Long Field Training in Jukyry

During the first part of November I had the privilege to welcome 4 new PC trainees as well as 1 technical trainer and 1 language teacher to my site here in Jukyry Central.  It seemed like just yesterday that I was traveling to Caaguazu to visit Nari when I had my long field practice.  Long field practice is a four day class that takes place in a volunteer’s site and allows the trainees to see the life of a PCV while at the same time continuing language and technical training.  For me it was stressful making sure that everything was set up and ready to go so when they finally got here everything fell right into place (for the most part) and we had a great time.  We had quite a week together and had a lot of fun cooking, laughing, and learning together.  Below you will be able to see some of the photos and activities we completed during their four short days here!

This is a picture of one of the burrowing owls that can be seen in my community, one of the PCT’s took this picture on their drive into my site in the bean fields.  

A picture of my house when they came to visit with my garden and plants along the side of my house.  They all seemed to love my house especially since I have a nice class room which makes my life a lot easier located behind my house!

On their first afternoon here we took a little while and took a walk around my community and many of the trainees were avid bird watchers so they we able to see many new birds here and take some fantastic photos.

The biggest project that we completed while they were here was making an eco-bench using the eco-bricks that my students have been collecting for a few months now.  An eco-brick is just a 2 liter soda bottle filled with inorganic material (plastics) that is just stuffed, and stuffed some more until it is completely full and is just as strong, or stronger than a regular brick.  The kids had been collecting these for a while, since it takes so long to make one, and luckily we had more than enough for our bench project.  So this is a picture of the area in front of the school where we decided to put an eco-bench.  We decided to place a bench here not only for the students but also as a place to sit and wait for the bus, before this bench you just had to stand to wait for the bus or be willing to get red clay dirt all over so now we have a wonderful bench to sit and wait on!  The problem now is that it only seats 3-4 kids so it is now a race to see who can sit on it, so hopefully next year we will be able to make a couple of more of these.

This is a picture of me helping to put the bench together using the eco-bricks, regular bricks, and cement to build up the bench.  

This is when we were trying to make “textured” concrete to make it a little more artistic and fun looking, mainly it was just fun to play with concrete like it was play dough!  It is a little hard to see but on the top we got many of the kids to come out and put their handprint in the wet cement and they loved being able to participate and leave a lasting impression.

The completed bench and the wonderful PCT’s that came out to my site.  It was a hot day but we worked together to get it finished with some help from my students and had a blast!  We also pushed leaves that we had gathered into the wet concrete around the base to just add some more artistic elements.  So now I am trying to get everything together that we need to paint the bench so that will be a good project this summer for me to work on with my summer classes!

In order to celebrate our wonderful bench making and to cool down we took a walk to the beautiful waterfall in my community and cooled off for the afternoon!

On Thursday we had a wonderful morning of preparing presentations that the PCT’s were going to give in class that afternoon.  Unfortunately due to rain (which means that school is cancelled) the just ended up giving the presentation to my host family and friends in my classroom.  They did a fantastic job presenting on composting and worm composting!  Since we had time to spare after the presentation we had plenty of time to play some Uno!

On Friday morning we all went over to my host mom’s house and spent about an hour helping to milk the cows.  It was a really fun experience and we all managed to figure out the technique and actually milk the cows, which is harder than it looks!

With some of the fresh milk we collected we had a late breakfast making chocolate chip pancakes, bacon, eggs with veggies, and fresh fruit!  It was just a good way to wrap up a great week and give them a little taste of home!  Sadly though the week had to come to an end but I think they went away with some great memories and learned a little bit about life as a PCV to help them through their next couple of years here in Paraguay!

This is just a picture of my niece’s cat that decided that it should have babies in my house which was a learning experience for us all but provided some great photo opportunities!