I´ve just missed the one bus that goes back to my little pueblo Kilometro 16, so looks like I will be spending a little more time in the bigger ´city´ of San Juan this afternoon. Luckily, my friend Toro (translates as ´Bull,´ I don´t think the name works in English like it does in Spanish) is coming into town later with his truck and will be able to give me a ride back. This whole transportation situation would be a lot easier if the PC just permitted me to ride motorcycles (even 7th grade girls ride to class on them), but for now they are still prohibited. The bicycle I have is nice, and its a great workout to ride 16 km on sandy, hilly roads like sand dunes to get to town. The problem is that I arrive to wherever I am going with a shirt full of sweat, even in the dead of the Paraguayan ´winter.´ Being from Chicago I still have a hard time believing 70 degree weather during the day can happen in the middle of winter. I can´t imagine how things will pan out with the bike in the summer, when temps are 100 and humid.
A big shotout to all the fathers out there for fathers day. Yes, I´m sure you are dying to know, they do indeed celebrate fathers day here in the Guay. It´s not as big as mother´s day, but nonetheless is celebrated. Yesterday night I happened to find myself at the fathers day party of a gentlemen who has 19 children. Let´s just say we did indeed eat buffet style. Also notable is that the mom schooled me in billiards after we ate.
Saturday my host family and I did some more work on my house-to-be. Did I mention that it is in the middle of an Orange Tree Orchard? If I did already, I apologize but being from the suburbs of chitown I am overly-estatic about the fact that I will be able to reach out my window and grab oranges off trees. Unfortunately, there is no avocado tree (my favorite fruit of all time or possibly second to michigan blueberries) nearby. I am in talks with people to have one transplanted to within reaching distance of one of my windows, and it looks promising.
Which brings me to a point I´d like to make about Paraguay. The people are so nice and accomodating it is often outrageous when I take a step back and think about what is actually happening. I was having this discussion with one of Fransisco´s (the dad of 19) kids yesterday night. He was wondering if people would be as accomadating to me as the town of Kilometro 16 has been to me in the last 2 months. I explained that I wasn´t sure; it is quite a complex question to be sure. My response to him was that the U.S. is a huge country, and I guessed that people in rural areas in the U.S. similar to the one I am in in Paraguay would also tend to be very accomodating. He wasn´t very satisfied with my answer, however, tending to believe that his town was the most hospitable, more than any town in the U.S. would be.
Now Paraguayan hospitality has to be up there in the top 10 in the world, and having said that YES I realize that I have only been to about 10 of more than 200 countries in the world. But here hospitality is ridiculous. It is over the top. Here are some examples. #1 I have already had at least 3 chickens and or pigs killed specifically to make dinner for me at various houses, which I had no saying in whatsoever. #2 I have to be extremely careful about what I say in front my family bc if I say something it is likely to become reality. I mentioned in passing that my favorite food here is chipaguasu (its kind of like cornbread but not cornbread) to my family. Days later, they made chipaguasu and they continue to make it about once every week or two weeks. It is usually more of a once everyone couple of months food, kind of expensive to make. I have also mentioned in passing that I like a certain flavor of terere (cold tea) and now everyone consistantly prepares it for me. This happens as well with most things that I talk about, sometimes just to make conversation. #3 reason I can walk up to any house at all in the neighborhood, and even if they do not know me, they will put up a chair, bust out some terere, and often invite me to stay for a meal afterwards. #4 My community is working together to build me a HOUSE.
The list goes on. I feel very lucky to be where I am in a place where people are very nice and whatsmore they are pumped to have an education volunteer trained in pedagogy to work in the schools. I´ve already begun teaching English classes in the high school twice a week, and hopefully I will start getting more work done in the elementary schools as far as material making goes. Tomorrow and Wednesday I am off to visit two nearby elementary schools and meet with the teachers and observe classes.
Oh yea and Paraguay plays again in the World Cup next Thursday. It was madness when they played and won last Sunday morning (in accordance with my previous assertion that futbol is the national religion of Paraguay, church was canceled for the morning world cup game) and surely it will be even moreso this Thursday, since if they win they qualify for the 2nd round, and they are in good shape to do so having tied and won the first two matches of the round. I really can´t exagerate the amount of energy that Paraguay puts into the World Cup. Literally, the last 15 minutes of the news are devoted COMPLETELY to the World Cup (no other sports beside soccer) and mostly to Paraguay´s preparation for future matches. There are only 3 channels here, but rest assured that every single game is broadcasted live here, the govt was smart enough to assure that all classes could view the game.
House update: roof is up. And we laid some bricks for the foundation. Pics...I hope theyll be coming soon who knows though.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
The World Cup in Paraguay
So, yes, the World Cup has arrived and I´m in Latin America in a country that indeed is playing in the world cup, which makes for an exhilirating experience. Soccer, for various reasons, has not become so popular in the U.S., but here in Paraguay it is more or less the national religion. To back that statement up I will say that I went to church a few Sundays ago here, and I estimate that about 25 people came. I went to the local soccer game a few hours later and I think about 300 people were there. And now with all of the madness that is the World Cup having started, the excitement in Paraguay is hitting the fan.
Allow me to make an analogy to the U.S. sporting scene. Imagine, for a moment, that Dan Elwood is President of the US of A (I would move to South America). For those of you who aren´t familiar with this living legend, his first order of business is to dissallow all other sports aside from college basketball. In addition, he decides to make the March Madness tournament just once every four years, to pump up the excitement of it. This is a little bit like what Paraguay is like right now...Soccer, or ´football´ as those elitist Englishmen call it, is largely the only sport played all over Paraguay, and it is played by all social classes equally. When Paraguay had their first World cup match this past Monday afternoon, school was effectively canceled because teachers knew that about 2 students would show up, so it wasn´t worth it at all to try and have class. Everyone was huddled around their TV sets watching the game, as was I. And in case you didn´t catch Maier´s prediction come true, they tied the 2006 World Cup winnner Italy in a dynamic performance. Honestly, I´m truely impressed with the talent Paraguay puts up for the Cup. The national population is about 7 million, yet I take them in a game over the US.
I gave my first workshop yesterday in the schools here. We made some primary school alphabets to put up in the classroom and shortly I will be showing the teachers how to use them to improve pedagogy via songs and more participatory activities.
Allow me to make an analogy to the U.S. sporting scene. Imagine, for a moment, that Dan Elwood is President of the US of A (I would move to South America). For those of you who aren´t familiar with this living legend, his first order of business is to dissallow all other sports aside from college basketball. In addition, he decides to make the March Madness tournament just once every four years, to pump up the excitement of it. This is a little bit like what Paraguay is like right now...Soccer, or ´football´ as those elitist Englishmen call it, is largely the only sport played all over Paraguay, and it is played by all social classes equally. When Paraguay had their first World cup match this past Monday afternoon, school was effectively canceled because teachers knew that about 2 students would show up, so it wasn´t worth it at all to try and have class. Everyone was huddled around their TV sets watching the game, as was I. And in case you didn´t catch Maier´s prediction come true, they tied the 2006 World Cup winnner Italy in a dynamic performance. Honestly, I´m truely impressed with the talent Paraguay puts up for the Cup. The national population is about 7 million, yet I take them in a game over the US.
I gave my first workshop yesterday in the schools here. We made some primary school alphabets to put up in the classroom and shortly I will be showing the teachers how to use them to improve pedagogy via songs and more participatory activities.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Build it, and they will come
What up Yall,
So it´s been too long since I´ve last posted, that´s for sure. I´m hoping this blog won´t turn into an Elwood where I rarely post updates. However, the last month it has been slightly difficult to get to the internet cafe to update. A lot more has happened than I will be able to say in this post. Anyhow, here we go.
I have decided that I got pretty lucky with my site placement, and these reasons I´ll tell you why. I believe I described a little bit in the previous post the sort of family I am living with but what I didn´t say was how lucky I am to be living there...My community and my family are way happy to be having an education volunteer in their town. They have had other volunteers in the previous years, so they are familiar with the peace corps but they have never had a volunteer who is going to work in the schools so they are happy to have me. So happy, in fact, that my entire town is rallying to build my house. That´s right, I am having a house built. And at very little cost. It is going to be an amazing place, right in the middle of an orange tree orchard. Plus with some banana trees behind it. Just last Saturday we started building it, and already we have the frame ready to go, just need to add some roof and some walls and the concrete floor and its all done. Now when I say house, I do just mean a 4 by 6 meter shack basically. With running water I hope, but probably not a shower. I think it will have a gas stove so I will be able to cook to my hearts delight though, which will be fun. I mean not that I haven´t been enjoying the Paraguayan cuisine, but they tend to eat very few vegetables, on average about zero per day, so my greens intake has greatly dropped here. Anyhow I am looking forward to my walden in the woods hut in which I will be living for two years. Pictures of the construction process to come. Hopefully.
I finally have my bike here which means I can ride the 16 km to town to use the internet and whatever else I have to do in town. I rode in today and its quite a pleasant ride, expect for the bumbyness of the dirt road that I have to endure. And its way bumpy, plus I have to watch out for motos that come up behind me and sometimes clip me pretty close. Its nice to have the bike though and not have to depend on the daily bus.
Things continue to go well though. My Guarani is getting better, although I still dont understanding alot of the conversations happening in my everyday life. For example, all of the negociations surrounding my house take place in Guarani, and I am usually standing around when they take place. However, I understand very little of what is said. Usually, I end up just helping to lift whatever needs to be lifted after this is communicated to me via gestures, and just continually reinterate to my host-dad that I want to make sure the door frame is tall enough that I do not have to lean my neck down every time I enter my house--my only request.
In the schools this week I will probably be starting to do some participatory activities, making alphabets in the school and other materials of which they are in neccesity. I could go on a very long rant here about what I will be doing in the schools but I will hold back. For now. Until next time, go Hawks.
So it´s been too long since I´ve last posted, that´s for sure. I´m hoping this blog won´t turn into an Elwood where I rarely post updates. However, the last month it has been slightly difficult to get to the internet cafe to update. A lot more has happened than I will be able to say in this post. Anyhow, here we go.
I have decided that I got pretty lucky with my site placement, and these reasons I´ll tell you why. I believe I described a little bit in the previous post the sort of family I am living with but what I didn´t say was how lucky I am to be living there...My community and my family are way happy to be having an education volunteer in their town. They have had other volunteers in the previous years, so they are familiar with the peace corps but they have never had a volunteer who is going to work in the schools so they are happy to have me. So happy, in fact, that my entire town is rallying to build my house. That´s right, I am having a house built. And at very little cost. It is going to be an amazing place, right in the middle of an orange tree orchard. Plus with some banana trees behind it. Just last Saturday we started building it, and already we have the frame ready to go, just need to add some roof and some walls and the concrete floor and its all done. Now when I say house, I do just mean a 4 by 6 meter shack basically. With running water I hope, but probably not a shower. I think it will have a gas stove so I will be able to cook to my hearts delight though, which will be fun. I mean not that I haven´t been enjoying the Paraguayan cuisine, but they tend to eat very few vegetables, on average about zero per day, so my greens intake has greatly dropped here. Anyhow I am looking forward to my walden in the woods hut in which I will be living for two years. Pictures of the construction process to come. Hopefully.
I finally have my bike here which means I can ride the 16 km to town to use the internet and whatever else I have to do in town. I rode in today and its quite a pleasant ride, expect for the bumbyness of the dirt road that I have to endure. And its way bumpy, plus I have to watch out for motos that come up behind me and sometimes clip me pretty close. Its nice to have the bike though and not have to depend on the daily bus.
Things continue to go well though. My Guarani is getting better, although I still dont understanding alot of the conversations happening in my everyday life. For example, all of the negociations surrounding my house take place in Guarani, and I am usually standing around when they take place. However, I understand very little of what is said. Usually, I end up just helping to lift whatever needs to be lifted after this is communicated to me via gestures, and just continually reinterate to my host-dad that I want to make sure the door frame is tall enough that I do not have to lean my neck down every time I enter my house--my only request.
In the schools this week I will probably be starting to do some participatory activities, making alphabets in the school and other materials of which they are in neccesity. I could go on a very long rant here about what I will be doing in the schools but I will hold back. For now. Until next time, go Hawks.
Monday, May 10, 2010
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!
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!
Monday, May 3, 2010
I Have my Shoe...REMIX!!!
Hey everybody. Sorry again for the lack of updates the last couple of weeks, but its been an action packed period. Life is good right now. I've been in Asuncion for the weekend with the rest of the other 46 volunteers from my training group, as kind of a transitionary period from ending training and moving out of our host family's houses to heading to our respective sites where we will all be spending the following 2 years. There has been a lot going on lately so this is going to be just a stream of consciousness post, we shall see where that takes us.
The swearing in ceremony where we take our oath as official volunteers took place in the American Embassy here in Asuncion. Maybe an arbitrary distinction but nevertheless throughout training it is something the PC continuously reminds you of, and it is nice to finally be an official volunteer and get the monthly stipend. The American Embassy here is high class, they even managed to get the address 1776. The The U.S. ambassador to Paraguay attended the ceremony as well so that made us all feel important. She gave a little speech, which honestly was dwarfed but one of the most amazing speeches I have ever heard in person by our volunteer speaker. In addition, after the ceremony, there was some of the most delicious chocolate cake that I have ever eaten in my life, no exageration. Top 5 for sure.
After we became official volunteers we were finally given cell phones, which was awesome after not having them for 3 months. I mean, in our training community if we wanted to talk to each other's houses we had to do it old school (cerca 1990) style and simply walk to the person's house and ask their host parents if they are home. Some of you may know I am personally a fan of doing without excessive modern convenicences but I take back everything I have said about cell phones. They are awesome. And after a 3 month period of no cell phones us PCVs definitely abused them a little bit this weekend, but I'm okay with that.
As part of the finale as we ended training there was a talent show. And I am proud to say the Early Elementary Education group came out on top against some pretty stellar competition. In order to explain the greatness of our act I need to give some background. When PCVs go to the our sites, some of the major work that we do is helping educate kids on how NOT to get worms. Something like 90% of Paraguayan kids get worms or other parasites, which is obviously outrageously high, and much of it is due to lack of education on how worms are contracted. One of the big things we do to educate kids is sing this song in Guarani which is to the tune of London Bridge and translated comes out "I have my shoe, shoe, shoe/And I'm feeling good, I don't have worms/And I'm feeling good"...and it continues with other such phrases. So, for the talent show we decided to spice up the song a bit, and invented the "I have my shoe...REMIX!!!" (In Guarani it is "Areko che zapatu"). I will hopefully be able to post the video either on the blog or on facebook but it is quite a spectacle. It features myself and 2 other dudes from my EEE group throwin down some mad lyrical flow, and we had the luck to have a professional beatbox in our group who strikes up a kickin beat. We even used giant mandioca roots as microphones. The lyrics we came up with are a mix of English, Spanish and Guarani:
I see you playin' futbol after school
Maaan why you ain't wearin no zapatu? (zapatu=shoe in Guarani)
Yo listen up all you little mitai (matai=little kids)
You don't want to quedar with that chivivi (=get diarrehea)
We're education and we're here to say
You gotta wash your hands, every day
And while we're at it can't you see
We're doin' participatory activities
And promoting gender equality
'Cuz we don't like our ladies with sevo'i (sevo'i=worms in Gua)
You know what you necesacitas?
You need some Goshdarn Zapatillas (shoes)
That's right big booty I'm lookin at you
Why you ain't wearin no Zapatu?
Now when I say "Sevo", you say "I"
Sevo I Sevo I
And when I say Zapa, you say 'tu'
Zapa Tu Zapa Tu
Now Papa Miguel's gotta pass the mic (Papa Miguel is my rap name)
To my brotha Rikzilla come and say what you like
(My buddy throws down probably my favorite line of the song right here):
Listen to the Rikman (his rap name is Rikzilla)
I'll give you the scoop
Giardia's no joke son I'm talkin' frothy poop
You don't get it from kissin'
So Stop Drop and Listen
Heed my advice or from your butt you'll be pissin'
No drip from the anos
When you lava los manos
So cuidate every day
Keep your poop sano
Now when I say Frothy you say Poo
Frothy Poo Frothy Poo
And when I say Lava you say Po
Lava Po Lava Po (Wash your hands)
Thanks ya'll for listenin' to our charlita (talk)
You can pay us back with a cervecita (beer)
That's Triple E
with Anne Marie
Comin at ya from Naranjaisyyyyyyy
It might seem a little graphic at points, but it is indeed parasites result in awful consequences for kids such as bad diarrhea, you can't really sugarcoat parasites. And it is a problem in the classroom b/c kids who are consistently sick tend to have a lot of trouble paying attention in class, which is part of our mission in Early Elementary Ed in Paraguay..Anyhow, This song was a first place winner in the talent show so represent EEE (Early Elementary Ed). (Take that SWAG.)
Tomorrow I head to my site where I will be spending the next 2 years of life! It's excited although it will certainly be weird to be away from all the friends I've made during training and be out on my own so to speak. One of the weirdest things is transitioning from interacting with other PCVs in English to conducting your daily routine soley in Spanish and Guarani. Well that and getting used to my host dad cutting an enormous chunk of raw cow with a tablesaw on the same table that you will be eating lunch on in an hour or so. Oh and not to mention using bags of cotton as couches. And actually a million other things. But indeed I got a really good vibe from my host family when I visited, so I am more excited then nervous about finally heading there and starting my 2 year service. It's going to take a bit of getting used to though. I mean, my entire town is on one street a little less than a kilometer long. If you want to try and googlemaps it, google 'san juan nepomuceno paraguay' and scroll 16 km to the east. Yea you won't see much, but that is indeed my life for the next 2 years.
Well I'm off to spoil myself with some filophals in the city, hasta la proxima!
The swearing in ceremony where we take our oath as official volunteers took place in the American Embassy here in Asuncion. Maybe an arbitrary distinction but nevertheless throughout training it is something the PC continuously reminds you of, and it is nice to finally be an official volunteer and get the monthly stipend. The American Embassy here is high class, they even managed to get the address 1776. The The U.S. ambassador to Paraguay attended the ceremony as well so that made us all feel important. She gave a little speech, which honestly was dwarfed but one of the most amazing speeches I have ever heard in person by our volunteer speaker. In addition, after the ceremony, there was some of the most delicious chocolate cake that I have ever eaten in my life, no exageration. Top 5 for sure.
After we became official volunteers we were finally given cell phones, which was awesome after not having them for 3 months. I mean, in our training community if we wanted to talk to each other's houses we had to do it old school (cerca 1990) style and simply walk to the person's house and ask their host parents if they are home. Some of you may know I am personally a fan of doing without excessive modern convenicences but I take back everything I have said about cell phones. They are awesome. And after a 3 month period of no cell phones us PCVs definitely abused them a little bit this weekend, but I'm okay with that.
As part of the finale as we ended training there was a talent show. And I am proud to say the Early Elementary Education group came out on top against some pretty stellar competition. In order to explain the greatness of our act I need to give some background. When PCVs go to the our sites, some of the major work that we do is helping educate kids on how NOT to get worms. Something like 90% of Paraguayan kids get worms or other parasites, which is obviously outrageously high, and much of it is due to lack of education on how worms are contracted. One of the big things we do to educate kids is sing this song in Guarani which is to the tune of London Bridge and translated comes out "I have my shoe, shoe, shoe/And I'm feeling good, I don't have worms/And I'm feeling good"...and it continues with other such phrases. So, for the talent show we decided to spice up the song a bit, and invented the "I have my shoe...REMIX!!!" (In Guarani it is "Areko che zapatu"). I will hopefully be able to post the video either on the blog or on facebook but it is quite a spectacle. It features myself and 2 other dudes from my EEE group throwin down some mad lyrical flow, and we had the luck to have a professional beatbox in our group who strikes up a kickin beat. We even used giant mandioca roots as microphones. The lyrics we came up with are a mix of English, Spanish and Guarani:
I see you playin' futbol after school
Maaan why you ain't wearin no zapatu? (zapatu=shoe in Guarani)
Yo listen up all you little mitai (matai=little kids)
You don't want to quedar with that chivivi (=get diarrehea)
We're education and we're here to say
You gotta wash your hands, every day
And while we're at it can't you see
We're doin' participatory activities
And promoting gender equality
'Cuz we don't like our ladies with sevo'i (sevo'i=worms in Gua)
You know what you necesacitas?
You need some Goshdarn Zapatillas (shoes)
That's right big booty I'm lookin at you
Why you ain't wearin no Zapatu?
Now when I say "Sevo", you say "I"
Sevo I Sevo I
And when I say Zapa, you say 'tu'
Zapa Tu Zapa Tu
Now Papa Miguel's gotta pass the mic (Papa Miguel is my rap name)
To my brotha Rikzilla come and say what you like
(My buddy throws down probably my favorite line of the song right here):
Listen to the Rikman (his rap name is Rikzilla)
I'll give you the scoop
Giardia's no joke son I'm talkin' frothy poop
You don't get it from kissin'
So Stop Drop and Listen
Heed my advice or from your butt you'll be pissin'
No drip from the anos
When you lava los manos
So cuidate every day
Keep your poop sano
Now when I say Frothy you say Poo
Frothy Poo Frothy Poo
And when I say Lava you say Po
Lava Po Lava Po (Wash your hands)
Thanks ya'll for listenin' to our charlita (talk)
You can pay us back with a cervecita (beer)
That's Triple E
with Anne Marie
Comin at ya from Naranjaisyyyyyyy
It might seem a little graphic at points, but it is indeed parasites result in awful consequences for kids such as bad diarrhea, you can't really sugarcoat parasites. And it is a problem in the classroom b/c kids who are consistently sick tend to have a lot of trouble paying attention in class, which is part of our mission in Early Elementary Ed in Paraguay..Anyhow, This song was a first place winner in the talent show so represent EEE (Early Elementary Ed). (Take that SWAG.)
Tomorrow I head to my site where I will be spending the next 2 years of life! It's excited although it will certainly be weird to be away from all the friends I've made during training and be out on my own so to speak. One of the weirdest things is transitioning from interacting with other PCVs in English to conducting your daily routine soley in Spanish and Guarani. Well that and getting used to my host dad cutting an enormous chunk of raw cow with a tablesaw on the same table that you will be eating lunch on in an hour or so. Oh and not to mention using bags of cotton as couches. And actually a million other things. But indeed I got a really good vibe from my host family when I visited, so I am more excited then nervous about finally heading there and starting my 2 year service. It's going to take a bit of getting used to though. I mean, my entire town is on one street a little less than a kilometer long. If you want to try and googlemaps it, google 'san juan nepomuceno paraguay' and scroll 16 km to the east. Yea you won't see much, but that is indeed my life for the next 2 years.
Well I'm off to spoil myself with some filophals in the city, hasta la proxima!
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