the paraguayan reverie

well well, i suppose i should really give some kind of update seeing as it has been a month without any additions to the blog. Where to start...ok. After much heeing and hawing i have finally moved into my new house. Ive moved over the hill to a different community that i was officially placed in by peace corps. I was kinda nervous about telling the family that id been staying with for the last four months that I was moving, but it turned out now to be much of a problem at all. I am kinda sad that im not living there anymore - i miss the company and being able to ask people questions about things that i dont understand at all hours of the day. But on the plus side i dont have to listen to little kids crying, people yelling at little kids, or mass amounts of chickens crowing at 4 in the morning. The day i was supposed to move there happened to be no but, so my contact stoped a carreta passing by and i threw nearly all of my plants, bags and tools on board. Granted an ox cart is not the fastest mode of transportation, but when the roads are esentially mud you take what you can get. I then had lunch with the host fam and followed the cart on my bike.

So the basic story since then has been a problem of utilities. Water and electricity in specific. My electricity didnt work for nights in a row and then mysteriously started working again. Around the same time the water shut off and remained off for about a week. Luckily i have a gas stove so i can heat up water to do a bucket bath, but man it is a pain in the ass without a running water source. I had to haul it all about a hundred meters to my house, then decided to filter what i was going to be drinking. I normamly wouldnt do this, but the neighbor who owns the well isnt the cleanest person, and im almost sure hes got worms or some kind of parasite. Therefore, i filtered my water so as to aviod a similar predicament.

Ive been working in the school garden at the escuela basica in costa alegre, my former town of residence. Ive been stressing experimentation with all of my projects, in the hopes that the kids will become a little more curious about things and start to make purposeful explorations. We did a natural pesticide demo and then applied them to the tomato plants that are being eaten. Weve also done a planting experiment with different concentrations of manure and soil to see which mix best supports health plant growth. At the collegio in ensenada, my present community, ive been visiting each students home in the final grade and helping them to plant trees. There are twenty seven of them so its been a challenge just finding everyone let alone helping them plant their trees correctly. So far ive visited 20 of them, and am hitting up the last 7 tomorrow mnorning.

The preliminary design explorations ive been working on for the new costa alegre collegio have kinda stalled, mainly owing to me working on getting my house in order. Im hopping to start to design a plan for participatory design in guarani so the students can make their own decisions about the layout of the grounds, what facilities theyd like and so on. Im still considering whether or not to include the teachers in the same groups as the students - they might take over, or more likely the students would just copy whatever the teachers do - but ill still have to wait for at least a few more months to get that project rolling.

Presently I am collecting data about the students to support a petition to the municipality for some funding for the new school. I figure if i can show that most of the students want to continue learning, but it will be difficult for them in their present situation i may be able to leaverage something. Also still need to contact different organizations in the states who might be interested in getting on board.
Anyone know a person, group, or organization that wants to help fund the construction of a new school down here?

Presently feeling nearly competent in speaking with people. Still lose most of the nuances of conversation, but i can respond and have general dialogue pretty well.

So, the new peace corps volunteer for tobati has arrived. We have lunch plans at my place next week, and she said she wants to go cut down a tree. I mentioned that I have friends with chainsaws who we could go cuting with, and i gathered from her face that that wasnt what she was imagining. She seems pretty nice, and once she gets her feet under her in terms of language im pretty sure we´ll be able to work together.

Im off to asuncion this weekend for a meeting with the country director to talk about work stuff and then im going to have a delicious, inexpensive dinner and drink beer. Yep. I miss everyone back home, and will call next time im sitting at a computer that has a decent connection. Bye!