Blowing their minds...

Greetings from the real dirty South! (Formerly, I just considered South Carolin the dirty South but then I started to live in a country without santiation systems and I quickly changed my mind!)

Tomorrow is 4 months at site and I can hardly believe it. My time here is going so quickly and so slow at the same time. Luckily, that´s pretty normal for a volunteer that is the first in a community like myself.

My house is SOOO close to being complete that I think about it all the time. Today I´m supposed to get the doors and electricity, so hopefully they´ll actually show up! They were supposed to come everyday for the past week, but I´m feeling optomistic! My bathroom was completed in a record 5 days and its beautiful. Its green and white and I can´t wait to blow the Paraguayan mind by keeping it clean with the one product they fear most: BLEACH!! I purchased all of my furniture (a bed, mattress, bedside table, dinner table for 6, 4 chairs, and a wardrobe for my clothes) for a whopping 800.000 Gs ($160!) I´m got my kitchen furniture unfinished so I can exercise a little creative energy in my kitchen. I´m currently toying with a Jackson Pollock inspired motif with black, yellow and white. Maybe even a little bit of his famous drip method as well! I have a ton of time to work it out, so no rushes on buying paint just yet. Also, I recently had my roof fixed and it wasn´t done well. After the first rain in 3 months I went to inspect and there was water all over the kitchen floor. Great!

Daily life is painfully slow at times, but if I learn new words in Spanish or Guarani, then I consider it a success. As the mission of the PC, 2/3 is just sharing cultures so even if I´m not doing anything directly for the COOP yet, I´m still accomplishing 60% of my goals! My host mom and I talk A LOT. She likes to sit in my room sometimes and listen to me talk on the phone in English, which at first made me uncomfortable, but now I´m used to it. I think she´s a little jealous that I´m not much younger than she (she´s 30) and I´m living a completely different, more worldly lifestyle. She´s great though and I introduced her to tuna and what the nutritional value info on packages means, so that´s helpful to expand her horizons!

And now its time for a Guarani lesson:

Che róga (my house)
Cherera Beva (my name is Beva)
Che peteĩ voluntaria Cuerpo de Pazpegua (I´m a volunteer of Peace Corps)
Amba´apohina Cooperativa ndive (I´m working with the coop)
Aiko familia Bogado ndive koaĝa (I live with the Bogado family now)

Don´t you feel a little more cultured already??

I had my official site presentation last Wednesday. It was great to see my boss, Rubén, because he´s a great guy to work with. He basically just went over the no motorcycle and no drugs policy. He also went over my resume (that I translated to Spanish a few months ago) so they knew a little bit of my history working with businesses. They had time to ask questions, and of course 40 men only had one question: is it permitted for her to get a Paraguayan boyfriend? The good news, is that we had almost 100% participation at the meeting and Rubén said that was the most people he´s seen this year in giving this presentations. They clearly want me here and I can´t wait until I can speak Guarani and actually get to work with them! Rubén also brought all of my bags up, so its really nice to have my entire ¨life¨ back. My little sister sat next me while I went through it and was mesmerized but all the ¨exotic¨ things I have like a spray that makes ironing unnecessary, and reuseable batteries.

This week or next week, I´ll be living another family just to get to know another area of our campo and another family. There area a lot of decisions going on with my house, which is why I may delay, but we´ll see.

Well, that´s about it from down here. Keep the emails coming and send care packages if you want! I could use a little pop culture!