If you're all wondering about the title, I'll get to it! First things first.
As you all can see, I've made it here to Paraguay! This will be the first blog that I write in Paraguay! I arrived more than 2 weeks ago, and it feels like I've been here for months. I say this because so many things have been packed into such a short amount of time. I arrived in Miami for Staging not this past Tuesday but the Tuesday before. That night I met a few of the other trainees and then tried to get some sleep. Wednesday was filled with ice breakers and other orientation activities to get to know better fellow trainees and the organization through which we'll be serving Paraguayans! All my fellow trainees are really cool. It was nice being around them because I no longer had to do much of the explaining why I'm here that I've been doing the past few months because everyone joins the Peace Corps for roughly the same reason. After a busy day, we went to the airport around 6:30, and, after a long check-in process and a 2 hour delay, we finally took off at around 2 in the morning on Thursday, technically.
We arrived in Asunción, Paraguay at around 2:00 after a short lay over in Montevideo, Uruguay. To be honest, I hadn't in the moment nor have I now thought much about the fact that I had just flown to a place quite distant and distinct from the place where I have lived my entire life, and that I will be spending quite a while here. I think I've been handling this fact well so far. I have not once questioned my intentions, and I have not once freaked out about the fact that my resources, primary support groups, and responsibilities will now be in a country in which I've never lived before. I've felt no reason not to be calm. I have too much to learn and take in during these short 11 weeks of training that it seems pointless and quite overwhelming to be preoccupied with much else.
Once off the plane, we were greeted by the Peace Corps Paraguay staff. From now on, I will use PCP as an abbreviation referring to Peace Corps Paraguay because I can already foresee it becoming old quickly having to write that out over and over again... Continuing on...We spent out first night in Paraguay at a retreat center not too far from the airport outside of Asunción. It was a nice time to relax a little, talk to fellow volunteers and staff, and experience some of Paraguay's traditions, one of which being the drinking of an herbal type tea called terere. It is very similar to mate, the most important distinction being that it is taken cold, not hot. There will be more about terere and mate later I'm sure, but for now, for all those that are interested in how to speak Guarani, the last vowel in words is the one that carries an accent. This is a general rule. For example, one would put the emphasis on the last e in terere. In the exception to this rule, an accent will be put on the vowel that is stressed to make clear its pronunciation. For example, Mba'éichapa, which is the most expression used to greet someone that roughly translates to "Hi, how are you?," has the accent over the e to show that the stress is not on the last vowel.
The next day we me the rest of the Peace Corps training personnel. All the staff are great. After having a session at the training in Guarambare, we went to our communities to meet our host families. I'm staying with an older retired couple and their son who is a university student. After having lived only a little over 2 weeks with them, I already feel like I can call them my Paraguayan family. I love them. They are very warm and welcoming, and were excited right from the start about hosting a trainee. The first weekend, Joel, the son, invited me to play soccer with a few of his friends and to go to one of his friend's birthday party. He is around my age, so I feel like we have a lot in common. My host mom is very caring and generous, especially with feeding me enormous amounts of food. It's great because she's a good cook, but if I didn't still have a good metabolism I'd probably be huge in a month or so. She taught me how to say 'I'm hungry' in Guarani! It's Che vare'a. I guess she figured that it is important to express my desire to eat. Ha! I'll talk more about specific foods in another post. She and my host dad also try to teach me a lot of Guarani, which can be a little overwhelming at times because I'm learning a lot of Guarani in class, but I appreciate it a lot. Luckily, we exclusively speak in Spanish, or Castellano as it's called here. They do not know any English, but since they lived in Ciudad del Este, which is a Paraguayan city that is located at their border with Brazil, they understand and can speak Portuguese as well, so sometimes we converse in that as well which is cool. It's amazing how they essentially can speak in 4 different languages: Castellano, Portuguese, Guarani, and Jopara, which is a mixed language of both Castellano and Guarani that it widely spoken in Paraguay.
In terms of Guarani, I've surprisingly learned a lot so far, and I feel like I can independently think about the language and figure a lot of things out based on the structure, form, and grammar rules of the language. Our training combines language classes and specific technical training which we have each day. Training is quite intensive, and we don't have much free time especially since a lot of time spent outside training is with family and other volunteers, so I'm exhausted by the time I have any of it.
Apart from all the Paraguayns I've met and all the language and culture of which I've been learning, I've been able to get to know better my fellow trainees, which has been nice because they're all very cool and have great things to share with Peace Corps and with other trainees/to-be-volunteers like me. We all actually got a chance to go to Asuncion, the capital city, for the first time in pairs to do a little excursion in which we had to find a few places in the city and then find our way to the Peace Corps office. I had a great partner, Evelyn, and we had no trouble getting around, and we had a good time figuring everything out. Tomorrow (Monday, June 13, 2011), each trainee will be visiting a volunteer to stay with them for a few days to experience first-hand the life of a volunteer and the work in which they're involved. I'm looking forward to it. I will be going to a little town called San Patricio in the departamento of Misiones which is in the south of Paraguay. I will update soon to tell you all how it went. Until then, I leave you all with a picture of the entire training group so you can see the people with whom I've been working. I'll try to put up some other pictures up soon, and write a little bit more diligently about my experience thus far.
From right to left, more or less, we have Steph, Roberto, Taylor, Amy, Eric, Vicky, Julie, Veronica, Kevin, Johanna, Ginsey, Shavon, Richard, Estee, Brittany, Randi, Molly, Dion, Evelyn, Ben, Chris, Marilu, and, finally, Me.
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