I´m a Real Volunteer Now

Tuesday April 25, 2006

First of all, Happy Birthday Mom!! Sorry I can’t be there to share it with you, or even get you a card on time, but I hope you have a great day! You deserve it!!

It’s been a busy week, let’s review….

Leaving Naranjaisy
We had several going away parties, all of which involved excessive amounts of eating and varying amounts of sadness to be leaving the community that had hosted us for the past 11 weeks. As one of our trainers said, there aren’t many places where someone can walk door to door and ask who’d like an American to stay in their home for three months and have 18 out of 20 responses be Yes. For all the hard times I had living with my family, I do appreciate the openness and welcoming they offered me. They will always be Mi Familia Paraguaya, and I will go back to visit (it’s seen as a big deal in the community actually if a family has hosted a volunteer and they DON’T come back to visit), tho I might not stay long!

Leaving Training
This part was easy. After so many weeks of being scheduled to the max, I am thrilled to be out on my own now and making my own rules and plans. I’ll miss being together with my friends, but also I’m ready to not be in a group of at least 8 people at all times.

Swearing In
We had a little ceremony on Friday with the new American Ambassador to Paraguay, who’s apparently fresh out of his assignment to Cuba. It was a nice enough ceremony, tho his speech was less than inspirational. My friend Bryan, another EEE volunteer, gave a much better speech, talking about the importance of being happy where you are, ie. not always comparing the local coffee to Starbucks, and just feeling lucky for what we have here and the incredible opportunity we’ve been given. After that, we got paid for the first time – have I mentioned that I’m a millionaire here in Paraguay?? That’s right, my monthly salary is a little over 1,000,000 Guaranies!! Who thought I’d ever be a millionaire, much less in Peace Corps. (ps - In case you’ve forgotten, 6,000 Guaranies = 1 Dollar) That night there was a huge party, in honor of us and the volunteers who just finished their service and are heading home. The party, which had an 80s Prom theme, was at a bowling alley, and featured a dance floor, a moonbounce, one of those moonbounce-y blowup huge slide things, a rockclimbing wall, and a mechanical bull!! The things you can get in Paraguay… We spent the rest of the weekend in Asuncion meeting the many volunteers who were in town for the party and eating really good hamburgers at a bar called the Brit Pub (which also serves beer on tap, a rarity here), and after a little too much of a fun weekend, on Monday morning I took the 4am bus up here to Tacuati.

And Here I Am
I arrived here in Tacuati, my new home for the next 2 years, around 1pm (and if you’re counting, that’s a 9 hour bus ride, but it was a nice bus w/ airplane seats and plenty of breeze) and pretty much slept the rest of the day. I’m staying for now with a nice woman named Elisa and her 13 year old son Erico, who appears to have Downs Syndrome. She has a huge house that’s a little like a labyrinth, it’s obvious rooms were just added on in the back when they felt like it, and there’s a beautiful patio with a hammock that I love. I’m supposed to stay here, or with another family, for the next 2 months to help me integrate in the community, learn about the culture, etc, but I’m hoping I’ll be able to move out sooner than that. If I can find a “casita,” a little house that’s on someone else’s property, that counts as living with a family but still lets me be independent, finally! I haven’t met up yet with Betty and Noemi, my two contacts who work at the Supervision office who I’ll be working with closely and who are kind of responsible for helping me to find housing, but hopefully I’ll find them today and see if they have any news for me on that.

The Next Three Months…
…are going to be so chill!! New Volunteers are supposed to take the first three months or so to learn more about the community, get to know people, develop language skills, set up their house, etc. So I don’t have to start planning workshops or something right away. Instead I’ll meet people, drink terere, observe in the classrooms, maybe hold meetings w/ the teachers to learn more about the strengths and needs they have, and stuff like that that doesn’t feel like work but really is. Based on what I learned from my visit a few weeks ago, and from the stuff the old Volunteer Ryan left me, it seems like they’ve done a lot of work already in creating didactic materials (tangible stuff that helps kids learn, like flashcards or number blocks), which is good b/c I’m not really skilled or interested in that stuff. But, the teachers still need help figuring out how to use all those materials in the classroom, which might involve model lessons or team teaching which would be interesting. In addition, there’s a parents group that might be fun to work with, and there’s a high school in town in case I want to do anything with them (tho I’m not really missing adolescents that much, to be honest). There is also a women’s group that Ryan made soap with, and there could be an opportunity to work with them in other ways too. Ali, who is a Cooperative Volunteer in Tacuati, works with the Coop here (a group of farmers to pitch in a sum of money and then can take out loans), and when he leaves in August I could probably do some work with them too. Ali also has a radio show, I’m not sure what he talks about but I’ve heard of Volunteers doing educational programming and playing some of the cd’s about health or something that PC provides, and I could maybe take over that when he leaves too. So right now, there are lots of ideas up in the air, and I will take the next few months to learn more about the community and what their priorities and needs are, and find my niche here. Sounds like fun, no?

Language, and Tests
I had my final language interview last week, and while I’m proud of my results I also think that they’re arbitrary and a little unfair (perhaps like any evaluation based on only a one-time test). I ranked an Advanced Medium in Spanish, which is only two steps from Fluent!! I think I was able to score highly because I was comfortable and was able to just chat with the interviewer, even tho I make lots of mistakes with verbs and didn’t use complex phrases. Someone who speaks more correctly than I do but who is not comfortable or willing to talk a lot would probably score lower, and I don’t know if that’s fair. In Guarani, I ranked an Advanced Novice, two steps above knowing nothing, but apparently indicates “some conversational ability,” which I think is pushing it a bit. I could talk during the interview about where my house is located and how many brothers and sisters I have, but that was about it. I think I got bumped up a level at the end when she asked if I had any questions so I asked her where she was from, indicating an ability to form independent thoughts, and it turns out she’s from San Juan Nepomuceno, where I had visited back in February, so I said that. When she asked me if I liked it there, I pulled off a really good sentence: Ma o meno, che avy’ave el campo el pueblogui, which means that I like the campo better than the city. I was proud of that sentence, but wonder whether the ability to create one good sentence really means that I can communicate with people. It reminds me of my old friend, the New York State Regents Exams, and how my students sometimes got lucky when the tester asked the right question, even if they didn’t know much else. Strange that I am now a student again, of so many things.

Travelling
I have plans to go to Concepcion, the big city about 3 hours away, on Friday b/c there’s a meeting of all the Volunteers in the area. My friend Sarah, a new EEE volunteer too, also lives 3 hours from Concepcion, so we’re hoping this will be the first of many opportunities to meet up and hang out there. I’m so far from Asuncion that I don’t know if I’ll go back there every month, as most volunteers do. Right now I’m planning for sure to be in Asuncion for July 4, when the Embassy apparently has a big party for all the Americans living/working here, and other than that I’m not sure. Concepcion has big grocery stores and internet – what more could a Volunteer want?

Mail Call
I can still receive mail at the Peace Corps office, but we also have a post office right here in Tacuati. Hint: It seems that photos, cds and dvds fit nicely in air mail envelopes, which cost a mere 84cents to send from the US, or if anyone is so inclined it only costs about $10 to send one of those padded envelopes, inside of which could fit candy, markers, magazines, power bars or anything else easy to buy and send J (Anything in the mail is subject to be searched and/or stolen, so please don’t send those diamond rings!) My address here will be another fun one:

Lori Sandler
Cuerpo de Paz
Tacuati, Paraguay

I promise a reply and maybe even a souvenir with every letter!!