Thank god i've been with my closest friends these last few weeks. It makes the transition back to Paraguay, the extreme heat, and my never ending cough seam bearable! So I started my traveling adventures in Paraguari visiting my friend Andy's site. We were just there for a night because I couldn't make it all the way to Liza's site in one day! Andy's site was very interesting and completely different from mine! It is up in the "mountains"- there are no real mountains in Paraguay, just hills! But it was absolutely beautiful. And green trees everywhere, great views! His community is very spread out, not like mine all in one central area. So just getting to the neighbors house was a good walk! His site has no running water, and he doesn't have an artisan well (water coming up from the ground), his well gets filled up from rain water. Because of this the water is not clean at all and he has to treat all of his water before drinking. It is definitely a harder way of life, harder to just live and do everyday chores! It was fun to experience, but i'm getting used to my more chuchi life! However he did cook some fantastic lasagna on his fagone that night! But that was just for the night, the next morning really early we headed out on our way to Liza's site in Caazapa. We ended up in Villarica crashing a vac meeting and getting to meet the newest group thats come to Paraguay! We finally met up with Liza in San Juan, where we bought a couple groceries and then took her campo bus to her home! I really enjoyed her community. And I adored her house, cute little blue wooden house, very homey and welcoming! The next day we ventured out in the morning inviting community kids to the camp we were having the next day. Then we went to meet up with Danielle who was coming in later, on the way to meet up with Dan, we decided it was a good idea to take a short cut through a field. Well we ended up in a bog. Liza ventured out first, only to lose both her flip flops in the mud. But... do not fear, Sarah to the rescue, I flipped off my flippys and jumped right in that mud to save the shoes. I was digging around in the gooey mud for a while when I eventually got them both out. That's what best friends do! Afterward I really enjoyed my mud socks and elbow length gloves! haha. We washed up in the creek just as Danielle was arriving. Reunited, we headed to Liza's second host families house. We enjoyed a really nice afternoon with them, drinking terere, eating delicious asado and playing with the kids. We headed home to get ready for our upcoming camp the next day. Our first days theme was nutrition. Second day sports and arts. Third day environmental education. Fourth and last day, parasites. The camp was so incredibly successful, I was so happy! Not only did we spend four morning with some really great kids, but we had the most amazing time hanging out with each other. Laughing hysterically, cooking delicious yummy food, making tie-dye camp counselor shirts and talking about inappropriate womanly things in front of Andy!! After camp we had to go to Asuncion for meetings with the bosses. And immediately Saturday morning we headed back to Andy's site. Now there were four of us, no running water and probably about 110 degrees in a corrugated metal one-room house. Needless to say, it was HOT! We went through an incredible amount of water, us girls walked around in just our sport bra's all week. However, I was really guapa one afternoon when I offered to go chop fire wood for the fagone. I like to say I chopped down a tree with just a machete... but that tree could have just been a really big branch!! It was still pretty good. I was sweating everywhere and had small pieces of dirt, wood and leaves all over me when I returned! Also adventurous, Andy put us in charge of making hot sauce. He had three big bushes full of little red peppers. So Danielle and I were giving the task of cutting the stems off... well about 20 min into it, and about 200 peppers down my fingers started tingling a bit. That's when I decided to stop cutting peppers. Another 10 minutes later and my fingers felt as though I had put them in a boiling pot of water for a couple minutes. They were ON FIRE!! For the next 6 hours or so I had my fingers either in the freezer or in a bowl of ice water. It was incredible... had no idea those peppers were so hot! But we had a really successful second camp in Andy's site. Despite the hot weather and the distance those guapo kids had to walk to get there.
I am currently on our week break, relaxing and preparing for my camp when the troop will be arriving here for in two days! I've put up posters in all the little stores and told all my favorite kids. I'm expecting a pretty good turn out- but we'll see, this is Paraguay!
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