NEW PHOTOS ADDED! I completed my first design workshop!! Visit my flickr account by clicking on the link to the right. It took alot of planning, and the help of my good buddy hugo (the to-be-director of the high school) to pull it off, but I now have a clear direction to take with the design thanks to the hard work of the teachers and students who participated. It basically took a week of:

- writing formal invitations
- hand delivering the invitations
- inviting the students house by house (aprox. 1 mile radius, on bike in mud/rain)
- designing the activities
- writing out instructions for the activities
- buying supplies
- preping the materials
- correcting the intended message - goal/objs of workshop
- setting the adgenda/timetable
- organizing use of workshop space
- buying food and cooking
- drinking wine from a box

All this, in addition to guiding people through a process they'd never experienced before to arrive at a product that at the outset they didnt understand. Activities that occured on feb.8th:

- presentation of reasons for holding the workshop
- drawing of ideal colegio and presentations
- explanation of a spatial diagram, by way of the local brick factories
- spatial diagraming of the school environment and presentations
- site walk/exploration
- solar aspect/orientation map
- spatial maping example of brick factory
- create scaled plans of school and presentations
- choosing actual location for first classroom to be built within the month

SO anyway, i kinda ran myself down to the point of sickness and had to stay in bed for a day after the workshop ended. I guess not really sleeping well for 3 days and then pulling a quasi-all nighter at the end basically has the same effect that it would back in the states.

School starts back up here in about 2 weeks, and im presently trying to figure out how to get the teachers be motivated accomplish something with me before the year actually starts. Two things that I know ill be doing for sure is organizing the students-teaching-students program again through the society-environment class, and also running a workshop on proper project management for some of the teachers at the high school. Kinda alot, but itll be all i have for the first month or so and im not too worried about getting most of it done.

Other than that its really hot. Hot. And i have running water twice a week for a few hours a day, said hours typically happening when I happen to not be at home to fill up every bottle and bucket I have. This sucks a bit, and makes nearly every aspect of my life inconvenient, and slightly more dirty than I would like.
It could be worse and I could not have electricity.. life without a fan would be horrid and even more sweaty/dirty. Ha!

Valentines day is tomorrow.. have to make a valentine! he! Chau!

Time away from paraguay has been a very interesting experience for me. And not just because of the places ive gotten a chance to see, but also because of the perspective ive been able to experience as not only a foreigner on vacation in another country, but as a foreigner from two different countries with a mix of two sets of cultural norms applying them to yet a third place.

Geographically, northern argentina is not that far from paraguay. If one were to fly from asuncion to salta it would only take a few hours. But the culture is so much more influenced by the incan empire that spread down along the andes that it really felt like a completly different country, no only in comparison to the paraguayn country lifestyle, but also to buenos aires in the south which was very european. The scenery was high-desert like, with scrub and large cactus on the hills and some larger vegetation down in the low lands. Packs of donkeys, little mud brick houses in backwater towns, packs of children staring at the buses as they pass by their front porches. All of this is much like paraguay (minus the donkeys), but it was kinda strange to hear people speaking heavily accented spanish instead of guarani in the smaller communities.

I actually was kinda taken aback at the conditions in some of the towns that we passed on the way to our destination place a few hours south of salta in cafayate (pronounced cafaCHAte). I know that argentina is pretty well developed in many parts, so i never expected to see people living in simple mud brick houses with no windows or doors like the ones ive encountered while exploring ruins in death valley. Ive seen plenty of tin and plastic sheet shack houses (even in my paraguayan community) but just being in the desert again and seeing the way some families lives out there, with just a little heard of goats and disintegrating mud house kinda threw me a bit.

For most of my vacation id been traveling with a pretty large group of 9 to 11 people, so being able to go into the last week of my vacation and travel with only one other person was super refreshing. It was get really trying when people are pulling a group in all different directions, and no one can make up their minds. One just ends up sitting around feeling irritated. This is in contrast to my last week, where if we wanted to go somewhere it was relativly simple to make the decision. However, this is not to say that traveling with just one other person does not have its difficulties. There were certainly times toward the end of the trip where we had spent so much time together, talking about anything and everything, that there was really nothing left but to just sit there and enjoy the scenery passing. Too, one cant as easily have alone time when traveling as a duo, since the other person would naturally have other people to hang out with in a larger group setting. Also, it kinda goes without saying that whether you enjoy the company of your travel companion can make or break the trip; theres nothing worse than feeling trapped in an difficult situation where one would of course want to instead be having a plesant, vacation-esque time. Luckily for me, although id known gina for only a short while before then trip, we got along well enough to have things go smoothly for the majority of the time.

The highlights of the final part of my nearly month long vacation were a hiking trek we took for a day around the valley to see some of the landscape that bore a striking resemblance to many parts of death valley - the jutting rock formations, box canyons and yellow blooming desert scrub was very nostalgic. At the end of the treck we hiked into the back of a canyon where a man was waiting to give a flute and drum performance in this natural rock theatre. It completly unexpected, and exactly what i would have done had i been there by myself. Thus, to sit and have this wonderful music washing over us and around the canyon while the wind rushed up and out into the sunset spotted valley was better than anything I could have asked for as a terminus to my trip.

So I am happy to be back in Paraguay, ready to see things in a new light, with a slightly new perspective. As gina and I kept realizing throughout the week, everything thing you do is built on the foundation of your past experiences, your memories and all the things you value enough to remember. I am happy to have had the opportunity to build on who I am while I was away, to have had conversations about things that really matter, to have been able to listen and share, to feel like i do not just let time pass, but am an active participant in shaping what comes to be. And as I told a good friend of mine, "Heres to the little moments - the times that connect moments to moments, between the bright flashes of experience. They define us, but we wont remember them with any clarity as time selectivly shreds the fabric of our memory. So heres to who we are in this moment - heres to now."

its been a great two weeks in uruguay and argentina, times filled with great beaches, dinner parties, lots of wine and more than a few really great times. Actually, this vacation thus far has far exceded my expectations, being that Ive consistently felt like ive been having a worthwhile time, even if i was just taking a nap on the front porch of our beach house, or sitting in a park watching the trees and clouds slowly move with the wind.

And tomorrow(!) i start hopefully the best part of my trip where i go up to beautiful tucumán and cafayate with gina to (of course!) have wonderful time for the new years. Im still not totally sure what were going to be up to when we´re cruzing around, but im pretty sure we´ll at least be going for swims in waterfalls, seeing some sweet desert rock formations and maybe even ride some horses. Oh yeah, i rode horses for the first time in Uruguay. On the beach. I was galloping up and over sand dunes with a pack of 6 other people; it was amazing.

Other highlights include the break-dance show i saw last night with my peace corps buddies and a few new friends from the hostel. It was a really cool time, despite the fact that the club was like an oven and i was basically soaked by the end of the night. As a side note, there are a ton of people from the bay area in BA, an almost funny ammount actually. I think out of a group of l0 that were with us last night, there were 5 people from CA, four of them from the greater san francisco area. Strange.

Another highlight was for sure the tango/dinner show which highlighted two dancers, and a couple singers. They were seriously talented, the man especially. I was totally blown away by the footwork, twirling and spinning, diping and kicking. Also, on the random note there was a family sitting at the table over that was from monterey, CA. I didnt know any of them, but still it was kinda odd. Also, as a slightly funny side note, my buddy dave and i decided to eat left over food after the show that people had left on their tables. Basically it was a cheese and meat plate and were were shoveling the cheese wedges into our mouthes while looking out for the waiters. This was a really nice place too, with people in suits and things, meanwhile me and dave are chowing down on people´s leavings. Classic.

More to come later.

presently typing away from the second floor of a hostel in the palermo neighborhood of buenos aires (BA) that has great stained glass windows and nice, "real" matresses, not a little foam pad that you have to suppliment by spreading magazines out underneath for a little extra cushioning. This is my first of 5 days in BA and ive got a pretty big schedule to get on, including the recoleta cemetary and adjoining artesinal fair today, a slew of museums and tango show tomorrow, and then maybe ill rent a bike and hit up most of the major parks to take some of the photos i keep saying that Ill take and then never do.

Im pretty excited about the cemetary today, to be quite honest. I found a map to all the graves in one of the side rooms in the hostel and the place is huge! Ive always been kinda curious about what would drive people to built a huge monument to store the body of a deceased family member. Must there at least be a little motivation on the part of the living to show off to the curious people, like myself who pass through, that their family was powerful, or that their family had money, or their family was well respected. Granted, it is also a tribute to the deceased, which has its place. But when that tribute (to use some examples ive seen in Paraguay) is a little house literaly covered in smooth shiny tile while the family has a dirt floor and crumbling walls, i have to question the rationality of it all. Well, regardless of the rationality of the place, im off to see it right now!

Ill add more later! Chau till then!

ok. ok. Things are moving along over here in Paraguay, and I dont mean the cows that have worn a trail in front of my house trying to eat my plants through the fence. What I mean is that Im going on vacation! Essentially leaving paraguay untill the begining of january for a much needed mental break from the rigors of bike riding and hydration rituals. Ill be going to uruguay and staying in a little beach town (the ocean!!) for a week, then to Buenos Aires for another week through christmas, and then off to the next exciting segment of my trip in northern argentina. As i pass the days flying kites and eating cheap, delicious food, the moment may arrive when I find myself sitting at an internet café. At that point, i will update this page so as to not forget later what had been going on around me. Till then! Chau!

so the last post i didnt quite finish my ideas about the problem of understanding the needs of the people who will eventually use a design. Ive since finished going through all the surveys from the ninth graders, and ive realized that they are quite aware of the things that they want, perhaps more than I gave them credit for. One question the gave me some great responses was one that I never would have asked had i not been observing their habbit throughout the year.

Each day at recess, most of the older kids leave campus to a small chapel across from the school. They usually sit over there and just talk with each other on these two old benches and drink terere. But their responses to why they value the space were great. Some of the highlights were that they 1. Appreciated the silence away from the school, 2. They felt like they were closer to nature, 3. They really liked the benches 4. It was a space separated from what goes on at the school that they could essentially claim as their own.

In comparision to other slightly more generic questions, this one gave me the information I wanted. Why was that? I believe it was because the kids didnt have to make any abstract connection to a place they could not readily conceptualize. They saw the place, they understood their rational for going there, and they wrote their responses. Simple.

Then going to the question which asked the kids to identify their ideal colegio (whose responses were almost not worth using) where the students had to draw only on their preconceived notions, students named teetertoters and slides as desired items. I asked them later about this, and they all laughed and said that this is completly not related to what they kids actually want.

Thinkings about it though, when you have no way to base your ideas on anything else then what you know (which is one elementary school) im not totally surprised at the non-sensical responses.

As a closing to this segment of the design story, i will be hosting the first of my design workshops this sunday with the profesors that will be teaching at the school. We will be setting their educational goals and how they relate with the design of the school grounds. Ill be setting up the building footprints so they can conceptualize the space, and also having them fill out a survey to identify their goals for the students and the teaching space. It will work out i hope.

Also, Ive read most of the letters from spreckles school (!) and will try to respond to those as soon as possible. I really enjoyed reading them, and should give responses that are equally enjoyable. Till later then!

Well what to say... its been more than a year that ive been in this country and im finding myself reflecting more and more about what im doing here and why exactly I should push myself to do the best work that I can. I still wonder sometimes: am I really what a peace corps volunteer should be? How would my work be different if I had a different temperment or work ethic? Am what Im doing really making a difference to the people with whom i work (or at least try to work)? I am, it seems, full of questions about myself. Im not really doing any self doubting about my place in paraguay, but i see more and more how my work can have the potential to really influence people of groups of people.

One project thats been weighing on me a bit has been the colegio design project. All the planning, the struggling to explain my reasoning and rational for why i want to run the project like so, and the seeming inability of various people to take an active interest in the project even when it will directly influence their quality of life and the standards existing within the community.

At this point, Ive finished doing the student surveys about their preferences for the colegio and the school grounds. Im still not even sure that ive really collected acurate data. When I ask the students about their responses to certain questions, for example, to describe their ideal colegio, they end up drawing the only colegio that they can conceptualize: Swing sets, a few separated buildings, a few flowers and a futbol pitch. This was slightly irritating. And in addition I had to pretty much explain each question verbally in guarani, as even the ninth graders cannot read spanish correctly, much less understand what the words actually mean. This is ok, and the data is still telling, but its utility for my project is very much in question.

I also had asked them to draw their ideal space to learn the subjects of the colegio. Many drew futbol pitches again, and they even rationaled that this was in fact was a learning space.

I had to consider myself and my biasas for a bit in this case. If someone told me this normally, of course I would normally assume that they didnt understand the question or else they were just trying to screw with me. Yet all the kids who drew non sensical things such as learning spaces (like water and grass) or a volleyball court, when questioned about their rational for drawing or writing these things, claimed most adamantly that all these things were in fact their ideal learninig spaces.

What does this say? It says that either the kids cannot even begin to wrap their heads around the idea of a space not already in existence (very posible) and therefore just drew what they liked. Or else they were completly serious, and i should take them serious as well. How can i see through their points of view? What information can I glean from the non sensical responses? When I looked at a drawing of an ideal learning space that only includes a bookcase full of books and a piece of chalk, and asked the kid "is this all you want to draw? A bookcase for your ideal learning space?" I should try to see it from their perspective as they answer "yes!".

When i imagine this drawing, i would include the things that I focus on: the space, where the students sit, and how the building interacts with the exterior space. Each person sees something different. Each thing is then filtered through their biases and socialy norms/taboos. What results is that someone may see the floor and how exacting it has been fitted together. more to come in a sec