Christmas in August and Recycled Art Day

This past week I was happy to welcome the Caaguazu VAC to my site.  This is just a small group of volunteers that all live in and around Caaguazu.  They arrived into my site on Saturday morning and stayed through Monday mid-day.  We had a wonderful time together and had fun celebrating Christmas in August and then on Sunday afternoon helping me to host a fantastic recycled art class.  Below you will be able to see all of the photos from this weekend.

On Saturday evening we celebrated Christmas in July.  We made some wonderful sugar cookies and homemade pizza and watched a Christmas movie.  We also had a white elephant gift exchange that turned into a lot of fun with some wonderful gifts.  So this picture is of the gifts before we exchanged them.

This is a picture of some of them after they opened their gifts.  After we celebrated Christmas we went outside to see the beautiful starry night that I have at my site due to limited light pollution.  We were out looking for quite a while because the stars were just so beautiful!  We were actually able to see a meteor falling and many different shooting stars. Such a great ending to a fun celebration.

On Sunday morning we got up and made a great breakfast and had some great actually Starbucks coffee, Christmas holiday blend of course.

In the afternoon we had a large recycled art day and invited all of the kids in my community.  We had 23 actually show up which I was very happy with.  We had 5 different crafts that the kids all rotated through.  This picture is of Nari showing the kids how to make wallets out of Tetra-paks which is just like a juice or milk carton. 

Pauline worked the station of magazine beads.  You cut pieces of magazines and roll them around a small stick and glue the end down to make beads that you can then make bracelets, necklaces, etc.

Katie worked a station where we had collected Styrofoam plates to make picture frames.  The kids used magazines to find pictures and then colored and added stickers. 

Sofia worked with the kids on making bracelets out of plastic bags.  There are always a lot of plastic bags all around the community so we had collected them and cut the bags into strips.  From there the kids could choose three different colors and braid them together.  Once it was braided we then ironed the plastic between pieces of paper so all of the plastic then fuses together and forms a beautiful bracelet.

One of the favorite stations was making glasses from glass bottles.  Brad and Abiu and I worked this station helping the kids use wire to get the bottle hot and then dunking in in ice cold water which usually works to cut the glass.  The kids then just had to use sand paper to smooth the edges.  The kids loved this station but it is actually a lot of work to get the bottle hot enough so we ended up having to help them a lot, especially the little kids.

After the kids went to each station we then had 20 minutes of free time where they could go back to whichever station they wanted to make additional crafts.  After that Nari and I gave a small presentation of making eco-bricks which just involves stuffing 2 L plastic bottles with plastic and other inorganic trash.  I am trying to get the kids excited about this so we can make enough in order to make an eco-bench in front of the school.  

A picture of all the participants with their new recycled art crafts.  I think all the kids had a great time and were excited about making more in the future. 

A picture that we told the kids to look crazy in but I think the volunteers here had a lot more fun with it than the kids, but fun picture none the less!

After we got the recycled art day done we when on a small walk in my community to see the beautiful overlook point and we decided to take a Caaguazu VAC picture along a fence line.  It took us a few tries to figure out the self-timer on my camera but we figured it out!

We had a lot of extra bottle tops the kids didn’t want from making the glass bottles so Brad and I made a beautiful wind chime to hang in my tree which actually works and sounds pretty cool!

So now I will be in site for a few weeks working in my community and preparing for my mom’s trip here to Paraguay.  We have a wonderful trip planned including a trip up to the Pantanal (like you see on Planet Earth, one of the most diverse ecosystems on earth), time at my site, and a trip to Iguazu Falls in Argentina.  I can’t wait!