Monday, January 25, 2010

So You're Going to...Which Guay Again?

In the last couple of months, friends and family have found out that I am going to the Peace Corps and they want to know, where are you going? So I tell them: Paraguay. Reactions vary, and I can see that some people can picture in their head exactly where Paraguay is on a map, whereas others aren't so sure, and ask for clarification. Anyway this first post is kind of a test post anyway, I wanted to get the blog up and running before I left the country. So for now I will give a little background on the country and what I am doing.

The Peace Corps allows its volunteers to preference a geographic region, say, Africa or Eastern Europe or Asia when in the process of signing up. So when I requested to be sent to Latin America, I had no idea to which country I would be sent. I remained unsure until last November, when I finally got a letter from the PC giving me my country of service: Paraguay. I knew a few things about Paraguay, like that it was a landlocked country north of Argentina, but I needed to learn more. Luckily I own an Onion World Atlas (which my sister stole for me in last year's Miller grab bag, long story which won't be told here). The Onion Atlas was able to tell me everything I needed to know: "Paraguay is a nation widely known for not being widely known, and legendary for being a country in South America. Oh, and it has a dam." All exaggeration aside, the Onion has a point. If you surveyed 100 random Americans, how many of them could tell you the different between Paraguay and Uruguay? I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess not many. Of all of the countries in South America, Paraguay is one of the least visited by tourists; and not once have I seen Paraguay featured in the cultural section of a U.S. Spanish textbook; it seems that only more well-known places like Mexico, Spain, and Argentina are explored. So the Onion's synopsis of the country really isn't far off: in general people do not known much about Paraguay. Well, loyal blog readers, prepare to have your mind blown in the next couple years as you learn about the real Paraguay through the eyes of a PC volunteer.

"Early Elementary Education Adviser" is my official title for the next couple of years in the Peace Corps, although that seems like a very broad area to me. I have been in contact with one of my college buddies who has been doing education-related things in the PC for 6 months in Honduras, and he tells me that there is often a good deal of flexibility as to what a volunteer can do once on site. So bottom line, I'm not sure if I'll be organizing a library or teaching classes every day. The work will be done on sort of an 'assess and match needs' basis. I've already been told through several emails from PC people that we have to be flexible, so that's fine with me.

My plane is scheduled to depart at 9:15 a.m. from O'hare Airport (don't worry Dad I double checked it this time, definitely not Midway) on Monday February 8th. All of the PC Paraguay volunteers report to Miami for a day of orientation and paperwork before departing the next day on a flight bound for Asuncion, Paraguay. Once we arrive in Ansuncion, all 50 of us will be transported to the city of Guarambare, which is an hour from the capitol. There, we move in with a host family and begin our approximately three months of training. After the three months are up, we head to our respective towns where we will be spending the next two years trying to accomplish some positive change in our areas of expertise.

February 8th is 12 days from today. Until then I have no job or commitments except to pack my bags, make final preparations, spend quality time with friends and family, and last but not least finish watching all the episodes of Entourage I can download in order to max on American culture before I go. Should be fun.