Nov 18 - Carapegua

Well I just got back from Carapegua yesterday. I stayed in a simple home with an older woman and her husband (or boyfriend?). They only spoke Guarani, but we could communicate the basics. We spent four of the five days there working in two schools giving presentations to the classes about environmental issues in Paraguay. We also painted an ecoregions mural on one of the school walls. It rained really hard one of the days and we had to cancel one of the presentations because no one goes to school if it rains. The electricity went out for about a day. Carapeguay is a bigger city in Paraguay with about 30,000 people, though the lifestyles in the city are quite different one house to the next. For example the house I stayed at only had the shower with cold running water, and one other water spout, open door-ways and was pretty small. Other houses close by have all the furnishings you could think of, with cars, microwaves, tile patios, etc. Etc.

We also visited a radio station where a peace corps volunteer named Nick regularly does a weekly show. He tells jokes, plays music, and talkes about environmental projects that are going on in the area. Our group of 6 went to one of his broadcasts and he asked us a couple of questions in Guarani, then him and Anthony (a trainee) played two songs together with a banjo and guitar. It had to be pretty funny to hear us all fumble around with our Guarani on the radio. Nick is going to be our EE supervisor starting in December when we swear in as volunteers.

I find out this wed the 21st where I am going to be stationed. I asked for an Urban site because I wanted to stay busy with teacher workshops, and work with non-profit organizations that have already been formed. I think it would be cool to be in a rural site also, almost everyone in my group would rather be away from the city (I think because they want open space, to be able to do agroforestry projects, gardens, and have a more relaxed (tranquilo) lifestyle. The rural areas are definitely more beautiful, have space, trees etc, but I think I will be able to educate better in an Urban setting. Anyway, we will se what happens next week.

All 40 of the trainees are getting together on Thanksgiving to celebrate and we all have the day off for training. We are all bringing side dishes, but are eating chicken instead of turkey (because there are not many turkeys around these parts.
I have a bunch of good pictures that I want to get up on the internet, but it takes about 10 minutes to upload each one so I am trying to figure out a better way to get them up. I know some of you really want to see more picutes...sorry, I will get them up as soon as I can.