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!