Hello! Yes, that´s a beautiful blonde American, alongside my good friend Alfredo at the San Blas Horse Show/Dance Your Pants Off to Polka Festival in Tebicuary-mi! If you don´t already know Erin, there she is; she didn´t appear in my photos before, even though I went on vacation to Ecuador with her, because of the stolen camera incident.
It can be a little awkard sometimes having another American in your community; you´re caught between courteously speaking your native language or courteously speaking a language everyone else can understand; caught between including a new guest and including people from your community; rolling with your Paraguayan peeps or hanging American style. But Erin was a GREAT person to have around for this happening party, she fit right in and didn´t need me around to feel comfortable. It was a great time!
The next day, we headed to Asuncion for a fun week of Peace Corps reflective sessions on our service and doctor checks-all-over. That´s right, folks, I´ve hit one year of service. Wow...
I commemorated the event by translating my resume to Spanish and beginning to look for well-pàying, environmentally themed jobs both in the US (California) and in SA (Buenos Aires, Ecuador, and Paraguay). Nothing´s turned up yet, but I´m working on it little by little.
And now I´m back in site, fighting off any attacks and making far too many pans of brownies. It´s still raining regularly, which is an element of Paraguay previously unknown to me. Suddenly its a lush, green, flowery place! And sometimes its even cool enough that I get an inkling to put on pants, or possibly take a rain jacket with me. Amazing...Oh, and I´ve also discovered a fabulous new little shop in my town which sells Marimar ice cream, the best in Paraguay!! This could get dangerous...
My water project is plugging along through the breuacracy of Asuncion, so meanwhile I´ve begun dreaming of a community plaza or maybe getting some chicken houses built in people´s homes so the dogs will stop eating all the eggs the chickens lay randomly around the yard.
And the bad news: Enrique applied for a scholarship for 500 DOLLARS from Peace Corps, and he won!!! It was so exciting, he even went to the city to sign up for Agronomic Engineering. And then, the call came: the judges made a mistake and awarded more money than they had, the scholarship has been revoked! Now as you can imagine, this would SUCK for any American student. But we can get online and reapply for one of the thousands of other scholarships available in our country. Here, that was the only golden ticket out of a life of hoeing fields and depending on the rain to feed his family, and it´s gone. A huge blow, to say the least.
Nevertheless, here in Paraguay we remain as Tranquilo as the setting sun...
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