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I do have a lot to be thankful for. Certainly I’m thankful for all of you being in touch by e-mail and snail mail alike. Or just reading and wishing me well. I’m living a pretty good approximation of the high life out here, doing good work, enjoying some adventures, and I’ve got more to look forward too when I finish my service.

In the meantime, I’m really looking forward to this trip. By volunteer standards, I haven’t been doing much traveling. Also, I haven’t been doing a whole bunch of sleeping since I sighted a few rats brazenly moving through my bedroom. So a couple of nights in a hotel should do me some good.

The Guaraní word of the day should mean “thanks”, but Guaraní as it’s presently spoken doesn’t much have its own term. The Spanish word is used much more frequently, albeit modified to “gracia” or “graciamante” to accommodate the Guaraní speaker’s accent.

The word of the day, then, is jopara, meaning mixture. The vast majority of conversations in this country take place in a jopara of the two principle languages, heavier on the Spanish in big cities and formal occasions and leaning more towards Guaraní when you’re telling the kids to go feed the chickens.

During our two-day staging event in

A pessimist says the glass is half empty.
An optimist says it’s half full.
A Peace Corps Volunteer says, “Hey, I could take a bath with that!”

This past week was an outstanding example of the phenomenon. Volunteers in each region of the country get together on a monthly basis at something called a VAC meeting. We get announcements from HQ, do a little student-government type work, solicit each other’s help on projects, and take the opportunity to laugh and gripe a bit in English. This month’s VAC meeting was held in Tacuatí. Lori, the other Volunteer in Tacuatí, and I were going to split the crowd between our two houses.

But then it rained and a tree fell on the power lines near my house. The whole pueblo lost both power and water for about a day. Out here, everything shuts down when that happens. People lock their doors and don’t peek out again until the radio starts back up. So it ended up that all eleven of us stayed overnight at Lori’s house (all 100 square meters and one waterless bathroom of it). We boiled pasta with rainwater, roasted marshmallows over her stove, and drank warm beer by candlelight. And everybody was up and ready for the 5:30 AM bus without so much as a word of complaint or a misplaced toothbrush. We’ve got a really awesome group of people down here.

The Guaraní word of the day is the verb (a)reko, meaning “to have”. To say “We (exclusive) have rain” is oreko ama. To say “We (exclusive) do not have power” is ndorekoi energia.

I’m just now moving to more independent digs, so this seems like a good point to stop and recall the good times in my first apartment in Tacuatí. I had great neighbors in my little house. Here’s one of my favorites:

She was a gift to the family, and brings the household chicken population up to about half a dozen official members and assorted visiting scavengers. She’s a pretty homely specimen with rusty brown feathers and a bare red neck. She doesn’t have a name. And if I understood my contact correctly, she’s due for the dinner table pretty soon. All the same, I’ve gotten attached to her. The family started its flock about the same time I arrived here, and she was the first hen. She’s an undemanding creature, quiet by chicken standards, and uninterested in pecking order politics. She doesn’t roost with the others and is unusually comfortable around humans.

During our first few weeks in Tacuatí, she decided she liked my kitchen. Most of the time, it’s dark and still and cool in there. In particular, I had a disconnected and disused sink full of fabric scraps. My favorite hen was the first to start laying her eggs there, and I’m still naïve enough regarding chickens to find that delightful. Eggs! Fresh from the source! Delivered to within arm’s reach of my frying pan! How cool is that?

The Guaraní word of the day is ryguasu, meaning chicken generally or hen more specifically. The chicks, then, are ryguasu ra’y. The roosters are ryguasume.

First, a short medical note for those who were concerned. My feet are in no danger. When I said the larger pique worm was the diameter of a pencil eraser I didn’t mean to imply a foot-long monster parasite. While they’re incubating, they curl up into little disks, and the disk diameter is what I was referring to. Any given cross-section of the worm is no thicker than a pencil lead and in any event, it was in the skin of a callus and has apparently caused y’all more pain and trauma than it caused me.

On a less nausea-inducing note, the pueblo of Tacuatí, like most if not all Paraguayan towns, has a patron saint (the Virgin of Something I Couldn’t Make Out Even After Asking Three Times) and a celebration on behalf of that saint. Ours was September 24. The two days prior were spent in bingo games, elementary school dance recitals, barbecues, and general party preparations.

Every year, the streets are lined with streamers. In the US, you’d buy them at Party City for $5 per 100 yards. They’d be made of vinyl in some Chinese factory, and one guy with a ladder could do the entire parade route in a morning’s time. Here, the streamers are individually hand-glued paper strips because that $5 is about Gs. 20,000 – a new pair of sandals, or 10 liters of milk, or a day’s wages for a domestic employee. Things like vinyl and machinery are relatively expensive in Paraguay, but labor is disproportionately cheap. And a person can glue a lot more than 100 yards worth of streamers in a day.

Then too, it’s just tradition to do it that way. And they are pretty, provided they don’t get rained away.

The Fiesta itself includes a Catholic Mass followed by a procession through town. The parish statue of the Virgin in question is placed on a litter near the head of the queue and solemnly walked through the nicer streets in town. Hymns are sung, fireworks are lit, prayers are recited, and kids are carefully herded into more or less orderly lines. At the end of the route, a few closing prayers are given, and then begins the asado. Good times. We even had an impromptu air show. A pair of military pilots on a training run spotted the crowd, buzzed us, and did a few barrel rolls. Not quite the Blue Angels, but you’ve got to love the spontaneity of it.

The Guaraní word of the day is heta, meaning plenty. We had heta people, heta to see, and heta so’o at the asado.

One of the odd little side effects of being in the southern hemisphere is that our daylight savings times are also backwards. Since our summer is just now getting cranking, we’re going to spring forward here shortly.

Up until now, we’ve been synched up with US Eastern Standard Time. But when Paraguay’s daylight savings time takes effect this weekend, we’ll spring forward an hour. And here shortly, DST will come to an end in the US and y’all will fall back.

End result, I’ll shortly be two hours offset, time zone wise. If it’s 8 o’clock in the US, it’ll be 10 o’clock here, and so on. In general, the best hours to catch me by phone are in the evening, say between 7 and 10 PM local time.

The Guaraní word of the day is kuarahy, meaning sun. We’re seeing quite a bit of it now. I amused lots of Paraguayans last week with my peeling sunburn, and I’m working on a very impressive farmer’s tan.

Was last week’s solar eclipse visible in the northern hemisphere, too? Ña Carmen was very thoughtful to tell me about it and so one of the radio DJs and I went out to look. We went during the middle of its projected showing, but couldn’t really see anything.

Eclipse or no, we have had some spectacular sunsets and sunrises lately. A lot of the local estancias have been having terrible brush fires due to our long-running (but very recently alleviated) drought. We aren’t threatened by the fires here, but we did get a tremendous amount of smoke, giving us some really extravagant twilight hours.

The Guaraní word of the day is pyhareve, meaning morning. In order to make the most out of each Horqueta trip, I get up really freaking early in the pyhareve. You need to be at the town bus stop at 5:30 to get the first bus out of Tacuatí, and you do need the first one. Depending on what return buses are operating that day, I have between two and a half and five hours to hit the bank, buy vegetables and whatever else I can’t find in site, meet and greet other Volunteers, and get online. Previous trips were quickly consumed with house wares shopping, but I’m hoping things will proceed at a more leisurely pace now that I’ve more or less got my apartment furnished. On the other hand, now I’ll have fewer excuses to go in.

Sorry for the long delay. So far I’ve been unable to make an in-town Internet connection, which means I only get online when I dedicate the day to getting into Horqueta, the nearest town with an Internet café. Hopefully the situation will be ameliorated here shortly, but meanwhile this is the best I’ve got. I have been received your text messages, Bill and Katie, and they’ve been great day brighteners. Also, Katie, the copy of Vogue was a smash hit with Paraguayans and other volunteers alike.

Life is finally starting to normalize a bit. My first two weeks in Tacuati were stressful. My house was only half finished and I was three-quarters moved in. The yard was crawling with workers putting in the new fence and my kitchen was consumed with preparing lunch for ten every day.

The living is definitely better with the fencing moved out of my breezeway, a fridge brought in, my gas tank connected, a door to which I have the key, a light bulb in the bathroom, and my hammock set up in a nice shady spot.

Likewise, the coop is on the road to recovery. My predecessor in town terminated her service early, leaving a gap of almost a year without guidance. In the meantime, the paperwork was neglected. So when I came, it was apparently clean slate time. All the ledgers and loan applications were sacked up and carted to a new office, the only paid employee went her separate way, and a replacement fresh out school was hired.

I spent my first week here waiting for the stars to align for the move, and the second week unsacking and reorganizing financial records. So it’s been at least two weeks since we’ve been able to transact any business. But at least now I’ve got a feel for the state of the co-op´s record keeping. My job is going to be reinstating the practice of writing out receipts and calculating interest, and teaching the movers and shakers some skills in accounting and computer operation.

The Guaraní word of the day is ama, meaning rain. My first night in my new house coincided with the first rain Tacuatí had had since May. Since then we’ve reverted to a more parched state, but I’ll take it as a promising sign that the drought broke with me.

Bonus note!! If you want to get technical about it, Tacuatí is supposed to be a nasal word with a tilde over the final i. However, as a practical matter, modern computer systems don’t recognize that character without getting into special font sets. I’m not going to inflict that on you. The popular alternative is to use a standard accent mark over the i. Since all Guaraní words are accented on the final syllable anyway, the mark usually goes without saying and its presence implies that something more is afoot.

I’m safely ensconced in Tacuati now, where I’ll hopefully remain for some months. I had a pretty pleasant bus trip, and got to see more of the scenery than I did on my previous night voyages. That’s unfortunately more than I can say for my suitcases, which got motor oil leaked on them. But the good news is that only one item (a pair of fairly impractical white Capri pants) will be unsalvageable for daily wear.

Just as well. I was needing new garden pants, anyway. And I do have some very ambitious gardening plans. If all goes well, I’ll be passing many grubby hours in those capris.

I´m going to leave my phone number up for another week, in light of the technical difficulties people have been having getting in touch.

The Guaraní word of the day is ao poi, which is generally used to describe the traditional hand-embroidered Paraguayan dress shirt. Its literal breakdown is ao, meaning clothing, and poi, meaning fine. We were all wearing ao poi in our training class photo, posted a few entries back.

Well, this weekend in Asunción draws to a close. I’ve gotten a lot done. I’ve got a hammock now and the seeds to start one rocking vegetable garden. My phone is programmed to annoy me as little as possible, my paperwork is up to date with the central office, and I’ve tested and re-tested my new bank card. I’ve gotten a little better sense of how this particular city is laid out, and gotten to know volunteers from a wide variety of other places.

All told, a pretty successful trip. There were some things I just couldn’t do, like buy my refrigerator, but I got the most important stuff done. Now it just remains to wish my training mates happy trails and hit the road. I’ll be arriving in site just a few hours ahead of some VIPs visiting for the 40th anniversary of PC Paraguay, so I should have a very interesting first day in site.

The Guaraní word of the day is opa, meaning finished. Training opa, vacation opa. Now it’s time to work.

After a few short weeks, we’re now leaving our training community. We’ve had some great times here, enjoyed some outstanding hospitality, and spoken more Spanish than we ever thought we could. It’s been frustrating from time to time, but it’s also been a tremendous amount of fun. Las Piedras has been great as a community and our families have been wonderful as individuals.

With their help, we’re ready to head out into Paraguay and begin our service. We’ll be back for an in-service training session in three months, and we all hope we can speak a little better, understand a little more, and share some interesting stories.

Pictured below is my training class, G-24 RED. From left, we´re Andrew, Will, me, Brennan, Betsy, David, and Stuart.

The Guaraní word of the day is sy, meaning mother. Che sy has been everything I could ask for in a host mom, and I’ll miss her.