Our first week in Paraguay

  Guarambare, Paraguay
Wednesday, February 2, 2005

We´re here! I just wrote for an hour and then everything disappeared, so I don´t know how much patience I´ll have. A ver.

We´re living with a nice, accomodating family that consists of a mom, dad, sister who´s 35 and has three kids ages 11 (boy), 18 mos.(boy), and 5 mos.(girl). Also a sister who´s 24 and a teacher. We don´t see their husbands much because they work elsewhere. There are also 2 grown sons, one who is living with us temporarily because he got a job here driving a bus (though he was suspended for 2 days for being 10 minutes late to ruturn with the bus. I told him I could never have his job as I am always 10 minutes late). His 6 year old son lives with us too, but his wife and daughter live in a town 3 hours away. The other son lives across the street and his radio repair shop is there too.

I´m feeling a little restricted not having the independence to eat when I want and fix what I want and use the sheets that I want (the non scratchy ones), etc. We are enjoying our family, however, talking in the evening and joking and learning Guarani (Simon can just hear the words and learn them, but I´ve started pulling out my notebook and making them speak slow so I can write it down. Otherwise I remember nothing). Our sister Liz made pizza last night. She said she´s learning to cook. The food is pretty normal here. Meat with noodles or ground beef and potatoes or soup. They keep serving us salad (with oil and salt for dressing) because someone told them Americans like salad.

Class is long. I get so tired sitting and listening for long periods of time. Language class, however, is great. There are 9 of 26 of us who speak Spanish well enough to start learning Guarani, so Simon and I started yesterday. The other classes are mostly worthwhile, but I get tired of talking about what culture shock will be like, and what culture shock feels like now, and then analizing our feelings. Blechk.

We are very busy, but I have had a little free time to walk around town to get to know it and excercize and read my novel and converse with our family while we sit in the back yard in the shade to avoid the heat and drink terere (a strong herbal tea and a social occasion sharing it). Also to visit other volunteers´host homes and converse and learn all about their plants (mostly fruit trees and yuyos which are herbs to make terere) and write in my journal.

I´m having trouble with e mail so sorry if I don´t write you back. Also, these computers don´t have usb ports, so I con´t send pictures yet.

I miss you all!

Jessica


This is me after 20 hours of traveling and 5 hours of orientation, meeting our host family, Inocente (father), Liz (sister), and Chona (mother--her nickname)



Here I am our first night drinking terere with our host family.



These are the houses our host family live in.



This is the house Simon and I sleep in; you can see our bedroom window here.