First Entry as a Volunteer

Hello everyone! This is my first blog entry as an official Peace Corps Volunteer! My ten weeks of training are finally over and I swore in on Friday (12/9)! The ceremony was sort of anti-climatic. We repeated some things in English, then in Spanish and then it was just over. But one of my fellow G-37 volunteers gave an awesome speech in a mixture of Spanish and Guarani! After the ceremony, which my host sister Isa and my host mom attended, we loaded into a van and headed out to Asuncion.  We had to get to the bank before 1 so that we could get our debit cards and have access to our money. We made it there at about 12:50. Luckily it was the easiest card I have ever opened. I signed my name on a piece of paper, the banker then told me my signature didn’t look enough like my passport signature so she showed me how it should look and I tried again. The second effort seemed to please her so I was handed a debit card with a pin number and told my money would be there by five, very rigid security here in Paraguay. We then went to the Peace Corps office where I attended a seed bank meeting and got a package from my awesome grandma! It just wouldn’t be Christmas without the Christmas tree nougats!  Since I opened the package in front of people I was obligated to share but everyone appreciated them so it was worth it.  After hanging out at the office and meeting some of the other volunteers (there are about 230 in total in Paraguay), a group of us headed to our hotel to check in.  Peace Corps had a concert that night with a mixture of volunteers and local Paraguayans called Ahendu and it was really fun. G-37 made our mark as being the first new G to really dance and get into the music, we were also told we were the most well behaved new G! G-37 is keeping it classy.

I stayed in Asuncion until Tuesday morning and I spent my time swimming at the embassy, eating Mexican food and pizza, and savoring my last few days with the members of G-37 that have quickly become my family in Paraguay. Our hotel had hot showers, awesome towels, and air conditioner that sort of worked so I lived the chu-chi life for a few days. Chu-chi is what Paraguayans use to describe fancy, frivolous things. It is very possible that I am spelling it wrong but it is one of my new favorite phrases I say.  I also love ‘Ikatu’ which means ‘it is possible’.  I was warned that I would leave the States speaking one language perfectly and return sort of speaking three and I absolutely believe it. I have been here less than 3 months and most of my sentences have 3 different languages in them.

On Tuesday morning Mario, Elijah and I checked out of our hotel (my roommate for the weekend, Lauralee stayed until later to enjoy the comforts of the hotel) and headed to the bus terminal.  We all had massive hiking backpacks with the stuff we will need for the next 6 weeks.  Seriously, this bag easily weighed 35kg.  So after saying goodbye I caught the Salto Crystal bus to my site.  I left the terminal at 7:45 or so and miscalculated the trip so I ended up arriving to site at 10:45.  Why is this important you ask?  Well here in Paraguay it is coming into summer and the heat here is no joke.  The guy who potentially could have picked me up in his car ignored my 3 phone calls so I called my contact and told her I could just walk the 5km distance to the site. Stupid, stupid Maggie.  When I put the day pack onto my hiking bag the combined weight was enough to continuously keep me off balance and I literally had to sit on the ground to get the backpack on. This was not about to deter me.  I put on some Adele and soulfully made my way up and down the hills that lead to my site.  Around the 2km mark a crisis occurred.  My left shoelace came untied.  Not wanting to take off the huge hiking backpack I decided to try to balance and bend over at the waist to retie my shoe.  I get about half way and I am super proud of how well I am doing when all of the sudden I just sort of fall over.  I rolled around like a turtle for a minute before decided I was not being efficient.  I took off the backpack and stood up and assessed the situation.  At this point I was covered in red dirt and sweat.  I then remembered one terribly awful Crossfit class that I took with my mother this summer.  We had to put a sandbag on our shoulders and stand up with it.  During this exercise I also had trouble standing and remembered the instructor, Mario, taking pictures and laughing at me.  I did my best to channel the same feeling of shame in being defeated by a sandbag (and having it documented) to lie on the backpack and roll over on my side gradually lifting up the bag.  Luckily shame is a fantastic motivator for me and I managed to stand up and continue on my journey.  The rest of the trip was sweaty but uneventful.  When I reached the road my contact lives off of I was greeted by an unpleasant surprise.  My contact and 6 other women from the community were waiting to great me.  Keep in mind that my face gets extremely red when I exercise and I am going to consider the 5km walk with the 35kilo bag exercise.  I also am covered with an odd red mud type substance as a result of the red dirt of Paraguay mixing with my sweat.  Basically I looked fantastic.  They all freaked out.  They kept saying poor baby and got mad at my contact for making me walk and kept asking if I fell or what happened.  Naturally I lied and said I got the dirt on me when I put down the bag to readjust it.  Eventually after talking for around 2 hours I was finally able to take a nice cold bucket bath.  Welcome to site Maggie!

I have spent the past two days in site walking around and integrating.  So far I think it is going well but I know it will be extremely slow.  Everyone I have met has been very nice and happy to have me here.  I have been spending the most time with my contact so tomorrow I am going to start making house visits and drinking terere with others.  Hopefully everything goes well but considering how my entrance into my site went I am bound to have some ridiculous stories for you all. I also got a cell phone so if you want to call me from skype just email me or facebook me and ask for my number, it is free for me to answer calls from the US so it would just be the random skype cost.  Sorry I haven’t blogged in a while but Internet is getting a little harder to come by.  I miss you all and happy holidays! Jajotopata! 

Also if you missed the facebook post, I now have an official volunteer mailbox! This means my new mailing address is:

Maggie Flinn PCV Mailbox 258

Cuerpo de Paz

162 Chaco Boreal c/ Mcal Lopez

Asuncion 1580, Paraguay

South America