Small Successes

Me in my hammock...Anna Paula, at 3.5years, is now proficient in taking pictures.

The retreat center where we had our workshop (see explanation below)

Our group of Paraguayan counterparts at the workshop (Enrique is on the right)

My neighbor kids getting ready to go to school

Mario's new puppy, Pott

Abby's birthday party

Hello faithful readers!

Since my last entry, I've eaten approximately 30 pieces of chipa! (see photos from 2007.) That's right, I got through Holy Week surviving (from Wednesday evening until Saturday evening, and every day for breakfast a week after that) only on chipa and sopa Paraguaya. I topped it with tomato slices when I could to make myself feel less guilty, but at the end of the day it was DELICIOUS. Anyone who has ever lived Semana Santa in Paraguay will understand.

Oh and I forgot to mention, at the beginning of the month of April Enrique and I went to hang out with Abby for her birthday. She was broke and wasn't gonna have a party, but turns out all her Paraguayan neighbors pitched in, serenaded her, made a cake, and we had a blast!

I've also gotten official approval to begin my ecological agriculture course; I'll be teaching about 2 hours a week to 7th, 8th, and 9th graders (about 25 students in total). The subject depth varies according to the grade, but we'll be doing theory focusing on soil composition and quality retention, and practical work in a school tree farm and vegetable garden. The professor I'll be working with seems to be better than most and kind of serious about her job, so I have somewhat high hopes!

Also this week, I got the official call from the district capital that our running water project was being funded by Mercosur and will be beginning soon (most projects take 2-5 years to receive funding; we applied in January, but have connections up top. Ahhh, corruption...). We had heard from our friend that we were in, but this was the first official, objective information I've been given. Yea!

My luck continued to hold, and I was able to grab a spot to take another community member to a project design and management workshop sponsored by Peace Corps. (Last year I went with my host brother Mario). This time I took Enrique, and we were planning on simply using the time to refine our running water project. However, as we completed the community needs analysis activities, we found that what we could really do is to work on reforesting our community as a complement to the running water project (drought and soil quality is a continuing problem in the community, and will still affect the crops, even if we have drinking water through the system). We pretty much have all the resources we need, and just need to organize people to do the manual labor. So that's my hope as I return to site tomorrow.

And finally, I was asked to participate in a test-run Spanish course and exam for future volunteers, so I'll be travelling next week, as well. Fun times!