doing, what an opportunity it is. And I’ll garner energy, I think, and come back, continuing to say, “Look. look. look.”

10 May: At the futbol game
I went to the futbol game, trying to integrate, even though I want to put up my hammock and have a Sunday alone with my books, under a tree. Through the chain-link fence, over the field where the men were running with their legs like chopsticks trying to get hold of a hard-boiled egg, I saw the hill I used to walk by every day, when I lived on that side of town. The sheep were still there, dotting the hill like scattered cotton balls, and I thought of how the sun turned them pink in the morning.

Through the metal I looked at all the different shades of green, as the fields met some woods, where a palm tree pops out of the bunch every few dozen yards, leaves like the hair of the tallest guy in the room.

Ants walked up and down the ramps of the fence links, and down on the ground discovered my discarded ice cream cup. They gathered and then got milk drunk and drowned, and I looked at this until my host sister screamed Goooooal! with the same shrill with which one would scream Help! and my eyes jolted to her and then I looked up at the goal and clapped. The horses, which usually graze on the field when there aren’t people running back and forth on it, didn’t even raise their heads. They went on eating, as if the home team weren’t winning.

In the trees where those two parrots have a nest, behind the bleachers where men line up to pee, I heard a bird and looked up in time to see its body, silhouetted with the leaves, flutter as it sang, like it´s whole body was a little instrument with legs. The sun set behind it, backlighting the clouds into puffs of neon that hung still. The light cast over the store where we bought electric orange Fanta soda. From my seat I looked at the pastel sky, past the faces of everyone else looking the other way, to see if the men from our town would get the ball in the net more times than the men of the other town.

Peace Corps Paraguay Video

2009-05-07T14:58:00.002-04:00

Here's a video that the Peace Corps peeps made to show invitees.