Follow Devin

Month: July, 2012

July 26, 2012

Site Placement

Today I found out where I’ll be living for the next two years!

Before we could find out, we spent a day in Asunción seeing the tourist sights and relaxing (or at least trying to take our minds off of the big surprise ahead). In order to make you feel the anxious pain of waiting like we did, I’m going to show you my touristy Asunción pictures before you can find out my site.

In front of the cathedral

Emily eyeing some ñandutí

Eating chipa guazu and other Paraguayan specialties at Lido Bar

OK! So then we get back to the training center, and I am placed in. . .

FERNANDO DE LA MORA, Zona Sur

map

Fernando de la Mora is an urban city of 200,000 people right next to Asunción, I’m thinking that this would be Brooklyn if Asunción were New York City (which it most certainly is not). It is chopped in half by the highway, and my site is the southern part.

My primary work will be with Fundación Libre, a non-profit working to promote culture, art, and reading in Paraguay, and La Red de Voluntariado: “Somos Voluntarios por un Paraguay Mejor!”, a network of youth that promotes volunteerism.

I know little else – I have not even finished reading the packet of information they gave to us about the site and work – so I’ll leave the topic for now and we can all find out together what my future holds in store for me. I’ll be visiting my site from Saturday to Wednesday, so I’ll have a much better idea then what my life will look like as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

5 Comments
July 19, 2012

Moving Through Training

I’ve now spent two separate weeks visiting distinct volunteers in their sites. The week of June 18, Candace and I visited Steph in her community of Yaguarón, Paraguari, Paraguay, and the first week of July I went with my language class to visit Liza in Nueva Italia, Central, Paraguay.

Candace and I had a blast, and Steph was an amazing hostess. A stray dog followed us all the way up the famous hill in Yaguarón, we shared tereré with some men at the Municipalidad, we got a lesson in Paraguayan infidelity from Steph’s class of high schoolers, and I saved TWO cats. The first one was stuck in a tree for a few hours – the sobbing little girl told us that the dog had chased it up there. I climbed the tree all fireman-style and pulled the scratching and clawing cat down to safety. The second rescue was less exciting, as the dumb (dumb in a loving way) cat had gotten itself trapped underneath the dresser, which I simply lifted.

At the top of the hill in Yaguarón, with our friendly companion who followed us all the way up

I had a great time and learned a lot in Nueva Italia with Liza. We made some friends at her business plan class and the youth group. A group of women from an asentamiento (like a government housing settlement) taught us to make chipa, chipa guazu, and sopa paraguaya. We actually just watched them as they threw in the ingredients and stirred the batter with their fists to make the delicious greasy dishes. We did knead the chipa a bit and form it into shapes before putting it into the oven. I had a little fun and made the chipa in the form of a pretzel, a braided loaf of challah, and even a snowman! Unfortunately I did not have my camera on me in Nueva Italia, so I had to save the head of the snowman to remember the experience (of course I ate the rest and it was delicious).

Chipa snowman head from Nueva Italia

I still love my host family, and they are all bromistas and farristas (jokers and partiers). It’s been cold here, and yesterday when I came home from classes, my mom surprised me with a warm winter hat! She also bought the same hat for Franko (age 8), so we can match all the time. Too cute.

Matching hats! Thanks Mamá

Training is chugging along and I’m starting to learn more and more Guaraní. I will find out my site placement next Wednesday. That’s right – I’ll know where I’ll be living for the next two years next week. Mamá’s only worried that I’ll be close enough so that I can come visit on my birthday for three, no four, days of partying with the family.

The bromistas and farristas at Mamá’s birthday party

3 Comments
July 2, 2012

Fiesta

Paraguayans love an excuse to celebrate. Almost every day I duck from hearing something like loud gunshots, which turn out to be firecrackers set off to mark any sort of occasion. In my first month here, I’ve already been able take part in many festivities.

Birthdays: Paraguayans throw a large party for three special birthdays: 1st, 7th, and 15th.
I went to my host parents’ great-grandchild’s 1st birthday party. We were there from 5 p.m. until midnight. They really had gone all out with Winnie the Pooh decorations, a huge globo loco (moon bounce), and lots of candy. There were so many babies. Everywhere.

Globo loco (moon bounce) at the one-year-old’s birthday party

Quince Años: The fifteenth birthday is a huge deal in Latin America, especially for girls. It’s been one of my life goals to attend a Quinceañera’s big bash, and this past Saturday I had the honor of eating and dancing at the party for my host “niece.” It was everything I could have imagined. A delicious buffet dinner was served around 11:30 p.m. and the whole family was there until past 3 a.m. dancing holes in the floor. At one point, the DJ put on a few Michael Jackson songs (very popular here in Paraguay), and MJ-style hats were distributed. People formed a circle and started showing off their moonwalk (Aleks you should have been here!), so I joined in as well. I must have shown some impressive norte moves, because after a while the DJ pulled me and another boy aside to start a dance-off dance competition. The audience formed, the music started playing, and I had no choice but to go for it. My dancing really isn’t that spectacular, so I spiced it up with some cartwheels and such. The music ended and the audience declared that I won! Now I have a nice silver necklace with a Jesus pendant as a souvenir.

The Quinceañera

Fiesta de San Juan: In my last post about food I mentioned the typical foods for the San Juan season. The day of San Juan was this past Sunday, and for the week before (and still continuing now), games and parties associated with the holiday take place all over the country. Many of the games have an aspect of fire: a ball of fire that people kick around (often into the unsuspecting crowd), a life-size Judas doll that is filled with firecrackers and set aflame, a set of bull horns that are lit on fire as someone charges into the crowd with them. There is also a tall greased pole with money at the top for the champion who can climb it, a piñata made from a ceramic vase hanging from a tree, a sack race, and more. In training we celebrated some of the games last Saturday for our language class, and I saw some more at the Capilla de San Juan (the neighborhood chapel) the night of San Juan. I’ll be going to a school-sponsored festival next week as well.

San Juan Games: The number of times the ring, dangling by a strand of hair, touches the side of the glass, predicts how many years until Virginia gets married

Judas, on fire

Pelota tata, the ball of flames

Fiesta Patronal de Ypane: The other half of the training group is settled in the town of Ypane (I’m in Villeta). We got another day off from the normal class schedule in order to join them for the annual festival celebrating their town. We went to an outdoor mass and wandered around the square filled with vendors peddling food and crafts.

Parade in Ypane

Fourth of July: Happy Independence Day! The U.S. Embassy invited all of the PCVs to the swank embassy in Asunción this Saturday for a picnic. I enjoyed meeting many of the other groups of volunteers for the first time.

Next week I’ll be going on Long Field Practice to visit a volunteer from Monday through Thursday.

1 Comment