September 29, 2007

im here!

We got to asuncion after a 10 hour layouver in buenos aires which was spent sleeping on the floor and trying to learn everyone´s name. After that we had a 2 hour flight to asuncion. At the start and end of the flight the capitain said "beautiful ladies prepare for landing/takeoff" it was pretty unexpected. The climate here right now is pretty mild, about 90 degrees with a bit of humidity but it´s going to get a lot hotter in the summer. I´m staying with a family in a small town outside of guarambare (a subburb of asuncion, sorta) the town is called nueva esperanza. There are only a few roads in the town and they are paved with cobbles. I live in a house with 5 people - two host parents who are in their late 40s, a 19year old daughter, and a 17 and 16 year old sons. They are all really nice but it´s been a bit frustrating trying to communicate with my limited vocabulary. However, we have started learning guarani right away so we can be really good speakers when we get to the campo (county) for our assignments. The food is heavy on starches and meat, but it´s still pretty tasty. The one phrase that we know really well is mbaechaba. Mbaechapa means How are You? but you don´t pronounce the M. We have language training for about 4 hours a day and then other kinds of training for a few hours in a local school. The earth is very red here and there are lots of trees that I´m not familiar with yet.

The other people in the environmental education group are really nice and friendly and all about the same age as me. I think that about half of them have the same level of language competency as me, so I don´t feel so bad about looking through a dictionary for words now. There arn´t really any mosquitos here except for at dusk, but supposidly in the campo there are TONS of mosquitos. All in all I´m doing really well except for feeling kinda frustrated about the language bnarrier, but hopefully that will pass with time. I havn´t been about to post any pictures yet but hopefully I´ll be aboe to do that pretty soon. This place actually really reminds me of my permaculture workshop in ariona last summer - the red earth, the humidity, and the summer monsoons.

I miss everyone a lot and send my best wishes back to the states. I´ll be able to write pretty easily so I´ll be on that as soon as I have a chance =] adios!

September 23, 2007

hrmah.

however much i'd like to push away my feelings of nervousness they're still there. I mean I've done this kind of thing before, going off and living on my own and making new connections & friends etc. but this time I'll be speaking spanish which is really throwing me for a loop right now. But there's not much I can do at this point other than get ready with my loads of bags. here i go!

September 22, 2007

two days left. feeling a little pressured to figure out my packing situation - I think I've got just about everything ready but I'm sure I'll end up forgetting something. I'm definitely feeling a little stressed in general. At least I got my ipod working and loaded with music. bleh.

September 20, 2007

sitting here in the design lab at poly WAITING for my collection of music to load onto my hard drive...80Gbs takes a really long time to drop even with firewire =T I talked a bit at Umut's 470 class today; it went okay I guess. I honestly hadn't been thinking about trona for a while so i kinda stumbled through my work and spouted a bunch of generalities. I guess people understood what I was saying. I remember not really getting into the class till about the 3rd week so i can understand the lack of pointed questions. Umut seemed to like it. I have a nasty headache and a two hour drive ahead of me. yay.

September 19, 2007

Just received my yellow fever vaccination and certification sheet. Guess the Peace Corps doesn't give volunteers in paraguay this particular vaccine because they don't consider yellow fever a risk within the country. However, if I want to travel into any of the more northern south american countries I'll need to have it to get back into paraguay. The PC doctor told me that I should get the shot in-country because it'd be cheaper, but he wasn't sure where I could get it from. Needless to say, I decided to get it here.

I also have a address for people to mail me things!

Lindsey Foucht, PCT
Cuerpo de Paz
162 Chaco Boreal
c/Mcal. Lopez
AsunciĆ³n, 1580, Paraguay
South America

This address will be good for as long as I'm a trainee, and is also posted above the map of paraguay at the bottom of this page.

September 17, 2007

t-minus

Alright! Officially one week to go until I'm on a plane to my S.American adventure. My packing is thus far woefully incomplete and I'm still trying to finish up those ever so useful rosetta stone language CDs. On the upside, my new crush/water/shock proof digital camera came today 3 days ahead of schedule. It's very nice. And of course my dreamy header image comes courtesy of a screen shot from byousoku-5-centimeter.