Feliz Día De Los Muertos

These things I hold to be true...right now:
-When it rains, the road is no longer a road, but a river.
-"Another day" and "perhaps" both usually mean No.
-Toads (kururu)have a dangerous poison that comes out of their eyes, but...
-If you spit into a toads mouth, some kind of sickness will be cured.
-You never terere on an empty stomach.
-If you mix watermelon and terere, you will die.

I´ve been thinking about the potential challenges I will face when I´m alone in my site, and I realized that what might be just as hard as being able to complain to a sympathetic, English-speaking ear will be not being able to share my accomplishments and successes. This is what brings on nostalgia and loneliness. Even being able to share a simple joke with my family feels huge, and I want to be able to express that.

I asked my mama the other day if she knew of any remedies for constipation. She sent me off to get some semillas de lino (flax seeds), which she made into a tea. Later she made me another jujo tea from orange tree leaves and then rubbed my tummy while we watched the news. I had not counted on the fact that by sharing my health woes with my mom, the entire town would be privy to them, as well. Everyone, I mean everyone, knew.

My mom and I were walking to the school for a performance the other night, and I saw a guy I had met at the soccer tournament. I whipsered to my mom that he had been drunk and annoying, and she proceeded to tell him, not only that I had just said that, but that I had not had a bowel movement in days. My language is getting to the point where I can usually tell if the conversation is about me. Then when the guy advised me to drink lots of liguids, I was sure. What can I do? Everyone knows everything here, and I guess I´m sharing this information on the internet anyway.

The school peformance was...odd. We paid $1000 Guarani (about 25cents) to get in and then another 1000Gs. for a chair. The ´dances´were led by a whistle-blowing gym teacher, and the uniformed students performed calistenic routines, complete with counting. It was not what I had expected, but it did go along with what I have been hearing about the education system here. Creativity and even critical-thinking skills are not encouraged. Children are taught by following orders, memorizing by rote, and reading from texts. And they don´t go to school when it rains.

Yesterday, we got back from our Tech. Overnight. We were visiting another volunteer, staying with host families, and getting some practice in the field. We planted and harvested abonos verdes (green manures) with a sweet, old farmer, I made some chipa with his wife (on a side note--the Guarani word for wife translates directly into "to have slave"), and we mixed up some venemos caseros (homemade insecticide) from a local plant. On the way back home, we stopped at store that sold peanut butter. Oh, sweet, sweet peanut butter. I also bought a bag of something that resembled wheat germ, and as I was putting it in a birthday cake, my neighbor commented that it was cow feed. As long as it´s fiberous cow feed.