Tacuati, first impressions

A City/Town/Rural Area
I don´t get it either. The sign says "Welcome to the City of Tacuati," but it´s definitely not a city. The streets are all dirt, in fact we´re 40km from asphalt. But the streets are arranged in blocks, city or at least town-style. However, the town as a whole is only about 4x4 blocks. And it's surrounded by countryside, beautiful fields of mandioc and sesame and corn. The attitude is definitely rural, too - tranquilo, as they say. In the middle of the day there´s noone out on the streets, everyone´s chillin in their front yard, drinking terere. Other things conflict too - there´s no supermarket, but you can get what you need apparently from the bunches of dispensas (small corner stores), and there's a place to rent dvds (recent ones, like the Aviator).

The People
Are super nice, and went out of their way to help me feel comfortable and welcome there. I spent Sunday afternoon with the family of Beti, my first contact there, and we sat talking and drinking a little beer and it was really comfortable and nice.

The Schools
There´s one head school in town, whose principal is the man I stayed with for the week. They have received a big grant from Escuela Viva already, and the classrooms are nicely decorated and they have a garden and, based on the 10 minutes I was there, seem to have it together. I also visited a one-room school, and a third school a bit farther away from the center of town that´s building a fourth room. Some of the teachers had worked with Ryan, the previous volunteer, already and in the Supervision office there were tons and tons of books and games and activities she had made for teachers to borrow or copy.

The Bus Ride
sucked. From Asuncion, it´s a 4am bus that arrives at 1pm, and on the return it was 530am til 2pm or so. There are shorter routes, but they involve switching buses at least once or waiting four hours in Concepcion or riding on the terrible dirt road, or all three, so it seems this particular bus is the one I´ll be taking. It was relatively comfortable, airplane-style seats and windows that opened, but how comfortable can you be at 5am?? I guess I was good at long distance bus riding in Honduras, but it´s been a while!

My Work
is still undefined, which is kind of how I like it. I don´t want to get sucked into working with just the head school, and it´s obvious that that´s what they´d like. But Beti, who´s my main contact and boss sort of, was very clear that she´ll support whatever I want to do. The school has a parents group, which could open up a bunch of different options for me, and it´d be possible to work in the asentamientos, which are tiny farming communities located on the road between town and the pavement highway. When I go back in a couple weeks, I´ll take the first few months to get to know people, facilitate some meetings to try to understand the abilities and needs of all the different schools and find a way to make my niche. I´m SOOOOO excited to get to chill and make my own schedule and have more control over my days.

My House
I stayed for the week with a family, both of whom are school principals. It was definitely the most fancy (here we say chu-chi) house I´ve seen here, with TWO TILED INDOOR BATHROOMS and a MICROWAVE. When I go back, I´ll be staying with an aunt of Beti´s and will start looking for a little house of my own. I already started talking about it last week, how I´d like to live on my own or on a house that´s on the property of a family (which gives a nice bit of social interaction while maintaining independence). So I don´t have that settled yet but I´m confident it´ll work out.

The Church
is big there, more so than anywhere else I¨ve seen in Paraguay. There´s a gorgeous old Jesuit church and an Italian padre, and I guess since it was Palm Sunday things could have been more religious than usual. I went to church for a few minutes on Sunday b-c it seemed to be the thing to do in the community, to show my face and be friendly, but I left after a few minutes b-c it was pretty boring.

The Language
I spoke so much Spanish!! I loved it, I was really impressed with myself honestly to be able to hold not only polite conversations, but to be able to talk w- Beti´s family about politics and cultural differences and things like that. The people in Tacuati speak Guarani with each other it seems, tho they could speak Spanish w- me no problem. But now I´m more excited than ever to learn Guarani and really become part of their community.

Now What?
This week is pretty much over b-c it´s Semana Santa, the big buildup to Easter in which noone does anything but hang out and make chipa, a cheesey bread yummy treat. We get a break from training, which we desperately need, and then next week is pretty chill as we wrap up training and have our swearing in ceremony at the embassy on Friday the 21st. Then I´ll be a real volunteer!!