Reconnect Training

This week (April 21-25) my entire G had what they call reconnect.  It is a training that takes place once we have been in site for 3-4 months and we all come together in the training center.  We had a wonderful week here and it was a great time to see all of my G mates, many of which I haven’t seen since we all went to site in December.  During this week in training we were able to stay with our original host family which has been a great time to catch up with my host family.  I have really enjoyed spending the week with them and nothing beats a hot shower (which I don’t currently have in site) and just the love and wonderful support of my host family.  I got a little bit of grief from my mom since it has been a couple of months since I have visited but I tried to make it up to her this week.  The training aspect of this week was divided into two different sections, so the technical session started on Monday at noon and went through the end of the day on Wednesday. 

On Monday we all met up in the training center and spent the afternoon as just our environmental conservation and education group.  We talked about our community needs assessment and also all got a chance to share our community maps and just talked about our first three months in site.  It was a great time to just share our successes as well as problems that we have all experienced in site our first few months. 

On Tuesday morning we were picked up early from our training communities and traveled to Apyragua, located in the department of Paraguarí. We went and visited a current environmental volunteer from G-40 (our sister G).  We spent the entire day at her beautiful site and learned all about starting tree nurseries, grafting citrus trees, and abonos verdes (green manures).  Below you will be able to see some of the pictures and I will tell you the story as I go.

This is a picture of the tree nursery that Tiffany (the PCV) and her committee set up.  They are currently growing citrus trees, mainly lemon trees to use for grafting on of other citrus.

This is just a picture of the “chain gang” that we had set up to help fill up the watering system.  We had to use the well to bring up water which we put in buckets and then put into the gravity fed watering system.

This is just a beautiful picture of her site with the hills in the background.

This was a picture of the charla (presentation) Tiffany gave about what she did to start this project and the grants she was able to obtain.

This is the watering system that they used to water each of their seedlings.  This system is very fancy for down here in Paraguay but works great!

After we learned about her project and had a quick lunch we then had the opportunity to learn the basics about tree grafting.  This is the wrong time of year to graft citrus trees, it should be done in the spring here, but we were mainly just practicing the technique.  This is a picture of Jason who was my partner for the project and below you can see a picture of what the new tree looked like when it was done.  We were using a limon rootstock and grafting on orange trees.

This is just a beautiful flower that I found at her site and below you can see another picture of her site.

This is just a cool looking insect that I found that landed on my hand.

When we were done with tree grafting and nursery management we walked across her community and visited with a farmer.  We went out to his kokue (field) and learned more about abonos verdes and we were able to see three that were actually planted as well as we were able to plant some ourselves.

After learning about abonos verdes the farmer showed off his onion production, and he has a very nice set up and was getting ready to move the onions into the field.  After walking around his property we were able to head back to the bus and arrived back to our training communities later that evening. 

On Wednesday morning we were once again picked up early and went into Asuncion and visited INFONA which is a national forestry institute.  It was a wonderful stop and I learned a lot more about trees and tree seeds of Paraguay.  I also got to meet many other forest engineers and was able to get a lot of questions asked.  They also give out free trees and tree seeds so I was able to drop off the request form that my community sent me with and will be picking them up in a couple of weeks.  They have a wonderful set up and when I come back I hope to spend more time there to learn more.  We then traveled into downtown Asuncion to the SENATUR office where we learned about tourism in Paraguay.  It was a good presentation to learn about the steps they are taking to get people to travel down here and around in Paraguay.  We spent the afternoon on Wednesday in the PC Office getting caught up on a lot of administrative things.

Thursday morning began the next phase of our training which was language/cultural training.  So we were able to spend about four hours in language class.  At first I wasn’t looking forward to this because I just felt like I was where I wanted to be when I came back but it all worked out great.  Our language professors are FANTASTIC and were able to figure out where we were and then we made a list of the things we wanted to learn.  So by the end of the morning I felt very confident and had learned a lot more technical vocabulary in Guarani and Spanish.  In the afternoon we heard from our fantastic medical team and then had a discussion the rest of the afternoon with our higher ups from Asuncion.  It was a great time to just share our ideas, frustrations, and just hearing from them about what resources are available to us. 

On Friday we had language class all day which I wasn’t looking forward to but they did a great job of breaking it up and by the end of the day I learned a lot.  We also got done at 4 so I was able to come home early and spend some more time with my host family.  I am sitting here at the kitchen table and just finished eating dinner with them all.  It is so fun to see how we all have changed in just a few short months.  I am much better with language and my sister now has a serious boyfriend, my brother’s daughter Mia has grown up so much since I left.  She is now talking up a storm and running everywhere.  It is so great to know that I will always have this supportive family here and so great to get caught up with everyone.  Will be heading back to site in the morning and will be working on my house this week.