First Few Weeks

Hello all! Let me start by saying that I hope there are still people that are actually reading this blog because the internet in my site is so slow that it takes me about 45 minutes of sitting (usually while sweating because of the awesome heat in Paraguay) and reloading to post one of these blogs. Okay so week one in site is officially over! I can say definitively that I have absolutely gotten better at killing evil flies and mosquitoes.  I also have about 25 spider roommates that help me out by killing these guys at night for me.  I am okay with sharing my room as long as they keep doing their part. 

On my first full day in site I decided to wake up early and walk around the community.  I wanted to make a map of all of the houses so that I could put it up in my room and mark down the names and interests of all of the people that I visited.  What I learned that first morning is that my site has about 15 houses.  Originally I had the smallest site in our G with 30 houses and now I have learned that I really have the smallest site.

I have been spending the most time with my contact’s family and a woman named Julia’s family.  Julia will eventually be my landlord when I move into the extra house on her property.  I also went and visited two other families during my first week and went to a lot of resos.  We have spent about an hour everyday talking about family and praying for Christmas.  I generally just sit there confused but I think the community appreciates my presence so I show up. 

I also went to church and then a youth group meeting with some girls about my age last Sunday.  This was interesting because initially I thought I was going to do Christmas activities in Acahay, the main town, with small children.  I learned as I was walking in that I was going into town with some ‘jovenes’ who were around my age.  My mind began racing at the change in plans and I forgot that ‘jovenes’ is not a gender specific word.  This means I thought that I was being set up by a stranger who wanted her sons to take me into town for the day.  After 2 minutes of panicking and several frantic phone calls I eventually learned that I was going into town with girls and calmed down.  We ended up attending the church service and then a 3-hour youth group session.  The session had invited different members of the communities surrounding Acahay that were active leaders in the church.  Somehow I accidentally became the leader of a group that was supposed to discuss how we felt upon receiving the invitation to attend the youth group, whether we felt it was a call from God, and what attributes we possessed to have God call upon us.  Keep in mind this is all happening in Spanish and Guarani.  I once again, freaked out.  I told my group I could not be their leader since I didn’t speak that great of Spanish and I myself had just tagged along to meet them.  They argued with me for a little and then allowed me to sit and just listen.  That Sunday I spent about 5 hours doing religious activity since we spend about an hour every day praying for Christmas in site. 

My meetings with the families generally consist of me going over and drinking terere with them.  They ask if I have a boyfriend and then if my eye color is real.  They then ask about my parents and what color eyes they have.  When they find out I have three sisters they ask if they are all “rubias” and say how lucky my parents are to have so many light eyed children.  They are really big on eye color here.  I have only been able to talk to my family and Julia’s family about anything at all agricultural but we were warned in training that integration would be slow and projects would be hard to come by in the first few weeks so we will see how it goes!

I have started a blog post about Christmas but it isn’t finished so that will probably get posted sometime later this week! I hope everyone had a great Christmas it was nice and awkward here!