Hey guys! Sorry its been a while since my last entry but ive been really busy...so i though id fill you in on WHY its been so hard to write a blog :) Heres what a typical day is like for me here in Guazu Cora, dept. Central Paraguay.
I get up hellaciously early (around 645) and eat breakfast with my host mom. She gets up at like 6 when her other two daughters go, alone, on about an hour bus ride to the capital to work for their dad. The dad is a misterious figure in my life...ive never met him, but I know he exists. I am kinda afraid to ask my host mom if they are separated or something, because I never hear her talk about him or anything. The only things I know about him is that he is a buisnessman in Asuncion and that Dalila and Violeta help him out at his “store”. But I digress....so after I eat breakfast I usually sit and try and figure out what is going on on the news channel for a few minutes while I wait for Carly and Eric to walk to the esquelita (little school—where we do most of our training...basically a little building in our satellite community).
The walk to the esquelita is like 10-15 mins. Its a dirt road in pretty shistey condition so when it rains, it becomes a mud river. So we get to the school and start classes around 745. Right now im in the intermediate spanish group so I study with 3 other people who are at around the same level. There are 4 other people learning beginner spanish and 4 others learning gurani (in spanish). Hopefully I will get to an acceptable level where I can start learning guarani by like week 5.
We have lunch at 1130, and since Carly and I live at the end of the road, my host mom brings us lunch on her moto (moped...they are super common here along with motorcycles and dirtbikes and no one wears helmets. Fun fact, 3 people per day die in paraguay because of moto accidents...in a country the size of NC). Lunch is the big meal here and its usually full of meat and starch. These people dont really believe in veggies.
After lunch we get picked up to go to Guarambare (aka the big city to us out in the campo...actually a small suburb of Asuncion) where we switch gears to talking about the “other stuff” like development goals and health and safety and all that other fun stuff. Today for example, we had a talk about how not to get robbed on a bus (most common crime against volunteers) then we had a talk with some current volunteers about what its REALLY like out in the campo campo (cuz apparently Guazu Cora is the Ritz compared to whats to come). They talked about their projects and how they went about planning etc.
After class we have like an hour to hang around in the town before we have to back to campo-land. Today I went right to the internet cafe to do the blog thing. When you get to the internet cafe, you sit down at a computer and just hope to god its going to work today. The computers are decently modern (like a few years old) but like everything is held together with glue and tape and one thing or another generally goes wrong if you sit there long enough. Like skype for example will misteriously take like 10 mins to boot up. Or the internet goes down for a few mins. Or your headphones are crap. So you sit there wasting your precious internet time (which is a little more than a dollar per hour) while there is a Paraguayo under your desk trying to fiddle with the wires when it doesnt work. So you can see why its a little frustrating to try to get anything done during your precious internet time.
After the cafe, we wait for the oh-so-unpredictable bus to take us home. Its "supposed" to come every 30 minutes but its kind of a crapshoot. After my 15 min bus ride and hour walk home, I usually just hang out with my host fam until its time to go to bed. I have a fair amount of reading and homework so im pretty much running on empty by like 11. I am the first to go to bed at my house usually. Sometimes Carly comes over and studies with me since shes two houses down and my fam loves her. My spanish is def getting better but its just taking time.
Phew. Long day right? Speaking of which I need to stop being antisocial on the computer and go hang out with the host fam. I love you guys!
I am so happy to hear that you are making it in the small time!! I am so proud of you, I am sure this is stressful, but you seem to be doing quite well. Good luck finding the greens down there, I hope you brought multi vitamins with you, if not, that will be part of my 1st Christian care package. I love you!!!
ReplyDelete-Sarah