Semana Santa

Today marks my second month here; two down and twenty five months left. I find out next Wednesday where I´ll be placed for the next two years. So as you can imagine, I´m excited, but am getting a little anxious about the whole thing. So far, so good. I had a minor breakdown the other day, but luckily pulled it together and am back to living it up in Paraguay. As one of my friends pointed out, it´s okay to have a bad day (even in Parguay). Today starts Semana Santa, which is Paraguay´s tradional celebration of Easter. As of today, all the families will start eating large quantities of Chipa. Chipa is a type of special bread made with eggs, milk, cheese, and to top it off pig fat. And it´s suprising when volunteers gain weight? Good thing Steffanie´s host dad made us a dumb bell out of bamboo and rice bags. If I could fight the freshman fifteen, I can fight the Peace Corps pounds off as well. Although to my advantage all the scales are in kilos, so I really never know how much I really am. The upcoming week is also a time for mourning in Paraguay. On top of eating vast amounts of carbs, you are then required to spend time sitting around because all the bussinesses, schools, and government buildings are closed. However my group of volunteers decided to put an American spin on things and have a ¨Chipa Crawl¨on Friday and go around to all the houses trying different family versions. Well wish me luck on my carb loading expedition.

Some things I´ll Just Never get Used to...

Regardless of the amount of time I´ve now spent here, some things continue to amaze me, including,
*To get a dog to go away you make kissing noises at it. You can imagine how confusing that could be for an American dog. You can also imagine how sad I was when I first made kissing noises at a dog and he ran in the other direction.
*The buses in general are still a mystery to me. For instance, this morning the bus stopped for the stop in front of me and for some friends down the road from me, but didn´t even hesitate to pick me up. You just stand along side the road wherever you may find yourself and wave them down. Sometimes they stop and sometimes they don´t. Personal space on the bus is none existance, and if it weren´t for my ample stash of sand sanitizer I`d probably never ride them.
*The heat...I just had to throw that in for good measure.
*All the stores reuse their glass bottles, so anytime you purchase a drink you must then later return that bottle to the store it came from.
*People greet eachother on the street with "adios". And here I am confused why everyone is saying good bye to me when I never even said hello.

A typical day or an atypical day in Paraguay?

After leaving Naranjasys and experiencing different towns within Paraguay I have been given a more well-rounded perspective of this county. I am currently staying with another volunteer in a rural town outside of Colmena. However, I am now challenged with the question of what should I expect to encounter on my daily life here. How can you differentiate between a typical day and an atypical day in Paraguay? For instance, today I woke up to the noise of a saw from the construction workshop behind the house, spoke on a local radio station, built a fence out of bamboo (to protect the vegetable garden from the sheep), and then walked 3 miles in the heat of the day back to the house. Should I expect this random chain of events to occur again in my future here in South America? I have also met a slew of other volunteers on this trip with interesting stories. They left me wondering the likelihood of these random events occurring in my life, as it did them. Will I be struck by lightning; Will Peace Corps then provide me with Ibuprofen when I tell them of this crazy phenomenon, Will I buy a horse and learn to care for it from a how-to book; Will I then decided to enter that horse in local races and bet money on it; Will I be able to classify twelve different types of mandioca; Will I eat with the Japanese but drink Terere with the Paraguayans; Will I be evacuated from my site because of forecasted flooding? The questions are endless. As of today, I have one month down and twenty-six left. I have sufficient time to define the meaning of "typical," by the Paraguayan standards.