a normal day

Ill try to outline a normal day here in my home town of Santa Librada. Ill start at the very beginning. Santa Librada is located about 4 hours away from the capital of Paraguay, Asuncion by bus. Asuncion is what I would call a 3^rd world developing modern city. Unlike China's quickly modernizing cities, Asuncion does not have the developing infrastructure or buildings that other cities like shanghai have. There is no real skyscraper skyline and the tallest building are maybe 6 or 7 tall apartment buildings. There are no big electric signs or anything. However the city does of course have running water, electricity and pretty much every modern convienience. Like other 3^rd world cities the rich and the upper class have the same things we would have in the states. Some of their homes are similar as well. The middle class are office workers in modern businesses such as banks and law firms. There is trash pick up and a basic recycling system. The biggest give away that the city is still 3^rd world is that stores are not super clean or organized. Store signs are home painted and a dishevel of products. The stores are normally small and cramped often no bigger than the size of 2 bedrooms put together. There is a lack of corporate stores with the exception of several chain grocery stores that look much more like american grocery stores. To get to Santa Librada you take one of 4 major “Rutas” that transverse the country of Paraguay. The primary one and most extensive is Ruta 1 which runs from the capital east to about the center of the country and then turns directly south until the bottom of the country. To get to my site you would take this “highway” directly passed many other smaller cities to  a 4 way crossing that is in between 2 bigger cities. The crossing is called 4 mouths because it is a 4 way crossing but the cross street from ruta are dirt roads. From this road its a 30ish to 40ish minute car ride into my site driving on a red dirt road. The scenery is kinda hard to explain. Think farmland like in America but in a tropical climate without machinery, much less organized and clean and animals kinda roaming around everywhere. When I am traveling to and from site I ride buses that are like old unclean American tour buses. The buses drop me in front of 4 mouths and if im not lucky I have to walk about 2 hrs into site but if im lucky a truck passes by and I can hitch a ride. Other than that there is one community bus that takes me to the Ruta but it only runs Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays at around 7 AM and 12 lunch time. If I ever come back in the afternoon I have to walk or hitch a ride. My site is made of about 80 houses spread out with some houses practically next to each other and others with a 10 minute walk between it and the next house. Most of the families have farming land somewhere near their house and animals on their home property. Everyone has chickens, usually 1 or two pigs and sometimes ducks.  There is an elementary school in my community and its a nice building. Often the church and school are the nicest buildings in town because of the importance of the church and the government funding for the school. Children go to school each day except when it rains hard. When it rains hard nothing happens. People dont leave their homes and the roads often become rivers. Power also goes out when it rains. School quality is pretty poor. Class usually consists of kids copying stuff written on the board verbatum and class goes from 7 am to lunch time or from around 1 to 5 depending on what age group the kid is in. Okay on to a normal day. If I am being a good volunteer I will wake up around 6 or 6:30 to start my day. Help the family with any house work like sweeping their property of leaves and stuff, maybe getting some wood for fire for cooking. Many families still cook on fires on the ground even though they have gas or electric stoves. The gas is relatively expensive and most people have free wood on their property. In addition there is a strong custom of cooking with wood. Breakfast is usually some sort of grain food made of corn flour, cheese, milk and egg cooked in a pan. It is usually kind of like a homemade toasted dough. To drink people here drink instant coffee that has much more milk than coffee or this drink called cocido which has an herbal mixture with sugar and milk. I drink cocido most days. After that its off to do a days work which is maybe visiting the school and talking to the teachers and kids about future talks I can give in the school. Or I might try to talk to people to solidify plans to speak at a community comission meeting. My community has 3 or 4 commissions. 1 for maintaining the running water. 1 for the school. 1 for the church and there may be one for the farmers. I am planning to do a fagon commission. A fagon is a type of cooking apparatus that includes 4 “burner” spots and an oven. It is made completely of brick and mud and fixes most of the problems that occur from cooking with fire on the ground. There is no bending down to cook. There are 4 cooking surfaces to cook more than 1 thing at a time. The smoke is channeled through a chimney to prevent inhalation and the wood burns more effeciently. I am hoping to get many families to buy into the idea and begin the process of procuring government funds to assist the community in building the fagons. I would then likely sit down with any of the families and drink terere which is a very common custom here where people sit in a circle and drink out of the same cup that has a herb mixture in it. 1 person is assigned as the pourer and has a pitcher or thermos of ice water sometimes with natural plants in it. The cup which is about 3/4^th filled with this mashed herb mixture (bought in stores) is filled the rest of the way with water and passed around to each person who uses a metal straw to drink the liquid. When the liquid is drank it is passed back to the server to be refilled. The flavor is quite refreshing and its fun to do. At least I think. On the other hand the sharing of liquid and straw would wreck havoc if someone was sick but all in all nothing bad usually happens. Lunch would probably consist of oily pasta with some sort of meat sauce in the sense that the sauce has tough chewy beef in it and the sauce would consist of oil onions and green peppers chopped into tiny pieces and cooked for hella long. Then people generally take a nap or terere some more. Then I could probably dig more trash pits or build hand washing stations or play soccer with kids who are way younger and way better than me at soccer. It is kinda depressing. Then its back home for dinner usually consisting of more fried food meat and rice with cheese or something similar with no vegetables. But more commonly dinner is just bread and cocido or cafe again. Dinner isnt a big meal here unless you have the money to make it lol. And then its off to chill in my room for couple hours and sleep at 10 ish. 

So I hope that gives you a grasp of what I am doing here. The above day is an ideal day by the way. Sometimes I wake up late and do nothing. Sometimes I spend a lot of time on the phone talking to other Americans.

its a peace corps life.

About 3 months in site

Its been a long time since I´ve written and i apologize. I don´t realy have good internet options so that is partially to blame. Lets see i am currently working to finish my house by house census of which i have done 33 of 50. Then i will be able to start my commisions which i am really excited to do. In terms of more interesting things, a 2 yr old i am currently living with walked into my room and pooped and then proceeded to drag some of my things through it. That was unpleasant. I am working on the house i am going to rent and will be shortly helping build a modern bathroom in the house. Its a rather daunting and expensive task but it should be fun. My computer broke which is also a reason i have not updated this blog. I have successfully made soap with community members out of chemicals and cow fat. That was fun. I will be trying detergent and softener next. Right now i need to work on speaking more Guarani which i keep putting off but it really makes talking to people hard. I just wish people spoke more Spanish. Being in paraguay without internet or a lot of conviences really gives you a chance to see how much we have and others do not. People here spend a lot of time really doing nothing, sitting together and talking and not talking. the whole awkward silence thing isnt very awkward here. I was in the capital the other week and ate chinese food for 3 days in a row and you would be suprised at how good the food was despite the lack of roast duck which made me quite pissed. Anyway it is crazy to see full blood asians speaking fluent spanish. I feel like so much time is passed but i really dont have that much to say. There are some young community members who i cant wait to start working with more and teach english. That is one thing. You see a lot of youngsters with so much potential and really realize they wont have the resources to explore that potential. Again if any of you have questions please ask.