Here we Go: First Week in Site

And what I week it has been! I am in the town of San Juan sitting in an internet cafe, known in Paraguay as a Cyber. It is around 9 am right now, and the principle reason for my journey into the town today is to find myself a Jacket. Contrary to what I thought after the first 3 months of constant sweating in Paraguay, it actually does get somewhat cold here. Although it doesn´t freeze, the temperature during the night can get as low as 6 degrees celcius (too lazy right now to figure out the fahrenheit for yall), which is pretty damn cold when you have walls with holes in them. And with the cold just setting in the las few days, and me only having my Knox College Cross Country hoodie (Represent, woot woot!) to keep me warm, I´ve been freezing my cohones off here in Paraguay.

So, in order to get to the town of San Juan from my tiny country area known as Kilometer 16 (you know your town is small when it is named for how many kilometers it is from the nearest town), I had to take a 1 and a half hour ride on a bus over a bumby dirt road. There is only one bus per day, and it leaves at 6 am and comes back at 11 am. So I am a bit limited as to my options of when to go to the town until I have my bike here. But it´s all good, bc the bus is fun; and I always take a little bit of hot mate for the ride. Today I met an 84 year old lady who was taking the bus into town, and she gave me a little backround on my town, like the fact that in 1970 when she moved to the town, there was literally nothing there. Anyhow, she seemed really happy when I told her it was my own Grandpas 85th birthday tomorrow. I love talkative older ladies.

So I arrived in my site last Tuesday, and since then I will admit I think I´ve been experiencing a little bit of culture shock to say the least. Mostly I´ve just been going to the schools to observe classes and see in what I will be helping the teachers. Friday though, we had a rain day, so I stayed home and had my first chance to work on my family´s farm. Basically for a couple of hours I macheted some weeds. It was actually a pretty solid workout, and also hilarious bc my 5 and 6 year old brothers had little machetes and were out working right next to their dad doing the little they could. It kind of made me think of when I was little and would take a pretend lawnmower out when my dad mowed the lawn, except that these kids have real super sharp machetes. Gotta put em to work, I guess.

The house where I am living is a blast and I feel that I got pretty lucky with how nice everyone is. I have 10 siblings: Fernando, 5, Arnaldo, 6, Gricelda, 8, Delfi, 10, Antonio, 11, Milciades, 14, Norma, 16, Agustin, 18, David, 19, and another one who lives in Buenos Aires whose name I do not recall right now. And needless to say it is a madhouse. As of 6 am everyone is up and doing chores, milking cows, herding cows into the pasture, making food, etc. But in the afternoon and night there is very little to do; I showed them crazy eights last wednesday and since then we have played probably around 12 hours total of the game. If I sit by myself in my room they will come stop by and kind of look at me until I ask them if they want to play crazy eights and then they get all crazy excited, its supercute. Even my 5 year old brother knows how to play the game which is pretty cool considering his kindergarten teacher hasn´t even started teaching him numbers and letters yet. They also get a huge kick out of the way I shuffle and do the bridge. I have been trying to teach them but so far to no avail. The other night I also decided to teach them the numbers in english from 1 to 10, and afterwards my house became a madhouse of people yelling one tou free four fiv seex seven eixs nine ten, which I found absolutely hysterical. I feel like I might regret this decision sometime in the future when I get annoyed with this yelling, but right now they are all so supernice I want to try and teach them some english.

As for Guarani, I am learning all I can by osmosis and listening to people especially the kids, but its become apparent that I´m going to need to find a tutor, at least for the first few months here. It is getting a bit frusterating to hear people talking all the time and have little idea what they are saying, except for when they address me directly since they do that in Spanish. Alright well I have to get going to buy my jacket and catch the bus at 11 am. Happy belated mothers day to all the moms and moms to be out there!