A glance at the past til now...

How does the earth turn so quicly? The summer has come and swiftly gone in a whirlwind of family visits, vacation, and attempting to stay cool, leaving little energy for cyber communication. After a year and a half, this place has become something that resembles home enough that I don't crave the internet connections I used to so look forward to.

After Chrismas and New Years in Uruguay, Hannah came back to my site with me, where we played in the river, went fishing with bamboo poles Huck Finn style,shucked and ate many many peanuts, and led an environmental summercamp. She got to see the way I live, including getting bored to tears by the bingo games the Señoras love so much. It was refreshing to have someone to share in the hilarious misery of it all, and to laugh with over a cold beer that I wouldn't have the guts to buy by myself.

We then continued our sister adventure in Brazil, where we had rented a one-bedroom apartment in Rio de Janiero for nine days with seven other volunteers. The limited space was made up for by a fabulous rooftop terrace,complete with grill, pool,and pool table. We were located in Copacabana, one block away from the Copacabana beach and walking distance from the famous Ipanema beach, where we could watch the sun set over the fantastical cliffs that surround that majestic city. Rio is unlikek any place I`ve every been. The sheer drama of its geography is jaw dropping. The view from the top of Sugarloaf makes me imagine what it must have been like to first come across that land, uninhabited, to stumble upon it by land or sea for the first time. Itś like Neverland, with lagoons and inlets, but now with lights covering all, and the flavellas (shantytowns) climbing hodgepodge up the sides of the steep hills. Acai is the life food and large asses reign supreme. Kids play soccer on white sands and the ocean washes away lastnightś sins. Carnaval, of course, attracts herds of people from all over to celebrate the worldś most famous party.

I was ready to get back to my little casita after 10 days. It felt good to get back to my routine of washing clothes, working bees, and having little plan for the day but to see what happens next. It wasn't long, however, before it was time to go again, this time to meet up with Mom and Bobo in Argentina. We met at the bus terminal in Cordoba, after a year and a half with no parents. We rented a car and headed north a couple hours to the magical little town of Capilla del Monte, where we celebrated the fall equionox with a healing sound bowl ceremony. We continued north, stopping at a town with thermal hotsprings, and then Cafayate (Mendoza's cute cousin) to taste wine. We left there with a case of organic wine and a block of goat cheese to keep us happy on the 23-hour bus ride to Iguazu Falls. We spent one night in Ciudad del Este, where we met up with my sweetie, Jorge, and then continued on to my site.

The two of them accompanied me on the sweaty journey to the high school for my photography class, and Bobo became famous for fixing the one computer in my community (no internet, of course). Mom, as you can imagine, became famous for being herself. On Boboś last night we had a chicken BBZ with a few of my Paraguayan friends and family. Mom stayed on for the rest of Semana Santa, doing useful things like de-iceing my fridge, deep-cleaning my wardrobe, and hand-washing my clothes. I also took advantage of having a mom to cook for me, and we feasted on chicken soup, macaroni and cheese, and the traditional Easter breakfast of creamed egg on toast. There were lots of community activities that week--prayer gatherings, decorating, and making a "Judas" scarecrow, complete with firecrackers, to be burned at the stake on Easter morning before mass. That Sunday we woke up at 4:30am to join the candlelit singing procession, making its way through the community and finally stopping at the church. That afternoon was the soccer tournament. Fall came all at once, the south wind gusting up and blowing antarctic air through the cracks in my walls.

Mom left on Monday, and things are back to normal, or as normal as can be expected. Life back home in the States continues with weddings and babies and changes. I sometimes think about the things I'm missing on long walks back home. There are barefoot footprings all over the sandy road that takes me back to my house, and I cramble them with my own shoed prints, weighted down by a body covered in and a backpack full of supplies I am taught to need. I have my waterbottle, as always, my hat and sunglasses, and my muisc, which helps me along the hour-and-a-half trek from the next communityi. I have my beegear, covered in soot and honey, a plastic bag full of honey still on the comb and crawling with drunk bees; cinnamon roles, the product of my cooking class, fresh out of the brick oven and keeping warm in my dirty shirt.

I wonder which are the moments I will carry with me when I go. Memories are surprizingly fickle and random. The moments that stand out most are those that seem inconsequential, and the so-called "memorable" ones melt away until I can recall only that the event took place. The actual scenes are hazy and unstill. Will I remember pressing up close to Jorge's back as we run away from the sunrise and the wind bites at our fingertips and noses? Or will I only recall that he took me the 45 minutes to put me on the bus to Asuncion? Will I remember the weight of my 2 and 4-year-old nieces on each of my knees and the blueness of the sky as we crouched in the field of manioc and I sang to them, trying to drown out the sound of their father and uncle fighting back at the house? There is so much beauty and hurt, too heavy to carry.

Teach a Man to Fish...

I´ve been living in my community, trying to promote sustainable agriculture (or at least pass the days), for fourteen months. I have hoed fields, taught classes, organized events, endured endless questions, and have made a general ass of myself (purposefully and unintentionally). After all this, however, I only just a few days ago was able to successfully explain what it really is I´m supposed to be doing here. I was sitting around one evening with my host family, a few members of my farmers´ committee, and six construction workers who had been hired by the Ministry of Agriculture to build a business-scale henhouse in my community. I had brought my guitar over, and we were taking turns singing songs in English and Guarani. The workers, who are not from my community, were curious about what I was doing there. I gave them the classic ¨teach a man to fish¨ explanation of community development. If you don´t know it, it basically says that you can either give a man a fish, so he won´t be hungry that day, or you can teach him to fish, thereby giving him the power to provide for himself. I am attempting to do the latter. As I explained it, I saw the members of my community, with whom I´ve been working for over a year, nod their heads in sudden comprehension of my job. I couldn´t believe I hadn´t explained it that way before.

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 Hannahś 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!

One Year Down

Two months have passed, taking with them any remaining cool summer breezes. The last days of classes are over, and the summer corn is already knee-high and begging for our hoes to unburden them of the ever-present weeds. Weeds grow incredibly quickly here. The days of following the shade have returned, and as I sit drinking endless pitchers of terere on a humid day, sweat collects and drips off my nose and into the corners of my mouth. Free sauna. I finally succumbed and bought a fan, which is helpful not only for the heat, but for fending of night bugs when I don't feel like being trapped in my mosquito net. Wow. I just made it sound awful here. Really it's not that bad. I actually love this time of year because it's time to relax and prepare for holiday festivities. The elementary school had their final presentation, and tomorrow night I'm going to the high school graduation. It's going to be a formal event, and each graduate has a certain number of invitees, and a padrino to send her off, kind of like a wedding. It sounds more like a prom to me.


Today is my one-year anniversary of living in Arroyo Moroti. Once again it is marked by the one-year reso ,or memorial, for Jorge's mother, who died two days after I arrived. I'm helping Jorge's family with a pig project. We've been planning the pig pen, and spent other day cutting the grass with a long machete (you have to squat low and use your abs) in preparation to plant corn and beans for feed. The idea is that with proper preparation, we can raise a pig for slaughter and sale in six months, and then I can use the pig pen to raise my own pig to eat for my departure party next year. Many Paraguayans don't feed their pigs sufficiently or provide with adequate accomodations, and so they end up waiting months and months past when they should be profitably slaughtered.


Now that Jorge is not playing soccer in the neighboring state, we've grown closer. A month or two ago he (finally) told me his story, about before his mom died, about how, despite being really intelligent, didn't make it past sixth grade because his alcoholic father took him to the field to work. I cried when he told me. I know it's a common story for poor people all over the world. Many poor families in Paraguay will send their kids to school to learn basic reading and math skills, and then they'll spend the rest of their days working as their parents have. I have my qualms with public education, but to hear that someone I love was denied the opportunities that come with receiving an education, hurts. He is blessed with amazing soccer skills, but to increase his chances of being discovered by a scout, he would have to move to Asuncion to practice with a more professional team, and pay for his living expenses while doing so.


I'm in Asuncion now, seeing off my friends who have finished their two years and are on their way home or travels. And speaking of travels, in a week and a half, I will be in Uruguay on vacation! A bunch of my friends and I have rented beach cabins for Christmas, and Hannah is flying in to meet up with us and come back to site with me. So, as usual, there is much to look forward to and much to love right now...

Lightning Strikes Again

As I mentioned previously, I had been hoping that my agriculture workshop would help to remind the community of what I´m here for and help to present myself as someone who knows about teh field, and not just some girl who cooks and works in the garden. I am by no mean demeaning these activities, but I also want to do the job I´ve been trained to do, which is a challenge as a female volunteer. It seems to be working. The conversations continue. I just talked to a farmer about ¨curvas de nivel,¨ a technique I´ve been itching to try that involved planting in lines that curve to the slope of the hill to prevent erosion and loss of nutrients.

I´ve become accustomed to visiting certain families that I know, but it feels good to branch out and have new people be interested in working with me, and because of the knowledge I have to offer and not just because I´m a weird enigma or because they think I´m going to give them money. Paraguayans assume that I´m the rich American, but I had to borrow money from my host dad this week. First, my stove ran out of propane, and I realized that I didn´t have the funds to refill it. So I´ve been dropping in on families during feeding time, which is more than satisfactory. Then my fridge broke. I was freaking out to a neighbor about not having ice and my food going bad, and an hour later, when I got back from hoeing in the field, two guys showed up on moto to fix my fridge. I was happy for the quick response, but it sent me running around looking for someone to lend me 200,000Gs ($40). So now I can´t cook, but I do have ice, and, at this time of year, that´s way more important. It is a luxury, though, to have that. Jorge´s family has no electricity or running water.

As I was also saying before, I finally have the energy to communicate with home. In fact, I missed my bus for teh sake of computer communication. I took a later bus that drops me off at a crossroads in the middle of sugarcane fields 10k from my house. When I left my house at 4:30am the sky was clear, and I felt comfortable in a skirt and sandals. When I began my walk, however, it was raining with a chilly wind blowing in from the south. I had to take my shoes off to get better traction in the mud. I´m usually able to hitchhike on that road, but with the combination of bad weather and a broken bridge, it was deserted. I started singing to distract myself from the groceries in my backpack weighing me down as the puddles in the road turned into full-fledged streams. I enjoy the rain, but I started thinking about the 20-year-old kid in my community who was struck my lightning two weeks ago. He was walking back from the field with a hoe on his shoulder, alongside his wife and parents-in-law, when lightning struck him dead on the spot. Lightning strikes are common here, at least more common than back home. A few days ago, my friend, Steve, was struck by lightning while sitting on his porch! Luckily he´s okay, but has a burn on his back from it.

When I reached the broken bridge, it really was broken, with most of the boards missing. A temporary path of plywood laid between the banks kept me on my way. Two hours later, I arrived at my house to find a huge piece of the tree beside my house on the ground, right beside--and luckily not on top of--my house. I quickly realized the irony of this, as it was he same kind of tree whose blossoms I had picked to make a boquet the other day. I was on a run, and all of the sudden, caught a whiff of lilacs. The scent immediately brought me back home, and I tried to make out where the smell was coming from. Unsure, I picked a few branches from a large tree, dripping white blossoms. I don´t think that was the lilac smell, but if I was ever in doubt, I now have a bouquet to fill my entire house and then some.



During Thursday´s cooking class, we made media lunas (criossants). At the end of the class, we discussed what we would make the following week, and they came to the decision that we would just celebrate my birthday that day, and everyone would bring something to share and be ready for a reggaeton dance-off. I´ve come to love that group of women. They range in age from teens to 50s, and I´ve enjoyed the female compañionship and mothering. I´ve had mostly male friends since I´ve been in PC, but I grew up in a community of girls and women, and I hadn´t realized how beneficial it´s been for me to have these women in my life. I feel honored that they want to take the time to celebrate my life.

Make it Rain

I realize that I´ve been slacking on my updates (bad), but I´ve had a lot of work to do in my community (good). I´ve been planning, organizing, and orchestrating an agriculture workshop on Soil Recuperation techniques. The weeks prior were spent inviting participants (on bike, uphill both ways, and, yes, it´s hot again), and confirming and reconfirming with invited guests and specialists. It all went down Friday, so now I finally have the energy to communicate with the outside world. As I mentioned, things have been busy and frustrating, and, of course, as seems to be the trend with events that I organize, it rained the day of the workshop. More significantly, it poured the day before, complete with peachpit-sized hail, so the roads were in a terrible, muddy condition and bridges washed out. I invited five of my volunteer friends to come and assist with the workshop, but the bus didn´t leave my community, so they had to take a different bus to the next town over and walk (and ox-cart ride) the 9k to my house.

The first night that everyone was there, we played soccer with the neighborhood kids in my yard--Paraguay versus the US. Those little rugrats won. Two of my friends are 6´4´´ and one is 6´2´´, so it was amusing to watch the interactions. We all crammed in my house, which fits one, and worked on our presentations for the following day. That morning I had been given the keys to the church, so my friend, Romelia (pictured with me) and I could straigten up. I´m continually surprized by the trust people place in me. I´m given church keys, school keys, and cash donations without question.

Of course, that responsibility also means I´m expected to take on extra burdens, and I need to learn to say ¨no¨when it´s too much. The problem is that I thrive on taking on responsibility, and I feel confident in my abilities to complete things successfully. But then, the unexpected interferes; it rains, for people are not as reliable as I think, or my email is compromised...I want to be able to trust people as much as they trust me. For the most part, though, I have to say, people general pleasantly surprize me. Still, sometimes I´m pushed to my limit. Because I was coordinating with a number ocf specialists and visitors for my workshop, I was continuously confirming and reconfirming with them because I have come to realize that Paraguayans will lie to my face and would rather tell me what I want to hear and save what they think I don´t want to hear until the last possible minute, or when I´m going to figure it out anyway. It´s not that they´re mean or spiteful people. They´re just used to reading between the lines and communicating something berbally while part of them is communicating the opposite. I just have trouble seeing the lines.

Like conversations people have around me, I think I understand because I do comprehend the words. But often the words have double or triple meanings, so that I think they´re talking about going fishing, but really they´re discussing my love life, shamelessly, right in front of me. There are not that many words in this language, compared to our vocabulary in English, but they make up for that in many subtle, and not-so-subtle, nuances.


It rained the moring of the workshop, and most of the técnicos and my Peace Corps boss showed up late because of the road conditions. The fancy people showed up with mud on their pants, including the Secretary of Agriculture, and other important people he invited. But at least they came, and so did the empanadas. And, surprizingly, for the bad weather, so did thirty participants. There would ahve been a lot more from surrounding communities, but I was satisfied with than number, knowing that Paraguayans tend to do nothing withen it rains.

I had my friends and the Paraguayan specialists each cover a topic under the subject of soil recuperation, and present on it for 10-15 muntues. I had a topic as well, but my biggest role, I quickly realized, was that of MC. It´s always been frightening for me to present in fron of a large group in my own language, but it was empowering to be in front a of a group speaking Guarani.

After the workshop, we had a raffle with tools for prizes that I received in various donations. Then we went to my house, where a couple Señoras from my comité had been cooking lunch all morning, and we feasted in my yard. Then I passed out certificates to everyone, including the técnicos, who crowded around me like little kid. They go nuts over these little papers. I´ve heard that instead of the stress we place upon resumes when visiting potential employers, they bring in these certificates and make it rain all over their could-be boss.

Finally, everyone went home, and I breathed a sigh of relief that the biggest thing I´ve done in my community--and might ever do---was done. That night, my friends and I made a bonfire and had a BBQ for some of my Paraguayan friends and family, serenading them with live American music.

I had been hoping that this ag workshop would help to advertize my presense in the community as someone who knows about agriculture. And it may be working. I´ve already been having new conversations with people. The other morning I went to a family´s house to make compost tea for their watermelon crop. That same afternoon, a man asked me how he could naturally control the bugs attacking his tomatoes. And another couple wants my advice and agroforestry systems. It´s nice to have people asking my advice about agriculture and not just resorting to chemical pesticides and fertilizers. I think the word is getting around about how dangerous it is to use that stuff, especially the way many do here, without proper equipment and protection. Two kids in the very small high school have terminal cancer, and I can´t help but thing these cases are related to ag chemicals.

And I don´t think I mentioned that I had a visit from a future volunteer, Amanda, who is going through training right now. I got to show off my community and my command of the language and customs after a year of living here. I remember being in her position last year and visiting a current volunteer. I remember being so exhausted and happy to just watch movies on her portable DVD player and not living with Paraguayans for a few days. On Amanda´s first night, my neighbor´s soccer team won the game (and a pig), and the guys invited us over the the pig roast and wine. It was good visit, and she got to witness what I love about Paraguay, and what drives me crazy. Sometimes that´s a fine line...

There´s no why (but why don´t chickens have arms?)

Sometimes I lay in bed early in the morning, listening to the sounds of Arroyo Moroti waking up. The roosters, the chickens pecking at the crumbs I´ve thrown out the window and swept out the door, moms yelling at their kids in Guarani as they get ready for school or the field. These sounds are familiar to me now, comforting even, especially when I think about when i first arrived in Paraguay--how these sounds were foreign and strange, and I would wake up feeling lonely and unsure. I know that I will miss these sounds when I leave.

And I love that there is no shame in public nose-picking! One thing (of many) that still gets me, though is watching chickens run. I always feel like they should have arms, that they´re somehow propelled forward, but things would be a lot easier if hthey had arms to swing and create equilibrium and momentum. But who am I to judge?

I was gifted another hen yesterday, so now I have a brood of two in my little bamboo henhouse. I´m keeping them closed in there for a little while until they know their new home. How are you going to eat eggs without a rooster?, they ask. Because, I´ve told them, don´t want a noisy gallo around causing trouble with my ladies. I explain that, just like women, chickens don´t need males to produce eggs, just to produce babies.

Yesterday morning I had a breakfast date with one of my host moms. I´ve been asking her to teach me how to make mbeju--a typical Paraguayan pancake made out of fresh corn flour, cassava flour, salt (of course), cheese, and some sort of oil (though pig fat is the most delicious)--because she makes the best I´ve had. Her 98-year-old husband claimed that mine was Ndahei (not tasty), though he ate it and sucked his gums contentedly afterwards.

I met with the agriculture comittee in the afternoon, and i explained the capacitation I´m planning, hopefully, with the financial support of local government and NG organizations. I´m planning a 1/2-day workshop on soil recuperation and crop diversification with the presenging assistance of soem fellow crop, ag-forestry, and beekeeping volunteers. Following that, there will be an excursion to a nearby ag-forestry institute, where they can see first-hand all the practices and principles I´ll be teaching. I feel like it´s time for me to do some of the work I´ve been trained to do and for what the community requested a volunteer. Each site placement is different, and I´ve figured out that my community is impressed and influenced by things like formal workshops, complete with fancy invitations and certificates. And if that´s what it takes to improve soil fertility, so be it.



After the meeting, I went for a run, joined by my quickly-growing puppy, Shambo, who´s now five months old. I passed Jorge´s house, where I was joined by his barefoot 8-year-old sister and 12-year-old brother, and two dogs. They followed me the entire half-hour (about 5k). I listen to music while I run (amusicahina--they turn music into a verb, which I find quite appropriate), but I enjoy having companions for motivation.

Is it ironic for a childless woman to be giving parenting classes to women with 8+ children, or is it rather appropriate? Spurred my by encounters with child abuse and with the encouragement of some fo the female leaders (the loud onces, gossipy ones, the ones with influential husbands, or who are active in the church...), I prepared a presentation with a neighboring volunteer for Dia del Niño (Day of the Child). We wanted the day to be all about the kids, so we organized games, I brought my kite, hula hoop, and waterbaloons, and the Señoras prepared chocolate milk and cookies. There must have been about 70 kids there, and while the teenage girls managed the masses outside, we gave a presentation to the mamas in the church. We went over children´s rights and divided them into groups, giving each group a hypothetical situation of a misbehaving child, and had them come up with possible solutions that did not result in violence. The whole thing went really well, and I got the kids excited for World Hoop Day. I´m organizing a festival on September 9th for the kids to make their own hula-hoops.

It´s both invigorating and exhausting to work with large groups of children, but my day was far from over. I spent the next few hours helping my agriculture committee create a document about its history, vision, and project proposals to solicit to the governor the following morning. It´s been so long since I´ve written a paper like that, so it was enjoyable, expect that, being the grammar freak that I am, it was hard to do so in Spanish.

As soon as I was done, my neighbors had a wine waiting for me and were ready to pull a steaming cow head out of a hole in the ground, where it had been cooking the past few hours. This being my second time having cow head for dinner, I had fun with it. I also knew to bypass the tongue and cheeks (no pun intended), and go straight for the creamy, garlic-infused brains, spread like cream cheese on cassava root. It´s supposed to make me smarter...

I´ve taught a few garden classes to the sixth graders. They´re a really good group, and they invited me to school last week, so they could cook kamby arroz for me (a Paraguayan version of rice pudding). As it was cooking over the open fire, they taught me a song in Guarani.

I´ve been attending the girls´ barefoot soccer practices, and on Saturday, I went to the field to watch them play. First were the boys teams--the 9yr olds, then the 10yr olds, and so on. Finally all the girls aged 11-17 got to play. It was frustrating to see how little attention is given to the girls´team in comparison to the boys. The girls play two 10-minute halves (as opposed to 20-minute halves), and I waatached them scrambling aroundthe boys team just coming off the field to borrow cleats. But it´s a start. As much as Paraguay is developing and very much in a state of flux (everyone over the age of 16 has lived under a dictatorship), they are trapped between this new life brought to them on TV, via cell phone, and on quick, efficient motos, and the very traditional, Catholic, chauvenistic life.

Recently I realized that the verb they use for ¨to turn,¨ as in to turn a certain number of years of age, is Amboty, the word for ¨to close.¨ So they´re asking, how many years will you close? It makes sense to me, as do some of the other words they use, which, when directly translated into English, sound strange. Such as, when the sun sets, it ¨enters,¨ and when it rises, it ¨leaves,¨ as if the sun lives in the unknown place out there and visits us for a while during the day. Or ¨you´re welcome,¨ is really ¨there´s no why.¨

The thought patterns are different here, too. Sometimes people think I don´t understand what they´re saying. It´s not the words that I don´t understand (well, sometimes it is), but it´s the why I don´t understand. There are some things, however, that keep us on the same page. I was sitting around shelling peanuts with some friends the other day, and Romina noticed that I could change my quickdry pants into shorts. ¨So when it´s hot, you can just unzip them,¨ she commented. In Guarani, hot and horny are used interchangeably, so I said, ¨When I´m horny, I take it all off.¨ They all laughed at my cleverness. They think I´m funny, but it´s not so much that I´m funny as much as I just like words.



By the way, the two cute girls in the picture are my Paraguayan nieces!