Site Placement!!!

I have a site!! I will be living in a small community called Villa Suenos y Esperanzas (Village of Hopes and Dreams)near a town called Capiata in the Central department of Paraguay! It is perfect, I could not be more excited!!! Now to give you some information on where exactly my site is and why it is so perfect! 

So my site is in the same department that I have been living in the past 2 months. It is about 30 minutes from the capitol city as well as other surrounding cities. It is close to the Peace Corps office and training center as well as the host family I have been living with! I am close to cities but I have a 4 k walk into my village that gives me the country feel. I can be in the city if I need to be but at the end of the day I can return to my house, porch, garden and beautiful view of some mountains! It is the best of both worlds!! 

I will be following up 2 other volunteers that have been living and working in this community for the past 2 years. They are a married couple! I am exciting because they have really set the foundation for Peace Corps in that community and are leaving me projects to work on and people to work with. I will hopefully be starting a youth group and a women’s group. The youth are really excited to work with me and the women just received a grant for a community garden! They want me to start a garden club as well.....HOW COOL? I am so excited!!!!!

I will have the opportunity to live in the house that the previous volunteers lived in and I hear it is super nice... for Paraguayan standards!!! They are also leaving me a lot of their stuff.. so basically I am receiving a furnished house! Complete with 2 beds, a table, chairs, refrigerator, oven, fans and more!!! Once I read that, I didn’t think it was real life..but it is and I am so blessed and so so so thankful!!! 

I was super nervous about yesterday and now I can’t stop smiling! Yesterday our language teachers took us on a little excursion around the capital of the Central Department, Argua. We visited this beautiful church, climbed a small mountain that over look a beautiful lake, then we went to lake! We stop and had lunch at a pizza place were I got to eat real margarita pizza! It was so WaterStone or Vin but it was good and I loved it! We also visited some artisans and learned how they make ceramics here, it was a busy day! And to kill some more time we stopped off at Burger King...haha. The weirdest thing is in Paraguay Burger King is one of the most expensive places to eat.. its considered “fancy! ” I laughed a lot at that! But their fries are good and gave me a small taste of America! The best part is this city is super beautiful and I want to go back... and its right next to my future site!! 

So all day we were dragged around and all we could think about were our site placements! Then when we got back to the office, it was perfect! Everything was decorated and everyone was clapping and playing music! It was so beautiful! We were called up 1 by 1 and were giving our cites and then put our picture on this big map of Paraguay! We all had a wonderful time.. there was also cheese cake and real coffee to celebrate! Everyone was there, our teachers, the staff, the country director and many more! I took lots of pictures (obviously) and will try and post them!! Tomorrow I leave to go visit my site for a whole week!!! Bon voyage!