Chicharrones in the Campo

(As a quick side note, you should be able to comment now on posts)

A lot has happened since I last wrote so if this gets incredibly long, I apologize. I just got back from a 4-day PCV visit where we all went to visit a real volunteer. I'll write more about that later but after swapping stories with several people it was decided that I had the most interesting trip so far.

The weekend before last, some of us went to Carnaval in Villeta. I'm not really sure what the point of Carnaval is but there was a street parade and everyone was spraying each other foam, which was fun and there were women dressed in big feathery costumes. It was cool. Then we went to a club and danced for hours. It was really hot and I have never sweat so much in my entire life but it was really fun. I wasn't planning on going but I'm really glad I did. We got home around 3am. My host family is so sweet. I apologized for waking them up and they said, “Oh no, the music is keeping us up anyway”, even though they had clearly been sleeping. We do have neighbors that play loud music constantly on the weekends though.

During the week, not much happens. We have language class 7:45-11:45ish (time is very flexible here) and then we go home for lunch and go back to school 1-5pm for technical training. We have been building losas, or the concrete floors for latrines. We also have learned how to lay bricks for fogons (brick ovens) and how to dig trash pits. A couple times a week we have trainee facilitated sessions where we give the charla (charlar literally means “to chat”. A charla is a short lesson on a topic). I did mine last week on health issues such as high blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, dengue and yellow fever. It was a pretty boring topic but it still went well.

Last Wednesday we had our Tapeapóvo. We were paired up and given a mission to visit two places either in Asunción or close to it. My partner and I went to a Ferreteria (a hardware store, not a ferret store) and SENESA, the agency responsible to developing water, trash and waste service all over the country. Volunteers often work closely with SENESA when they want to do anything in those areas. We then met up with everyone at the Peace Corps office in Asunción and did a bunch of stuff there. On the way home, we convinced our tech trainer Ricardo to stop for ice cream!! About 10 of us gobbled down 2 kilos of ice cream in a matter of minutes. It was sooo good.

And finally back to these past few days. I went to see a volunteer named Nati who lives in a barrio near Mallorquin in the department of Alto Paraná. Departments are basically like States here. So, I got totally lost trying to find her site and didn't get off at the right stop (we figured out later it was because I was missing an entire page of directions!). I ended up somewhere I was NOT supposed to be. I got back on the bus and eventually made it to the right terminal after riding for about 8 hours and having motion sickness the entire time. I also crossed the entire horizontal expanse of the country from west to east that day. On accident. So I got there and it was raining and we have to walk 10km to get to her house (1km = about 0.6 miles, so 6 miles). We rode about 2km on the back of an ox cart but walked the rest. In the rain and really deep mud. We got there around 6pm and I had left Santo Domingo at 6am.

I met several nice families. One of them asked if I liked chicharrón and since I didn't know what it was I said I would like to try it. Fried pig fat. The first one was really hard to get down but not wanting to offend them I said it liked it. So naturally they gave me an entire plate of it with mandioca, which I am also not a fan of. I ate what I could while trying not to think about what I was eating. Meanwhile these adorable little piglets were snuggling on my leg and I asked if I was eating their mom and they laughed and said “Yeah you are!”. Ugh...

So I'm back in Santo Domingo and I'm so glad to be home. It's weird to say “home” but it is my home at least for the next 9 weeks. I also really missed my host family and the other trainees. We all had fun stories to share. My host mom said that my niece kept looking at my closed door and asking when I would be home. It was really good to do these visits though because now I know what to bring up in my placement interview and what a real site is like. I thought Santo Domingo was the campo but it's not by any means. It's almost urban compared with the site I visited. It was also nice to be with a volunteer who was very honest about anything I asked her and who had been though everything already.

We have a lot of stuff coming up. I can't believe it's March already! February went by really quickly but it's not showing any signs of getting cooler around here. Boo. Anyway, I am doing great here. I miss you all a lot; keep the letters and e-mails coming! I really want to know what's going on back home, even if it doesn't seem that exciting.