Meet G 41!

These are the 22 other people I have been going through training with. We met in Miami and all 23 of us flew down to beautiful Paraguay together.  I thought I would blog a little about them and the whole meaning behind a “G” another lovely Peace Corps term. 

So our training center is located in a small town called Guarambare which is where the G comes from. Each new group that comes in has a number and we are the 41st group to come through so we are Guarambare 41 or G-41! At first I thought 41 was the number of trainees but I was wrong. We also have “sister G’s” who swore in over the past 2 years. Peace Corps does a really good job at setting up the attitude and role of the G and making us all feel like a family. From the beginning they stressed how important your G would be over these next 2 years. At first it was strange to think about getting so close to 22 strangers but now it is all coming together. We are all doing this together, learning together, stressing out together and taking on this challenge. It has been really fun getting to my G, they are great. I am lucky to have such a unique and special group of people to share these 2 years with. 

Although we will be placed in all different places around Paraguay, you are still encouraged to see each other. Over the 2 years G’s will plan trips into the city together for weekends and take vacations together. It is common to visit the sites of other G mates and talk frequently with one another. As you all know I am a talker and sometimes you just need to speak some good old english with other Americans, this is when your G comes in! I have already experienced this and will probably experience more over the next 2 years. Also our sister G is really close, they swore in last April. They are planning on coming to our swear in dinner and organizing a weekend in May in Asuncion where we can all go out and get to know each other. 

For the most part ever one in my G is under 25 and has graduated college, worked a little and traveled ALOT. Lots of world travelers among me, it is really interesting to hear about the places people have been and they things they have done. We spend a lot of time together now, some times a little to much but I keep telling myself in a few short months we will be very far from each other. It does help that we can talk for free on our Paraguayan cells phones, thanks to our lovely Peace Corps cooperate plan! 

Song of the Week: Daddy Yankee- Limbo- On repeat, check it out!!  

Also, I woke up this morning to my host Dad skinning out pig... it was a very interesting experience, it was weird how natural it seemed. 

Happy Semana Santa y Easter!!! 

LFP and week 6

Hello! What a week its been. An easy way to put the PC life is the days go slow but the weeks and months go fast. I had a hard time understanding this until now. I am approaching 2 months in country and I really cannot believe how fast it is going. This week especially, where do I begin... 

Saturday we had a little fiesta with our families and it was really fun. We are starting to enter into the winter season and its been getting chilly here. Saturday night was a chilly night, I was unprepared.. Non the less we had a good time. Sunday was a funny day. I guess you can say we celebrated St. Patricks day... On Sundays the Paraguayans start their party early. My family had a bunch of family over and we eat lots of food, had some beers and danced all day. I am starting to really communicate with my family and starting to really feel a home being built here. Sunday was a family day and I had such a great time! I am looking forward to this Sunday! 

This week I went on my Long Field Practice (LFP) another requirement for PC trainees. I went with 5 other trainees and my professor to visit another Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV). We went to the department of Misiones and stayed in a small community called San Pablo. It was a very beautiful place, lost of trees and mountains. I stayed with a new host family and they were so sweet and welcoming. They didn’t have much but had a lot of love! It was defiantly a humbling experience staying with them and seeing another way people live in this country. They only had 4 lights in the house, a dirt floor, running water outside only with an roofless outdoor latrine. It was a whole new experience for me. I shared a room with a 17 year old girl, frogs, spiders and lots of other bugs. I embraced it and learned a lot, I was thankful to experience what I did and learned a lot. Who knows...my future site could be very similar ( check out photo below of my house).Each family, community and house is different here you never know what you will have or wont have. 

Some of the trainees with our PCV, Spencer. Check out the beautiful landscape in the background! 

We spent the week working in the school and health post. We taught about nutrition and  communication. We also cooked with families and dug a compost pile. It was a good week, we worked a lot and got to hang out with a PCV, Spencer who was awesome! It was great to hear from her and learn about her personal experiences as a PCV. She was a great host and cook! She has her own house and we hung out there a lot, I hope to have a house similar when I am a PCV. 

This is the house I stayed in this past week, reminded me of the secret garden! 

On our ride home we stopped at another PCV site and had a big cook out for lunch and it was delicious. We also stopped in other towns to do some shopping. I love seeing other places in Paraguay, they are so beautiful and unique!! When I got home I was so happy to see my family, my host mom made a big and delicious dinner. I love my family here, they are wonderful and keep getting better! 

Right now I am really enjoying myself and have adjusted really well. I am getting nervous  for my future site. It is scary to think that in 4 weeks I will be an official PCV and moving to my future site for 2 years. AHH! Scary! I have no clue what kind of site I will get. We have 1 more interview with our placement coordinators ( who are amazing!) to discuss site placements... we receive our placements on April 3th.. the BIG reveal! I will keep you updated! As for now we have some more training and technical exams next week. This weekend I get to skype with my sister while she try’s on wedding dresses, technology is crazy! I can’t wait to see everyone!! Next week is Holy Week/ Easter here and well all over. Its a big big deal for Paraguay and we will be cooking all week, starting with the slaying of our pet pig...how exciting!!!! 

High Lights of the Week:

• Learning and speaking more Spanish by the day! 
• Spencer made cinnamon rolls for use this past week and they were THE BOMB 
• Bought my first Paraguayan craft and now have my own beautiful side purse. The perfect size for change and my phone! 
• In PY you can buy mixed cd’s with 175+ songs on them and one of my paraguayn friends just bought 7 so now I have lots of new Paraguayan tunes!! ( I love the music here!) 
• The mornings are beautiful here and I am now enjoying my coffee and it makes my mornings that much better! I say this now, but I really don’t mind the rooster wake up call! 
• Falling in love with this land 
• My mom made chicken with Old Bay last night and it was a little taste of heaven! 
• Also we had fresh pine apple juice last night and it was divine! 
• This weekend we turn our clocks back witch makes us be on the same time zone as all of you East Coasters!! Should make life a lit easier with phone calls!!! Ring Ring! 
• I am starting to train for a half marathon for May! 

Chau, 

Te Amo! 

Training Update and a few pictures!!

I’ve been thinking about this post all week and what I wanted to write about. There is SO MUCH happening I feel like there is no way to just write about one thing. So I am going to try and write about a few things that I am learning and take you on a tour of my brain! 

So learning 2 new languages has its difficulties and great rewards. My brain has never experienced so much activity. At the end of the day it feels like mush, it takes all I have to look over my flash cards one more time, turn my light off and crawl into my bed. The most difficult part about this processes is the confusion happening in my brain. I want to speak in spanish, but naturally I speak english. Then theres a point when I can only think in spanish and start to speak in legit spanish-english sentences and I don’t even know what I am saying. There are times when I can only think of the spanish word for something but I want to be talking in english then there are times that swaps. Its very confusing and exhausting. They say that after 2 years here you forget how to speak english, I didn’t believe them at first.. but now after 5 weeks I am having trouble speaking english. To all my bi-lingual friends, you rock!! I want to be like you! 

So language is a huge part of what I am learning, we spend about 4 hours in class each day just learning spanish and guarni. I sometimes feel like the whole day is a class because I only speak spanish in my house as well. After language class we have technical training. This training varies each day. Some topics we have covered are; sexual and reproductive health, nutrition, gardening and composting, cooking over fires,    dental health, trash management, parasite prevention and lots of health education practices. Its all very interesting! The purpose of tech training is for us to practice technical skills, learn to apply skills within the Paraguayan world of work and gain knowledge of possible areas of education with Paraguayans. 

Its all really enlightening and empowering. I am being trained in so many areas, both in english and spanish. Thats another area where my mind freaks out a bit! Over all I am enjoying the tech sessions its just a lot of information. Between language class in the morning and tech in the afternoon, my brain is exhausted in the evening! We have 5 more weeks left of training, its all going by very quickly. On Monday I leave with a group of 5 other trainees for a long field visit. We are staying with new families for the week and working in the community as if we were volunteers. I am nervous and very excited!  

Today we had a huge rain storm, all the roads flooded and the power went out for a while. I made a cup of tea and read. It was very peaceful. Then my host mom made empanadas and I made guacamole! Its was a delicious dinner!! Over the weekend we cooked for the Paraguayans and shared different recipes with them, they enjoyed that. My spanish is improving a lot and I am enjoying talking with my family and the community more. The Paraguayan Holy Week is coming up and we are already starting to prepare food, mainly chipa! A delicious warm, cheesy roll. They eat chipa for every meal, its pretty funny! This weekend we are having another dinner for all the volunteers, I am excited, Paraguayan parties are always fun! 

Here are a few photos, I will try and put more up on my facebook!  

This is the school where we have most of our training. This photo was taken when we cooked for our families  last weekend! 

These are my sisters, Sandra and Karen with the Paraguay River behind us! 

A Strong Heart

“There is a quiet courage that comes from an inward spring of confidence in the meaning and significance of life. Such courage is an underground river, flowing far beneath the shifting events of ones experiences, keeping alive a thousand little springs of action. It has neither trumpet to announce it nor crowds to applaud; it is best seen in the lives of men and women who do their work from day to day without hurry and without fever, It is the patient waiting of humble ones whose integrity keeps their spirits sweet and their hearts strong. Wherever one encounters it a lift is given to life and vast reassurance invades one’s being. To walk with such a person in the daily round is to keep company with angels.” 

Howard Thurman 

This is good, really good I love it! If you need to re read it, do it and over and over again. This was hanging in the office of my tech trainer here in PY. Every time I read it I get something new from it and I hope you will too. I want a strong heart and I want to keep company with angels! 

Everything has been great in Paraguay, actually really great. I can’t describe the feelings I’ve been having about this place. On Friday it will be a full month that I have been here. A whole month of living in Paraguay! If I was to write this post a week ago I would of thought I was crazy but I am so excited for the next 26 months! So excited!

It has been a really hard adjustment. I’ve been forced outside comforts, lost my ability to verbally communicate....naturally, experienced the saddest days of missing home, family and all its glory. I’ve woken up days in a row and absolutely not wanted to be here. I knew it would “just take time” but some days I didn’t want to give any time. Thats all really depressing, I am well aware. But there is happy ending and joy was found and now I am falling in love with Paraguay! 

It happened over the weekend and I’m not really sure how. The people, the country, the culture and the Peace Corps community is amazing! I am so so happy I am here and ready for these 2 years. It has been the best feeling to wake up and be excited to be here and start my day! 

So there you go, a bit of my heart and how I really feel about Paraguay! Please come visit me, you have about 26 months to make your plans. Just not July 2014 because I will be in America FOR A WEDDING!! 

A weekend update:

-Ate lots of empanadas

-Went to a few Paraguayan parties and danced the night away, I really love dancing here, a lot. But the Paraguayans don’t actually start dancing till midnight so it makes for a late night under the moon! 

-Ate a pig and a cow for lunch on Sunday, and kind of liked it. Turning more Paraguayan by the day! 

-Saw the best fire works show, ever. Would have been totally illegal in America. Actually most things Paraguayans do would be illegal in America, but its totally fine here! Muy tranqillo! 

-Had a bug burrow its self in my toe and lay eggs. Then had my sister dig it out while the whole family watched. Apparently its common and harmless, but was still very painful!

Hope you Marylanders stay safe in this “predicted” snow storm heading your way! Miss you all and gladly excepting packages!!!!! I am currently eating my last reese’s cup. It was really hard to ration these! Enjoy your Wednesday! 

Peace Corps Visit ( PCV)

Hola! I spent the last 4 days living with a current PCV at her site. My volunteer’s name was Bri, she is from Arizona and was really nice! Her site was pretty campo which is the Paraguayan version of rural. She lived in a quiet, mountainous community that lots of people vacation in. I wanted to blog a little about the trip, it was mostly a lot of eating and relaxing! 

School doesn’t start till next week for the Paraguayans so there wasn’t much going on for Bri. In the summer in the campo you don’t really do much, it is hot and people just relax. So thats what we did. Bri lives in an awesome house, for PCV standards. Its a 2 room house with an indoor bathroom. It was cosy and I liked it, perfect for a PCV. It even had screened in windows and warm water for showers which is a huge plus for housing here.

I arrived on Monday via bus and made it without any problems! I was so proud of myself! We grabbed lunch,ice cream and went grocery shopping. It was awesome to go to a big super market, they had so many options I felt like a kid in a toy store! We bought lots of food and went back to her house. Is is a 8k walk from the city to her house so we took a taxi. There are only 2 buses that go into her community each day. On Monday we laid around, napped, chatted and cooked pizza. Really good pizza, Bri made the dough from scratch and it was so good. We ate 2 whole pizza’s. I was so pleased! 

On Tuesday I had yogurt and granola for breakfast and it was heavenly! I had forgotten how good yogurt was, when you live with a host family you really have no control over what you eat :( We also met with the principal of the school and chatted and toured around a bit. Bri made burritos for lunch and then we napped some more! For dinner we made cinnamon buns and I have absolutely so regrets. I had a craving and it was satisfied. I highly recommend making cinnamon buns from scratch, it will change your life. 

On Wednesday we walked around her community and talked with some people. I learned some more about what its like to be a health volunteer here and the life that comes with that. It was good to live it out for a few days, see what I would and wouldn’t want at my post. We obviously ate more.. I made a veggie pasta and it was also wonderful, got my veggie fix since Paraguayans don’t really eat veggies! Bri made garlic  bread sticks and then we took more naps.  Life in the campo stops between 1pm -6pm so you just go with it. That night we had some more cravings for chocolate peanut butter brownies and salt and vinegar chips. All were made from scratch and all were wonderful!! 

I ate a lot, but we also ran a lot so it evens out, right? It was nice to get away from the training life for a little and eat some american food favorites. I had a good visit and learned a lot. While I was away my host mom kept texting me to check in and tell me she missed me. It was really sweet and I felt so loved! It was nice to come back today and fewl so welcome when I got home. All in all it was a good week. A few more things 

1. I learned how to make peanut butter from scratch and will be perfecting that recipe while I am here 
2. I love cooking even more when its from scratch, makes everything taste better and it just feels better! 
3. My love for ice cream grows by the day 
4. Also getting a nice tan! Not ready for a winter here! 

I promise there is more to life in Paraguay then food. It was just an exciting week to eat so much american food!! You never know hoe much you love things until you can’t have them every day... next I will be making bagels from scratch! Just call me Betty Crocker! 

Have a good weekend everyone. I will be relaxing and going to a 2 year olds birthday party! Should be filled with Mickey Mouse decor and lots of screaming ninos!