Last Week of Training!

Well I can honestly say the last nine+ weeks have just flown by going through training.  I think they just like to keep us very busy!  On Friday night my family went over to my grandma’s house to celebrate her birthday.  Overall we had a great night and I met a lot of new people and had some great food!  The best part of the night was when the mariachi band showed up in traditional Paraguayan attire and playing the traditional instruments and it was just a great experience and the guys were so good.  I have posted some pictures of their performance below. 

This past weekend we had our last Saturday session that we will have but it was on bee keeping.  I can honestly say that before this session I had very limited knowledge about bees and bee keeping but I learned a lot.  The bees that we have here in Paraguay are Africanized bees which are also known as the “killer bees” because they are a larger, blacker bee that is a lot more aggressive than the European bee.  Evidently they can also produce a greater amount of honey if properly managed.  It was great to just learn how it is done in Paraguay because in the US it can be just as simple as mail order hives and queen bees.  Here in Paraguay everything is either done by separating a hive that is too large that is already currently managed or live captures that is mostly done out in the woods.  It was amazing some of the stories we heard today about the live captures and how it is normally done with very little “equipment” by the Paraguayans.  Some of the stories are a little bit scary and mostly involve cutting down trees to cut the hive out, so they were telling us different ways to do a live capture. 

After our two hour lecture we got to go outside and get suited up in what felt like space suits to go and visit the bees.  I have some pictures below!  We were able to go out into the woods and see the managed hives at the local agriculture school but we didn’t have the best weather for bee keeping because it was very cloudy.  Also it didn’t help that our smoker broke on our walk into the woods, which is very essential when opening up the bee boxes.  So we simply just looked at the bee boxes and then stood way back when our guide attempted to open a box to get out a panel for us to look at but sadly the Africanized bees lived up to their name and were NOT HAPPY with us.  Luckily most of us were standing back a bit because when she opened the box there was just a huge swarm and she calmly told us to just turn around and walk quickly away.  If I was her I wouldn’t have been as calm because she was just covered with bees. 

So at the end of the day I learned that it is only possible to open the hive with a smoker and that you for sure need the proper equipment and a calm attitude.  I was luckily not stung at all but our guide was stung around 30 times but she was used to it, but still didn’t look like fun to me!  Also I learned if you do have bees on you the best thing to do if you are done with what you’re doing is to just start walking in circles out away from the hive and give the bees a chance to be done with you and go back to their hive.  Overall it was a great morning and even though we were just able to suit up and see the bee boxes it was for sure a great day and peaked my interest in bee keeping.  They said bee keeping in the states is a lot easier with access to proper equipment and tools, so I guess I will have a couple of years to do some great research on that!

When I got home from bee keeping I spent about two hours washing a lot of clothes by hand, it still just amazes me how long it takes but since it has been raining just about every day at least for a little while it has been awhile since I could wash clothes so the majority of my Saturday afternoon was done doing that.  On Sunday we had some people from other communities come over for a soccer game and we had a great time but had to quickly stop because it just got WAY TOO HOT!  I also uploaded some pictures of food since some of you have been asking about that!

This last week of training we have A LOT of different things going on.  Many of which just involve wrapping things up including our final safety/security test and language test.  We will also be going into Asuncion a couple of times this week to complete even more paperwork and get a lot of the last minute essentials out of the way.  Also I am starting to get everything packed back up, which is proving to be difficult; I really need Thad here to help me pack!  We are taking with us three months’ worth of stuff to our site since we will be using the public bus so we can take our large hiking backpack and the rest of our stuff will be delivered to our site in about three months.  It is just amazing how much stuff we have accumulated since we arrived: mostly stuff from the PC like our mosquito net, which doesn’t really condense, our first aid kit, and many, many different training manuals.  I think though I will be able to get it all fit and figured out, might just take some time and adjustment. 

We will be done with everything on Friday and have the last weekend with our families before we swear in on Monday morning.  My mom was saying this weekend she was going to start decorating for Christmas so that will be a great way to end my stay here.  I am going to really miss my host family here!  On Monday after we swear in we have to start moving towards our site and since I logistically can’t get to my site in one day due to the bus schedules I will just travel to Caaguazu and stay with my PCV friend there overnight before I go into site the next day.  Once Monday rolls around I will try to keep you all posted over the next week but a lot of things going on!