Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Sandra

Sandra is my life saver. She just turned 16 years old, yet already has so much to teach me. With my two sisters gone, I’ve found myself alone in the house quite often as my oldest sister is usually busy. There have been many days when I’m left to fend for myself food-wise with pretty much nothing in the refrigerator. Sandra has willingly come over all of those days and helped me put together something pretty decent for lunch. She’s taught me how to cook a whole variety of food, start a fire, dance to raggaeton, and how to enjoy the simple things in life. She’s always making sure I have everything I need and acts like my mother half the time. She’s helped me so much in my garden and took me on an adventure to visit a school in the neighboring community. I genuinely enjoy her company and I find myself at a loss whenever she’s not around. We joke around constantly and tell each other almost everything. Is it weird that my best friend is 16? Anyway, her mom left over a week ago to go to argentina in order to see a doctor because she’s been having a lot of problems with her legs. Who knows when she’ll be back. Her dad works in a neighboring town and is gone all day, every day. He’s also violent with the kids while drinking and rarely lets them leave the house when he is around. So, in the meantime, Sandra is responsible for keeping up the household… cooking, cleaning, washing her dad and brother’s clothes, and caring for the animals, yet somehow she still finds time for me. Granted, we can’t go work on my house anymore together because she needs to stay and watch her house, but she’s always over here (we live right across the street from each other) or inviting me to her house to have mate dulce. She is a doll, and I have so much respect for this little girl. I look back at my life when I was 16 and I never had any of the hardships she has, yet she is always happy with a great attitude. Not only does she not complain, but she does everything with a smile, laughing her way through the hard times. My peace corps goal is to be more like Sandra.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

some updates

29/6/2010
VIVA PARAGUAY!!!!!!!!!!!!! I just got back from a very busy, and very EXCITING day!!!!!!! Today is the day of San Pablo, my community’s patron saint. I woke up at 5am to the sounds of bombs going off and church bells ringing. My sister told me that this was to “wake up san pablo”. Well, it worked. We had a mini parade at 7:30 which consisted of a beaten up pick-up truck with the statue of Saint Paul in the bed. There were about 30 community members following behind, praying. Then, we had mass in the chapel. The priest only comes to our town once a month, so this is a big deal. I would say there were a good 60 people there. The mass was said in guarani, but to my surprise, I understood mostly all of it. Congratulations, me! Then we brought our TV over to the church and we all sat outside and watched Paraguay kick some butt!!! We all painted our faces with the Paraguayan flag. It was absolutely amazing… I had goosebumps during the whole shootout. My community went wild screaming when we won. These people are crazy about football and the fact that we have one of the 8 best teams in the world seriously means a lot to this country. Afterwards, we all ate lunch together which was cooked by some very guapa (hard-working) women who spent the entire morning making delicious chicken and a rice salad. To top it all off, I started playing soccer with all the little kids, then we played a trillion games of “pato, pato, gallina”.
All day today, I couldn’t help but notice that I am fully accepted here. Everyone goes out of their ways to greet me, talk to me, ask me if I still enjoy my life here, offer me their fruit from the trees, and invite me to visit their houses whenever I want to. The kids run up to me and give me huge hugs, are constantly asking me questions about “alláaaaaaaa” (the united states), and are always so curious as to what I am doing here and why in the world I want to learn guarani. They are the most patient with my inability to speak or understand guarani very well which is very endearing. Even though I cannot communicate with a majority of the smaller kids, I can still play games with them, and they LOVE it. My sisters here have become like my real sisters. We spend so much time together and we laugh and joke about the silliest things. We have the same sense of humor which is always helpful. They go out of their way to help me and it means the world to me. They come lay in my bed with me at night and we just talk. I’m definitely going to miss living here. My favorite person here and best friend, 15 year old Sandra, is always over our house hanging out. She’s awesome and makes me feel right at home. She mostly will only talk to me in guarani because she says it’s the only way I’ll learn. At first, I hated her for it, but now I love learning her new phrases and it’s really helpful. I’ve learned really well how to insult someone in guarani because that’s usually the brunt of our conversation. She tells me I’m fat, and I tell her she smells bad. The other night we had a dance party at my old host family’s house. Before leaving, my host sister told me I looked like I was pregnant. These people are brutally honest, but they sincerely don’t intend to be mean. In their culture, it’s totally normal to tell someone “you look ugly today”. Instead of getting upset about it, I came right back at her with, “Shut up Auxi, you’re fat too.” I don’t really think I’m getting fat, I’m hoping it had to do with the shirt I was wearing, but whatever. What do they expect when they only feed me cow fat, spaghetti, and bread? Anyway, Paraguayan dances. They’re always interesting and a great source for gossip. If you dance with someone for more than one song, it means you want to be their girlfriend. If you dance with someone with a bad reputation, word gets around. No matter what you do, everyone is watching; hence my reasoning for staying low-key and not wanting to dance with anyone. I managed to have the fattest, ugliest, oldest man at the party hitting on me ALL night. And by all night, I mean he stood by my side and just stared at me, practically drooling. When I refused to dance with him, he bought me a soda in hopes that this would change my decision. No. An hour later, he asked again. Of course, I said no. Within 5 minutes, I had another soda in my hand. I couldn’t help but laugh at his ruthless insistence. Eventually I turned to the mean side and told him I would never dance with him in my life, so please leave me alone. I relocated myself and was then asked to dance by my 16 year old English student. No, no, no. We were joking around and he told me over and over again, “que mala que sos” which means you’re so mean. Blah, blah. Now every time he sees me, he greets me with, “hola, mala.” He came over to the house today to try and get my phone number, but thank god my sisters wouldn’t give it to him. All I can say is that it’s going to be a long two years.


12/7/2010
I’m just laying in bed during another rainy day in Paraguay. We’ve lucked out so far because the weather has been awesome the past few weeks (like 70 degrees), but now it looks like the cold is rolling in with a whole bunch of rain storms. On rainy days, I don’t feel bad about sleeping in until 8am . I made myself some fried dough for breakfast (healthy, I know but at least I’m cooking), and then I ventured out to bring something to my old host family. I sat with them and had some mate while we watched the rain falling. After, I went to the health post to talk to the nurse, whose house I will be moving into in august. I took my bike there and got stuck in a whole bunch of mud puddles, lost my sandal in a puddle and had to fish it out, and arrived back home looking like a huge truck just splashed a whole bunch of mud all over me. I now understand why Paraguayans don’t leave the house in the rain. I’ve been buried in housework and worrying about the cost of putting in a modern bathroom. Turns out, the bathroom will cost 2.5 million guaranis which is equal to about 500 dollars. Doesn’t seem to bad when I put it that way, but I only have 3 million guaranis in my bank account right now and that needs to pay for my food, everything else I need to buy for my house (mattress, sheets, silverware, plates, pots, pans, chairs, a gas tank for my gas stove, and whatever else I discover that I’ll need… like cockroach spray because I’m pretty sure my kitchen is infested hahah). SO, looks like I’ll be waiting until we get paid again in august to buy any of these things. I’ll be living simply for the first few months, but after that, I won’t be paying monthly rent so I should have plenty of money. I’ve started my garden with my favorite 16 year old! I have two tablones set up which are just raised rows of dirt. I’m going to buy seeds this week and start planting! The backyard of my house is a disaster and the only play for me to put my garden is over an old trash pit. So hopefully I won’t be eating chunks of glass and rubber with my veggies. I have tons of fruit trees which is exciting!!! I have guyaba, bananas, grapefruit, grapes, cherry-ish things, and a fruit called mammon which I’m not really sure what that translates to. The worker dude is starting the bathroom when it stops raining, so I’m just hoping it’ll get done relatively fast. I’m more than ready to move in and live on my own!!!!!!!! EXCITING! I’ve been having a lot of family drama in the house that I’m at now between the three sisters. It’s a super long and complicated story, but I’m right in the middle of it all, and as much as I love these girls, I think it will be best for me to get out of here and stay somewhat detached.
As far as work goes, it’s pretty nonexistent right now. I’ve just been hanging out and getting really close with a few of my neighbors. I feel like I’m an actual resident here now instead of just a visitor. The schools have been on strike for 3 weeks, they are now in 2 weeks of winter vacation, and the news says that they’re planning for 45 more days of strike after break. I was planning to start my health lessons in the primary school on dental health and in the high school about nutrition, but it looks like that may be put off for quite awhile. In the meantime, I’m finishing up my census and planning to hold a meeting to start my committee for my brick oven project. We’ll see how all that goes!
I have to tell you all this story because it was one of my best days here in Paraguay so far. I went to my future house to start cleaning it up and to start work on my garden. I was NOT looking forward to all the work that needs to be done, but I figured I need to start somewhere. Auxi, Mari Ines, and Sandra came with me and brought all their tools and cleaning products. We put on some loud reggaeton and before I knew it, the majority of the neighborhood kids showed up to help. I stopped working for a second and took a look around. Every child, as well as my sisters and Sandra, all had some sort of tool in their hand doing a job on my house. One 10 year old was cutting down a tree in the middle of the garden with an ax, one was sweeping the patio, one was cutting back bushes, one was raking the leaves, one was getting all the cobwebs off the walls, one was scrubbing my bedroom floor, one was getting dirt off the roof tiles, and one was digging in my garden, getting all the trash out of the way. I was so overwhelmed with a feeling of gratitude that I forgot about all the work and money I’d be putting into this house. It was so amazing to see these children genuinely caring for me. This is why I’m here in Paraguay: for the children.