Another New Year?

Diez, Nueve, Ocho, Siete, Seis ,… Tres, Dos Uno FELIZ ANO NUEVO!!!!!! I celebrated the new year at midnight with all the essential ingredients, friends, drinking, loud music, firecrackers, shouting and an exhausting trip home as the sun rose. A typical new year…. Minus the typical and add Paraguayan. Perhaps it was the Spanish countdown, or the traditional Paraguayan polka music that followed the countdown, or the fact that I was in the middle of a farm in rural Paraguay drinking cider and joking around in Spanish I cant seem to ever master. Was it the bbq dinner I ate at midnight (common for the new year) or maybe that my trip home was actually walking 40 minutes from the neighboring compania to my compania. All in all I had a good time, I hung out with my Paraguayan friends, ate great food and saw how another culture celebrates a holiday we too celebrate in the US. I did miss my brothers and home friends. The new years reminded me of new years past which made me nostalgic but again, a great experience.

Fast forward to the past 3 days. It was Chinese New Year this past week, a tidbit I needed to be reminded of out here and was glad to hear. To celebratre I went to visit my friend an hour bike ride away in a town called Santa Maria. If you read my Diana story, it was this Diana. Diana is an Education volunteer and the town she lives in is much more developed than where I live, think Paraguay’s version of a nice suburb. Town has one major paved road and cobblestone for all other roads. There is a dispensa on almost every corner mixed with bread places meat shops and other trade shops. Ice cream is readily available as are vegetables. There is a music institution and Paraguayan version of small universities. The people in Santa Maria tend to be wealthier, nicer houses, more disposable income and more free time. Quite different than little old Santa Librada. Anyway, Upon arrival we immediately set to work planning meals. This was the result:

Saturday breakfast: Pancakes with bananas and bacon

Saturday lunch: Ja Ja mein with pearl milk tea

Saturday Dinner:  Left over noodles (still delicious cold) with pumpkin pie for desert

Sunday Breakfast: Pork congee with spring onion

Sunday lunch: Cant remember right now, probably left overs.

Sunday Dinner: Thai chicken curry

Monday breakfast: yogurt and banana  (had to go to Diana’s reading camp)

Monday Lunch: Left over Curry and congee

Monday Dinner: pork dumplings and pumpkin pie (a whole new pie)

Everything was made from scratch because frankly, there was nothing preprepared to buy.

I had a great time with Diana and it was fun to celebrate a holiday that reminded me of home with a lot of delicious food that reminded me of home. So thank you Diana. Tomorrow morning (7am to avoid the heat) I ride back to my site with all my sauces barely fitting into my minibackpack. The whole weekend was a great reminder or why friends are important and what can really lift your spirits.

Bonuses:

Got to see Diana teach 2 classes

See another volunteers site

Have good fast internet

Eat great food!

Teach a womens exercise group a mix of hip hop and exercise

PS. Everything was great up until we realized the empanada skins we bought to use as dumpling skins were already a little spoiled before we even started using them. Then we remembered we were in Paraguay and it all made sense.

A Glimpse into my Paraguayan life.

List of whats on my table:

Large poster paper

house keys

kitchen knife

toilet paper roll

cell phone

2 white board pens

1 homemade whiteboard

white paint

1 tomato, 3 onions and 2 bell peppers

cilantro in a cup of water

Mexican hot sauce from Mexico

2 limes

a cutting board with discarded pieces of lime, tomato and onion

a Tupperware of unfinished picco de gallo

a Spanish to English dictionary

2 MCAT book

2 notebooks

3 seed packets for napa cabbage, cucumber and broccoli

plastic cups

2 rag

a USB stick

axe deodorant spray

a bus ticket receipt

my watch

a pen

mp3 player

eraser

pencil sharpener

instant milk tea packets

A Taste of Home

Just one cha siu bow, 1 roast duck cha siu fan, or just one bowl of mom's mapo tofu. What I would give for those foods now. As you might imagine, getting a taste of home for me is particularly difficult. Sure there are a couple Chinese and Korean restaurants in Asuncion (run by immigrants that have been here 15-30 yrs and whose food tastes awesomely authentic) but I can only relish those in Asuncion. When I am stuck at home I do the best I can, scrounging up whatever Asian sauces I have left from home and stirfrying the few ingredients I have (rice, green pepper, onion, tomato, egg and soy sauce) It makes for an okay fried rice especially if I have a little meat but honestly I almost never cook meat. Too much hassel with prepping the raw meat plus the raw meat is sold quite unsanitarily here. Meat hangs for unknown intervals of time in unrefrigerated or only slightly refrigerated areas with butchers never washing their hands, never using cloves and usually handling other products and money with the same hands touching the meat. Thus meat has a sort of ominous “im gunna be spewing liquid out both sides” feeling to it. As I was saying, as a result of my isolation I have done a lot of experimenting trying to come up with different things that taste good. Honestly, I have not been particularly successful. Most of my food tastes similar despite my efforts but I like it. I always start with garlic and ginger with a bit of oil. Then add my onions or potatoes followed by green pepper. Thats usually the start of everything. I have been a bit lucky as I made friends with a leaving Koica (Korean Peace Corps) volunteer who handed off his rice cooker and lots of sauces. Yes I have been eating everything with that Korean red bean paste that is so delicious. Note: red paste, hot dog onion and rice is delicious. Long story short, nothing really tastes as good as anything from home, the only thing stable being oyaku don. But im good and always have my runs to asunsion for good beef noodle soup or bim bim bap. That will have to do.

Oh one more thing, I miss stir fried leafy vegetables so much it is killing me. I can sometimes get one type of leafy vegetable in town but thats it. People only eat lettuce and cabbage here!!!!

The Arroyo

Arroyo means stream in Spanish. When its 100 degrees outside, an ocean, lake, river or even stream could be considered a dream. Paraguay being a land locked country, that rules out oceans. Having a total of zero lakes in my department rules out lakes, all one can hope for is a small river or stream. Amazingly our community happens to have such a stream and equally amazing is the “piscina” which mean pool in spanish. When I first heard of the arroyo and so called piscina I was skeptical. I had seen the stream before and it was shallow and maybe 3 feet across. But by extreme luck or something this one part is for all intensive purposes an all natural pool. The small stream widens to pool width and deepens enough to jump off 10 foot rocky edges and be perfectly safe. The pool comes with plenty on different level jumping points, a nice grassy areas to lay out on and a shallow side for the youngsters. It is truly an amazing place. With this natural treasure available, most of the teenages in my community rush to the stream at about 1:30 and finish at 4ish. It is a greta place to relax, cool off and mess around with friends. Sitting on the grassy knoll overlooking the piscina is quite a site. Young people doing the exact same thing American kids would be doing without all the money it costs to have a pool, without the cute, sexy or hip swim suits or pool toys. Just worn shorts, and old holey volley balls to toss around. Although some of the girls have bikinis, no one seems to shed the shirts they wear for fear of the sun. Its a refreshing site, a pool like no other.

Good News!!! In the words of Professor Farnsworth....

Good news!! my projects seem to be making progress. If you are still following this blog, props, seriously. You could be looking at Cracked, Reddit or a kitten falling asleep but instead you are validating my existence so thank you. To give you all an update, my main project right now is obtaining the materials for fogons (brick stoves that use wood). Our commission was formalized and we have already had one meeting with the Intendente of the municipality, think County Supervisor. He told us that the money would be available at the end of this month and that we should return close to then with an official document asking for and outlining the costs of the materials. Our president and I are going to turn this in in 2 days. Woohoo! In other news it is summer here. Since November it has averaged about 37-9 degrees Celsius here during midday. That is about 100 degrees for us Americans. The heat combined with the humidity makes doing any manual labor, visiting families, playing sports, walking around or moving in general, highly unpleasant. Here in Paraguay, the locals wake up at five and work until about 10. After that, all effective work slows to a crawl or simply stops until about 5. The system totally works for them. At 10 ish they drink terrere, and prepare lunch. After eating lunch there is a 1-2 hour nap time usually lasting till 2 or 3. Then there is more relaxing and any activity that can be done in the shade and sitting down until about 5 when it starts to cool. Then after that there is soccer and volley ball.

Today I woke up at 9 being awakened by clapping (Paraguayan version of door knocking) of a neighbor asking for a minicarga. Which means he wanted to know if I could give him the equal of 75 cents in cell phone credit (enough to send like ____ messages or talk for maybe 3 minutes.) After sweeping my house,which I have to do because of dust and insects that accumulate every night, and other random cleaning, I ate breakfast (some of yesterday's dinner food). Then I headed out of my house around 10 to go work on my garden. As you may recall, I had planned to make my own garden long ago but had been putting it off on the excuse that I didn't have a shovel. Finally, when I went to clear a patch of land for the garden, I worked hard and did a good job clearing the plot when the land lord came and told me not to put it there. Sadness.... Anyway, I told myself id put the garden somewhere sometime and left it at that. I was mentioning my continued desire to start a garden to a local family I hang out with when they told me I could use their space for a garden. They had the fence (halved bamboo sticks stuck into the ground) already in place and all I needed to do was do a little reparation and prepare the seed beds. So today, in the 11 o clock heat, I prepared 4 seed beds with one of my closer Paraguayan youth friends and planted cucumber, broccoli, napa cabbage, cilantro and basil. Now normally im all down to do manual labor but in this case my little friend enthusiastically did most of the soil turning and seed planting. Anyway, in this heat the gardening manual says cucumbers and napa cabbage will grow well but the other stuff might not. F the manual lol. I have to ensure the fence stays well kept and water everything all the time. I hope it all works out. It would be great to have the cilantro, basil, and napa cabbage readily available. Its hard to get those 3 here in Paraguay. Cilantro is available in town but basil and napa cabbage no.

Back to my day, then I ate lunch at the house where my garden is. We ate a soup made with beef bones locra and other vegetables. It was awesome and a nice change from my own cooked food. The soups kinda remind me of the chinese soups my mom makes at home which is cool After lunch it was pretty much hang out and digest food time for me and sleep time for the mom and dad of the house. I spent the time chatting with the Paraguayan boy (13) and catching up with some other volunteers on their holidays. At about 4 I headed back to my house to eat a little bit and do a little of what im doing now, journal/blog but on my way I saw a lady shelling beans. (most people eat red colored beans here.-no idea what they are actually called- They grow it in their fields and de-shell them by hand.) It was a perfect way to pass time. I stopped and offered to help. It was a family about 5 houses from my house, but one I did not spend very much time at. I spent the next hour chatting about my horrible guarani and de shelling beans. It was very enjoyable. I will probably go back tomorrow. As usual I was asked if I was American and my racial background. After that there was the question about the weather in the United States with the ever present assumption that all of the US has the same weather. After that I took to my house to relax, eat some food and write this blog entry. I hung out for about 40 minutes until it was nice and cool to go play volley ball. Right now volley ball and soccer are the primary past times for after 6 ish. The house I go to play has a nice dirt court and there are usually at least about 10 teens there. Some of the young kids are ridiculously good at the game. Volley takes me to sun down around 8ish when I teach English usually one on one or one on two with 2 pretty cool students. One is Derlis, this 17 year old dude who can already answer my questions in English and write paragraphs about his day in English. It is awesome. In fact I taught him today. We practiced future tense. Then at about 9:30 or 1o come 3-6 teens who come to learn basic break dancing and use my place as a hangout in the night. Today I had to tell them that I needed some space because they always come every day and mostly stay till midnight. It was cool to teach the dance but I cant handle it being endless.