December 12, 2007
ADDED PHOTOS! Click on the FlickR link under image hosting on the right to see some shots of paraguay, fellow volunteers and a number of domesticated animals. I think im in there too. We swear in on this friday, lookin forward to it, but not to having to relenquish my norte security net. And of course not everyone has the same phone carrier so its going to be expensive to get ahold of all my favorite people! WIll update more later! Ciao!
December 9, 2007
phew, its been a while since i updated and ive got a lot to get on here. First off I am back from the future site visit, sitting in an air conditioned room. Very nice. We met at a retreat center outside of guarambare to get on board with our contact from our future sites. I had no idea who mine was going to be, as it wasnt listed on my info form. I finnaly found my contact after some searching - hes a teacher at one of the local schools, in his mid thirties and is a pretty funny guy. We did a bunch of get to know you type activities, watched some traditional dancing that included dancers with vases on their heads and ate a load of good food. One of the days we were all our playin around with the frisbee and i pulled my quad. Ouch. Its almost better now, but it was a pain (literally) for a good week and a half. A good number of people´s contacts decided not to show up for whatever reason, so some people were still wondering what was instore for them by the time we were leaving. I was still feelin pretty nervous, attempting to talk to cornelio while only understanding half of what he would say in return.
After saying goodbye to the fellow trainees we all hopped on our respective buses. After having a t-ray session at the local market cornelio flagged down one of his friends witha truck and I jumped on and tok of for site. This whole time i was feelin pretty good because I assumed id recognise where i was going. Nope. I have no idea how I got to site (i do now) as we took all the back roads and such. I walked over to a school nearby and made some small talk with a teacher that was there, met up with cornelio about an hour later and took off for his house. At this point i was still a gimp, walking with a stiff left leg, so getting around was of course sheer joy. On the way to cornelios house i got caught in a spider web. I walked right into it. But this web happened to be about 20 feet across and filled with at least a hundred spiders. Needless to say I freaked out and ran around swiping the little buggers off my person while cornelio looked on, laughing. It was pretty funny.
Met up with willie (the present PCV) on the second day and we hoofed it all over talkin to various people. Im pretty sure we walked around 15k that day, and holy god it it hot outside in the afternoon. My living arangements with conrnelio and his 5 kids was interesting as I would often find two of them sitting on my be3d simply watching me write in my journal as if its the most interesting thing theyd seen since the last colectivo (bus) rolled through. One of them kep asking me if there3 was this and that in the united states, for example: are there fish in the united states? Are there tigers? Are there rivers? Is there snow? Are there mountains? Are there japanese people? Is there sopa paraguaya? Endless streams of questioning. I passed the crap out on my rock hard bed under the rapidly spinning fan, while listening to the sound of bugs incinerating themselves on the light bulbs outside. Not too bad.
The next morning I went with george (cornelios son) to help make ladrillos (bricks) near their house. We fliped the semi solid bricks over three at a time and then steped in between the fliped ones to get at the next row. It was pretty challengin for me given that ive got big feet compared to a 12 year old. Had sporadic conversation with the other workers, while attemping to hydrate my rapidly sweating self. I seriously think i sweat way more here than i did in the states. Even in the desert, no way would i get this wet. There´s a certain meditative quality about making the bricks - the slap slap of mud going into the mold, the scrape of a level, the flip, flip, step of turning the freshly made bricks to catch the sun. It was a good time.
The next day I went with willie to one of the other schools nearby to help with a world map project, and also to meet some of the other teachers. There are so many people that I have to get to know in so many different communities (6 to be exact) that I do feel a bit overwhelmed. The deal is that im going to be centered in one of the communities while bikin myself to work in the others. I do get to ride through the forest, open rangeland and some nice kokuekuera (farmer fields), but man if im not sweating bullets the whole time. I had to rest on the side of the road in the shade at one point for a about a half hour after I started to get dizzy while riding up a half k hill. That evening connelio said he was going to introduce me to the parents and teachers at the school in some kind of formal event. I wrote out a little speakch in guarani to read and cornelio approved it. There were about 45 people there plus the teachers, but at this point im not so nervous about making a fool of myself so it wasnt any big deal. Got up, said my bit, they claped, i sat down. Opa.
That night george and i went fishing at the local aroyo for tilapia. I enjoyed the view way more than the fishing, and took a good long while to think about my potential future in this place. It seems like a place that I could feel at home in, with bueys along the road, the light breezes and dense clumps of forest. In a way it reminds me of california if im off by myself, watching the clouds pass by from the shade of a lapacho tree. I can´t complain. I´ve got it pretty good.
Ive got alot more about the long field visit to add but my time on the internet is running low, so ill hit everything thats going to be going down in the future. We swear in this coming friday in asuncion, meaning we swear to defend the constitution of the united states, blaa blaa blaa, so help me god. After that they feel us cake and we hop on the colectivo to go to our swear in party (the theme is pirates and stoplights) and I will of course be wearing green. We´ve also got hotel reservations in asuncion for 3 nights after, so its going to be an awesome club going, futbol watching, dirty market shoppin good time. Then i go to site and then next adventure begins. I WILL have access to internet in tobati (about 15 k away) so ill still be able to update the blog and check the email, although I cant say with what frequency. HOWEVER, I will have a cell phone courtesy of peace corps that people in the states can call, SO you can always contact me that way if anyone so desires. Ill email people the number when I get it.
I received lots of packages: the frisbees came, as did the gaia´s garden book, hillary´s bday package (thanks!) and the letter with the dagoba chocolate bar (send me more...mmm). No evidence of any molskine journals or the mushroom book. Jam would be a bad idea, as it would probably break and get all disgusting like in the box. I´ve got a few small things i could use for christmas so Ill make an update about them later, and try try TRY to get some awesome photos up this coming week. Till then, Ciao!
After saying goodbye to the fellow trainees we all hopped on our respective buses. After having a t-ray session at the local market cornelio flagged down one of his friends witha truck and I jumped on and tok of for site. This whole time i was feelin pretty good because I assumed id recognise where i was going. Nope. I have no idea how I got to site (i do now) as we took all the back roads and such. I walked over to a school nearby and made some small talk with a teacher that was there, met up with cornelio about an hour later and took off for his house. At this point i was still a gimp, walking with a stiff left leg, so getting around was of course sheer joy. On the way to cornelios house i got caught in a spider web. I walked right into it. But this web happened to be about 20 feet across and filled with at least a hundred spiders. Needless to say I freaked out and ran around swiping the little buggers off my person while cornelio looked on, laughing. It was pretty funny.
Met up with willie (the present PCV) on the second day and we hoofed it all over talkin to various people. Im pretty sure we walked around 15k that day, and holy god it it hot outside in the afternoon. My living arangements with conrnelio and his 5 kids was interesting as I would often find two of them sitting on my be3d simply watching me write in my journal as if its the most interesting thing theyd seen since the last colectivo (bus) rolled through. One of them kep asking me if there3 was this and that in the united states, for example: are there fish in the united states? Are there tigers? Are there rivers? Is there snow? Are there mountains? Are there japanese people? Is there sopa paraguaya? Endless streams of questioning. I passed the crap out on my rock hard bed under the rapidly spinning fan, while listening to the sound of bugs incinerating themselves on the light bulbs outside. Not too bad.
The next morning I went with george (cornelios son) to help make ladrillos (bricks) near their house. We fliped the semi solid bricks over three at a time and then steped in between the fliped ones to get at the next row. It was pretty challengin for me given that ive got big feet compared to a 12 year old. Had sporadic conversation with the other workers, while attemping to hydrate my rapidly sweating self. I seriously think i sweat way more here than i did in the states. Even in the desert, no way would i get this wet. There´s a certain meditative quality about making the bricks - the slap slap of mud going into the mold, the scrape of a level, the flip, flip, step of turning the freshly made bricks to catch the sun. It was a good time.
The next day I went with willie to one of the other schools nearby to help with a world map project, and also to meet some of the other teachers. There are so many people that I have to get to know in so many different communities (6 to be exact) that I do feel a bit overwhelmed. The deal is that im going to be centered in one of the communities while bikin myself to work in the others. I do get to ride through the forest, open rangeland and some nice kokuekuera (farmer fields), but man if im not sweating bullets the whole time. I had to rest on the side of the road in the shade at one point for a about a half hour after I started to get dizzy while riding up a half k hill. That evening connelio said he was going to introduce me to the parents and teachers at the school in some kind of formal event. I wrote out a little speakch in guarani to read and cornelio approved it. There were about 45 people there plus the teachers, but at this point im not so nervous about making a fool of myself so it wasnt any big deal. Got up, said my bit, they claped, i sat down. Opa.
That night george and i went fishing at the local aroyo for tilapia. I enjoyed the view way more than the fishing, and took a good long while to think about my potential future in this place. It seems like a place that I could feel at home in, with bueys along the road, the light breezes and dense clumps of forest. In a way it reminds me of california if im off by myself, watching the clouds pass by from the shade of a lapacho tree. I can´t complain. I´ve got it pretty good.
Ive got alot more about the long field visit to add but my time on the internet is running low, so ill hit everything thats going to be going down in the future. We swear in this coming friday in asuncion, meaning we swear to defend the constitution of the united states, blaa blaa blaa, so help me god. After that they feel us cake and we hop on the colectivo to go to our swear in party (the theme is pirates and stoplights) and I will of course be wearing green. We´ve also got hotel reservations in asuncion for 3 nights after, so its going to be an awesome club going, futbol watching, dirty market shoppin good time. Then i go to site and then next adventure begins. I WILL have access to internet in tobati (about 15 k away) so ill still be able to update the blog and check the email, although I cant say with what frequency. HOWEVER, I will have a cell phone courtesy of peace corps that people in the states can call, SO you can always contact me that way if anyone so desires. Ill email people the number when I get it.
I received lots of packages: the frisbees came, as did the gaia´s garden book, hillary´s bday package (thanks!) and the letter with the dagoba chocolate bar (send me more...mmm). No evidence of any molskine journals or the mushroom book. Jam would be a bad idea, as it would probably break and get all disgusting like in the box. I´ve got a few small things i could use for christmas so Ill make an update about them later, and try try TRY to get some awesome photos up this coming week. Till then, Ciao!
November 26, 2007
im back! Were getting ready to leave tomorrow for a meeting with our site contacts from our future place of residence. Its going to be pretty interesting trying to communicate with this person (who ever they are) about the community and such things. Since Im a follow up volunteer, Ill also be going around with the current PCV and get the lay of the land, get my living arangements squared away for the first three months and asses some of the things the community might be interested in making happen. Everything seems pretty up in the air but Im sure it´ll turn out alright. The day after tomorrow we travel to the sites, so we´re on overdrive right now trying to get everything squared away before we go nilly willy into the campo.
Its kind of funny thinking about living in another new place after were all just now getting comfortable in neweva esperanza. I personally welcome the change, as I prefer my new place much more than my current living situation. But still, Im hoping that this new place will finnaly be somewhere that I can feel like Im at home. I dislike feeling like an extended stay guest a great deal. Im actually really looking forward to cooking and taking care of my own place 4 months from now when peace corps lets us move into our own places.
The other day we gave these presentations about the culture of paraguay in guarani. Mine was on jokes, and I preped for about one hour before so it was for sure my most rushed presentation so far. People seemed to find the jokes funny though, which was nice. My paraguayan host mom is still talking about how funny my jokes were after 3 days. On a less humorous note, while we were playing an ice breaker game before these little presentation one of the trainees in the crop extension unit got crushed under a few people, hyperextended her knee and thought she heard something pop. Im crossing my fingers shes alright (crosses fingers),as we´ve all come so far and it would be incredibly shitty to have something like that throw a wrench in the mix. She´s also really a good person and has a lot to offer, which would make it all the worse if she had to leave to get fixed up (crosses fingers again).
Lets see, I havn´t seen a wink of any packages but everything takes about a month to get here so things should show up by the end of my training im thinking. I look forward to the mushroom book its a good one. Also, on the topic of christmas i dunno about presents yet, Ill think about it this week. But hold off on the books for now as Im not yet sure if theres going to be some topic that would be really useful that ill discover on my site visit.
However one thing that Im going to have to learn a good bit more about is cattle and dairy work, as many of the families in the area are running cattle and clearing forest to do so. They certainly are funny looking, all white with big droopy ears. More to come about this later. Well, for now thats all ive got. Ill try to maybe do an update sometime durring my site visit if I get a chance, but most likely itll happen next week. Jajotopata!
Its kind of funny thinking about living in another new place after were all just now getting comfortable in neweva esperanza. I personally welcome the change, as I prefer my new place much more than my current living situation. But still, Im hoping that this new place will finnaly be somewhere that I can feel like Im at home. I dislike feeling like an extended stay guest a great deal. Im actually really looking forward to cooking and taking care of my own place 4 months from now when peace corps lets us move into our own places.
The other day we gave these presentations about the culture of paraguay in guarani. Mine was on jokes, and I preped for about one hour before so it was for sure my most rushed presentation so far. People seemed to find the jokes funny though, which was nice. My paraguayan host mom is still talking about how funny my jokes were after 3 days. On a less humorous note, while we were playing an ice breaker game before these little presentation one of the trainees in the crop extension unit got crushed under a few people, hyperextended her knee and thought she heard something pop. Im crossing my fingers shes alright (crosses fingers),as we´ve all come so far and it would be incredibly shitty to have something like that throw a wrench in the mix. She´s also really a good person and has a lot to offer, which would make it all the worse if she had to leave to get fixed up (crosses fingers again).
Lets see, I havn´t seen a wink of any packages but everything takes about a month to get here so things should show up by the end of my training im thinking. I look forward to the mushroom book its a good one. Also, on the topic of christmas i dunno about presents yet, Ill think about it this week. But hold off on the books for now as Im not yet sure if theres going to be some topic that would be really useful that ill discover on my site visit.
However one thing that Im going to have to learn a good bit more about is cattle and dairy work, as many of the families in the area are running cattle and clearing forest to do so. They certainly are funny looking, all white with big droopy ears. More to come about this later. Well, for now thats all ive got. Ill try to maybe do an update sometime durring my site visit if I get a chance, but most likely itll happen next week. Jajotopata!
November 24, 2007
che apunose ndepe. Anitepa? Anite.
alright. So its been a busy past week with field trips, language/tech training, site placement, multiple visits to the cantena for libations and of course a very american thanksgiving paraguayan style. Here´s the rundown:
We´d been getting ready for thanksgiving for about the last 2 weeks or so, collecting money and researching the turkey procurement problem that is oh-so-pervasive in paraguay. We decided to go with spinny-chickens (the kind that you buy on the street that are spinning in metal cases) and about 7 kilos of potatoes. In total we got 12 full chickens. The full spread included:
chicken (of course)
standard mashed potatoes with chives, margerine, and milk from a tetra pack.
sweet-potato mashed potatoes (my favorite)
mac and cheese
stuffed peppers
SOFT whole wheat bread, not cocito "dog biscuit" ring style
deviled eggs
obscene amounts of salad and veggies
HOT salsa and crackers (there are NO tortilla chips here)
tons of fresh fruit salad
apple pie and apple crisp
rice and bean salad
bannana and peanutbutter empanadas (my favorite desert)
Im sure there was more too, but this is the stuf that sticks out. I got there at about 7:30 to start working on the mashed potatoes and experimented with different mashing methods including a blender, spatula, cheese grater, soup ladel and standard fork. It was a good time hangin out with my fellow aspirantes (trainees) and not have the spector of impending homework doom hanging over us.
After getting sufficiently fat, we went and played a game of american football on the local kancha for about 2 hours, and ended with a few beers at the cantena. All in all a really good day.
OH! So site placement - yeah i got mine (drumroll). Im going to be the follow up volunteer for the Enviro Ed. volunteer we visited in ensenada! See last post for the description. Im REALLY excited, this town is a-mazing and pretty progressive in terms of working to improve and conserve environmental resources. And they´re all liberales which is a nice bonus. FYI, there are two major parties in Paraguay, the colorados and the liberales. Strossner´s (paraguay´s dictatory for 30ish years) old party was the colorados so i´m feelin pretty good to be living around people not down with the same old game. I´ll try to post some pictures of everything soon, the internet is so frikin slow here its really impossible to get anything large up on flickr.
Mom - I have been receiving all your letters and packages, do not fret. I got the new yorker arts issue (people were jealous) about 3 days ago, but havn´t seen anything else since then. Yay mail!
Margot - Hey! Yes, my address will change but i´ll update my infomation on this page when it does. The confiscation thing is due to import restriction placed on certain items coming into the country. Dunno why exactly, but i can certainly can see someone out there in this corrupt litle country squirling away a huge pile of plastic toys, sock and bateries (to name a few). Letters are just fine but take about a month to get here, so id say have the kids hold off for a bit till I know my new address.
Dad - how goes the new job? The name of the professor in charge of my project at Cal Poly is Bill MacElroy in the landscape architecture department, and he does have hard and digital copies of all my work. However, because the state of the project was in pieces rather than a coherent whole at the time that I finished, Im not so sure that its going to be very easy to fit it into whatever format the planning awards require. Tell me more about the competition and I´ll let you know what I think about the potential of my stuff to fit the criterea.
Az - I hope you are very very well! Im miss you lots and am very glad your house didn´t get torched. It was hard to get information here, and I was quite worried for a few days. How goes the job? I can´t complain over here ;)
Here are a few more books that im adding to my list, but havn´t really had time to research yet:
Seed to Seed - by Suzanne Ashworth and Kent Whealy
Breed your own Vegetable Varieties - by Carol Deppe
Smallholders, Householders: farm families and the ecology of intensive sustainable agriculture - by Rober Netting
To everyone else, amazing family and friends, I miss you all very much! I´m going to be setting up skype here (an online internet phone service) so I should be able to give everyone a call sometime soon! Yay!
I visit ensenada again next week for more meet/greet and t-ray (yerba). Ill do my darndest to get some pics up! Till then, Ciao!
We´d been getting ready for thanksgiving for about the last 2 weeks or so, collecting money and researching the turkey procurement problem that is oh-so-pervasive in paraguay. We decided to go with spinny-chickens (the kind that you buy on the street that are spinning in metal cases) and about 7 kilos of potatoes. In total we got 12 full chickens. The full spread included:
chicken (of course)
standard mashed potatoes with chives, margerine, and milk from a tetra pack.
sweet-potato mashed potatoes (my favorite)
mac and cheese
stuffed peppers
SOFT whole wheat bread, not cocito "dog biscuit" ring style
deviled eggs
obscene amounts of salad and veggies
HOT salsa and crackers (there are NO tortilla chips here)
tons of fresh fruit salad
apple pie and apple crisp
rice and bean salad
bannana and peanutbutter empanadas (my favorite desert)
Im sure there was more too, but this is the stuf that sticks out. I got there at about 7:30 to start working on the mashed potatoes and experimented with different mashing methods including a blender, spatula, cheese grater, soup ladel and standard fork. It was a good time hangin out with my fellow aspirantes (trainees) and not have the spector of impending homework doom hanging over us.
After getting sufficiently fat, we went and played a game of american football on the local kancha for about 2 hours, and ended with a few beers at the cantena. All in all a really good day.
OH! So site placement - yeah i got mine (drumroll). Im going to be the follow up volunteer for the Enviro Ed. volunteer we visited in ensenada! See last post for the description. Im REALLY excited, this town is a-mazing and pretty progressive in terms of working to improve and conserve environmental resources. And they´re all liberales which is a nice bonus. FYI, there are two major parties in Paraguay, the colorados and the liberales. Strossner´s (paraguay´s dictatory for 30ish years) old party was the colorados so i´m feelin pretty good to be living around people not down with the same old game. I´ll try to post some pictures of everything soon, the internet is so frikin slow here its really impossible to get anything large up on flickr.
Mom - I have been receiving all your letters and packages, do not fret. I got the new yorker arts issue (people were jealous) about 3 days ago, but havn´t seen anything else since then. Yay mail!
Margot - Hey! Yes, my address will change but i´ll update my infomation on this page when it does. The confiscation thing is due to import restriction placed on certain items coming into the country. Dunno why exactly, but i can certainly can see someone out there in this corrupt litle country squirling away a huge pile of plastic toys, sock and bateries (to name a few). Letters are just fine but take about a month to get here, so id say have the kids hold off for a bit till I know my new address.
Dad - how goes the new job? The name of the professor in charge of my project at Cal Poly is Bill MacElroy in the landscape architecture department, and he does have hard and digital copies of all my work. However, because the state of the project was in pieces rather than a coherent whole at the time that I finished, Im not so sure that its going to be very easy to fit it into whatever format the planning awards require. Tell me more about the competition and I´ll let you know what I think about the potential of my stuff to fit the criterea.
Az - I hope you are very very well! Im miss you lots and am very glad your house didn´t get torched. It was hard to get information here, and I was quite worried for a few days. How goes the job? I can´t complain over here ;)
Here are a few more books that im adding to my list, but havn´t really had time to research yet:
Seed to Seed - by Suzanne Ashworth and Kent Whealy
Breed your own Vegetable Varieties - by Carol Deppe
Smallholders, Householders: farm families and the ecology of intensive sustainable agriculture - by Rober Netting
To everyone else, amazing family and friends, I miss you all very much! I´m going to be setting up skype here (an online internet phone service) so I should be able to give everyone a call sometime soon! Yay!
I visit ensenada again next week for more meet/greet and t-ray (yerba). Ill do my darndest to get some pics up! Till then, Ciao!
November 19, 2007
okaaay. hey! Im back from long field practice, the time that certainly lived up to its name. It was a long week, in that i felt like Id been in this little rural pueblo forever by the time we were getting ready to leave. But at the same time, the days pased really quickly - it was a strange dynamic. We visited a little town called ensenada (no, not mexico) about 4 hours away from nueva esperanza. To find it on the paraguay map, go about a quarter of the country east from asuncion and you´ll find ensenada. We were on dirt roads for about 2 hours to get to the place so it was kinda far out there. I kid you not, when we got there I swore I was back in california. The landscape there was really nostalgic with its rolling hills and sporadic groves of trees and grazing cows.
We got in just fine the first day and got set up with our families. I lived in a house with the librarian at the collegio (highschool) and her extended family. We had flush toilets and running water (cold) with all dirt floors and animals (chickens/ducks) in the house. But of course they had a DVD player and cell phones. Paraguay is a strange place.
We got rained in the second day and I discovered that when a roof leaks onto a dirt floor you get mud! Imagine that! I decided to go take a walk to another guy´s house and walked for about an hour through a little forest that was surrounded by cane and mandi´o field. It was so nice with lots of birds flying around and the rain making everything nice and cool. Of course I got soaked in the end (my raingear wetout and started to condense on the inside) and had to walk back the way I came becaue I got lost, hah.
The next day we visited the collegio and shadowed a professor there for about 3 hours and did our best to talk to them about their teaching methods and the paraguayan educational system. It was a really strange experiece being in a class with the pofessor essentially talking at you for the whole time and ignoring the rest of the class. The schools here a kinda sad - kids only got for a half day and they have an hour recess. Teachers randomly leave the classrooms to go chit chat and there really isn´t any focused learning going on at all. Most of the time is spent copying down text from the books, memorizing it, and being tested on your ability to memorize. No one asks any questions, nor is there any discussion on the topics being covered. It´s strange.
Toward the end of the week we each led a small workshop about a preprepared topic relating the the environment. I talked about nutrition with vegetables and the connection between vitamins and minerals and our health. I had the students read about a problem someone was having with their health, and have the students connect a vitamin deficiency to the health problem and suggest solutions via diet change. I think it went well.
I find out where Im going to be staying for the next two years on wendsday, so Im a little nervous. We turned in our site preference sheets on saturday, so I hope I get something close to what I said I wanted. Will update more about this when I find out the low down. Time for class! Ciao!
We got in just fine the first day and got set up with our families. I lived in a house with the librarian at the collegio (highschool) and her extended family. We had flush toilets and running water (cold) with all dirt floors and animals (chickens/ducks) in the house. But of course they had a DVD player and cell phones. Paraguay is a strange place.
We got rained in the second day and I discovered that when a roof leaks onto a dirt floor you get mud! Imagine that! I decided to go take a walk to another guy´s house and walked for about an hour through a little forest that was surrounded by cane and mandi´o field. It was so nice with lots of birds flying around and the rain making everything nice and cool. Of course I got soaked in the end (my raingear wetout and started to condense on the inside) and had to walk back the way I came becaue I got lost, hah.
The next day we visited the collegio and shadowed a professor there for about 3 hours and did our best to talk to them about their teaching methods and the paraguayan educational system. It was a really strange experiece being in a class with the pofessor essentially talking at you for the whole time and ignoring the rest of the class. The schools here a kinda sad - kids only got for a half day and they have an hour recess. Teachers randomly leave the classrooms to go chit chat and there really isn´t any focused learning going on at all. Most of the time is spent copying down text from the books, memorizing it, and being tested on your ability to memorize. No one asks any questions, nor is there any discussion on the topics being covered. It´s strange.
Toward the end of the week we each led a small workshop about a preprepared topic relating the the environment. I talked about nutrition with vegetables and the connection between vitamins and minerals and our health. I had the students read about a problem someone was having with their health, and have the students connect a vitamin deficiency to the health problem and suggest solutions via diet change. I think it went well.
I find out where Im going to be staying for the next two years on wendsday, so Im a little nervous. We turned in our site preference sheets on saturday, so I hope I get something close to what I said I wanted. Will update more about this when I find out the low down. Time for class! Ciao!
November 9, 2007
well well im back again for another post. At least this time the internet is up and running at full speed so I can actually access all the web pages I want. We´re still doing a lot of busy work in tech training. It´s useful stuff and all but I can´t help but feel a little borred when we could be learning actual practical skills like transplanting trees or soil fertility management for crop production, for example. I mean, classroom dynamics are important too but I can only take so much on one topic.
We´re going on long-field practice next week which means that Ill be leaving for another site with a few other trainees and staying with families while we attempt to work a little bit one on one with teachers in a high school on environmental issues. Im going to be covering health and nutrition, so Ive been doing a fair amount of work thinking up activities for people to work on in the classes that are creative and stimulate their desire to learn. After long field we have a little less than a week untill we find out where we´re going to be placed for the next two years, so people´s stress levels are running a little high right now. Everyone wants to get into a good site, but no one is sure if the opaque entity that is peace corps is going to pull through and actually give us some of the site amenities that we´d like. We do get to fill out a questionaire about our future site and have been interviewed by the higher-ups on our site preference, but no one is really sure whats going to happen untill november 21st.
Tonight im going to a music festival that is going to show case the best paraguayan national music tallent. Im pretty excited, considering that the festival is just 15 minutes away from my house. It costs 10mil to get in, which roughly comes out to about 2 US dollars. Speaking of dollars, it sure has been losing value lately...
I put my mosquito net up for the first time the other day because I was tired of getting eaten by said insects during the night. It has not, however, kept the bed bugs from making a meal of me. yay. Oh, and I also finnaly got a fan in my room so now im no longer sweating bullets at night. I enjoy sleep without waking up drenched at 3 in the morning thank you very much.
Not a whole lot else to report, except that the frisbee that Im "hoping" to receive is indeed one for throwing and catching =]. As you suspected dad, any sporting goods store should have some kind of frisbee that can be used for ultimate frisbee, just be sure to ask the clerk for the right one. Well, time to go to the show. Will return later.
We´re going on long-field practice next week which means that Ill be leaving for another site with a few other trainees and staying with families while we attempt to work a little bit one on one with teachers in a high school on environmental issues. Im going to be covering health and nutrition, so Ive been doing a fair amount of work thinking up activities for people to work on in the classes that are creative and stimulate their desire to learn. After long field we have a little less than a week untill we find out where we´re going to be placed for the next two years, so people´s stress levels are running a little high right now. Everyone wants to get into a good site, but no one is sure if the opaque entity that is peace corps is going to pull through and actually give us some of the site amenities that we´d like. We do get to fill out a questionaire about our future site and have been interviewed by the higher-ups on our site preference, but no one is really sure whats going to happen untill november 21st.
Tonight im going to a music festival that is going to show case the best paraguayan national music tallent. Im pretty excited, considering that the festival is just 15 minutes away from my house. It costs 10mil to get in, which roughly comes out to about 2 US dollars. Speaking of dollars, it sure has been losing value lately...
I put my mosquito net up for the first time the other day because I was tired of getting eaten by said insects during the night. It has not, however, kept the bed bugs from making a meal of me. yay. Oh, and I also finnaly got a fan in my room so now im no longer sweating bullets at night. I enjoy sleep without waking up drenched at 3 in the morning thank you very much.
Not a whole lot else to report, except that the frisbee that Im "hoping" to receive is indeed one for throwing and catching =]. As you suspected dad, any sporting goods store should have some kind of frisbee that can be used for ultimate frisbee, just be sure to ask the clerk for the right one. Well, time to go to the show. Will return later.
October 31, 2007
Alright, back from the bar with the other trainees to make a post. We had our language interviews on monday to test our aptitude in guarani. You have to pass at an intermediate-mid level (5 on a 10 point scale) to go on to spanish. In talking with everyone else they´re at the novice-mid to novice-high level which makes me feel kinda strange because I actually passed at the intermediate-mid level. Maybe because my family doesn´t speak to me in spanish at all i guess ive been picking it up pretty well. The guy who was interviewing us tape recorded the whole thing and had us talk about ourselves and then ask him questions about random things.
Also on monday I did a presentation about soil degredation and designing water harvesting earthworks to the environmental ed and crop extention group. I made little mock hills on the ground and let people figure out the solution that the erosion and soil degredation problems. Everyone liked it and the trainers said that it was a really good presentation.
We´re learning about all the dating and romance of paraguay and i got to say its pretty interesting. There are actually certain "dating days" when a man can visit a womans house and just talk and relax but its kinda like a date. Tues, thurs, sat, and sunday morning. And if a man visits a woman on the other days, then that´s telling her that shes his "second choice". You can also send these things called saludos that mean that youre interested in someone. If they send them back then that might mean that they like you. Speaking of liking people, I was pretty interested in one of the girls in the apiculture sub-group. Unfortunatly, she doesn´t really seem to be interested athough it certainly seemed so at first. It´s too bad, seeing as she´s cute and a really interesting person.
Its pretty hot and humid here, and its going to get even warmer. As they say hakuitererii, which means it realllllly hot. And boy is it going to get warmer...
In terms of the book questions, i still really want the permaculture design manual but would say that at this point to hold off on buying it because it´s so heavy. Ive got so many books to lug to my next site I want to get situated before I start adding more books to my collection. But sending gaia´s garden would be really nice. ALSO, about the frisbee, please just send one brightly colored or white frisbee for¨"ultimate frisbee". If you send more than one in a box they´d probably get confiscated.
*Very Important* If you send the book, please SEND the book gaia´s garden in a separate box so in case they do take the frisbee i´ll still get the book. I´m going to make a page with all the things I could use so I can keep a running list sometime next week. =]
I really excited about your new planning adventure dad! Sounds like a lot of exciting fun. Thank god you got rid of the bel air...haha. Yes, Ive gotten moms letters but havn´t had a moment to write a thing, emails or paper. I do really like getting the letters though, its fun reading things that ive gotten in the mail. This blog is just about the only thing ive had time to update...mrh.
I got really sick last week end and was barfing for about half a day and also had a fever. It sucked and i missed a field trip and couldnt eat anything for about 2 days after. But im just fine now, obviously, as i just got back from the bar. How are things with the fire in california?? I havn´t gotten any recent news in a long time so I feel really out of the loop. BUT in general everything is really fine here - I have few complaints. Will update more later!
Also on monday I did a presentation about soil degredation and designing water harvesting earthworks to the environmental ed and crop extention group. I made little mock hills on the ground and let people figure out the solution that the erosion and soil degredation problems. Everyone liked it and the trainers said that it was a really good presentation.
We´re learning about all the dating and romance of paraguay and i got to say its pretty interesting. There are actually certain "dating days" when a man can visit a womans house and just talk and relax but its kinda like a date. Tues, thurs, sat, and sunday morning. And if a man visits a woman on the other days, then that´s telling her that shes his "second choice". You can also send these things called saludos that mean that youre interested in someone. If they send them back then that might mean that they like you. Speaking of liking people, I was pretty interested in one of the girls in the apiculture sub-group. Unfortunatly, she doesn´t really seem to be interested athough it certainly seemed so at first. It´s too bad, seeing as she´s cute and a really interesting person.
Its pretty hot and humid here, and its going to get even warmer. As they say hakuitererii, which means it realllllly hot. And boy is it going to get warmer...
In terms of the book questions, i still really want the permaculture design manual but would say that at this point to hold off on buying it because it´s so heavy. Ive got so many books to lug to my next site I want to get situated before I start adding more books to my collection. But sending gaia´s garden would be really nice. ALSO, about the frisbee, please just send one brightly colored or white frisbee for¨"ultimate frisbee". If you send more than one in a box they´d probably get confiscated.
*Very Important* If you send the book, please SEND the book gaia´s garden in a separate box so in case they do take the frisbee i´ll still get the book. I´m going to make a page with all the things I could use so I can keep a running list sometime next week. =]
I really excited about your new planning adventure dad! Sounds like a lot of exciting fun. Thank god you got rid of the bel air...haha. Yes, Ive gotten moms letters but havn´t had a moment to write a thing, emails or paper. I do really like getting the letters though, its fun reading things that ive gotten in the mail. This blog is just about the only thing ive had time to update...mrh.
I got really sick last week end and was barfing for about half a day and also had a fever. It sucked and i missed a field trip and couldnt eat anything for about 2 days after. But im just fine now, obviously, as i just got back from the bar. How are things with the fire in california?? I havn´t gotten any recent news in a long time so I feel really out of the loop. BUT in general everything is really fine here - I have few complaints. Will update more later!
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