First Week in Site!

I love my town. It’s so cute and everyone is really nice. We have a huge plaza that is surrounded by these beautiful trees that have these brilliant purple flowers that I am continually amazed by. My town is in a little valley of hills and the majority of the roads have cobblestone, which is very nice because the dirt roads wash out like rivers when it rains. We even have more than one restaurant and a hotel, both of which are hard to find in the majority of towns I’ve been to. The family I’m staying with has a really nice house, where I enjoy my own room, which is at least twice the size of my room in Guarambare. I also have air-conditioning and a wash machine!!! Both of which are almost unheard of here, so I feel pretty spoiled. The only down side is that my room is directly on the main road through town and I don’t have any way to close my windows (I just have metal bars and wooden blinds, but nothing that shuts out sound) so it is pretty darn loud and it actually wakes me up in the morning. Also, there is a business that is directly next to my room and they open up at 6am and start rearranging things, while listening to music, which isn’t the best thing when I want to sleep, but normally I’ll be up at that hour so it shouldn’t be too big of an issue. I live with a couple whose two children are both in New York. They are really nice and they actually go out and do things, unlike my family in Guarambare, so they have made it really easy to meet a lot of people in town.

I’m also about 15 minutes from San Bernadino, which is a big tourist town because it is right on a beautiful lake. There are a lot of advantages to being really close to San Bernadino. First, it is beautiful. Second, it has a good amount of restaurants and internet, which is always nice. Third, it might make a good incentive for people from the states to come visit me? Number three is only a hypothesis that still needs to be tested...

The first day I arrived in site was crazy. I was going on 4 hours of sleep and I arrived here at 12pm and threw down my bags and went to meet my family at the 15th birthday party (quincenera) of the neighbors. From there, the mayor picked me up to eat lunch with all the town council and a mayor and a few council members of a town on the other side of Paraguay who had come into town to celebrate the fiesta patronal (more later about that). The mayor arranged a visit to the nicest house in my town, which is owned by a German couple who apparently moved here after their daughter died in a car accident in Germany and the wife ended up in a wheelchair in the same accident. Their house is AMAZING. Not only is it really beautiful, but it also has an amazing view of the town (it is up on the hill) as well as the surrounding hills. They live on this big property that has all these animals. They have a little house that has all these huge snakes, like cobras and stuff, and they extract the venom to make the antidote, some kind of business I guess. They also have turtles and a lot of big birds and they even had a pond that had little crocodiles in it! They also have tons of guard dogs, which they sell on occasion. Apparently they were all this one kind of Brazilian breed that I hadn’t heard of, but they were big and fierce. When he put one of the dogs front paws on the fence it stood at least 6’5”, it was crazy. Of course, I forgot my camera that day, like I always do on the days I actually do something interesting, but the mayor said we would go back in the next two years haha. After the house tour, I went to Catholic mass in the plaza because they had a special mass for the Fiesta Patronal. In Paraguay, each town had a saint of that town, and our saint is Saint Lorenzo. On the day of that Saint there is a big party. Well Sunday was our fiesta patronal, but they also had activities on Saturday. They had the mass right outside the church because so many people come that they can’t fit them all in the church. After that we went to walk around the carnival that was in town and got some dinner there and from there we went to the big concert/party in the “tinglado” which is basically a big concrete floor that has a tin roof. We stayed until 3:30am and then got up at 7am to get ready for the 9am Sunday Mass in the plaza. Right after the mass we watched the parade and at the end I walked in the parade with the municipal employees. All the municipal employees were wearing their blue uniforms and heals and I walked right in the middle of them with my jeans and rain jacket and hiking shoes. It was pretty awkward and funny but when we walked by the mayor and his wife they seemed pretty amused, so that was good. Later, I ran into a Peace Corps volunteer from a neighboring town and she said that I must be the bravest PC volunteer to be in the parade on my second day in site, haha. From the parade we were supposed to watch the horse show but I was too tired so I had to come back to take a nap, but I was still able to catch the end of the horse show. Basically, there is no competition or anything, people just bring their nicest horses and ride them to show them off, but of course I enjoyed it because I love horses.

To say the least, it has been a really busy first weekend in site, but now I think things will start to get back to normal and I can start to focus on my work. I’m going to hopefully spend the first week spending time with the different municipal employees so I can get to know some of the different departments before I start planning projects with one department over another. Although this coming weekend is pretty crazy. It is the fiesta patronal for the capital, Asuncion, on Friday and it is also the day when the new president, Fernando Lugo, swears in, which is a big deal because it’s the first time there has been a change in political party in over 60 years. Saturday is the “dia de los ninos” or day of the children, which is also supposed to be pretty big.

Things are going really well in Paraguay, hope everything is going well with you all!!!
LOVEEEEE!
Julie