Portrero Pucu and pics

So, to return to Portrero Pucu, the site is higher than Santo Domingo, my home for the last two months. There are about 75 houses in the compania, and another 20-25 in an adjacent compania called Naranjaty (which means something sort of like orange plantation in Guarani). In any event, the majority of the houses seemed to be made of adobe or stucco walles over brick with thatch roofs. I also saw many brick houses with traditional tile roofs, and one house made of stone, which was pretty surprising. I think it is the first such house that I have seen in Paraguay.
There is an escuela basica (which runs from preschool-14 years of age) and a colegio, or high school, in the site. All told, there are 115 students in the two schools.
The site has one looooong straight road running to a small pueblo called Caballero in one direction, and another larger pueblo in the other direction called La Colmena. La Colmena is known for its waterfalls, Japanese population, and happily, Japanese FOOD. It is also the location of one of the three VAC groups (basically a place where Volunteers congregate once a month to catch up and strategize on larger projects) in Paraguari.
As far as the physical infrastructure of Portrero Pucu, I was pretty surprised. It has many developed houses, there seems to be a wealth of cattle, and the house I was in staying in was one of two on the property of the landlord - and both had modern bathrooms.
As my visit was kind of a reconoiter/get-to-know-the-community, I can't tell you everything I'll be doing. However, I do have some ideas:
Many of the kids asked me if I was from the US, and then one asked me if I was from Germany, thinking it was a state in the US. So probably we're going to do a World map on one of the school's walls, if I can get permission from the Directora. I also wouldn't be surprised if I spent a couple hours a week helping out one of my contacts with his English class.
Health related projects are going to be a little more tricky. The site's biggest deficiency is water - my house had it, but there isn't enough pressure to reach many houses in the higher elevations of the site. That makes it harder to grow vegetable gardens, promote cleaner hygiene, etc. However, there is a ton of bovine fecal matter lying just about everywhere, and that's a prime site to infect children with hookworm and rowndworm. (I stepped barefoot in a nice fresh patch during a football game...)
In any event there should be at least a few huertas (veggie gardens) that I can help people work on, also plenty of health charlas in the school, and maybe get a running water project started. As far as nutrition goes, I'll probably hold cooking classes or work on that in a family-to-family type of thing.
Pictures below, including some random ones of a monkey that I spotted after I came back to my training center in Santo Domingo.