Alright, back from the bar with the other trainees to make a post. We had our language interviews on monday to test our aptitude in guarani. You have to pass at an intermediate-mid level (5 on a 10 point scale) to go on to spanish. In talking with everyone else they´re at the novice-mid to novice-high level which makes me feel kinda strange because I actually passed at the intermediate-mid level. Maybe because my family doesn´t speak to me in spanish at all i guess ive been picking it up pretty well. The guy who was interviewing us tape recorded the whole thing and had us talk about ourselves and then ask him questions about random things.

Also on monday I did a presentation about soil degredation and designing water harvesting earthworks to the environmental ed and crop extention group. I made little mock hills on the ground and let people figure out the solution that the erosion and soil degredation problems. Everyone liked it and the trainers said that it was a really good presentation.

We´re learning about all the dating and romance of paraguay and i got to say its pretty interesting. There are actually certain "dating days" when a man can visit a womans house and just talk and relax but its kinda like a date. Tues, thurs, sat, and sunday morning. And if a man visits a woman on the other days, then that´s telling her that shes his "second choice". You can also send these things called saludos that mean that youre interested in someone. If they send them back then that might mean that they like you. Speaking of liking people, I was pretty interested in one of the girls in the apiculture sub-group. Unfortunatly, she doesn´t really seem to be interested athough it certainly seemed so at first. It´s too bad, seeing as she´s cute and a really interesting person.

Its pretty hot and humid here, and its going to get even warmer. As they say hakuitererii, which means it realllllly hot. And boy is it going to get warmer...

In terms of the book questions, i still really want the permaculture design manual but would say that at this point to hold off on buying it because it´s so heavy. Ive got so many books to lug to my next site I want to get situated before I start adding more books to my collection. But sending gaia´s garden would be really nice. ALSO, about the frisbee, please just send one brightly colored or white frisbee for¨"ultimate frisbee". If you send more than one in a box they´d probably get confiscated.

*Very Important* If you send the book, please SEND the book gaia´s garden in a separate box so in case they do take the frisbee i´ll still get the book. I´m going to make a page with all the things I could use so I can keep a running list sometime next week. =]

I really excited about your new planning adventure dad! Sounds like a lot of exciting fun. Thank god you got rid of the bel air...haha. Yes, Ive gotten moms letters but havn´t had a moment to write a thing, emails or paper. I do really like getting the letters though, its fun reading things that ive gotten in the mail. This blog is just about the only thing ive had time to update...mrh.

I got really sick last week end and was barfing for about half a day and also had a fever. It sucked and i missed a field trip and couldnt eat anything for about 2 days after. But im just fine now, obviously, as i just got back from the bar. How are things with the fire in california?? I havn´t gotten any recent news in a long time so I feel really out of the loop. BUT in general everything is really fine here - I have few complaints. Will update more later!

hey all im back in nueva esperanza and back in the swing of things with school and such. We´ve started doing work out in the community building gardens in the back of various peoples houses which has been pretty fun. My visit down south to the volunteer´s site was really good because I got a first had look at the living conditions and general lifestyle of a peace corps volunteer. I´m kinda fried right now from class so I don´t have a lot to get out of my head BUT I do have a link

http://www.discfly.com/productinfo~productid~dcsultrastar.html

for the frisbee disk that I would like for my birthday. Dad i know the doggie disk may be better to get through customs but its just not going to work, haha. Don´t worry about customs, just send it fedex in the smallest box possible. I also have a few books that I could really use (for future reference) in case anyone feels like getting me something really spiffy. Listed by order of preference (but any of them would be awesome):

1. Permaculture: a designers manual by Bill Mollison
2. Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands vol. 2 by Brad Lancaster (www.harvestingrainwater.com)
2. Gais´s Garden by Toby Hemenway
3. Mycelium Running by Paul Stamets

Any of these should be sent by fed-ex to the address at the bottom of this site. SO when Im not so fried I´ll make a proper update about what´s been goin on and such. =] Ciao!

mba´echapa encarnaciongui!

(baeschapa encarnacionwe) Hello from encarnacion! I´m here visiting with another volunteer sam, who is another environmental ed. volunteer. He´s one year into his service and lives in a little town called nuevaventura that´s out pretty close to one of the national preserves in the southern provence of Itapua just across the river from argentina. Ill be staying at his site for about 4 days and learn the ins and outs of his work and interact with his community a bit. Its been raining pretty hard here so we´re killing time to wait for the roads to open again.

Ill give a little more infor about general life in nueva esperanza with my host family so as to shed a bit of light on some of the interesting cultural nuances of this place. First, my host dad works as a bricklayer which makes my family pretty much middle class. My host mom stays at home and takes care of more domestic things during the day while my host brothers and sister are at school. There arn´t a whole lot of social activites excepting church but walking is pretty big here. Also, two of the volunteers brought frisbees with them and they´re a huge hit. We play ultimate frisbee in the evenings. Walking is an intersting thing here, because who you walk with and at what time of day has a lot of connotation. For example, if a guy and girl are seen walking together especially at night, people assume that they´re going to go get it on. In a nutshell. This means that when my host sister (who is 19) asks me if I want to go on a walk I decline for reasons of keeping things uncomplicated and because I don´t want her "esposo" getting any more jeallous than he already is.

We mostly walk around on foot and then take busses when we have to. The bus system is totally loose - you just stick out your arm and the bus will stop for you no matterr where you are one the road. Speaking of drivers, people are nuts here! They will pass at all times, into oncoming traffic, buses swerving off the road onto dirt to miss other passing busses. And there really arn´t lane lines either, you just kinda go. Its really insane.

In terms of food, we can get just about any kind of fruit or vegetables here, its just that i don´t do the shopping so I usually end up eating a starchy product (like mandi´o) and meat. No vegitables unless you count cabbage sprinkled with salt. Two nights ago I got served a big plate of beef tounge for dinner. I closed my eyes (literally) and ate half of it. Big thick pieces of tounge...yuck. Sam, the volunteer im visiting here, said he has eaten pigs eyes as a "treat" and also had pidgeon heart soup. Yum. Pigs are a fun topic here, as a few people have witnessed the killing of pigs. One beekeeping volunteer even did the deed herself - she stabed it in the jugular and held a bucket to catch the blood. Pretty intense.

The churches are all catholic here, and of course everything is in guarani/spanish so its hard to know what´s going on. But all the motions are the same, and you still do the greeting your neighbor thing so it´s kinda easy to know where you are in the mass. Two odd things about the mass: 1: Only a few people go up to take communion, everyone else just chills in their chairs. Not sure why. 2: Most services include a couple or two having their marriage consecrated by the priest. It happens so fast I didn´t actually realize they were getting married untill someone told me.

Here´s a typical sentense in guarani that i had to write for class:

Guarani: Oi po mbo´ehárakuera escuélape. Ha´e ogusta okaru mesápe clasépe.

English: There are 5 teachers at the school. They like to eat lunch at a table in a classroom.

Oi = There is/are
po = 5
mbo´ehárakuera = teachers (adding kuera makes the word plural)
escuélape = at school (ading pe to the end adds an "at" or "in" to the attached word.

All the verbs are conjugated at the front, but they all conjugate the same way except for 4 irregular verbs. Also, to make any verb a future tense you just add "ta" to the end, and to make it past you just add "kuri". It´s really nice and easy to learn. The pronunciation is the killer though. Words have to be said a very certain way otherwise you might end up saying something you really didn´t mean to. Example: a classmate of mine wanted to say that he eats something which is Che Ha´u (shai ha-oo). But instead he said "Che u" which means "I want you to eat me". The language teacher had to leave the room she was laughing so hard.

Anyway, everything is going very well. I´m still a bit nervous about the language thing but considering what we´ve been hearing from other volunteers we´ve got a real advantage starting out in guarani right away. Ill update again next wendsday when Im back from nuevaventura. Jajotopata!

alright! we made it to the peace corps office in asuncion in one piece. Its super nice here with real toilet paper (not just a roll of thin hard paper product). ALthough you still don't flush the paper - it still gets put into a waste paper bin by the toilet. Tomorrow we're going on a long stay site visit to another volunteer's site somewhere in the country which is going to be a big adventure! We're getting back on next tuesday so Ill update more then. ciao! OH! PLEASE send me pictures of you! I really need them to show people who are curious about my friends and family! =D

okay! Things are moving at a really fast pace here in some respects and in others things are super slow. Family life? Really slow. We sit around, eat food, walk to the water tower and back and go to church. Pretty much it. Contrast this to going to language training and technical training, its like warp speed. We´re learning all guarani for 4 hours in the morning using didactic materials. On thursday we´re going to asuncion on a field trip/mission to meet with some environment NGOs and ask them questions about what they´re involved in and how they support the peace corps. Annnnd we have to this in guarani AND get to asuncion on our own and deal with all the language things as well. Its going to be challenging. ha. It´s really nice here right now, cool and breezy, about 85 degrees. We havnt had much rain yet, but there was a crazy lightning storm the other night when all the lights went out. It was really noticable the next day how much smoke was in the air after it rained, meaning that i actually smeled fresh air for the first time since ive gotten here. Everyone burns their garbage so it´s kinda smoky.ç

OH! Two things before I go.

1. I could really use another large size moleskin lined journal, normal pages not the thick kind. Also, a frisbee for ultimate frisbee would be amazing. These two things would make nice birthday presents (hint,hint).

2. I can´t access my email. Mom could you remove the tilde from the begining of the pass word? thanks! Ill update more next week when i get back from asuncion!

Jajotopata! (see ya later!)

mbaechapa! Okay so weçre learning guarani at a pretty fast pace. the language itself is pretty easy with only one way of conjugating verbs and no irregular tenses. its actually relly nice to learn. the only thing that is REALLy hard is making the nasal sounds that are ubiquitous to the language. Its like youre holdiong yuour tongue at the top of your mouth and speaking through your nose...yep, haha. But since when we get to our sites were going to be speaking only guiarani mostly its pretty important to learn. My family is still good, but the language barrier with me speaking little spanish is hard. I havnt been able to log onto my hotmail account because its not functioning on the computers here so this blog is the best way to get me info. Im really craving brocolii. we eat alot of meat at our house. Well gotta go! Will update more later.