And another....

From your amazing foreign correspondent in Paraguay............Semana Santa!
Semana Santa (Easter Week) begins today (as I write this) with Palm Sunday. My mother is going to have a misa (mass) at her house with the sacerdote (priest). Despite the low rate of weekly-church-going Catholics, as in the states, 95% of the country is culturally Catholic.

On Wednesday, each family will partake in the Paraguayan tradition of baking rolls and rolls of Chipa. Chipa is a delicious, heavy breadlike product made from mandioca flour (think potato flour) and pig fat. Mmmmmmmmmmm. When its old, its dry and gross, but fresh warm chipa is makes me go weak at the knees.
...Moving on. I'm pretty sure that on Easter Day, most of the community is going to get themselves to one of the capilla's (chapels) in the area. Further details as events warrant.

A few random thoughts next. Several of you have asked for more general observations about Paraguay. First, the weather here is changing slightly. The mornings are chilly, sometimes misty. But around 11:30, the sun bursts through again, and by 2pm, its back in the mid-80's-low 90's. (And no, it's not always paradise, especially with 90% humidity.)

I'd better explain a little about my group here. In Paraguay, there are 230 volunteers, ma o meno. That group is expected to rise to 300 or so in the coming year as Pres. Obama is pumping a lot more money into the agency as a whole. Peace Corps in Paraguay is also one of the biggest programs in the country - only Ukraine has more volunteers.

Within the 230, 49 are in my "G" or training group. We will be working in three different sectors - Health and Sanitation (mine), Early Education, and Urban Youth. The Health and Sanitation group has about half of that 49. It was then split in half. About half of them live in a compania (unincorporated township) about six kilometers away from my group. And also, I can finally give some details into what I will be doing. Peace Corps volunteers work in sustainable development. Now, I was an English major, so development peeps might differ on this definition, but essentially, development works in two ways - physical assistance, and more difficult to quantify development work that we will be doing. Essentially, we're going to be working with interested parties to help them gather the resources to execute projects THEY want completed. That might mean giving nutrition presentations to women's committees to try to get more veggies into local diets, it might mean working with a local governmental group to get money to build brick ovens, or it could mean teaching self-esteem and life-planning classes to high school students. It also means teaching or developing leaders for said projects so they will continue, if necessary, once we are gone. What it DOESN'T mean is contacting some random church or aid agency and asking for something that will be useless once it breaks in five years and possibly leave the community worse off and dependent.

The physical projects might include building those brick ovens, latrines, or wells. We had a tech overnight class, and my group pulled a tree trunk out of a natural spring. It had been there for 20 years or so, serving as an ad hoc pipe. We dug down to clay and built a brocal (sort of like a well) instead.
In our week long project week, my group visited a departmento (state) called missiones in southern Paraguay. Its a beautiful site, with hills and rivers, and incredible thunderstorms. While we were there, we gave several charlas (presentations) at the primary school. Sara and I taught a class on nutrition and then on identity. We did this activity called "Personal Flag," which helps kids identify how they are unique and how each has specific interests andl ideals. It might sound silly, but its not, and its a great way to lead forward into talking about values, which leads to relationships, which leads to sex ed, which leads to AIDS awareness and prevention.
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And now a few more random observations. Parties here in Paraguay are totally different from parties in the states. So far I have been to two paraguayan style parties - a town-wide dance, and a quinceanera. In the town wide dance, everyone shows up an hour two three hours after its supposed to start (bringing fashionably late to a new level!) and then eat dinner.
In our case, the PC trainees were sitting together in groups watching it all go down. One group of Paraguayan men sat on their motos chatting and sharing beers. The young women sat with their escorts, and finally after the beer took the edge off their nervousness they started dancing. More on the quince in a bit.
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I hope the description so far hasnt struck you all as negative. Here are some of the things I like about Py.
First, this country is ALIVE. Its Red-green, lush jade, blue green, its just pulsing with plant and animal life. Every family has a ton of animals- cows, dogs, cats, chickens, parrots, sheep, pigs, and turkeys. And all the animals = specifically the cats and dogs, is wonderful. I'm sure I'd be having a much more difficult time if I didn't have all of the animals around. For example, One of my dogs, Camilla, adopted me, and follows me everywhere - we have to kick her out of my classroom every day. She used to have an infection that got into her brain, and so her right rear leg twitches like she's dancing. But whenever I go anywhere, I've got that little puppy pressed at my knee.

Paraguayans as a whole are incredibly giving and generous. If you walk up to anyone's house, the family immediately asks you to sit and have a terere. In the state´s, an unwarranted visit might mean the peson behind the door might call the cops.

And of course, my favorite thing about Paraguay - Soccer. I don't know which fools decided that soccer shouldn't be a popular sport back home, but it is beyond fantastic. Every Saturday, one of the other volunteers and I head to the cancha (field) and play a few games with the men from the area. Every time I play, I'm struck by the athleticism, the fluidity which is its own ballet - so much more real than watching 300-lb brutes pummel each other in 6 second spurts. I never played soccer back home formally, but I'm learning a ton here.