Two Flinns in Paraguay

Sarah came to visit!!! So after 19 months living in Paraguay someone finally came to visit me! Sarah spent a week with me in Paraguay. Her first day here probably was not her favorite seeing that her flight was delayed by around 5 hours and just after arriving we started catching buses to get to my site.  I live about 100km from Asuncion and it takes two buses to get there and about 2 ½ hours.  Luckily for her we took a cab to my site so she got out of the 45 minute walk in. Once we got to my site she was immediately attacked by Copper.  We spent 5 nights in my site and Copper slept in her bed every night.  We ended up making chipa with my committee, chipa guasu with my host mom, cutting glasses out of wine bottles, tracing and painting part of my world map, milking cows, and fixing up my garden.  On Friday night some other volunteers came over to meet Sarah and we had a mini pizza party.  Over all I think my site was interesting to Sarah.  I had lost some perspective on what it’s like coming from America and being thrown into a rural Paraguayan community and this experience helped with that.  I decided to make a list of things Sarah reminded me/taught me:

·         My bathroom is gross, even though I have a shower now! Apparently a cold shower isn’t all that great (I disagree with this, my shower is life changing).  

• Using cups of oil and lard with every meal is not normal, and is actually kind of disgusting. This is in reference to Paraguayan cooking, not mine.
• People publicly commenting on your physical appearance is not normal. Side note: They LOVED Sarah here.  I was told that she looked like a model and if I lost weight I could too.  After being in Paraguay for so long this didn’t offend me.  It did however offend Sarah and my mother.  This came with the added benefit of my mother finally admitting that I am her smartest and prettiest daughter; perhaps she said it because she felt sorry for me but I’m 90% sure she meant it.
• Motorcycles are not family friendly. It isn’t uncommon to see 5 people on motorcycles here, and I have seen people breastfeeding while riding on them. This is not only weird but also dangerous. 
• In America, tampons come with applicators.  
• Burning toilet paper is weird, and makes a fantastic video montage.   
•  It’s also weird that you can’t flush toilet paper down here.
• Taking your trash on your 2.5mile walk and then on a 2 hour bus ride just so you can throw it away, instead of burning it or burying it is also weird. 

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Sarah and I eventually left my site and headed to the capital for 2 nights so she could meet more volunteers and try and find some gifts for people.  We ended up going to T.G.I. Fridays for dinner one night and she wasn’t impressed.  Friday’s in Paraguay has a deal on Monday nights where you get unlimited beer with the purchase of a meal.  Honestly, unlimited. C’mon Friday’s you are asking for trouble.  

It was nice showing her the capital and I think she enjoyed hot showers and toilets instead of latrines.  Sarah and I didn’t do a whole lot of crazy things when she was here but it was fantastic just having someone from home to spend time with.  It’s been a weird adjustment getting used to being alone in site again.  We only spent 5 days together in my site but being able to speak English and just have someone to talk to all day was amazing! I am so thankful that Sarah was able to come see me, even if my site likes her more than me I love that she was here!

*I don’t really think they like her more than me, they just think she’s prettier. They told me I’m nicer.

Since it is now April I guess it is that time of year where we all admit that our New Year’s Resolutions were a big flop; I am no exception.  However; if I have been a less than stellar blogger this year, I do feel like I have been a better Peace Corps Volunteer.

Year one in the Peace Corps is a weird thing.  You are thrown into a community with 10 weeks of training and you hope for the best.  Looking back I am often surprised at how hard it actually was for me.  Year two is great! You know the people and already have relationships with them. They know why you are there and you only get asked if you’re German every other week! 

Since my last blog my women’s group had a male join; however, our name did not change.  We are still ‘kuna kyre’y’, which means hard-working women in Guarani. We are going ahead with a chicken coop project.  Most Paraguayan families have chickens just running around and sleeping in trees (I had no idea chickens enjoyed sleeping in trees before this).  The problem with the Paraguayan method of raising chickens is that they don’t properly feed them so the egg production suffers and the chickens are skinny.  As a part of the chicken coop project each family will (hopefully) receive 20 chickens and materials for their coops; they will also be responsible for planting and harvesting beans and corn in order to make their own home-made chicken feed. The past week I gave a lecture on different varieties of home-made chicken recipes they can use.  Next week (when Sarah is here!!!!!) we will begin fund raising by making and selling bread within the community. 

I also began working with my contact and her family and their bee boxes!  They had very old Langstroth hives which were falling apart.  Paraguayans prefer these boxes because they are pretty but there is an easier to make and cheaper option called a top bar hive.  These are African style hives and I convinced my contact to switch to them! We built the first one together with her son and then Elijah and I built the second two.  Unfortunately we were unable to do a wild hive capture, because ants had eaten our wild hive, but we moved the other two hives into their new boxes!  My contact was kind enough to let me have one of these boxes and late one night Elijah and I snuck out and moved the bees next to my house.  Now it really is all women over here with my 4 chickens, dog, cat, and thousands of bees! 

This is the old box that is a disaster!

Bees at night! Not the night we moved the box.

In honor of Sarah coming next week I also got the ball rolling on my World Map project.  World Maps are a pretty common Peace Corps project because they are easy to do and it is a physical tangible success.  After getting told that the US is smaller than Paraguay and asked if the US is next to Spain enough times you begin to see the importance of geography.  The majority of the paint is donated so what the volunteer really needs is time and hopefully some friendly PCVs to come help out! I still have to actually draw the map but I have the wall cleaned and painted! 

The wall of the school where the map is going!

I cannot wait for Sarah to get here and I am hoping I can con her into writing a guest blog! It’s pretty serious journalism so I understand if she isn’t up for the task.  Hopefully I get better at blogging but I’m not making any promises… Until next time!