I finally got to visit my site. I love it and I can’t wait to go back there. Everything in the community is VERY campo, so the ambiente (atmosphere) is very tranquillo and the stars are beautiful.
I had such a wonderful time in my community and I don’t really know how to express to you the atmosphere. I guess the best way would be to start at the beginning. My contact is a very guapa dicrectora (principal) of a school that has been asking for a volunteer since 2007. After we met she took me to her house for the weekend. She lives in Blas Garay, but not in my community. While I was with her, I met the principal and vice principal of the local head school, and she took me met a Kansan who is married to a Paraguay and they live in the community next to mine. For those of you who know my family, the Kansan kind of reminds me of my Uncle Keith. The Kansan’s name is Randy and he told me that it was his responsibility to look after any American in the area.
On Monday morning, I finally went to my community. The school had a bievenidos celebration for me (a welcome party). It was very cute. The kids at the school did two traditional Paraguayan dances and the teachers and parents gave very nice welcome speeches (first in Guarani and then in Spanish so that I could understand). The hilarious part was that they found a giant picture of Jennifer Aniston and labeled it Samantha. They kept telling me how much we look alike (which we don’t), but it was a major ego boost.
After the bienvenidos I went to my host family’s house. They are SUPER nice and I love them already. My host dad is the community’s Plan Paraguay representative and my host mom runs the cantina at the school. I also have three siblings and a grandmother. Their house is surrounded by fruit trees! And they grow mandioca on their property too. They have several pigs, chickens, roosters, some cows, 2 dogs (tigre and leon) 5 cats (3 of witch are 15 days old) The house itself is made of wood with a metal roof . There is a kitchen in another building in the back (with a fire and no stove). Although they have running water, there are no sinks (only a spigot in the back yard) and no toilets (I’ll be using a latrine for the next two years).
I am also very close to a Lieana (a rural health volunteer from my training group). We plan to do a lot of projects together because both of our sites could use health and education volunteers.
There is tons more that I’d love to tell you about my community, but at the risk of writing too much, I’ll post the rest later. If you want to know can talk to my Mom and Dad as I am going to force them to listen to a minute by minute account of what happened
