December 17, 2009 (typo disclaimer: I can´t figure out how to change the spellcheck language permanently. Every time I switch it to English I just reverts back to Spanish. It also randomly changes some of my words so I apologize in advance if you have to do a little guessing to decipher what I´m saying.

I’ve now been in my site just two full days. A whole series of emotions and thoughts have been running through me as I struggle to make sense of the languages swirling around me. I am staying with a sweet older couple. I have a bedroom connected to the computer room. The Women´s comité put their heads together to get them donated by an organization, or that´s how I understood it at least.

You know now given that I´m writing you that I arrived safely in site, but you don´t know the half of it nor the stress as I proceeded to navigate my way on public transportation. Thankfully, this was not my first time getting to my site, but it was the first time when I went completely by myself.

In the morning on Tuesday, December 15 I woke early to enjoy one last good breakfast at the Chaco Hotel with my Bellow PCVs. I loaded my two packpacks up and Amanda and I caught a bus to the terminal. The more I walk with the heavy pack the more I was thankful I didn´t have to take all of my staff out to site. I also wondered whether I really needed all the staff I had in my bag.

Once at the terminal I managed to tell the attendant that I needed to make it to O´Leary by 1pm and I asked how long it would take to get there. She sold me a ticket for the 8:30 bus and said it would take 3 hours. I was hopeful that even if she was an hour off I should still arrive with a little extra time to send a letter off at the post office. This was not the case. As we got closer to my finally destination I began to worry because I didn´t know what my next plan of action would be because I was Barkly going to arrive by 1pm.

I bought chipa on the bus and thought of my friend Kevin who has convinced my to buy chipa several times and is always pleased when I give and am happy I did. There´s nothing like chipa to satisfy a hungry stomach and a long bus ride always makes one hungry. Thankfully, for the bus ride I was sitting front and center on the 2nd floor of a double-decker bus. For some this would be the last place they´d want to sit because the main highway is only 2 lanes and the busses are not afraid to use the shoulders as an extra Lane. It´s a good thing too because I would have arrived in O´Leary even later. I don´t mind the rides because I get to read and write a lot. Of course, I´m sure I´ll be thinking differently once I´m in site for awhile and those are my forms of entertainment.

At 3 past one I stepped off the bus and waited in the dust for my backpack to be pulled from the belly of the bus. With only and ounce of hope that maybe the bus had been late I drug my luggage to the terminal and asked a lady if there was a “collective a Ka’a Jovai”. I couldn´t understand her response at all, but she kept pointing in the opposite direction I wanted to go. I thanked her and stepped out and walked to the other side of the terminal. I asked a man who was waiting on the side of the road leading to my community about the bus and he gave me a sad look and shook his head saying it had left at one. At this, I crossed the road to a stand under a shade tree with a bunch of other Paraguayans. I was in the middle of texting a friend when I noticed a run down bus pull up to the cross roads from across the street. Not recognizing it as the bus I rode 2 weeks earlier, I dared to hope that it might cross the road and take me in the direction of my barrio.

I crossed the road again and shortly after was joined by others who had been standing under the tree. Some other random older man walked up to my and started asking me questions. He apparently knew the PCV that lives in the town and another person who I was not acquainted with. I asked him about the bus and he told me it was going in my direction. The bus pulled up and I recognized the driver and the girl who takes the bus fair and helps the passengers. Relief swept over me as I sat down.

It was a long 22km and I was tired. I knew shortly after I stepped off the bus that I stepped into a new problem entirely. I knew where I was staying, but I no Langer knew where I Peace Corps issued cell phone was. Yes, that´s right I just lost my cell phone just 4 days after getting it. Not a great way to show how responsible you are when you first arrive. I was met my Lorena halfway to my destination. She took me to her family’s house (her father is also a community contact). As best as I could I explained about my cell phone and he hoped on a moto and rode 16 km to try to catch the bus in hopes of recovering my phone. No such luck. I called Gloria, my boss, and she called the office to have my phone cancelled. I know need to figure out how to get a police report and make the trip back to Asunción. I was hoping I wouldn´t have to make that trip for a long time but I’ll just make the most of it while I’m there.

In the mean time, I tried to swallow my disappointment and frustration and focus on making conversation and getting to know this family. I will be living with this family next month. The grandfather wanted to buy my smoker from me and they even showed me one of the hives. I´ll take a closer look at it once I get settled.

Thus far i´ve done a whole lot of sitting, reading, writing, trying to talk, eating and some more sitting, reading and writing. I managed to mix it up by working out and walking to the kokue to root up some mandi’o. While out there Ña Vinda showed me giant green worms that are devistating many of the plants. I watched as she decapitated them with her hands and they spun around clinging to the plant with their insides oozing out. I told them about a venenos casero (homemade pesticide) after calling my tech trainer Brian for a recommendation. We´ll see if I can actually motivate them to try it because after I told her about it she showed me a container of pee (I ´m not sure who or what type of pee), but apparently she uses this to control them, but again plenty was lost in translation.

I´m sure these posts will be well after the fact, but at least I have computers I can use here. I didn´t bring my laptop out with me because it was just too much and I knew that I might have access to the computers here. Thankfully, that has turned out to be the case. I’m getting plenty of looks as I type. The children and teenages that come here every day are here for computer classes, but they’re not learning to type so they think it’s pretty cool when I just write without having to look at the keyboard. (Thank you Grandma Curtis for all those hours you spend teaching Carissa and I on your typewriters ) School’s out for the summer, but every day there have been different kids here slowly typing out the pages. It´s exciting that they have such nice new computers. Maybe I can teach typing classes when I learn how to speak the languages.

Well, time to see who I can go visit for a little while. I´m supposed to go look at some hives at 4pm, but we’ll see if that actually happens.

December 19

The weather has been threatening rain or in the case of two nights ago actually raining which means I have yet to go look at the hives. Oh well, there are plenty of other days for me to go look at them. I’m used to the idea that plenty of things get planned, but you’ll have to be patient and wait for them to actually happen.

For example, yesterday I went to a high school graduation. I heard 2 or 3 different start times non of which turned out to be correct. I was told to show up at my contacts house at 5. I decided I would wait until 5:30 to text and take a shower. It turned out to not matter because the graduation didn’t start until 10:30. My contacts daughter, Lorena (14) came to my host family’s house to pick me up. We walked back to her house and within and hour she had my hair done up with little rubber bands and given me chuchi clothes to wear. I would have been just fine wearing the skirt I came in, but I figured I would go along with it. Lorena’s aunt from Buenos Aires and sister from Argentina had made long bus trips to be there for the graduation.

The graduation was more like a cross between a wedding and quinciera. The event was held outside with large banners draped across from post to post. There was a big stage and tons of giant speakers. All the girls were dressed in the same long pink prom dress and the boys wore black pants and white dress shirts. Rather than just having a speaker and the class walk across a stage and receive diplomas like we do in the states, each graduate was announced and escorted by someone special—boyfriend, girlfriend, mother, father, etc. After they were announced and applauded they danced together and that was the end of the ceremony. After they began dancing we started eating what the women had prepared earlier—traditional Paraguayan fair. Even though it was fried I enjoyed it because I love empanadas. There was also chipaguasu, Milanese, and fried croquettes filled with soy meat (those were delicious). We had hard cider for a toast and finished with a delicious cake. It was really moist because of the milk and dulce de leche in it. The frosting was delicious and homemade too. After being asked several times I finally agreed to join the dancing. After a few songs my other contacts girls rescued me. It was almost 1am when we finally left. I fell asleep to the rhythm of reggaeton.