counterclockwise

So I’ve turned 26, and it was a very happy birthday. My training class and trainers were very sweet to me, as was my host family. We ate empanadas (homemade, hot, and savory) and played go fish. I got a box of chocolates, a ballerina windchime with a pretty little sound, and cheese homemade by a French expat living in Guambaré.

The day after, I learned how to make empanadas. We did a workshop on cooking with soy with a few of our host familes. Soy tortillas (the Paraguayan kind of tortilla, not the Mexican type), empanadas, flan, and two different kinds of juice. Interesting work, and good to kind of tie our daylight and night time worlds together.

The Guaraní word of the day is roga, meaning house. My house was one of the ones hosting a group of soy-slinging trainees. And my host mother, bless her heart, was a real trooper putting up with our clumsy efforts.

* As a matter of fact, yes, I have been telling people about the Alabama drought and crop failures. Training is heavy on the agricultural vocabulary and nerd humor just doesn’t do much for this crowd.

As it turns out, a Paraguayan winter is a lot like a Tennessee spring. We arrived in this country during a vicious cold spell. It came close to breaking me, because (1) my winter clothes were in the suitcase that arrived a few days late and (2) it also took a few days to figure out how to work the odd shower heaters they have here. [Even in finer Paraguayan households, no one is so extravagant as to supply hot water to all the taps all the time. And since there are no dish- and clothes-washing machines, the only place you really need hot water is in the shower. Thus, the more fortunate households have a kind of mini water heater built into the shower head. They’re electric, about as dangerous as you’d suspect, and wildly varied in their efficacy.]

But the suitcase came, and some kind soul told me what I was doing wrong with the shower head, so here I still am. And sure enough, about the time I got it figured out, we moved into a warm spell. For the next three weeks, we had clear 80 degree days and 60 degree nights. We broke out the short sleeves, searched for the coldest beer in town, and had volleyball games.

Our host families, trainers, and neighbors have spent the last stretch of time telling us that it was going to rain again and/or get cold “in another two days.” It’d become something of a joke with us. “Sure, it’ll rain in two days. And next week we’ll get our site assignments, the summers will be pleasantly temperate, and politicians will keep their campaign promises.”

This last week, we’ve been told that it would rain “because of San Juan.” This is a religious feast day and secular fiesta celebrated close to the winter solstice every year. This year the feast happens today. And every year it, like my father’s birthday, is cold and rainy.

And wouldn’t you know it, this year has been no exception. Hello winter!

The Guaraní word of the day is ikatu. This is one of very few irregular verbs in the language, meaning “to be possible.” It’s irregular in the easiest way imaginable; it simply doesn’t conjugate for anyone, ever. Memorize the one form, and you’ve got it. It can also be used as an adjective or an adverb. For San Juan, rain ikatu!

I’ve just returned from a weekend excursion to visit a Volunteer at her site. T is in my same project group, working for a co-op about an hour and a half from where I’m currently stationed. They make farm loans to their members and help them with apiculture - raising bees and selling honey. I wish I could post the pictures from their operation now, but I haven’t yet gotten home to my laptop.

But take my word for it that it was a beautiful trip. As you go further east from my training site, the land flattens out except for some very dramatic gneiss knobs. The trees, roadstops, and busy family farms give way ranches and a national park. I’ll have to go back someday, and this time on a mode of transport more conduicive to stopping and dawdling.

At least, stopping and dawdling at your own discretion.

I arrived two hours late on Saturday after three jam-packed buses blew by me without stopping. But somebody eventually found a way to squeeze in one more body and T was gracious about it. All told, a good time. And it’s good to have some concrete picture of the vida voluntaria even though I categorically know that I won’t be living in her same spot.

The Guaraní word of the day is y, meaning water. It makes you or breaks you here. For example, my hostess this weekend has the nicest, hottest shower I’ve had since arriving. And on the other hand, the slightest little change in the local aquatic microflora and microfauna can make the most profound differences in the itinerary for your trip.

I haven’t spoken much about the nuts and bolts of Peace Corps training. Up until now, I’ve had more interesting things to say. But this dreary day has finally come, so here is an account of exactly what the hell is going on out here.

There are sixteen in this abnormally small class, Paraguay’s G-24. Of those, nine are in the Municipal Services Division and seven of us are in Rural Economic Development. The Munis live in a nearby, genuine town with paved roads and cyber cafes and all that. We REDs have our homes and families in a farming community reachable by a long, dusty stretch of cobblestone road. By and large, we stick to our host communities, which have houses rented for classrooms.

The host communities are fairly representative of our eventual locations in terms of size. However, my training community is relatively developed for a farming locale – an hour from the capital with pretty reliable electricity and no threat of being stranded by rain on muddy trails. Some of us have indoor plumbing, others have latrines. We´re all on well water. A girl could get spoiled on this – some volunteers don´t have electricity. Others have weak current, insufficient to power thirsty gadgets like refrigerators. I´m still weeks away from finding out how my service site will measure up.

In the morning, starting at 8 AM, we have language class. We break into microgroups (no more than three students per classroom) and have intensive, conversation-based language classes. I get about two hours a morning of Spanish and one of Guaraní. We go home for lunch and siesta for an hour and a half, then have technical skills classes in the afternoon.

The tech classes are longer (and certainly feel that way) but less intense. They’re more about the usual business school patter:  jargon; group projects; and giving presentations. It’s necessary, though. I’ve got language leaking out of my ears after just a morning of it – a full day might kill me.

The Guaraní word of the day is korapy, meaning patio. Guaraní y´s are pronounced like truncated u´s. Korapy an important term out here. We have year-round outdoor living. At my house, for example, the dining room table is outdoors, as are parts of the kitchen and all of the entertaining space. We sit around drinking mate and commenting on the antics of the pigs, chickens, and pets roaming the back yard.

The Peace Corps gives trainees living expenses of approximately 17,000 Guaraní a day. This is intended to cover things like bus fare, snacks, and replenishing our soaps and such. Our host families are paid Gs. 27,000 a day for our basic care and feeding (although we trainees don’t handle that money at all). Trainees pay an additional Gs. 10,000 out of pocket for every 12 items of laundry.

Our Gs. 17,000 per diem works out to about $3 a day. It’s enough.

On our first day here, we were given Gs. 240,000 and an admonition not to spend it all in one place. I’ve done pretty well. I’m got another week to payday and about Gs. 100,000 left. We’ve got a big trip coming up on Wednesday and a holiday today. Should be doable, though.  In a typical in-community day, I might spend 5 mil on an after-class beer with friends or a can of bug repellent. On a big spending day, I might put down 40 mil: 8 on bus fare to and from Guarambaré, 5 for an hour online, 2 on a snack from the training facility’s kitchen, and the remaining 25 mil on a splurge item like a Thermos bottle. There are a few things I can’t quite afford yet (my favorite shampoo in the US costs 45 mil for a travel size bottle here) but these are few and far in between.

Three of them to be exact. I’ve taught a modified version of “go fish” to a few neighboring children. I know they’re somehow relatives of Doña T, but I’m not exactly sure which branch of the family tree they call home.

They’re very enthusiastic players.

But we have fun. Still, I think I may need to look up the rules to a few more games. How do you say “old maid” in Spanish?

Today’s Guaraní word is héẽ, meaning yes. If you say it properly, you sound like a very small weed eater starting up. The language is very nasal, and most of us nortes tend to reflexively make disgusted faces when we speak such syllables. Nevertheless, héẽ is very close to the Guaraní word he’ẽ, meaning sweet.

So I’m hanging in there and doing a lot of hanging out. The parts of my days that aren’t eaten by classes and basic life management tend to be spent in the company of other trainees. This Sunday was all about volleyball, and catch, and knocking around a soccer ball at D’s house, followed by more of the same on Monday. Tuesday, we took a day of rest for our poor aching forearms.

When I’m not with the other RED aspirantes, you can find me on the patio at Doña T and Don M’s place, drinking pomelo juice fresh-squeezed from homegrown fruit and trying desperately to absorb fifteen different ways to say “good morning” in Guaraní. Yes, as of this Tuesday we’ve started formal lessons in Paraguay’s private language.

It’s frustrating to go back to the two-concepts-an-hour pace you have to take with a new language after we’d been racing through the process of remembering our Spanish. Thankfully, we still get some lessons en el español – I need as much verb conjugation practice as I can get, and it’s nice to feel good at speaking, at least for a little while.

The Guaraní word of the day is chuchi, which means elegant or swanky. It can be applied to men, women, children, animals, or objects.

In the last few days, we’ve spent lots more time outside of Guarambaré, which should be the story of the next ten weeks or so. We’ve had our first classes in CHP’í. Mom, give my thanks to Ms. Schwarz for the review books. I made the advanced section of Spanish, which means I’ll get into Guaraní lessons that much more quickly.

After classes yesterday, the seven of us in the RED program decided to do a neighborhood tour – see where we all live and meet each others’ host families. Lots of fun. Lots of stories and hospitality. Consensus is that I’ve got the nicest room of any of us. Afterwards, we spent an hour or so in a roadside hangout watching the fútbol game (Paraguay’s champion Olympia team vs. some doomed hillside establishment) and having a beer.

In the evening, there was a quinceñera across the street from my house. For those unfamiliar with the phenomenon, a quince is a girl’s 15^th birthday party in the Spanish-speaking world. It’s like your bat mitzvah, your wedding reception and your senior prom all rolled into one. The girl spends most of her time trying to look like a dead-serious grownup while she poses for photos with everyone in the room. There’s a traditional dance with her father, and other important men in her family.

This particular quince was held outdoors in the family’s yard, under cold that would have sent most norteamericano bridal parties into a conniption fit. But here there were easily 200 people at the party looking mostly unfazed by the frigidity, a gaggle of photographers and their equipment, caterers, and a semi truck for the DJ. However they got that thing over the cramped and rutted little path up our hill, I’ll never know. But all in all, it was a blast.

Today´s Guaraní entry is a very useful one. It concerns the phrase jaha, which means ¨Let´s go¨or ¨We´re going¨. I imagine I´ll be hearing a lot of that one.

I’m here! Here being the town of Guarambaré (a suburb of Asuncíon) about once a week and the smaller community of Las Piedras most of the rest of the time. I’m so glad to have arrived in winter; I can already feel the summer heat just from looking at the foliage and the infrastructure.

That was my first impression of the country from the plane window, in fact. We dropped below the cloud cover and the first thing that came to mind is that here we are, at the beginning of winter, but the whole countryside is still a verdant green. My host mother tells me that one of the trees in the backyard is losing its leaves for the winter, but it’s in the distinct minority.

And my host family, Sr. M and Sra. T, are lovely people. They’ve been wonderfully hospitable and very forgiving of my many linguistic deficiencies. I have a very nice room with all the amenities - a warm bed, a private bath, and ample room to make sense of all my stuff. I feel fortunate to have found my way to their home.

Today’s Guaraní entry concerns the suffix ‘í. It’s a diminutive attached to words to indicate smallness. So for example, we do some of our training at the headquarters of the CHP training contractors in Guarambare. But the majority of our training, the part studied in Las Piedras, is completed at the CHP’í facility. Since we’re in a Spanish speaking country, the acronym sounds out like say-aychay-pee-ee.