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.
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