Paraguay, Para Que?!

The title of this blog is a well known joke in South America which translated into English means “Paraguay, for what?” but I like to say “Paraguay? Que Guay!! “Which means Paraguay? How cool!” (In Spain Spanish, they don’t use Guay here) I’ve been in Paraguay for three days, and training for 3 days, yet I feel like I could write a thousand pages. There are soo many differences, even more so than I had noticed in Peru. You get such a good look at the culture by staying with a family. So I’ll start there first, mi familia is pretty great. I love my sister Azucena (27) and her 1 year old, Favricio. Her husband Francisco is really funny. The grandma lives here and she is 74. The “aunt” is the one who decided to take on a volunteer and she is really nice too. She is a teacher of teachers and she is very religious. We are going to church tomorrow, but it’s not Catholic, which is kind of rare. I can’t remember what church it is exactly. And finally a 30 year old brother who lives here too, he is a teacher as well. That, along with 3 dogs, 7 birds and lots of chickens and ducks, all of which are very mean except Sancho, a small and long dog. It’s definitely a full house, but it’s a lot of fun. I have my own room and I have a pretty big bed too, fit with a corner dedicated to Jesus Cristo. There are three others that are here most of the time. A nanny for the one-year old, an aunt that lives down the street and her two boys, one is 7 and one is 13. The 13 year old is very helpful and he is very close with this family.

The house is open air, which is probably really nice in the summer, but right now it’s about 40 degrees and there is no escaping the cold. I am super super glad I brought that sleeping bag, because I’m only slightly cold at night, and it gets down to 32 F. I’ve been sick since staging and they gave me some yuyo (pronounced JuuJoo) as a remedy. It’s basically hot water with different herbs from their garden. I don’t know if it’s just a coincidence but I am starting to feel a little better. My family told me not to wash my hair this morning because I will get even more sick, so I didn’t. They have some interesting ideas about health and similar topics. I don’t know about this one, but apparently owning cats makes you infertile. We don’t have any cats here.

The town we are in is very cute, all the roads are a mix of really red dirt and cobblestones. But mostly it is dirt. There is a main road that runs through the town that is paved but that’s all. There are many animals running around, like in Peru, but the scariest of all the animals in Paraguay live at my house (it’s true!). I want to take pictures of the town but I don’t want to be flashing around my camera, so maybe I will on the last day that we are here.

The water here is apparently a lot cleaner than the rest of South America so eventually I might be able to drink the water without getting sick. We had our first shots through the PC, and we had to get the flu shot and the yellow fever one. My arm is still sore from the flu shot, but I apparently am the only one that is still in pain so I don’t know. We have to get more on Wednesday.

Another interesting thing about Paraguay is that for a country where things tend to move very slow, news moves very fast. One night I didn’t drink cola when offered to me by my aunt and the next day my host brother asked me why I didn’t like it, even though he wasn’t there when this occurred. I also keep hearing about other volunteers and what their families think of them and how they adjusting and what they eat. For example, I’m not sure which volunteer, but one that lives on my street apparently refused to eat anything or watch telenovelas (soap operas) with his family and also really loved the tea cocido… I’m not sure why these things are important or need to be talked about, but it is funny how that kind of stuff gets around.

So this first week has already been quite the expereince, I could write a lot more but I will leave it at that for now.. Hopefully next week I can upload some pictures, esp of Favricio bc he is sooo cute!!

MUCH LOVE!! miss you all!
Julie