This past week (Nov.
4-8) I traveled to Caaguazu for our LFP.
I went and visited another PCV at her more urban site. I went with one of our language teachers and
three other PCT’s. Caaguazu is located
about 3-4 hours from our current training community. We started out early on Monday morning and at
first we thought we were just going to have a food tour for the day because the
bus driver and language teachers kept telling us that this place had the best
empanadas, others chipa, and then finally ice cream and bread. So of course we all had to try and
compare!
The landscape on our
drive to Caaguazu was just beautiful with lush green hills and cattle ranching
as far as the eye could see. It was just
amazing the large expanse of cattle ranching and I was just trying to imagine
how truly wild this place would have been before they took away all of the
trees, but regardless it was still beautiful.
It still just amazes me that we can go from a very urban area and drive
less than 5 minutes and see beautiful countryside. So by the time we had stopped along the way
and tried all of the wonderful food we arrived midafternoon. Caaguazu is actually the wood capital of the
country so there were countless sawmills as well as every single wooden item
you could imagine for sale along the road my favorite were all of the toys for
kids mostly painted with different Disney characters. I would have loved to been able to look at
all of the beautiful furniture and other items but we didn’t stop there.
The PCV I visited
lives on the outskirts of town, and currently works with 7 different schools. She mostly works on the 3 R’s (reduce, reuse,
recycle), school gardens, and other trash management solutions. She spends just about every day in the
schools, which sounds like fun to her but I would just like to occasionally
work in schools. During the week we were
there we had language class (Guarani) 2 hours+ per day and then the rest of the
day we worked on various other projects.
We helped her with her garden, make and presented a lecture to 6th
graders about composting and then helped them actually build a compost
pile. We also spent a lot of time just
quizzing her brain about what it is like being a volunteer (especially in a
city) because most are not placed in a city.
One of the afternoons
we walked to a community center where they are sponsored from an international
organization and provide a preschool for the community with a wonderful teacher
who somehow manages 30 different children every morning and afternoon. Also one day a week they open up a soup
kitchen for children and also have women groups that meet weekly talking about
nutrition and how skills to make them more marketable in the workforce. They also have a huge garden that we worked
in and we also planted trees around where the children play. They also recently received a grant for
computers so they have a handful of computers so the PCV teaches basic computer
skills there on Saturday morning.
We also did a lot of
cooking making banana bread, carrot cake, and homemade pizza. I am quickly learning that many volunteers
become great bakers here from scratch (ie not being able to use a cake mix) because
you don’t really have a choice and have ample free time. The volunteer I stayed with is known by her
community for her chocolate chip cookies and cakes because Paraguayans don’t
often have these things. Also I am quickly
learning that you can get by without many things like when we went to the
community member’s home to make carrot cake she didn’t believe in spoons to
stir up the batter so I was able to get my fingers nice and dirty.
So with that said I would like recipes from different people to make
cakes, cookies, breads, and any other foods that can be simply made from
scratch. Also please remember that I
have a more limited ingredient selection so please keep it simple. Please feel free to email them to me or post
on my blog!
Below you should be
able to see pictures from our 4 day trip.
On Friday we all
traveled into Asuncion for committee meetings.
PC Paraguay seems to have a committee for just about anything and they
took us in to attend so we could start meeting many of the other volunteers
serving in Paraguay many of which are in different sectors (Community and
Economic Development and Community Health).
We also were able to start learning more about other events that PC
hosts in Paraguay like a camp for children to attend that is called PY Verde
which is about conservation topics.
There is also a seed bank in the office where we can check in and out
seeds on a small scale as well as a vermiculture (worm bed) and compost
piles. I was also able to go to a
meeting about the biodigestors they use here in PCPY and the design and meet
the people who are on the team with the hope that I might be able to work on
this in the future. Also I forgot to
mention that I had a HUGE pile of letter arrive today that were all stamped the
same date (evidently the government shut down affected international letters)
so I now have about 20 different letters that I will be opening over the next
few days so a big thanks to everyone who sent me a letter!
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