Fall Means Futbol!

Hello hello, my gente! There for a couple days after I got home from Asuncion (when I last wrote) I thought my life was going to slow down. Days arrived for which I had nothing in particular planned, and I even went off on a whim to a birthday party that involved a 7km walk in the heat carrying a platter of veggie tart and a loaf of banana bread (made by yours truly)! Upon my return from the fiesta, however, things got serious again, and well, leave it to Megan to work herself to the max. Basically what happened is two projects that I´ve been trying to do for a long time came to fruit all at once. First, my comite finally got it together and asked for money from the muni to buy trees to plant around our chapel and our futbol field. Then, they got REALLY on it and went all by themselves to ask the mayor for a donation of baby fish for the 7 fishponds that people have built in my town but haven´t been able to pay to populate yet. That was all nice but none too exciting until the muni decided that they were not just going to give us money to buy fish, but actually BRING us fish from the Brazilian border...3000 of them! As you can imagine, our ponds need no more than 300, so I thought fast and made my fishpond project district-wide (that is, the town center and all 10 of its "companias", or surrounding communities, of which my town of Cerrito is one). I called a PC friend of mine who specializes in fish and lives way far away in the south of the country, Pilar. He agreed to come up next week with a Paraguayan who also does fish to do a presentation in town center on care of fish ponds. Then, everyone who participates will get fish for their pond (that´s my thinking, anyway). As luck would have it, I somehow on my way out of the muni I managed to run into the radio producer, who announced all this free of charge! Talk about development work!

The radio guy also offered me a Saturday spot, as well as visiting rights whenever I want during the week. This is perfect, because next week I´m taking a young member of my community, Jorge, who is interested in working in organic agriculture, to a 3 day workshop at a permaculture started by PC volunteers about 2 hours from here. The whole trip is paid for by PC, but we have to somehow share the info with our community upon our return. I´ve been kind of stumped how to do this, but I think a one hour a week slot on the radio would be a great way to do it! Yea. :)

And if all that is not enough to hopelessly confuse you, I also accidently started a 3rd comite. I think I mentioned the group of women interested in learning PC widsom that are too far away from where I meet? Well, we had out soy-making session, and they loved it! The wanted to meet again the next week, so last Friday we met, made the soy "meat" and soy milk out of the beans again, and used those materials to make cake. And the excitement continues: this Friday it´s gonna be pudding! I have fun trying the new recipes (and taking the extra meat and milk home to try MORE recipes) and they love getting together (senoras don´t get out much) and trying new foods. Everybody wins.

Speaking of new recipes, I made cheesecake yesterday out of Paraguayan cheese (the idea that more than one texture, flavor, or type of cheese exists in the world surprises Paraguayans...and my descriptions of France just blow them out of the water!) and it turned out pretty good! That is, my taste tester (guess who, dad...haha) gave it a garbled, full-mouthed approval.

And amidst all this locura, I still make it to every single football (I mean soccer) game that my beloved team plays (over half of the team is composed of my closest peers...by being a 23 year old SINGLE woman with NO children, I get grouped with the guys). Unfortunately they haven´t won yet....ouch. Better luck next time.