The Mosquitoes have Arrived! :-(

It seems like the past few days have once again flown by.  It seems as if they just like to keep us extremely busy so we don’t really have time to slow down, which I guess is good in some ways but bad in others.  This weekend was extremely warm and I am slowly trying to adjust that you can’t just walk into air-conditioning to cool down but rather am learning how to cool down with fans and multiple showers per day.  Luckily the weather seems to warm up for a few days and then cool back down so we our bodies are slowly able to adjust.  We have a lot of people in my group from the Pacific Northwest and other northern states and they are already having a hard time with the heat so I guess I’m luckily to be somewhat used to it.  I’m sure we will all get through the summers here hopefully without complaining too much but I can honestly say I’m not looking forward to the 110-115 degree days so hopefully we have a “mild” summer! 

I have also learned that my mosquito net doesn’t allow any air circulation but rather acts as an oven so sorry to say I took that off my bed.  Unfortunately though the mosquitoes have made their official appearance and you walk outside and there are just swarms of mosquitoes.  Luckily for some reason they haven’t taken up residence in my room I think because I constantly have the fan on so I think being without my net for now will be okay.  The problem is if you walk outside you just get swarmed especially right before a big storm like we had yesterday (Monday) and unfortunately they just came back with a vengeance after the storm.  There seems to be a major problem throughout Paraguay with Dengue Fever and unfortunately one of the other trainees is currently in the hospital with it.  The Peace Corps has been sending out numerous emails about it but there is really only so much you can do.  We have been thoroughly educated about how to reduce our risks but it is very treatable illness even though you have really bad flu like symptoms for a few days and our medical team is awesome and does a good job of taking care of us!  So I will try and keep my fingers crossed and try and use my bug spray and net (on cooler nights!).  Sadly though it sounds like even among the local people just about everyone has had Dengue at some point and it is quickly on the rise throughout the country despite the health warnings and information posted everywhere.  I think the main reason is there is just no way to escape getting mosquito bites, but I guess time will tell. 

On Saturday night I had all of the trainees in my community (11 of us left) over to my house for a small get together to help unwind and we ended up having a wonderful time playing UNO and my mom was so nice because even though I told her not to she made many little finger foods for us.  We ended up staying up way later than we should have but we had a great time just getting to know each other better outside of classes and we had a lot of fun playing UNO.  It was also nice because I was able to sleep in on Sunday.  One of my friends here Jennifer (from Oregon) lives close to me and on the weekends we have been walking around the “community” which basically just means down the mud roads into the countryside with many cows and sugar cane.  We have fun just talking and trying to unwind from the week plus get a lot of great exercise!  Around noon my family and I left the house and we went over to my grandparents’ house (my mom’s parents) for a small celebration. 

One of the big cultural events here is anniversaries of family members death’s so evidently one of their family members died a year ago so we had a small celebration of their life.  It really just involved about a twenty minute prayer recitation and then we just had a big BBQ with the entire family so I was overwhelmed meeting all of my “new” family and my grandparents, especially my grandfather were trying to ask me so many questions.  I was not able to participate in the prayer recitation but rather was put on animal duty to keep all of the chickens, dogs, cats, flies, and any other animal away from the food while they had their ceremony, which was a TON of work in and of itself.  Sadly the chickens are very persistent and managed to get some Sopa Paraguaya (this is one of my favorite dishes here so far, it’s like corn bread with fresh corn and cheese that my mom makes).  I also learned that my host brother has a one year old daughter so he brought her to the picnic so I was able to play with her a little bit.  It was a warm afternoon but we had plenty of shade and cold Terere to drink all afternoon.  We stayed until midafternoon and then I was able to come back and get some homework done. 

At this point we have a huge stack of reading the want us to start doing in our “free time” which we don’t really have any between class and family activities so I have been trying to get ahead on our technical reading on the weekends which is a lot easier than my language lessons mostly because technical skills are taught in English.  I am learning a lot of technical information mainly on organic gardening, environmental education in the schools, agroforestry, as well as history of natural resource management in Paraguay.  It seems like the majority of my work in my community should revolve around agroforestry since there are only 2 people “trained” in forestry.  I am really looking forward to this because this is something that can be incorporated into nearly anything with a positive result.  My task now is to just try and learn about all of the important trees here in Paraguay and what is normally used in different agroforestry practices.  I am also trying to express to my teachers an interest in biodigestors so hopefully I can be on the “PC Paraguay Biodigestor Team” who is only a select few from each group.  They are able to travel throughout Paraguay to install and inform the people about biodigestors and this is something that I studied/worked on in Costa Rica and what I worked on a little bit with Porter. 

At this point I have moved from Spanish to my Guarani classes and I am quickly learning that the pronunciation is key in communication because there are many words that are spelt the same way but depending on where you accent or influx your voice it can mean a lot of different things (most of which are bad).  I will try and post some examples of Guarani when I have time!  My host mom is so awesome because she sits down with me for a couple of hours every day to help me with my homework because she wants me to do well in class so I can be good in my future community.  She is also so nice because she is always telling me how good I’m doing and how much improvement I have made even though I can’t see it.  She has also started introducing me as her daughter which means so much to me to be an official part of the family now! 

It seems like the next week I will not be able to post for a while because we will mostly be in our training communities and not at the training center where we have intermittent internet access.  Over the next week we will be focusing our technical training on agroforestry which I am so excited about.  We also have our second language proficiency interview next week and our second interviews with our environmental coordinators, who are the people are placing us in our future community, so a lot of important meetings over the next week.  I was able to talk to my dad, mom, and Thad back in the states this week which always just makes my week so much better.  I was able to get caught up on what’s going on back at home and the news as well as just such great encouragement.  I have also been getting a lot of really wonderful emails so please keep them coming as they truly help make my day.  I have also been copying the emails into word so on days when I don’t have internet I can still read all of the amazing encouragement. 

Also today I planted my first tree in Paraguay!  I will try to post pictures soon.