Thursday, January 14, 2010

Summer sweat is sweet



I am already back in Asuncion again for my mid-service check up and to pick up my sister!! The past week I have spent in site has not been enough time to sufficiently catch up after two weeks of vacation in Uruguay. For more on that, check out HannahÅ› blog at http://www.bananafishtails.blogspot.com/. She covers it eloquently, so I am going to skip over those two weeks.

I had been a little nervous about going back to site, just because two weeks is the longest amount of time I have spent away, and I was dreading the readjustment and having to answer the same questions over and over again. While waiting for my local bus, I took out my iPod to listen to while I wrote at a little empanada stand. I quickly put it away, thought, so that I could, instead, listen to the sounds of Paraguay, the sounds I have been deprived of--for better or worse--these past few weeks. A few clouds rolled in with a breeze, so it was not unbearably hot, like it had threatened to be in the morning. Some teenage boys were listening to reggaeton on their cell phones.

I caught an earlier bus, so I could stop by the municipality and drop off a letter soliciting funds for the summer camp I'm planning. It's actually starting in just over a week, so I have some preparation to do before then. I'll also have Hannah and some other volunteers there to help out, and this week I'm doing a mini training for some of the local teenage girls I'm friends with, so that they can facilitate activities, as well. I think I'm starting to gain a little more control over my attitude. No matter how stressed or hot or annoyed I am, if I greet people with a smile and a giggle in my voice, things go a lot better, and I'm much more likely to get what I want. This seems like an obvious statement, but it can be hard to put into practice. Also, things are so corrupt in the political system here that I'll get what I ask for if they like me, and I will be completely ignored if they don't.



When I arrived back in site, watermelon season was in full swing, so I've been feasting everyday, multiple times a day. A tidbit about watermelon is that Paraguayans cut it lengthwise and Americans cut it the other direction. The rule is that you can eat watermelon or you can drink terere. Not both. The real danger, however, is in mixing watermelon with grapes or grape products, like wine. They say that if you put grapes on watermelon, the latter will either disintegrate or explode, but I have yet to test this theory. Cantaloupe, however, is liberally mixed with wine. They make a delicious cantaloupe-wine smoothie, which we take down to the river in big thermoses.

After vacation, my sleep pattern was thrown off, so I wasn't getting up until the ungodly hour of 9am, about the time people start coming BACK from the field, since it's too hot to work. Even waking up at 5:30am is considered getting a late start on the day. Jorge and I have been hoeing our cornfield, which we are cultivating to feed our future pigs. Hopefully we'll have little piglets running around soon!

On my second day back in my community, Jorge's family was slaughtering a pig to sell the meat, and they invited me over to partake in the activities and feasting. When I showed up, the head was already pegged to a gree, the organs laying in a tub, and the fat sizzling over an open fire. Chicharon are chunks of fried pig fat, and it is mouth-wateringly delicious. I knew I had become a part of the family when I was given the task of cleaning out the intestines and stomach. My 17-year-old friend, Griselda, and I carried the tub and a knife down to the stream, where we slit holes in the soft membranes and literally scooped and squirted shit out. And pig shit stinks. I almost vomited when I also removed 8" long parasitic worms, as well. Welcome back.

Now Hannah and I are in Villarrica, and heading to my home tomorrow!