Oatmeal and Raisins.

Hace cuatros semanas falta un blog… nos disculpan!

We are settled in to our site (Villa del Rosario, San Pedro, Paraguay)! We’ve been here for four weeks now and we are gradually adapting to our current situation. Hopefully we can recall some of the events that took place to catch you up to speed… We swore in as Peace Corps Volunteers on August 5, 2011. The ceremony was quick and painless. There were speeches, smiles, hugs, tears and awesome chocolate-dulce de leche cake. This was also the goodbye to our host family, who gave us a parting gift of dishes; plates, bowls, silverware, cups, mugs and more. When we were leaving, our family saw us off with tears of happiness and sadness (we can only presume). Happiness, because we were going off to do good work; and sadness because they will miss us. The feeling was mutual, this family of six opened up their home to us for ten weeks and treated us like family from the get go! La Familia Sanchez-Mendez son una familia que representan el Corazón de Paraguay! Muchas Gracias si Uds. Están leiendo este!

From our swear-in ceremony we fled to the Peace Corps office in Asuncion in order to get things squared away. We received our cell phones, our internet modem (which didn’t work in our site, hence, no internet for four weeks and counting because we are currently borrowing!) and we had a few meetings before heading off to our hotels in downtown. The hotel that we stayed in was The Palace and it was pretty nice! For those that come to visit, we recommend this hotel next to staying with us…but we’ll get to that later. We spent three days in Asuncion relaxing and spending time with our fellow volunteers before heading off to our respective sites. It was weird to realize that our friends that we spent the last ten weeks with, day in and night out, were all going their separate ways. But I think we all knew that we had work to do. Anyway, we are going to stay in contact and see one another as frequently as possible. It’s important because we need to figure out where we are going to put our future time share!

After a nice break, we were up and on our way to our new home town. Here, we arrived to a house with Maria and Claudia. Maria works with families in our city and Claudia is a student in the local High School. They were very welcoming and prepared a room for us to sleep in. They had a pig and they have a dog, chickens, a rabbit and a parrot. The animals went wherever they wanted to go (you have to know that that pun was intended!) When we would sit down to eat, the rabbit would come by and say, “What you got? Let me get a lil bit…” The chickens would squeeze through the fences (doors to house) at times just to walk by and say wassup. When it was hot outside, all the animals just kind of lounge around and while the pig would lay down the chickens would use him as a couch. Notice that I said that they had a pig…they ate him.

We visited just last week and he was gone! The dog had the pigs foot in his mouth and was trotting around with it. And they were good friends too…

Right now, our days consist of walking around and meeting people. We will say hello, introduce ourselves and pass time by drinking Mate or Terere. We have been invited for lunch countless times always accepting with a smile. Given our situations, we were able to move out on our own a little earlier than expected. We have a three bedroom/1bathroom house with a large patio, front yard and backyard. In our backyard, we have a peach, pear, grapefruit, papaya, mandarine and coffee tree, not to mention our neighbor with a huge mango tree that peeps over our fence substantially! We bought a machete. We are planning on starting a vegetable and herb garden; and we are planning on eating our own produce when it eventually grows.

Not much else to catch you up on right now. We just got our bikes last week, so we will start getting around more! Thus, in our next blog, we should have more stories to tell, as well as tell you all a little more about the work that we are planning on doing.

We love you and we will talk with you soon 🙂