Pictures of my little town

Taking pics on a day when life is beautiful.

A scene I pass on my way to the coop.

A Yataity street

My mud hut

The view through my front window

Depression...Stuff...Life Rhythm

Hello. Enjoy some pictures.

Brennan in his kitchen

My lunch today. I tried to get it at an angle where you could appreciate the mass. That dark stuff on top is almost all meat.

Hmm, let’s see, what else? We went to Asuncion last week to go to the futbol game. Lots of red and white and drums and people puking on the way to the game, oh wait, that’s my friend!
Someone found out that if you try to sneak liquor into the game and get caught, the police will arrest you and take your mug shot with a cell phone camera.
After the game we were at a street party and ended up talking on camera some reporters. Everyone in town was like, I saw you on the news! Apparently they got some footage of Sasha dancing as well.


Speaking of police, I saw a bus driver bribe a cop, so that was cool. I saw the points of a folded bill popping out from underneath his license as he handed it to the officer.
My host sister asked if I wanted to watch “El Senor de los Anillos,” and having no idea what the heck that was, I said sure. So in the past two days we watched both the first and second Lord of the Rings. I understood about as much as the first time I saw them, which is to say not much. It’s like my childlike experience when I watch the telenovelas, and react totally based on body language and inference: “The lady is mad at the man.”
My computer class is going well! I understood a bit more of the joy of teaching when I saw one of my students walk right up to the computer, put her pen drive in and find the photos on it. A week before she had stood there holding the pen drive out like she might break it, not sure what to do.


Tuesday, Oct 14: Depression
Tonight I called home. Friends, some family. Had a great video call with my mom. So close, yet so far away.
One of my friends and I had a depressing conversation though, about the “recession,” possible “depression.”
And I feel depressed.
I actually have to say that one of the Big Reasons for joining the Peace Corps was the fear of the economic fall of America. Once I realized how rich we really are, how precious our place in both time and space is, and how fast things are changing in the world, I felt like I was standing on top of a rumbling tower. I just kept looking down.
With globalization, who knows what the heck is going to happen. Good thing I’m a writer, because the arts are the last thing to go in a financial hard times, right?
So naturally, I wanted to face third-world life.
Now, that’s not exactly what I’m living down here. But there is a living without. Having been here, I know that if things get worse back home, and I have to take the bus and not have air conditioning, I’ll be ok.
But I’m thinking of everyone who’s been affected. Hang in there.


Thursday, Oct 16: I’m so sick of seeing how rich people are.
We get free Newsweeks, to keep up on the happenings of the U.S. and the world. This week I see that Germans are rethinking nuclear energy, Japan is building robots that can play instruments, and...that in jewelry, black is the new gold?
Apparently this is a new section in Newsweek called The Good Life, and I can’t believe this has made into Newsweek, or can I?
When I was little, we had one show, one, that focused on the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Houses, cars, blah blah. Now it’s everywhere. Every channel has a Most Expensive this...The Fabulous life of So-and-So, blah blah.
It’s like a freak show.
I’m looking at the magazine, with each item listed with their prices that I’m sure thousands of people are right now calculating into how many months of their mortgage they could have paid with that money.
I’m sitting her looking at a $2,000 bottle of wine, a $9,400 necklace, and a $250,000 turntable.
I’m so sick of having this stuff thrown in my face, everywhere I look. A photo story in the L.A. Times about a new designer $250,000 ice pick (and the rediculous release party) was one of the finals straws of “I have to get out of here.”
I came here to get away from it, and one of my greatest dissappointments is that Paraguay is already gripped by ads, tv, commericials. They’re being slowly loaded on to the treadmill, surrounded by the scenes of unattainable beauty, impossible wealth, and being told that if they run a little faster, they can get there.
And I want to say, We Americans have been chasing things for 50 years, and we’re just tired and no happier, in fact less happier, then when we started. Does anyone else think that this whole housing thing might have something to do with the greed fed by seeing photo after photo of mansions?
I feel clausterphobic. How far do I have to go to get away from people from all angles telling me that the good life is just another dollar away?
I´m just saying that if we keep looking up, at the tippy-top of the spectrum, we´re going to keep thinking we´re poor. We need to remember where we really sit. In other countries, our things could fill that Good Life section.

Monday, Oct 20: Cue music
Life has fallen into its rhythm. If this were a movie, we’d be to the montage, the soundtrack hitting “Strange” by Built to Spill, my legs walking to the drumbeat through the sunlit grass as I zigzag my way through cows and cow poop mines to the cooperative, toting my bag of Ao Poi supplies.
(This strange plan is random at best)
I’m pinning my needle in my Ao Poi, taut in the embroidery hoop, to free my hand and reach for the terere guampa being handed to me.
(This strange changing atmosphere)
Some creepy uncle is grabbing me by the arm and asking someone what my name is.
(This strange how much more can I take)
I’m watching Brazil’s Next Top model while eating pizza with the sisters.
(Yeah it’s strange but what’s so strange about that)
I’m giving in and wiping my mouth on the tablecloth like everyone else at the long table of a big family asado, looking around like someone’s going to catch me.
(Yeah it’s strange but oh well)
We’re sitting in chairs on the lawn and I'm silent in a conversation of Guarna
(I’m not saying it right)
I’m laying in bed, in a clearing between my laptop, cellphone, books and papers with words of three languages, reading one of those books I’ve always wanted to.
(And it’s strange but what isn't strange.)

Hummingbirds and Getting picked up on a bus.

Hello everyone! All is well here. It’s getting hot. This morning I had a very successful computer class. I would write about that but I was too busy recounting the story that involved cute police officers. You’ve got to decide what’s most important, you know? Serious business next time, maybe.
I hope everyone is ok and not too worried about the financial crisis. I’m thinking about you.

Love,
Paulette

p.s. I added some pics in the post below.

Wednesday, Oct. 8: Don’t forget hummingbirds are amazing.

I was just getting used to hummingbirds when I read this:

“Consider the hummingbird for a long moment. A hummingbird’s heart beats ten times a second. A hummingbird’s heart is the size of a pencil eraser. A hummingbird’s heart is a lot of the hummingbird. Joyas valadoras, flying jewels, the first white explorers in the Americas called them, and the white men had never seen such creatures, for hummingbirds came into the world only in the Americas, nowhere else in the universe, more than three hundred species of them whirring and zooming and nectaring...

Each one visits a thousand flowers a day. They can dive at sixty miles an hour. They can fly backward. They can fly more than five hundred miles without pausing to rest...

Every creature on earth has approximately two billion hearbeats to spend in a lifetime. You can spend them slowly, like a tortoise, and live to be two hundred years old, or you can spend them fast, like a hummingbird, and live to be two years old.” (Brian Doyle’s “Joyas Valadoras”)

And I say, Don’t forget things are amazing, even if you see them every day.

I try to take a moment every time I see the moon to realize that it is a hunk of rock, being lit by the sun, both a gazillion miles away, as we are all floating through space.

You just can’t take life too seriously if you keep the amazing things in mind. Or at least, that’s what I hope.


Sunday, Oct 12. Picked up on the bus
Sasha and I are on a packed bus. I didn’t mind riding without a seat when I thought I was just going to site, but then we last-minute changed our plans from the “I have to work in the morning” option to the “Oh screw it, it’ll be fun” option, and now I realize I’ll be standing like this for an hour and a half more.

We are two deep in the aisles. Everyone standing is leaning toward the windows, hands on the luggage rail, as though we are about to have an uncomfortable exam. Sasha’s hip is on my left, the arm rest of the seat I’m facing is digging in to my knees, and I have an aerial view of the overweight woman sitting there. On that armrest, the arm of the overweight woman is touching my leg, feeling like a wet slug across my thighs. Next to me is a soldier, actually not touching me. Behind me, the man facing the other way has his butt right up against mine. When I try to move forward, the arm rest digs, when I move back, I’m pressing into a stranger’s butt. Everyone standing on the bus is having a similar experience. The seated are royalty. I’m trying to talk myself out of closterphobia.

I think about those rail cars packed with Holocaust victims on their way to death camps. Then I feel terribly guilty about that thought even coming to mind. Am I comparing this to that? I hope not, because that’s...Just don’t even have that come to mind, please.

Sasha and I are sweaty. Everyone’s sweaty. I feel like a traveler.

Beyond belief, the bus stops for the chipa lady, and we now officially have what my father would have called “ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag.” As bad as it is for us, this poor woman has to make the rounds, all the way back and all the way up, the third person wedging through in an aisle, carrying a three-foot basket of chipa and making change.

It’s actually kind of fun to watch the wave of people’s scrunched, pained faces as she reaches between them to grab hold of a seatback and pulls herself through with a struggle reminiscent of birth.

It was also one of those bonding experience that has us laughing with the two soldiers next to us.
Sasha keeps looking past my shoulder, smiling and saying, “Oh, just had a little eye contact back there.” This is with soldier to the right of the one to my right. If we were all waiting in a buffet line, he’d be first to the prime rib.

“Oh, there we go again.” She smiles and looks at me. “He’s cute too.”

We have an hour before we need to get off.

“Ok, so the mission is to get him that phone number before our stop.”

In what we thought at the time was a grand coincidence, he hands over his phone with a message, “Sorry what is your number”

Sasha and I giggle and she types back and hands him her phone with her number. Phones are being passed back and forth with guys we have now found out are police officers.

The guy next to me gets my number, the one that knows a little bit of English, enough to overhear that Sasha wanted his friend’s number.

We all start to chat, with the people we’re leanng over looking at us, an audience with their chairs turned sideways.

They helped us find our stop, and Sasha and I squeeze our way out just like the chipa lady. I find it easiest to walk on my tip-toes, so that my butt squeezes between the lower backs of the people on both sides. Back-butt-back is markedly more feasible than butt-butt-butt.

As the bus pulled away we waved. I review my birks, cargo pants, sweaty t-shirt get up and think I never thought I'd be picked up looking like this. Sasha says, as she does after flirting, “Don’t think I traveled all this way and forgot to pack my pimpin’ skills.”

That night Sasha’s guy sent her a message and mine sent me a message that said “Good afternom!” Between him and some others fellows I know around town my text message inbox is looking like a Spanish baby names book and I’m learning how to read textspeak in Spanish. Again, as my father would have said, “Trouble brewing.”

Blah Blah...Bugs...Rodeo...La Virgen

Hi all. I´m not feeling so hot about this blog. So much happened and this is just like notes. But there´s a balance everyone has to find in living and documenting your living. And with how much time I´ve been spending recording, editing, etc., I just said I´m going to put it out there as is.

This morning I had all my toys out - recorder, camera, laptop, playing with iPhoto, iMovie, etc. I have a media extravaganza going here. I really want to put up some of the audio I´ve taken and definitely the video of the Virgen. In due time...

So, the photos are uploading nor the video. Wha-wha. Some time later this week I´ll try again.

Wednesday, Oct. 1

When you close your eyes at night, there are a few things you might have on your mind, as you enter that defenseless state of sleep.

Depending on where you live, you could have varying levels of fear about a bomb dropping on your house or a robber entering. I think about bugs.

I wonder how long it will take until I wake up with one on my face.

It’s almost 11 at night now, the time I’m usually up, telling myself just one more chapter, the time when it’s just me and the noises.

Right now, it’s a noise like something being dragged across the floor, then stopping. Is that a little noise in my room or a big noise outside?

Outside there’s the groans of the cows, the whinnying of the horses. The chickens and roosters seem to finally shut their mouths at night. Oh wait, no there goes one...then its friends.

Always there’s shuffling of a beetle in my bag, the ping ping of the bugs on my florescent tube light, buzzing looping around.

Tonight I walked in the house, and seeing a cockroach on the floor, I said, “Wow, that a huge-- EEEEEEEEE!” I started squeeling as it took flight.

Ok...that’s definitely from inside my room...going to investigate...

I did my noise-stalking, changing the position of my ears to try and triangulate it’s location, like I´ve done so many times before. This time it seemed like it was coming from inside my big backpack. Knowing that if I whipped open the cover and saw something, I’d scream, I instead grabbed it by the strings and dragged it of my room, putting it in the hallway. I’ll explain to my host family tomorrow.

I can hear crickets outside, and still those roosters and a dog, but inside I only see one moth on the wall.

I’ll go brush my teeth now...Oh, I see a small little insect has drowned in the saliva of my toothbrush.

All you can do is rinse it off, then go to bed and try not to think.

Thursday, Oct. 2: Greetings

My favorite greeting is the put the hand out, then kind of shake and at the same time go in for the double kiss.

Sometimes you put your hand out, and people just go for the kiss, and your still kind of holding it there between you like it’s in a sling.

Then sometimes, people want the handshake only.

Sometimes I forget and just go in for the hug. I did this yesterday, saying goodbye on the street to a cute Yataity townie. I went in for a quick friendly hug and he ends up kissing my ear.

Sunday, Oct. 5

I have begun to accept the ignorance of what the hell is going on at any given time, and that’s helped.

Back home, we have expectations. We know how Christmas is going to go, we saw it on tv. We know how Valentine’s Day is supposed to go. We’re shown the memories we’re going to have.

Back home, we have dissappointment, because it’s never how we expected.

So it’s freeing, exciting, that I never see what’s coming.

I knew from the carnival set up in the church yard, ferris wheel and all, that something was set to happen this weekend.

Turns out it’s the Festival Patronal, whatever that is.

This morning the family asked if I was going to go to their grandfather’s house for our Sunday asado. We get there, and the next thing you know we´re riding somewhere else, with someone who I think might be an uncle, in a Mercedes. Where we´re going, I don´t know.

We stopped halfway to Villarica at a shop where a guy held up cuts of meat for the man to choose. We bought 7 kilos (about 15 pounds) of meat for 92 mil.

During the meal, there was a parade

There was a parade with the Virgin, a paper mache doll, held above the heads of those walking.

Before the food was ready my host sister and I went to our friend’s house, and her mother told me the virgin was there. Why didn’t I come by?

“She was here? Why didn’t she call me?”

The joke went over like a lead balloon.

We took a huge jug of terere into the plaza and just sat on the bench, passing around the guampa. Looking around.

The girls talked about “churros,” or cute guys, whispering and giggling. It reminded me of a story my traveling friend Kati told me about her trip to the Phillipines. There was a similar moment in a group of girlfriends where she realized it’s exactly the same, in whatever language, on whatever continent.

My host sister and I went back to her grandfather’s house for brunch, a tradition I’ve come to love. Two long tables put together, three different kinds of meat, lots of Guarani I don’t understand.

There’s so much life cycling. There are the dogs and the grandfather, the puppies and the grandchildren. Flowers. Plants. Chickens.

Every once in a while someone yells to my younger host sister, Larissa, to bring the rubia. So I go, never knowing what I’m about to see.

Today one of the aunts took me to a tree that looked like it had grapes glued all over it, right to the main branches. We picked off some of the fruit and ate it, after I received a lesson about which parts to eat and which parts to spit out.

That night I went back to the fair with Nancy and two other friends. I thought we had missed the second rodeo. We were just hanging out, looking for churros (hot guys), when suddenly we saw people standing on the railing, gathering out front where there were about 50 motorcycles parked, and where the guys with the huge speakers in their cars were showing off.

Fight.

We were 100 feet off, but they waved me over. And we stood next to the fence, peering at a girl trying to talk her boyfriend out of fighting while the crowd looked on.

Am I really doing this right now?

The Rodeo

We had not missed the rodeo, as I found out when we walked to the cemetery yard, where strung lights criss-crossed a bowl of stadium seating made of planks. In the center was a ring of wood and wire and a rodeo clown speaking Guarani into the microphone.

We sat on widely spaced planks that sagged every time the music started and the girl next to me started to dance.

The rodeo was kind of a mix of bull fight and rodeo. I don´t like the treatment of the animals – it seems to me like a jazzed-up version of boys throwing rocks at a street dog – but the fact that they were in there with angry bulls was something worth my 20 mil to see.

Bulls are huge. Sometimes, I’m walking down the street here, and I’ll think I see someone approaching out of the corner of my eye. Then I look up, and it’s a cow. It startles me every time.

And at night, when I walk from the separate kitchen to the house, the cows are sleeping right next to the fence, and I understand the word massive a little better.

People started lining up against the inner wall, meaning the people behind them couldn’t see. There was this one guy, who kept getting up to yell at the people in front of them. He was a local hero to his section. An hour in, people were seven deep standing all around, and he had parted the seas. It got to where he didn’t even sit anymore, just stood, waiting for his duty to call. That became a secondary show. He eventually lost the battle. But the whole time it was one of those awkward scenes that became like a secondary show.

Tuesday, Oct. 7: On the other side of the coin...

Not knowing where you’re going also means not knowing what you’re in for. Last night we went to the church for some event, I didn’t know. We stood in the back of the packed church for the longest time while my back ached from stepping up the yoga, watching a huge line of people take communition. This guy in front of me kept turning around and looking at me in a way I did not like. I nodded, like, Yes I see you there. Once I almost said, “Que quiere?” What do you want?

Suddenly I was suffering from my “social closterphobia,” where I’m in an uncomfortable situation and leaving would cause some kind of social weirdness, so I just stay and suffer my mental complaints.

I excused myself for a minute to call Sasha and blow off some steam. The carnival was going on outside still. The little boys had guns from the little shops, light in weight but realistic, from glocks to full-on semi-automatic molds of plastic. Some had them tucked in their pants.

Sasha lamented my situation and told me to give the guy the crazy face. The key, she told me, is that I have to look indignant.

We took a break to go a friends house and make some mate. At that house, my friend showed me some pink cloth and said that those were the clothes the virgen wore last year, pink Ao Poi. We came back with chairs to watch a show of Paraguayan dancing and singing. The girls danced in Ao Poi skirts pulled straight out on both sides.

At some point it became clear that we were waiting for the Virgin. Every once in a while the MC would say, “Que vive la Virgen! Que vive Yataity!”

After the show, people started making their way toward a cleared path lined with flowers. The man with the microphone on stage was saying thank you to the Virgin, for protection, for the happiness of the community. Then the bell started sounding. Fireworks blasted from the park. The man with the microphone was yelling. People were pressing in. A siren started like it was a techno song. Confetti fell from the bell tower.

From the doorway in the church emerged men with her on their shoulders, the same statue that seemed to me like paper mache when I saw it at the parade.

People waved.

They walked her up and down the aisle in all the blaze of it, people waving white cloth. They faced her to each section of the crowd.

And as the man on stage yelled, ´´Gracias Virgencita! Gracias!´´ The figure dissappeared again into the church doors.

Photos: Church carnival; swing ride, kitch for sale; guns, bbs and Mary clocks; and somewhere in Paraguay, my old car shows up (I will have a dream that night that I go back to St. Augustine and steal a Honda Civic.)

Rude...Teaching...Dance Party

Hi everyone. Just wanted to say thanks so much for the comments and the emails. I appreciate all the support!

Tuesday, Sept 23: Rude

I was on the phone with my sister the other day, and I heard her say to my nephew, during some of his antics: “That’s rude.”
Rude. Before it seemed such a concrete idea. Something was rude or it wasn’t.
Then I came here, and saw things that I was taught to frown upon. And I felt those negative emotions that had been ingrained in me in the way we pass on culture.
If I did some of the things people do here, back home, I could see someone say to me, “What in the hell’s the matter with you?”
Here it’s normal to start eating before everyone sits down, to eat directly from the salad plate in the middle of the table, to wipe your mouth with the tablecloth.
In the way we consider those things rude from our view, Paraguayans could see us as rude from their view. Here it’s rude to just flat out say no to an invitation. It’s rude to not greet everyone you see in the street. It’s rude to not share your glass.
Add to that our micro-cultures, what’s acceptable in one family being unacceptable in another, and is easy to see why we people sometimes have a hard time playing nice. We play by different rule books.
So the more appropraite thing, dear sister, would be to tell my little nephew that his tongue sticking-outing is considered anti-social in our family unit and in our regional and contemporary cultural paradigm. Let me know how that goes over with a five-year-old.

Thursday, Sept 25: Fat ass.

I went to visit my old host after two weeks away, and she told me, “Estas mas gorda.” You are fatter.
I accepted the comment and rolled on, later telling one of my favorite senoras that day that I was going for a walk because according to the other woman I’d gained weight.
She looked at me and scrunched her brow. “Aca, no.” (Here, no) she said, running her hand across her stomach.
“Aca,” she said, putting her palm on her bum and looking at mine, “si.” She nodded.
I cracked up. Your ass is fat. Is that not the worst thing you could tell a woman in the U.S.?
I let her in on the joke, and she gave me a confused look. “Asi les gusta los hombres.” (That’s how the guys like it) she said. Then with a sucking sound effect, she traced an hour glass in the air with her hands and curved it wide at the bottom, rounding out imaginary cheeks with a popping sound from her mouth.

Saturday, Sept 27: Home Away From Home Away From Home

We’re in the Alpes once again for a group birthday celebration in the capital.
I’m sitting in the pitch-black attic as those around me try to get in a nap before Round 2 tonight. Last night we went to see our favorite American hits cover band. While they sang our Coldplay and Pink Floyd, our group danced and pumped our arms and sang along. Later they switched to some Spanish music, and they tables were turned, with everyone around us dancing and singing as we just kind of swayed, left out of the language and the pride.

Sasha and I spent today lounging by the pool waterfall in the lushly landscaped yard. As she was preparing to put in headphones, reclining on her beach toweled-chair with her face in the sun, I turned to her and said, “Toughest job you’ll ever love, Sasha. Just hang in there.”
“Thanks Paulita.”
To top it off, we had Lomito Arabe, which is our favority gyro-like Asun treat, delivered directly poolside.
However, I did help this week! Yes, I, me, was of use to another person of the third-world variety.
The cooperative got a request this week for a catalog of products, which they didn’t have. So I helped my friend take product shots and taught her how to use the camera, then we put together a catalog in Word.
Just making the catalog would have been ten times faster, but the important thing is that I’m not here to do things like that, I’m here to teach people how to do things like that.
The fact that I’m here to be a teacher, really, hit me in training.
Teaching is like walking a person through a path. You know the landscape well and want to trot along. They are blind with inexperience, frightened, shuffling along. You want to say, “Come on. Why are you walking so slow?” They want to say, “Wait up. Don’t go so fast.”
Add the fact that I’m teaching computers with the fact that it’s in another language, and I can feel that I have some learning to do of my own...on patience.
Any time I get frustrated, or I just want to yell “stop clicking!” I remember how blind I recently was in the world of Spanish. I had teachers who calmly held my hand and warned me of potholes as we went along. They never said, Oh god, it’s just a verb, it’s so freaking easy. In the way they grew up speaking Spanish, I grew up with the language of computers.

Ode to my friends
I got the chance to catch up with some buddies from the U.S. today, to hear the voices of my old life. I felt so refreshed with their encouraging comments.
Then I went downstairs, my ears numb from the headphones, and looked at all my new friends I have here and felt doubly lucky.
There’s Sasha, of course, party of one, who will break it down literally whenever and wherever, who gives me the crazy eye when I deserve it, and keeps me laughing with text messages all day long.
There’s Matteo, who starts talking with his hands and raises his voice with enthusiam when the conversation turns to music or spanish. He also does a killer impression.
There’s Timmy Charley, who tries to act all goofy but then quotes Yeats and does math in his head while I’m searching in my phone for the calculator. Timmy, who dances, we decided, like a robot with Parkinson’s. He’s always there to laugh at my “That’s what she said” jokes.
There’s Eric, our New Yorker, and his constant profanity-laced commentary on what sucks and what’s awesome today. His sweet side comes out when he talks about his girlfriend or his mom.
There’s Pooja, who’s always talking out a thesis and reminding me of the vastness of education that is over my head.
And those are just my fellow REDs. Our whole group is a mix of people from all over the United States, so many cultures mixed to come here and mix some more. And then there are my Paraguayan friends, who are becoming more three dimensional as my language improves. And I have my family, who I’m lucky enough to like as well as love.
In friends, I feel like the richest girl in the world.

Sunday, Sept 28: Salsa
We started Saturday by trying to watch the presidential debates via YouTube. They were on live, but with Spanish voice-overs. You’d think with two men debating, the translater would be male. Turns out not so much.
We passed the day shopping, buying tickets for an upcoming futbol game, using the internet.
I chatted for a while with Koika (sp?) volunteers, who often stay in the same hotel. There’s a similar program in Japan and Korea. So we meet all these Asians who are doing the same thing, and chat in our overlapping foreigner Spanish.
Saturday night we headed out to salsa dance, requested of birthday girl Pooja. At the club I saw these two couples dancing in a back area like professionals. My friend Joan and I sat to watch, and as we saw our other buddies walk by on their way to the rest room, we called them over to sit with us.
This guy was dancing around, his legs like a puppet, they seemed to barely touch the ground and support his weight.
Timmy Charley, always surprising me, was going on and on: “This is incredible. Look at them. This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I want to dance like that.”
So we decided to take lessons. Turns out the puppet is also a bartender named Alex, who told me he would give us lessons for 40 mil (10 dollars) on Saturdays when we were in Asuncion.
Timmy and I decided we are going to dance like that at our despedida, our going away party in two years. Training starts on our next trip.
We left the club at about 3 and stopped at the Esso gas station/cafe, the 24-hour Denny’s of Paraguay. The late-night snack of choice is the Super Pancho, a gargando hot dog.

Los Simpsons

On Comfort...Opportunity...Rubianess

Here is a puppy. She lives at our house and her name, coincidentally, is Sasha.

Hello everyone. Things are good. If you’re checking this on a commercial break, the gist is that everything is good and I’m suddenly like a celebrity.}

The rest of you might want to take a pee break and get a snack, because I had three rainy days to just sit and write, so this is a little long...Don´t feel like you have to read it.

This morning I had a good laugh when I told my friend that I was going to shave my head in the summer. She said, Like Britney Spears? Maybe you had to hear it in the Paraguayan accent, but it was pretty hilarious.

By the way, who’s reading this blog these days? Grandma, is that you? Say hi via comment or email me. Just curious.

Sept 16: Consider myself presented

I had my presentation yesterday, with the director of Rural Economic Development.

Here are somethings he told the crowd:

For the first six months, my job is mainly to sit around getting to know people.

I’m not an employee of the coop, and I don’t have to have regular hours.

I can work on whatever projects I want, and if I don’t want to do a project, I don’t have to.

I have to go into Asuncion every now and then. (Where yes, I do sometimes work).

My boss also reminded me that I’m a first volunteer, so my projects are going to evolve very slowly and I shouldn’t worry about trying to get too much done too fast.

I really like my job.

Sept 18: Dia interesante

I received a card from my mom at the Villarica address, hence I loaded the little bus to go there. On the way there, the camposinos sin tierra, or countrypeople without land, were blocking the road in protest. We took a choppy route around the group that was holding hands across the road.

I picked up my card at my the compound where my friend lives and a send-off barbeque was winding down. An urban youth volunteer asked if we ladies wanted to go get free manicures and pedicures at a beauty school.

We went and while we sat around waiting in school desks, one of the women just pulled up with a bucket of water and patted the towel on her lap for me to put my foot there. I was so uncomfortable. Getting my feet washed and toes painted for free by a Paraguayan is not exactly what I had in mind for my “service”. I swear I’m going to help someone. Soon.

Sept 19: Rainy day with time to write

I was in a good mood today. People spoke in Guarani to me and laughed when I didn’t get it, but somehow I was able to laugh it off. They made fun of me because I didn’t know it was Friday, and they said, yes, it’s Friday, then Saturday, then Sunday. And somehow, though it sometimes seems so impossible bad days, I laughed with them.

Another volunteer was telling me a story about she nearly snapped when a woman made fun of how she was rolling dough balls. It can be the littlest thing that sets you off under the stress of missing family, being a perpetual guest, speaking another language.

But the alienation is starting to give way. People here tell me about the deaths in their families, they let me in on their funny stories, they teach me things.

Comfort

Reading my new yoga book, I found this quote: “What was very uncomfortable becomes comfortable. The principle of learning to live without ‘comfortableness’ is the same for all levels of experience. It is overcoming our need to be comfortable that expands our horizons and facilitates our growth. So this going to the direction of ‘uncomfortableness,’ and making it comfortable, is what keeps pushing the envelope of our limitations.”

We know comfortableness well. The motto of America could be changed from “In God We Trust” to “No no, don’t get up.”

I initially signed up for the Peace Corps looking for discomfort to make me a better person. I was exhibiting all the symptoms of someone raised in the environment we find ourselves in. I was thinking I needed more, more travel, more success, more ego-food, to be happy. I was upset that life wasn’t like it was on tv, though I knew I should be able to be happy with what I had. I thought the Peace Corps would change that. I booked it as the Inner Peace Corps.

I wanted a pre-packaged transformation that I could pop in the microwave for two years. I wanted my Peace Corps experience to massage my character the way those electric wraps jiggle away fat on the thighs of people on the infomercials, while they lounge reading a magazine.

I wanted that my choices be taken away. I wanted to be forced into being healthy/simple/at peace, like I was signing up for soul fat camp.

I thought there was something magical about that lack of comfort. Luckily, before I left, I read A New Earth, and realized all that changing would be up to me, no matter where I was.

If I had been planning on that lack of comfort to fix things, I would have been quite panicked upon arriving. Because the easier it is here, the harder it will be to be changed. I’m not going to start eating healthier because all that’s availabe is nuts and veggies from the field. They have cookies and cake here, just like home.

I’m not going to stop watching tv because there’s no electricity. They have their talk shows, just like home. I’m not going to stop spending money because there’s no shops. I was just in the mall last week.

I almost have as many chances as I did back home to screw up. Which is good, better even, because after fat camp you go back home.

But, going back to that quote, there are other kinds of discomforts that I’m more able to accept now. My discomfort with Spanish makes me study harder. My lonliness makes me more self-reliant.

And when strangers evolve into friends and unease gives way to familiarity, give it time, I remember that stretching my life is limbering up my character the way yoga limbers the limbs.

But I’ve been changed

I suddenly realize how rich I am, in opportunities and in money, even if I earn $30,000 a year for the rest of my life.

I saw this woman on the bus in Asuncion with a picture of her disabled son in a wheelchair begging for money. She told her story then looked to the left and right aisles and people kept their eyes on the road. And I thought I saw her eyes tear up.

And my eyes teared up, as I put myself in her brain, thinking that her son is disabled, that she has no job, that her only option is to beg for money. As little as that yeilds, there’s nothing else to do. As hard as she would work if she had the chance, she can’t.

Granted, maybe that was just a picture she found on the sidewalk. Even if her story was fake, there are so many people here who are stuck between two paths that both lead down the road less desired.

What other choice but to go hungry must there be if the only other option is to send your barefoot four-year-old out to wash car windows on a busy city street?

As much as we’ve been taught that against all odds, you can rise up and be the success story, for millions, billions, it’s just not true. Their life will be hard and dirty and short and sad.

For this I chide myself for all the times I’ve thought that I couldn’t be happy with what I have.

So goal number one: to be happy in my life situation.

Side effects include an acute awareness of my opportunities. As hard as other people work for a few pennies a day, I want to work to make the most of what I’ve been given. Suddenly I want to go to Columbia to get my Master’s. (This is where I make that joke that I left my $100,000 in my other jeans.) I never really thought I wanted to further my education. Then, suddenly there it is. And if I really want it, I can make it happen.

That’s the difference between me and so many people in the world that were previously invisible to me.

Opportunity is what I hope I can give the people I come in work with here.

Sept 21: Dance Party, Paraguay

Today is the first day of spring, if you happen to be in the southern hemisphere. This is a popular weekend for a big dance party.

There had been signs up here and in Villarica. The painted sign here showed a blond reclined in a bikini. During the day a honking line of car zigzagged up the street with signs advertising the party.

I went with my host sister. We met up with her friends and they straightened their hair, put on makeup, and asked each other whether they should wear this or that another way or “asi no mas.” (just like this). Sitting around with them, I felt at the same time like this was just like a scene out of my life, getting ready to go out with the girls; I also I felt like a reporter again, like I had no business being there, and how random that I was right there, witnessing this scene somewhere in Paraguay.

We arrived early by Py standards, at 11 o’clock. The community center had just a few people milling around the gymnasium-size hall. There was a dj booth with a cat walk, and some girls in dresses and devil horns (apparently there was a theme) strutted up and down. The spinning lights and the fog machine failed to fill the space. We began to dance in little groups, and by midnight things had filled out a little. In Py people form two lines and dance. They face each other, but it’s just two lines. A guy had his friend ask my friend if she would move so that he could dance on the opposite to me, in the other line. We later found out he was 18.

We danced and people passed around Brahmas. The girls strutted the catwalk again and blew kisses to the whistles. I think they were competing for Miss Spring.

The bathroom, guarded by one of the senoras I knew in town, cost a mil to use, and I couldn’t find the Spanish to say I thought I was being unfairly taxed for my weak bladder.

I was exhausted by 2 and we didn’t leave until 3. I woke up an hour later and heard the music still going.

Today we had a big asado with the other family. Two long tables pushed together. Beef, chicken, one big fish cooked with the head on and it’s body filleted out in halves.

I’m really liking the family I live with. I’m starting to be in on the jokes -- like the fact that the beans will be “working” in a few hours -- that tell me that when I’m around, it’s doesn’t mean the company’s mixed.

September 22: The Rubia Has Arrived.

My self esteem is having an identity crisis.

Back in the states, I’d rate myself a solid average: your garden variety Big Blond Amazon.

Since landing in Paraguay, I’ve muffin-topped out of my Columia pants from all the fried meals, I’ve barely worn makeup or heels, my face has regressed back to my teens with the acne, my legs have reverted back to hairy prehistoric times. Meanwhile, I’m surrounded by billboards with greased-up, thonged women and telenovelas with scantily-clad seductresses reminding me of what I could only hope to look like through the miracles of science and an eating disorder.

So I feel a little like, ok, we’re just going to put sexiness on the sideshelf and worry about that later.

And right when I stop trying to get male attention, I suddenly enter the Twilight Zone.

Here I am The Rubia, The Americana. It’s what my mother calls the “Only Donut in the Fat Farm” syndrome. It reminds me of the short while that I lived on a U.S. Marine Base.

I’ve gone from garden variety to exotic delicacy. But it has more to do with novelty that anything else.

Yes, my hair is yellow, and it is getting a bit long.

So when I walk into a dance party, six inches taller and five shade lighter than the women around me, apparently the text messages started to fly. Of course I hear about this after the fact, from my giggling friends. Apparenty a few guys thought they were the quickest route to getting my number.

I thought most people had seen me here, but apparently the dance party was my coming out party, with all kinds of people wondering, Who’s the rubia?

My friend Eric went through the same thing when he went to Japan. Everywhere there are different standards of beauty. We tan while the Filipino women use skin-lightening cream. Who knew that the key to beauty is travel?

So to get a big head about any of the cat calls would be pathetic, I remind myself when I’m tempted to get a big head. It’s like the people I see here in Asuncion, who are Paraguay-rich. It’s those who show it off, who think they’re better than everyone because of it, that make me laugh. All I can think is: You’re middle class in America. I have to remember that so am I.

Foster Home No. 3...American Vacation...Bacon

Sept. 9: Foster Home No. 3

I was driven to my new house in the back seat of my host’s car. My new host “mom” sat shotgun.

“What does she eat?”

“Oh, she’ll eat whatever. No problem.”

“Does she drink cocido?”

“Oh, she likes coffee.”

“Coffee?”

“Yeah, she drinks it in the morning...”

I just sat silent in the back.

My new house is nice. It’s right next to the soccer fields, the roaming grounds of sheep, hourses, cows. Next door there is a yard where another farmer lets roam his cows and ostriches in rotating shifts. I like to watch the ostriches with their backward knees.

I’ve spent the last few days passing out invitations to my “presentation,” where my boss is going to come here and explain to the people exactly what I’m doing here.

I went to the radio station to invite them, but they ended up having me go on air to invite the whole community. My friend Mariela was next to me on the couch, whispering the answers to the questions the DJ was asking me to help out.


Sept. 11- Come se dice 'slackin'

Ok, 5:30. Time to put down “Eat. Pray. Love” and study. Yep, Spanish time. Yay Spanish.

Oh look, my computer is right here on my table. Hmm...Well I guess I could just write my blog for a little while.

And so it goes that I’ve been slacking on my studies. Guarani has me frustrated and I’ve barely passed “I go.” The main problem there is that I can get along with Spanish alone here. I’m trying to find the joy in learning for the learning's sake (along with the kudos from the locals), but the joy is just so wrapped in frustration. It seems every time I ask for help in Guarani, someone just started rattling off in words I don't know.

Spanish. Ugh. It’s been four months. Why don’t I know this yet?

But when I’m just sitting around chatting in Spanish, I try to remember, I’m sitting around chatting in Spanish. This couldn’t have happened four months ago. I’ve always wanted to know Spanish, but always thought I was too lazy to actually learn.

And so, in the words of wise Sasha, “Ain’t nothing to it but to do it.” Ok, here I go...


Sept 12: Slow Slide to Hippiness

I’ve started doing yoga, which I usually associate with boredom and discomfort. But I’m willing to give it one more try.

I Googled for yoga positions, and clicked on a site that seemed to have some printable ones. Next to the articles section of the page, it said, “Did you know women have 11 moon centers?” Oh lord. I’m not looking for my moon centers. I’m looking to fit into my pants.

Remember when I thought I would lose weight in the Peace Corps?

The yoga stuff has been prompted in part by the fact that I just found out that I can’t move into my own place for another six weeks. Six more weeks of eating Paraguayan, of breaded meat bathing in bubbling oil. Something has to be done.

I jog and walk sometimes, but it’s always a scene and it’s weird that I go alone.

I’d rather being doing Krav Maga, but the local YMCA quit offering classes. (that’s a little PC humor.)

So I lay out my quick-dry towel and I stand like a warrior and I bend like a flower, and at least my shoulders ache, which tells me I’m doing something. This morning I laid down to do my snakey pose, and I had to push my Birkenstocks out of the way to make room for my head.

And I thought: Birkenstocks, yoga, Peace Corps. Oh God, I am a hippie.


Sept 16 - American vacation

Before I came to the Peace Corps, a second uncle tried to convince me to instead to the Foreign Services and/or work for embassies. I didn't, of course, but this weekend I got a taste of what it would have been like if I did.

A friend of a friend who works for the embassy had a cat that needed to be taken care of for a few nights. So I joined the cat-sitting team of seven volunteers and met up at a three-story brick house in the middle of chuchiville, Asuncion.

We opened the heavy front door, flanked by stained glass, to see a house straight out of Pottery Barn. We piled our shoes by the wooden staircase and went around the house exclaiming like it was our first day on MTV’s Real World.

“There’s a treadmill in my room!”

“She has chocolate syrup!”

“This toilet paper has plies!”

I stayed in the room the internet, aka Skype-central. The desk had wavy vases that wobbled everytime I played in the rolly swivel chair while talking with the headset on. The desk was stacked with mail and catalogs, including Pottery Barn.

My friend told me that embassy employees get free shipping, which means that most of the stuff in the house was shipped in, including food. The extra freezer, in the garage where my clothes were enjoying their first mechanical drying, was filled with Kellogg and Aunt Jemima and Betty Crocker. Within the first few minutes of checking in, I was drinking a tall glass of chocolate milk and examining everything Burt's Bees and Lysol and Pledge.

After Eric enjoyed a real shave from a sink that had hot water, he asked me, “How does it make you feel to be in this house?”

“I don’t know,” said, thinking maybe I don’t want to know.

He said, “Yeah, I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing.”

I let myself watch whatever crappy tv show I wanted on cable that was in English, with Spanish subtitles. I laid on the couch looking at the life of Denise Richards on E!, with the Spanish commercial pronouncing her name Denise Re-tards. We watched the Global Edition of the Daily Show, followed by the Best of Will Ferrill.

Mr. Whiskers or Muffins or Boots or whatever name we threw out enjoyed lots of attention. My friend the Captain Cat Sitter was so nervous about letting the cat out that he carried it much of the time. We were only allowed to open the door about six inches and slide through while another person scanned the area for any sign of an escapee.

The first night we sat outside, drinking and chatting on the porch by the little pool.

In the morning we walked to the huge grocery story, determined to make bacon, egg and cheese croissants happen. It was your typical cluster of four hung-over people trying or organize a grocery mission and figure out how to ask for chedder cheese in Spanish. Between a little chuchi shop and the big supermarket across the street, we went through the same culture shock as in the house.

“Gummy bears!”

“Bubbletape!”

“Donuts!”

We got there on sample day, and even though it was 10 in the morning, we felt the need to accept the glasses of the new Brahma beer. I consider drinking beer in a grocery store an acceptable cultural exchange.

We ate the donuts, with white frosting and sprinkles, immediately outside the store and took the groceries home to make the most delicious breakfast I’ve had in a long time.

I went to the Peace Corps office to get things done. I perused the library for as long as I wanted. I just love how many random books are there. I brought home a bag full. I walked around Asuncion by myself, enjoying, loving the freedom, and basking in the feeling of knowing where I was, and that if I got lost, I knew I could ask for directions, even in Spanish.

And now I’m back, as if sucked through a portal to America and back. And how did it make me feel? Fine, I think.

After my slight freak out, both my aunt and my mom reminded me that I can come home, any time I want. And that’s true.

If I wanted to work for the embassy, I could have. If I want to go home now and get a PR job and live in a three-story house. I can do that, too.

So I’m remembering that I choose to be here, even if, at times, I get lost remembering why.

On that note: Things I miss:
* hot baths
* nice, strong showers
* lookin’ sharp
* Grimbergen
* Krav Maga (and seeing my Krav Maga teacher)
* Yankee candles
* Food, sweet, glorious sushi, thai, mall chinese, Bagelicious stinky-stank special (tunafish with cheese on toasted everything bagel)
* This American Life
* Intervention, Cheaters (which I just actually saw a commercial for here!)
* My press pass
* Our beach

Things I’m surprised I don’t miss that much:

* my car
* couches
* my cell phone rings
* going out every weekend
* fast food

Things I like better here:

* Salad, served with a little oil, lemon juice and salt, ok too much salt. And I love how they just make it with whatever’s around. One day we had a cucumber and onion salad.
* The fresh-squeezed juice
* The double cheek kiss hello. Lots of girl-friend affection, walking arm-in-arm and such.
* Watching futbol/soccer games. Par-a-guay! and fireworks in the street when we score

Upside down...Homesick Cry

Hello. My name is Paulette. I live in Yataity. I am happy there. I work in the cooperative. I'm going to live in Paraguay for two years.

Hola. Soy Paulita. Yo vivo en Yataity. Estoy feliz allí. Trabajo en la cooperativa. Voy a vivir en Paraguay por dos años.

Mba'éichpa. Che Paulita. Aiko Yataitype. Che avy'a upepé. Amba'apo cooperativape. Aikota Paraguaype mokôi ano.

Sept 2 - Upside-down

I stood tonight thinking about the stars. They’re different here. Gone are my dippers I could spot easily. Now I look for the Southern Cross.

The stars on the other side of the planet, confirming that we are surrounded on all sides by space. Floating here. I thought about this while looking up at the top of a palm tree with the stars behind it and for a moment dizzy, like I might fall into space. I looked at the trees, and knew that they grew here at a different angle that the trees back home, growing out instead of up, like spokes on a wheel.

Sept 3 - Liver and Onions.

I had seen it in the refrigerator, a huge mass of non-meat with an off-brown color flowing off both sides of a plate. Whatever it was, I hoped I wasn’t around when it was served.

Lunch today. I sit down to what looks like meat with onion. I poke it with my fork and it’s resistance is more spongy than my liking. My host heaped more onions on top. And I think: Onions. Liver and onions.

I taste it and I know, from a practical joke my dad pulled on me, saying something a spoonful of brown stuff was chocolate ice cream when it was really liver pate.

After my first bite, I panic inside, looking at three large piece on my plate. “Oh crap. It’s liver. I hate it. Maybe I can eat it with some rice. (Another bite) Oh god no. Can’t. Won’t.”

For the record, I have eaten everything put in front of me thus far in Paraguay.

Ok, so there was one time where I took a bit of tripe, which looked like meat when I picked it up. Then I bit into it and suddenly I thought it someone had walked into the house with poo on their shoe, then I realized what I thought I was smelling was the taste in my mouth. So I spit it into my hand while the host was grabbing more drinks, and later threw it to the dog outside.

But other than that, I have been a dutiful guest.

However, this time I figured I’d had a good run, and thought of what Sasha says when I get too sensitive about offending people. (Later, she would say of this event, “I’m a grown woman and I’ll eat what I want to eat and I’m not going to eat that. Period. Next question.”)

I ate around the liver and I heard my hosts mention it in that way that I can kind of tell what people are talking about, even in Guarani, by their expressions. And I smiled and said sorry, I don’t like this part of the cow.

And they were very nice about it. I ate another serving of rice. And by the time I got to the cooperativa later it seemed everyone had heard that I finally found something I didn’t like to eat in Paraguay.

Sept 7: One big home-sick cry: Check.

This morning the family came over. And while I did Ao Poi, they spoke in Guarani. A pig that the empleada had woken up at 3 a.m. to kill was dragged in piece by piece. Both rib cages slopped on that countertop. They hacked it to pieces and partitioned them out into grocery bags while I drank my morning coffee. Later I opened my fridge and made a frightened “Mway!” noise at the sight of three shelves full of red carnage.

When I put my Ao Poi down to try and socialize, I just stood around, staring. Ao Poi is something you can do to be invisible, to look like you belong there even if you’re alone, like smoking a cigarette.

A hummingbird came and picked a the flowers right next to my head. I had time to look up and see it’s flutter of wings around a body no bigger than a human bite and a long orange beak. It was an amazing experience that I couldn’t really share. Everyone there had seen picaflors plenty of times before.

I was called when there was food. And I sat there while we ate and they talked, in Guarani.

And it’s hard to be the outsider at someone else’s family time, when you haven’t seen your family in four months and all you can think is how much longer it’s going to be. When you used to be the one joking and now your the quiet one, not saying anything for hours.

And I’d had a dream the night before that my nephew didn’t know me.

Walking to my casita, it started. The big tears you can’t stop, and you just flop on your bed and have what my mother calls “a good cry.”

I talked to Paula in Key West for a while. It calmed me down. But right in the middle-beep! Out of minutes on my phone.

The store that sells minutes didn’t have any today, maybe tomorrow, and the internet cafe is closed. Nothing I can do but take a walk and buy myself some ice cream.

There’s something else I cry about too. It’s not just missing home, it’s a kind of home-sickness that will follow me back to the states. Even there, I won’t have the kind of life where all my relatives can come over for a barbeque on Saturdays and pull up chairs under the shade. Our together time involves hotels and flights.

When I want to call my friends and family, I call Key West, Sebring, Tarpon Springs, St. Augustine, Virginia, Pennsylvania. There is no home where a big welcome home party is waiting.

Sometimes our whole way of life, or my whole way of life, moving around so much, makes me homesick.

And with all I want to do, (maybe) get my masters, be a traveling crazy, I’m afraid of the truth of one of my least favorite quotes: “You can’t have roots and wings.”

It hurts every time I rip up my roots.

Sept 8: Feeling Better

Sitting outside with my laptop and the hummingbirds and butterflies, thinking about the slight breakdown yesterday. “Everything is going to be alright,” mom would say.

There are ups and downs, everyone says about the Peace Corps. I think when I have my ups, like in two years when I’m chatting in Guarani and I forget I’m a Norte, when it feels like family here, then it be all the more amazing remembering how much of a foreigner I used to be.

Ao Poi...Feeling Like a Volunteer...Settling in to life here...Packing List

Hi all,
Ok, so the nice ladies at the post office who paused making their Ao Poi long enough for me to send some post cards told me that I could get packages right here in Yataity. They’ll go to the post office, and the ladies said they’d bring them to me.

So the address is:
Paulita
Cuerpo de Paz
Yataity, Guaira
5140
Paraguay

The Paulita, Cuerpo de Paz part I just made up. You could probably put “Rubia” and it would get to me.


August 28
Today I woke up and walked outside and the lawn people were here. A man in a straw hat was pushing around what looked like a toy lawn mower, with a long cord, with other cords added on with black electrical tape, the whole contraption stringing its way inside. There was a machete on the ground for trimming the hedges.

I sat outside with my host mom and made Ao Poi. I’m in that phase of learning something new where it’s all I want to do. I keep trying to make myself study, but I say... one more line, one more line. So I brought out my laptop, and we listened to Amy Winehouse in the breeze with our embroidery.

I feel like I’m slacking, but all the ladies here love that I’m so into Ao Poi. “Que guapa,” they say. “How hard working.” They tell me I’m going to make lots of money, but I don’t think I’m allowed to sell my stuff.

I bought the fabric for my first shirt today. They marked it for me and I sat in bed tonight and worked wearing my headlamp.

I have this weird time at night, after I have my 5 o’clock coffee. I usually head back to the casita. My options are: listen to music, read, write, do ao poi, study, or play the snake game on my cell phone. Lately the snake game and Ao Poi have been winning vs. all other options.

Me in the shop with my nearly finished shirt.

August 29 - Feeling like a volunteer
Today a few of us met up in Asuncion to change our phones to the other company, Tigo. It’s a big deal which line you have here, or which chip. Because it’s expensive to call across lines, many people here have different chips. When they need to call their Personal friends, they pop open the back of their phone and trade out their Tigo chip for the Personal one.

It’s a competitive market, so, just like back home, the cell phone companies are huge advertisers. I think they have a deal where they offer to paint the outside of businesses for free where their chips are sold. Many are either red with Personal logos and the business name painted, or blue Tigo with the same. All over the TV, billboards and radio are spots, Tigo uses the cutest Paraguayan futbol player as their spokesman.
On the bus ride this morning we passed a hotel with its sign in Guarani, and word by word I realized to my surprise I could read it. Che Sy Roga. My mother’s house.

I got the bus at 6 a.m., so by the time we passed the chipa ladies, I was ready for my usual bus breakfast.

Now you have to be careful -- many a cases of the BIG D have been blamed on bad bus chipa. But there’s this area on Routa 2, where ladies in thick stockings and short skirts wait on the side of the road with their baskets. I think the buses are contracted to stop at this one company, where one lady and one person with a thermos of cocido get on. The bus continues on as they sell the chipa, which is like a Paraguayan cheesy bagel, and small plastic cups of hot cocido. This time I was surprised at how it felt -- like my usual favorite.

For once in Asuncion I felt like I knew where I was going. I bought my bus ticket for the ride home to make sure I could get a window seat, a task that felt like it was out of a language class.

On the local bus to the PC office hopped on all the usual vendors, including one fat man who, if it didn’t molest (annoy) us, would just like a minute of our time to show us this wonderful product. He then demonstrated this high-quality belt (I noticed he was wearing another kind), knocking the buckle against the rails so we could hear that it was metal. And he was going to offer it to us for just 10 mil. But wait, there’s more. Here’s also going to throw in this handly lighter. Oh, wait, and this wonderful wallet with pockets for your photos, cards, etc.

I got off before he handed out the clear-wrapped packages to be viewed by the unwilling infomercial audience. I watched the bus go by, followed by one with two men standing in the aisle, one playing a guitar and the other an accordian.
I checked into the Peace Corps Office, which is like our little Bat cave. There’s the doctor’s office, the director’s offices, a seed bank for free help starting a garden and even a lounge with a dvd player for us to hang out in. But the real spot is the library, with its free internet. There’s a free-for-all book trade of paperbacks, as well as references we can use back at site. I filled my backpack with books on marketing, feasibility studies for our web site, and new novels.

We all have our own little lockers, and people post funny pictures of each other on them, slip each other notes and dvds, and that’s where we get our free Newsweeks. It feels like camp, which is good. Because my motto is that life should feel like field trips and camp.

In the library you hear volunteers talking about vacations they’re going to take,

projects they want to start and collaborate on. People know each other from being in the same group of trainees, being in the same VAC (or area group), and from crossing paths in Paraguay. People share the goodies in their packages (Eric got Oreos! Oh my word I miss those.)

I spent too much money, as I usually do in Asuncion. On one bus, this little kid came around, putting two chocolates and a little piece of paper on everyone’s lap. The paper said something like: Please give me one mil for these chocolates as I am poor and need this money to feed my family.

Dammit.

No, I’m not spending any more money. Yes, I am a sucker.

I’m very aware of my obvious position as The American. Like everyone is watching me to see what an American will do. Like, oh look at your expensive clothes, but you can’t give a poor little kid the equivilant of a quarter?

I gave him the mil when he made his way back to the front of the bus. He took the little paper to use again.

August 30 - Yataity Saturday
This morning my host’s son came with his wife and their 2-year-old. The toddler played in the yard with the little girls from across the street. I sat in the sun and stitched my Ao Poi. My shirt is coming along.

I went to the cooperative for a little bit, then left at noon with a “Aha akaruta.” (I’m going to eat lunch) And they said Ok, Chau. It was my first Guarani sentence where people actually responded like it was normal conversation, they didn’t laugh like, ha, look what the Norte learned.

Back at the casa we had a huge asado with beef, pork, cheesy rice, salad, and madioca.
After that I went back to the cooperative to hang out with the ladies. My friends had me look at some lyrics they had looked up and written out in English, to “November Rain” and “Wish You Were Here.”

Alf was on the TV, with a voice like a dubbed voice like a Mexican Cookie Monster.
We were talking about clothes and sizes and one of the women asked me: “Tu madred es gorda?” Is your mother fat? Oh I laughed inside, thinking of all the middle school “Your mother’s so fat....” jokes. Your mother’s fat, the ultimate insult. And Is your mother fat? The ultimate off-limits question. But here, it’s just another fact. Your mother is fat or she isn’t. (Don’t worry mom, of course I said No.)

When I’m in the shop, the customers always come in, look at the racks to the right, then pause as they see me on the left, with my embroidery hoop by the window light. A Rubia making traditional Paraguayan craft. It gives them something to talk about with the shopkeeper.

After we closed shop I headed over to the girls’ house. On the way there I learned some Guarani cuss words. One popular phrase translates to Satan’s ass.
That night we watched a Thai kung fu movie, dubbed in Spanish with English subtitles, and ate popcorn.

August 31 - Who kills the chickens?
Sunday I returned to lunch, and helped them make empanadas and pizza. The chickens tried to peck their way in from the back door.

“Who kills the chickens,” I asked, with a nod to their feathered pets. Their mother, the girls told me, with a shudder.

Then we were talking about St. Augustine while pinching the sides of the dough filled with chicken and hard-boiled eggs bits.

“And in St. Augustine, Paulita,” said one, “Who kills the chickens in St. Augustine?”
This time I laughed outloud.


And now, a public service announcement:
This is for all the future Paraguay volunteers who just Googled “Peace Corps Paraguay Packing List.” I found some lists like this when I was preparing to go, and they were very helpful. So here’s my commentary to help you out:

Peace Corps Paraguay Packing

Things that have been key
220-volt adapter with surge protector
baby wipes
baseball cap
bath towel (The quick-dry campy type)
deodorant - Bring your own brand if you’re picky. One guy brought 40 sticks. I think that’s a little overboard.
Digital camara
duct tape - for when your spanish dictionary starts falling apart.
face wash, and maybe extra because it’s expensive here.
flashlight, the wind-up ones are convenient and impress the kids
frisbee
Gatorade powder - nice for when you’re sick.
Gifts
gloves
headlamp - In case you need to use a latrine at night.
hiking boots - when the roads turn to slush
hooded raincoat
internal frame bag
ipod
journal
laptop - Peace Corps advises against it, but everyone who didn’t bring one feels like an idiot.
Lightweight pants
long sleeve or flannel
Long underwear. I sprung for the under armour, and I’ve been happy I did
Makeup. For those nights when you go out in the city and you just want to feel like a lady again.
Medium fleece jacket. I got a North Face three-in-one and it’s great.
Nalgene bottle - The Starbucks cup of the Peace Corps
nice shoes. You’ll want some work shoes. and ladies, bring some going out shoes!
Birks
Scarf
sheets
sleeping bag. Bring one that had a hood, so that if you’re sleeping in questionable circumstance, you won’t have to touch anything but your sleeping bag.
Hand sanitizer
Swim suit
Purse, or something to carry around on a daily basis. Something like a small backpack that fits your notebooks.
USB Flash drive
warm hat

Take it or leave it
money belt - I wear it in Asuncion and I haven’t been robbed, but whatever.
nice outfit for swearing in
Notepads. Bring at least one for training, or you’ll have to buy one with the cast of High School Musical 2 on the cover
sunscreen - they give you some, but it’s not good for the face

Things I haven’t used yet, but you never know
baby powder
bandana
Bug spray
Camera cards - My friend in Africa told me he sends his home rather than upload his photos, but internet’s not that slow here.
can opener
deck of cards
Leatherman - It still makes me feel cool to have it.
permanent markers
recharchable batteries
sun hat

Things I didn’t need to bring
books - there’s a big network of book trading here
Camp soap - just bring regular soap
Compass/whistle
Shampoo/co (aah! Huge spider! ...destroyed) nditioner - they have plenty here. I’m a Suave girl now.
Digital alarm - my host family woke me up during training and now I have a cell phone
A modest dress - I bought an ugly long-sleeve brown dress, because I thought I needed to look. My host sister asked me if it was a uniform, and I have yet to wear it. (The women here do not really dress as modest as it seemed in the PC handbook)
glowsticks - I thought they’d be good for light, but now I have no idea when I’d use them.
knife sharpener
Spanish-English Dictionary - They give you one
TP
Top-of-the-line water purifier. The water here is fine, and they give you chlorine tablets anyway.

I wish I had brought
beads (or whatever craft stuff you like)
more ankle socks so I don’t look like a loser wearing tube socks with shorts and sneakers.
sneakers. What was I thinking in leaving my sneaks?
a nice comfy hoodie
photos. I have some on my computer, but not nearly enough. And they’re not portable.
More shorts. PC said that the women here don’t wear short shorts. Um, I beg to differ.
More sports bras
More tank tops


Also, just go for the 80 pounds you’re allowed to pack. I bought every compact, light-weight, camp-style piece of equipment I could waste my money on. I was at 66 pounds with my internal-fram pack and one rolling backpack. Then I got here, and one other guy brought two huge rolling black bags like he was going on a trip to Miami. You don’t really have to carry everything you own. So just pack what you want to bring, because once you get down here, it’s going to be super expensive to ship or buy here.
But really, if I got here and all my stuff had been destroyed on the flight, I still would have been fine. I mean, the Paraguayans are fine with what they have down here, so so will we. So try not to freak out about it.