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

so ive been thinking about what ill be taking away with me when I complete my spendid time here in paraguay. I know it´s still a ways off, but with things starting to feel more settled in site ive begun to wonder a bit about how my life here will transfer to over there. I do know in paraguay that Ive become a more health conscious, both in terms of my own personal well-being and that of other people. I mean its hard no to want to brush and floss everyday when you see people with cavities on the fronts of their teeth and little kids with just black mush in their mouthes. I dont really understand the teeth problem here actually, seeing as these people have been given many dental hyegine presentations and get tooth brushes free through the school. As I see it, the problem really comes down to lifestyle choices, and the fact that a thought process such as "Should i really give my three year old soda every day, and then suckers or hard candy on the side?" does not really exist. So anyway, im now bushing my teeth regularly. Great.

But what else? So i´m getting better at learning new languages. This is a good thing, especially if id like to work in california where i believe the minority population has been the majority for a good while now. Granted, the design buisness usually follows the money trail, but that doesnt mean there´s now work to be had serving multiple populations. I really feel like now more than ever that the way to being the most succesful a person can be is to learn new languages. I mean, here its essential and not really an option. But it makes me see how much one might miss out on back home in the states without that knowlege. On the flip side, my english is degrading. Typically, i forget the correct wors in english and have to supliment it with a spanish or guarani word. I spend 30 seconds today tring to remember the word for remolacha (beets) in the supermarket.

I also feel like this specific type of work has made me more acountable to myself and to my goals and rationalizations about the future. To be sure, I see many paraguayans wasting their time away being drunk, taking no interest in their education, or just assuming that whatever will happen is just going to happen. Its almost a fatalistic aditude, but they are so tranquilo about the buisness that I often forget that things could be better. I do sometimes sit at my house doing nothing and don´t feel guilty about it. Ive learned to relax. yes. But at the same time, ive realized very clearly that if i dont gett off my ass and put myself out there and push people to change or to listen or to think nothing is going to happen. Im not going to learn anything, and they arnt going to get anything out of the deal either. There´s no one looking over my shoulder here telling me what to do, or if im doing my job right, or even to give me an idea of what i should do. Its all on in my head, and all on my shoulders. This is not to say that i feel stressed all the time, certainly not. But i will for sure that away from this experience the keen understanding of how one gets something done: you go make it happen.

ADDED NEW PHOTOS! So ive put up some photos of my house, images of a pig slaughtering i attended and some shots of a tree plating project i recently completed at one of the local escuela basicas. Just follow the link on the right to flickR. Im presently hanging out in asuncion and enjoying the pleasures of a relativly cool afternoon. Received one shirt and landscape architecture magazines in the mail, which was pretty sweet. Enjoy the photos!

hey there hope everyone thing is going well up there in the northern hemisphere. Its wintery here, and cold, sorta. I went to a sortija last night, which i would most closely associate with a rodeo except the people just ride around in circles and crack their whips for no apparent reason. Basically its just an excuse for guys to get drunk and watch girls. I went with a few friends and met up with other people there, and after the horses stoped circling the band cycled up and people started dancing. There was polka and cachaca, paraguayan and columbian? music respectivly. The dances are kinda specific depending on the kind of music, so i spent about a half hour or so watching and drinking more cheep beer. I was told later by my friends from the collegio that i am a good dancer, but they were pretty sloshed so who knows if they were actually seeing strait anyway. Got to dance with a good many girls so i would consider the night a success.

Two days ago was paraguay independence day, and all the people from the companias came into tobati for a parade. All the kids from all the schools were dressed up in various uniforms quasi-marching down the street. All the girls from the collegios had 4-5 inch platform books and miniskirts, as well as some heavyduty makeup. This is not to say that im complaining, but it certainly was amusing watching them try to march to a beat in those big boots.

So another one of my shirts was consumed by a cow. Well more precisely it was riped up into little pieces. Therefore i have a shirt request from threadless; maybe someone could send it over to me? Heres the link:

http://www.threadless.com/product/1219/My_Fantasy_World

Work is moving along, im just not quite sure in what direction. Im kinda at an impase with the collegios students and their planting trees at their houses, so ill have to come up with something new pretty soon here to keep them occupied. Thinking of doing the same project with the students in costa alegre, so ill see how that goes.

I received three packages in the mail while i was visiting asuncion. Two of them had the books in spanish for the kids at my host fams house and the other one had the design books. I gave the kids the books and they imediatly started reading them and seemed to be enjoying them. And then the next day they got a computer game for their dads computer and started playing that instead. Reminds me of the states. Im starting to make my way through the design books and they´ve got a lot of good case studies and pictures if the people here ever wrap their heads around getting the school project going.

Well thats all for now, be back later.

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!

Happy birthday hilary! I tried to call again, but then my phone ran out of money =/

Back for another instalment of everything thats been going on for about the last month or so. Its been pretty darn busy over here, so its been nice to have a free weekend in the city to unwind. The down side is that ive blown most of my money for the month. Oh well, its not really my money anyway. Thank you taxpayers!

Anyway, to begin ive been working at two schools in the area around where im living. The teachers are nice, and seem to be interested in anything that i think up for the students to work on. Last week i did a demonstration on composting and we set up a compost pile for the students to use when they clean all the weeds out of the garden for the year. A few of the students actually seemed to be genuinly interested and the rest of them seemed like they could care less. But this is the same case in the states right? Im planning on doing tree planting with the students next week when they bring in the trees ive assigned them to collect. The crazy thing about the students here is that they all know how to ID trees and what theyre good to be used for. Even the little kids know, its just part of the culture. I think about asking a 9 year old in the states to identify 10 trees by their leaves or berries and i think id be hard pressed to find one that could actually do it.

Going two weeks back from now, a group of american high school students came to visit from the states. This was strange to me, seeing as I had no idea that anyone from the states knew enough about paraguay to end up in tobati, fairly far away from the capital. Well, this group of students isnt just a little group. They were 145 students harvard medical school doctors and i think a dentist from a private, east coast highschool. Seems most of the students are well enough off that they can pay for the 3000 dollar trip from their pockets without having to do any fundraising. One laughed when i asked if they sold candy bars or something to finance the trip.

So anyway, they brought about 100,000 dollars to fund projects over the week they were there, which i see as good and bad. Good because the municipalidad is corrupt as all hell and money for any significant project tends to dissapear via graft, and bad because of the precedent it reinforces for the paraguayans in terms of depending on the handouts of external entities instead of being self sufficient. I dont deny that they have good intentions toward the paraguayans, and that its a great experience for students in the US to experience a different culture/country. I just question how their work is serving to empower the paraguayans to become better citizens, to empower them or to create the begining of good social change. They are also connected to a private school that is funded in part or totally by the macchi family, a influntial family in tobati, which serves to give a select group of needy paraguayan students free, high quality education and daily meals.

Its easy to say, "Its better if we focus on the tangible." Its good for PR, people like getting free stuff and giving to the "poor" might even aleviate some personal guilt over being financially very well-off by world standards. I dont really know. But as I was watching the buses and flat bed trucks pull up to the central plaza in tobati, with hundreds of screaming kids, baloons, and blaring music, i couldnt help but wonder why. Why this reaction. Why. If you took away the project money, how would the reaction change? Are the people really excited because they know american students are coming who want to work, to learn and teach and share? Or are they happy that they´re getting a new building at their school? I call what team tobati is doing development work, but whats it developing?

And what did the US students really get out of it? Yes, now they see that there are poor people in the world who dont just live in africa, ate some good food and got rid of that pesky required community service requirement. They now know how to toss bricks, shovel dirt, and say a few more words in spanish maybe. But to be quite honest, the 140 students that came could put their services to much better use interacting with the people here, learning what they can and teaching in return. Its almost insulting to see these kids who I know are very smart, creative people come here where creativity is in short supply and toss bricks. Two paraguayans could do the work of 12 students for 7 dollars a day and get it done faster and better, leaving the students to put their unique skills to use. I would challenge the students of team tobati to reconsider their role as development workers in paraguay, how they might come to work on some of the less visible problems inherant to the country. But how does one find out what these problems are? You ask, and then you learn, and then you act. Sounds much more fulfilling to me than shoveling soil.

As i told most of the people who came to costa alegre, I am willing and able to help in any way I can to make their experience of coming to work in paraguay more fulfilling for everyone involved. Im hoping some of them take me up on it. If theres one thing i could say to the teachers or people in charge of the team tobati exerience, its that your program is good, but you have the power to make it even better if you choose to do so. Nothing is ever stagnant and its always worthwhile learning from succeses and mistakes, right?

For people interested in sustainable development work, i emplore you to read "Two ears of Corn" by Roland Bunch. Its about agricultural development, but is broad enough that it can enlighten any development program. Its amazing and not to be missed for anyone involved with team tobati.

Also found out this weekend that a new urban youth volunteer is going to be placed in tobati in one week. This means that im going to have a very close new neighbor, and that they will be in the thick of the tobati situation in ways that i can not even imagine. I wish them good luck.

Moving into my own house in about a week, yay! Ill update more about that when it happens. Till next time then!

alright so im back in the city at the office with a bit of information to update about. Things are going well in site i suppose. I dont really have any thing to gauge my progress by since each site has its own unique qualities that determine if a volunteer is being succesful. BUT still, ive been working in a farmers field with a machette cutting corn down thats ready to be harvested, cleaning around mandioca plants with machette, as well as shucking corn and breaking bean pods. Working in the fields certainly makes me feel accomplished for a day, like I've actually done real work. And its a good work out, and makes people think i actually DO know how to work on things and have a work ethic.

Ive also bought a bee hive in a neighboring town and started to try workikng my own bees. Me and one of the people that I work with split open a palm tree trunk and took out this wild hive, transfered the comb to the box and tried to get as many of the other bees in there asd we could. We were both covered in bees, and there were thousands and thousands of them flying around everywhere. I work with a veil and gloves, but other than that i just wear a long sleve shirt, shoes and my hiking pants. I didnt get stung once, even though i was moving hand fulls of bees out of this trunk into the box. Its pretty fun.

School starts on the 25th and im going to start out by working in a collegio and escuela basica with a few of the teachers in their tech, science, and practical project classes. Im looking forward to it, and actually getting to know the ins and outs of the school system and the process of working with the teahers.

Its been a fun time in the city with lots of beer drinking, kareoke and dancing. We were at a club last night that had a foam bubble shower that was pouring from a cauldron in the middle of the dance floor. It made the whole place into a giant soapy foam soup with strobe lights and bumping music. It was a good time, one which i will likely repeat next time im in the city.

I received just about everything in the mail that people have sent me at one point or another. Ive got journals galore, letters, new books, tools. Its good. Thanks for the gifts!! Well, im gonna go get some mexican feed at the local chuchi mall, so perhaps ill update more later. Ciao!