Saturday, March 27, 2010

Long field practice

So, this was a particuarly long week this week. This week we had what is called long field practice. This is supposed to prepare us for actual volunteer service by having us do a bunch of presentations and get to know one of the areas that we could be sent. So, four of us went to visit a volunteer that is currently working in the town of Villa Rica. When we first got to the city, we met the volunteer and proceeded immediatly to a school where she had been working to check out their library. We were given an assignment to give a presentation to the teachers of the school about how to better use the library. This was a little strange though because we first of all had never seen the library, and second of all we felt like we were supposed to tell teachers how to do their job. After we arrived in the library though, we came up with some activities that the teachers could use with their students, so it was more like we were just giving them ideas of how to encourage their students to use the library. Soon after I was dropped off at my host families home for the week. It was a little bit awkward because they didnt seem interested in talking to me. It made more sense later on though because I realized that they didnt speak very much spanish and they prefered to speak in guarani. The sister of the family did have a boyfried that lives in buenos aires that was visiting, and he and I had a good talk about amost everything. We talked about religion, politics, differences between the states and paraguay, you name it. He was really nice guy and gave me his number to call when I go to buenos aires. That night the family gave me a bed that was kinda in the living room/master bed room, while the sister and her boyfriend shared a room with the 11 year old son, and the parents slept in the kitchen on a cot together. I kinda felt bad, but it would have been even worse to refuse their hospitality. That night it rained like crazy, I have never heard thunder so loud in my life, it blew the window open above my bed and I got soaked. The next day the power and water were out for the whole town. Im not sure how much it really was but I think they got something like 12 inches of rain that night, and there was all kinda of flooding in the sorrounding areas. I saw some pictures on the news of houses nearby that had water up to the roofs of houses. This also meant that we were required to go back to using well water for everything. I drank a bunch of well water, but so far I havnt felt any bad affects. Hopefully it doesnt come back to haunt me. That day in the morning we went to a cooperative when a different volunteer was working to check out her work. She was helping a group of people who make traditional paraguayan ebroidered shirts to diversify, and make a web site. The shirts are really cool, I bought a couple of them, so maybe you´ll see some pictures of me soon wearing strange embroidered shirts. After that we went back into town because we were supposed to have an interveiw on the radio. We had planned this big long script of what we were going to say on the radio because all of us are still struggling with the language, but it proved to be of no use. It ended up that the show host just asked us a bunch of questions regarding peace corps and what we were doing there. So my first time on the radio in my life I was speaking horrible spanish and a few words of guarani. Afterwards we went to visit an institution that is funded by the U.S. embassy that teaches free english classes to students of the area. We met a girl there that was in the advanced class and had just gotten a scholarship to study at the university of kansas. Afterwards we went to visit this very interesting old man that had a museum of his life set up in his apartment. The man had been part of a group called Los Gomez, that in the sixties and seventies had toured the world and been moderatly famous. He had pictures with sammy davis junior, and pope john paul. He told us that he had been to 72 countries and had lived in the U.S. for quite some time, and he had been to Utah a few times too. He also knew that he needed to go to wendover to have any fun. Later that night I did another thing for the first time. The volunteer we were visiting participates in a choir and invited us to participate. So the first time I ever participated in a choir, I was singing an Elvis song that had been translated to spanish. The next morning we had a meeting with some of the city government workers in the department of youth. We spoke with them about what a volunteer could do to help them in their work, and found out about a lot of the recoursed that we could use in our work. In the afternoon we helped in a tree planting activity on the grounds of a school after another volunteer talked to the kids about deforestation. After this was done we were able to assist fith graders that were supposed to be reading to first graders, and we even got to stay around for recess. The kids thought it was hillarious when I asked to join in on their jump rope. Im sure they have never seen anything as strange as a tall strange looking american, dressed in professional clothes doing jump rope. Soon after we had to give our presentation to the teachers. For the most part it went well, and we gave the teachers ideas about how to better use the books in the library and how to make their lessons more interactive, but it was at the end of the day and all the teachers just wanted to go home, so they seemed a little annoyed with us. During lunch that same day, I came home really hungy and excited to eat. Then, my family served me up a giant bowl of menudo. If you dont know what menudo is, it is cow intestine soup, and it is terrible. I felt really bad because I had to tell the family that I couldnt eat it, and it went to the dogs. Later that night, we cooked for the families we were staying with. We made soy empanadas, tortilla paraguaya out of soy, a black bean salad, and juice made out of soymilk and fruit, and it was all from scratch. The women thought it was strange that I liked to cook and clean, because in paraguay the men would never do such a thing. The next morning we went to a reformatorium for teenagers, and did a talk with them about values and future planning. It was really interesting talking to them, and they were really thankful that we came because I guess they hardly ever get visitors, and never from people who what to help them. In the afternoon we were supposed to go to a pretty big waterfall to swim, so we set out from the town towards the big hills that are nearby. When we got into the hills we started crossing little wooden bridges in our car that I thought were going to snap under the weight of the car, untill we finally got to one that had been completely washed out by the rain. We drove around for a couple more hours looking for an alternative route, but eventually gave up and went to another waterfall. It was small, but it had some little cliffs to jump off of which made all the driving worth it. Later that night we had a meeting with a neighborhood commision that was doing projects in their community, and had even requested a peace corps volunteer to help them in their work. There is going to be a volunteer in their neighborhood, perhaps even me, and we wanted to figure out what projects they wanted to work on when the volunteer got there. It was really impressive to see people in the neighborhood so motivated to help their community. The next morning we visited an ophanage, and aparently they dont not get a lot of positive male attention, because they were just swarming me. We were trying to play some games, and do some activities with them, but I spent most of the time, pulling kids off of my back. I had a body suit of children wraped around me. They all just wanted attention and hugs, and it was really sad to see their faces when we left. After we had a terrible lunch and walked around the city a bunch more, we got on the road to head back to villeta. On the way home we passed some of the flood zones. We drove over this stretch of highway where all you could see was water on both sides, and sunken houses. The river that flooded looked like it usually is about fifty feet across, but yesterday, it was about a half mile wide. Ive never seen anything like it.....

1 comment:

  1. Hey there sweet pea. Love the blog. Just FYI, more people will read it if you cut it up into paragraphs instead of one long scroll, and throw pictures in it. Love you!

    ReplyDelete