One More Month??

It's looking like a month from tomorrow I could and SHOULD be in Paraguay!! Sooooo I definitely did not do everything I wanted to, but that is just how it is for me... When I have no obligations and all the free time in the world, I am the least productive. So that is a disappointment, but there is no reason to dwell. I have gotten a lot of research done for my thesis, made a few productive trips down to Blacksburg to really hammer out my thesis ideas, did some substantial work for the organization HELP Africa, reviewed some Guarani, worked out and strengthened my foot on my own and in physical therapy twice a week, but mostly I just hung out with friends and family and bummed around the house...

So I decided to make a list of things that I must do in this last month before I go back!! Things that I will be upset if not done! (I'm sorry if this isn't interesting, but it is actually necessary for me so I figured I would write it here).

- Finish proposals for both organizations willing to donate books to my library!

- Look into other international and national nonprofits that donate books

- Buy Spanish scrabble!!

- Figure out why 2 medical bills never got paid

- Talk to companies/stores that might be willing to donate backpacks for my mobile library project

- Explore PC network as a place to get books donated

- Get something for my host mom from Guarambare, Gudelia

- Get two hooks for my hammock --maybe hooks for others too? it's a good gift, so handy!

- Buy transition to democracy book for my thesis!

- Make a craft box to bring back with me

Maybe I should have a going away get together to make sure I see everyone before leaving!

Ok that's all for now. Even though I really want to go back to Paraguay, now I know how hard it is to be away from everyone and I think it's going to make that much harder to leave AGAIN! But I think I'll be happy having projects and feeling like a useful human being on this Earth.

<3>

Julie

Happy Fourth of July!!

This fourth of July was spent in its corresponding country, the good ol' USA, which I recently realized was the first fourth of July I have spent in the US in four years, which was a streak that began with my first venture outside it's borders sophomore year, my trip to Spain. I spent the 4th in a TGIFriday's in Madrid celebrating with my study abroad friends. The following year I was flying home from the Dominican Republic on the 4th and saw all the fireworks from the plane. The next year I was in Paraguay still in training and making pizza in a traditional tatacua oven. So this is my first real traditional 4th in the US since my freshman year in college, and it was a nice to be at 'home' for once. But by home, I mean Virginia, because I spent the 4th down at Smith Mountain Lake, which is where I'll be spending a lot of time from here on out since my parents will be moving there next year. It is a beautiful place to watch the fireworks over the water, on my friend's family's boat. It was what you would want in a relaxing fun and food-filled weekend. I good balance of sun, swimming, sleeping, boating, eating, and drinking.

Here are some very patriotic pictures to celebrate the occasion.

My Elementary School friend Sara and I at Smith Mountain Lake

Us girls in red, white and blue for the occasion.

The girls and the girly-est of them all, chloe the pup

New Video for Trainees

Sites and Sounds of Paraguay

This is a link to a video on YouTube that was made by one of our trainers to show new volunteers who haven't arrived in Paraguay yet what life is like! A lot of my friends participated in it's production and I was there during a lot of the taping, even though I am not in it, I still feel cool. 

Great Job Ricardo!!

Top ten most unsanitary practices in Paraguay...

But you grow to love!! 

I snagged these from my friend Mark because they are so right on, and I think are applicable in all parts of Paraguay, with MAYBE the exception of some rich people in the capital city. I did add a few personal touches that tend to stretch the boundaries a tad more. 

1) Sharing the same guampa and bombilla (drinking cup/bottle and metal straw when drinking Terere). In other words drinking after multiple people usually sitting in a circle and using the same straw, even random drunks and bus drivers...I may or may not be speaking from personal experience.

2) Being served and huge central trough of food among many people, and all sharing one set of silverware, or not using silverware at all!

3) Being served a plate of food on a plate recently used by someone else, and not yet cleaned. Same goes for glasses.

4) Being expected to use the tablecloth as your napkin, that is, grabbing the table cloth and wiping your mouth and hands on it. Table clothes are usually changed every 3-5 days.

5) Sharing a glass with any acquaintance remotely known, when drinking almost any beverage.

6) Eating meat that was just recently sitting on the counter (hanging in the open air or in a bin unrefrigerated).

7) Watching just about everyone go to the restroom and continue cooking without washing their hands.

8) The absence of soap in almost all public and private restrooms.

9) Nose picking in public (this apparently is not seen as something gross here). However, in my experience most who to do practice this in public, tend to scratch their inner nose, and don't actually uncover any "gold" if you get my drift.

10) Continuing to consume food after finding a bug or insect in it.

Amen. 

Julie out of Paraguay- can you help?

Hello Friends and Family,

As you know, I'm no longer in Paraguay... for the moment, but I am still trying to get resources together for the project I was working on the last couple months I was in Paraguay, my library project. My community put together a library committee and has worked hard to organize themselves and create an application for the funds. We were awarded 840 dollars from a Peace Corps library fund. We have created a budget that includes library shelves, tables, chairs, a desk, and books. Our plan was to get the state government to donate computers and the embassies to donate more books.

How can you help?

1. It's looking harder and harder to get computers donated from the state and I figured some of you out there might have laptops that you don't use anymore because you have replaced them with something newer. So my question is, do you have any laptops that still work but have replaced and are no longer using? Laptops would be preferred so that I can transport them myself, since I won't have much to bring back with me to Paraguay.

2. Books in Spanish would also be appreciated; these could be for any age group on any subject. Anything in Spanish would be greatly appreciated.

3. For a separate library project, called 'mobile libraries' I'm looking for any old backpacks that people are willing to donate to me. This project is still in the planning stages, but I think it should be pretty easy to get off the ground. Basically, I'm looking to make 'mobile libraries' for each grade level, which will just be a backpack with books appropriate for each reading level. This program targets schools in the rural areas, who don't have access to many books or school materials and tend to have lower literacy rates and most do not continue on to higher education. Each school will get a backpack at a time for an allotted amount of time. After the students have had a sufficient amount of time with them at one school, they will pass them to the next school until each school in the 'companias' or rural areas of my time have had a chance to read the books.

That's all for now!! Thanks for keeping up with me and if you want to know more about the projects or would like to help out in other ways, contact me!! I'm sure most of you have my contact info, but my email address is Juliebe8@gmail.com

Thanks! Much Love!!

Julie

Health in PY

So my mom said I should make a list of all the health issues I've had in Paraguay, but I would like to preface this by saying I tend to be prone to minor health problems and it wasn't as bad as it sounds because they were spread over 9 months (as of yet)

1. I was perfectly healthy until the very end of training, when I got a gastro-intestinal infection and I missed the last (and most fun) day of training... :( Everyone did skits imitating each other and sang songs and basically made fun of everyone for a day. This lasted for about a week where I could hardly eat anything and when I did eat, it was very restricted..such as white rice and diet sprite. The saddest part about this was we spent the weekend after training in Asuncion and for the first time we were able to eat at good restaurants and not the regular, monday rice with vegetables and chicken peices, tuesday meat-grease soup (copyright: Shola), until sunday's barbeque. I couldn't even eat the cake at our end of training ceremony!! 

2. Giardia: Many of the volunteers I know had a bought of Giardia, and most were worse than mine, which included basic stomach issues and nausea for a couple month, but the symptoms came and went, which is the classic Giardia way. 

3. Fire Burn: So there are some interesting traditions that go on in Paraguay for the San Juan festival, the saint of fire, something I learned very quickly celebrating this day. If you want to know more about the fire traditions on this day, I already wrote about them on a blog from June, but the one tradition that ended up burning me was called "pelota tata" which means "ball of fire" --obviously a bad sign. We were about to leave the party of boys kicking around a burning ball of wire stuff with paper and doused in kerosene and when I turn around a ball is kicked directly into my left shoulder and I brushed it off with my right hand. Thankfully, I was wearing a raincoat that melted, but protected my shoulder from being burned and only my hand was burned brushing the ball of flames off of me. 

4. Skin Fungus: Close to the end of training there was one day where we were all at a friend's house planning our end of training party and the skies opened up and it poured until the street were converted into shallow creeks and about at that time we decided to walk home. Well, my feet were soaked and I must have came in contact with some kind of water fungus because a dry itchy patch of fungi appeared on my foot. Considering my usual skin problems, I just thought it was a patch of exema, and I let it be for a whopping three months!

5. Shoulder popped out of socket: During our technical training excursion we were visiting a volunteer in Santa Rosa who worked with a youth group that were learning to play basketball. The volunteer, Sean, decided it would be fun to have a tournament of volunteers vs. youth group and invite the community to watch. While this sounded fun, we weren't informed of another group of basketball players that weren't as small and inexperienced from the town over, with whom we were also going to compete. The very first competition with the youth group went well and we won fairly easily. The second game against these giants from the town over was another story; I swear there must be something in the water over there because extremely tall Paraguayans are a rare breed, and there were about 15 of them all in the same town, that all happened to enjoy basketball. Well, the first couple minutes into the game, I was going up for a rebound alongside the PY giants and one came down on my shoulder and popped it right out of socket. Fortunately it popped back in on it's own in 30 seconds so it wasn't a big deal but it was pretty sore and uncomfortable to move. I was a little overwhelmed by the situation and unable to express in Spanish what happened, so I ended up crying and our trip chaperone and  language teacher thought it was best to go to the hospital less than half a block away, so that's what we did. Even though they turned out to be very incompetent and really only asked about the United States and not my injury. It did make me appreciate the health services in my town, which isn't much bigger but seem to be much more helpful. 

6. Water contamination: After moving to my new town Altos, I was happy to find a clean water supply that I could drink straight from the tap, which it what I did on most occasions. However, one Sunday something contaminated the town water supply and I would estimate that one in every 4-5 people in town came down with sever stomach problems, mine was particularly violent, keeping me up all night for several nights..NOT fun, by far the worst illness I had...and I hope I never have to repeat. I felt like death.

7. Acne and discoloration: I'm starting to think this was more just aggravated from stress caused by changes in environment, which probably aggravated an inevitable period of severe acne. Since it never happened to me in high school, I figured I was due for some hormonal changes.. Discoloration was probably related to the heat. 

8. Exema: Not sure why, but I also began having more dry skin patches, that were different from the skin fungi!! now i know the difference. But just an annoyance, really.

9. Cigarette burn: This was just kind of funny because I was at the Paraguay-Bolivia soccer game after-party at the Plaza de los Heroes and there were a lot of people drinking a lot of "milk" which is what they sayyy they are selling on the streets (when the are REALLY selling beer) because it's technically illegal to sell beer on the streets, but the police don't seem to mind. We were all listening to music and dancing and another volunteer fell into me and burned me with his cigarette but didn't even realize it until I yelled at him about it the next time I saw him. So now we are even and that is why I'm not mentioning him name now :) 

10. Shattered Heel: I think we all know too much about this accident..and if you don't know, check out the blog entry "no, I'm not in paraguay anymore" 

So thoses are my injuries/illnesses for the first 9 months in Paraguay, hopefully the second year will be a little less dramatic :)

HEALTH UPDATE:
I think I must have reached some kind with the illness I've contracted in the last two months!
- Scabies! Apparently from sheets at the hotel that were not washed properly
- Parasite in my hair! NO idea how I got this one!
- Infected toe from a pedicure gone wrong! (the first and the last time I had a pedicure in Paraguay that involves anything more in depth than just painting the toe nails!)
- Huge bites that are super itchy and are not from mosquitos. People are torn if they are ant bites (I don't think they are) OR this mysterious white bug that you can't keep away from you even with insect repellent (sounds right to me!)
- Ended november with a nice cold and another type of skin infection to top it off! Wow, my body did not like coming back to Paraguay.... Hopefully it is all downhill from here!

No, I'm not there anymore :(

So my Peace Corps service has come to a halt due to an unfortunate accident where I shattered my heel. My doctor said I had to have surgery to recover and sent me to Washington to have that surgery.

WARNING: ugly photo of my foot later!!

How it happened:
I was walking back from a meeting at the hospital (how ironic) and I was only about a half a block away from the hospital when I decided to stop at my friends house to get the English books I had lent her. At this point it was around 9pm, and completely dark. I crossed over this gutter (without realizing) to enter her house and I sat in some pretty bright lights for about 15 minutes and when I came out, I could see even less (haha) and I decided to walk across this path in front of her house (as seen in the photo) and tried to cross to the street, where the path ends (a little after the tree) and I could see the grass under the tree and there was only a small area that I couldn't see, but I just assumed it was also grass and I literally just stepped off the side of the gutter and landed at the bottom (about 4 and a half feet down) and landed right on my feet..but I landed really hard on my left foot and that's what caused the injury :(

After I fell, two neighbors helped pull me out and they drove me (half a block) BACK to the hospital and everyone, all the doctors and the mayor were still in the meeting and saw me all crying haha...I was saying that my ankle hurt (bc I thought it did) so they took an xray of my ankle and said it wasn't broken, and it wasn't until 5 days later that I got other xrays of my foot and we realized that it was actually my heel that was broken.

This is the first cast I had, which is partial soft cast.

I had one mad cankle due to the swelling from the plane ride!

This was my preparation for surgery. I had a pump on my foot to make the swelling go down and these funny socks to avoid blood clots.

Dad setting a good example for the other patients

In the waiting room before surgery the doctor gave me three choice for surgical hats so we had to model them a bit to make the right decision (I decided on the classic shower cap look)

Everyone had to try them on.

My awesome friends and family sent and brought me lots of flowers and cookies and movies and balloons!

Looks like I'll be here for about 4-6 months, so I'm brainstorming what I can do to take advantage of my time here and here are some ideas I came up with:

-Study more Guarani

-Begin to Work on my Thesis/Major Paper

-Practice Guitar

-Read lots of books

-Organize projects that I can implement when I return to Paraguay

-Get to know organizations (NGOs) that I want to support and follow and possibly decide which organizations I might be interested in for after Peace Corps employment

That's all for now!

CALL me if you are in NOVA :D