My trip to San Juan Nepomuceno

Well, I survived the bus journey to Asuncion!  We completed our tasks of visiting a democracy promotion agency and the Cabildo museum, followed by making our way to the Peace Corps office.  My partner and I were unable to find the bus to the Peace Corps office, but it couldn´t be too far of a walk, right?  Actually, it ended up taking us over an hour to walk there!  It was a good trip.  We stopped at a place for lunch to get some yummy empanadas and peach smoothies as well.

Monday to Thursday this week, I went on a site visit to experience the life of a Peace Corps Volunteer.  My volunteer lived about 6 hours away, 2 busses.  It was not to difficult to get there.  The city was called San Juan Nepomuceno, and about 35,000 people live there.  It´s considered a medium sized city for Paraguay.  We got to cook some delicious food, such as homeade pizza, eggplant, hash browns, and stir fry!  The volunteer who I visited also teaches zumba and yoga workout classes for the community, and I got to participate!  For our assignment for training, I observed a 5th grade class for 1 hour, visited the municipality, and interviewed a small business owner.  6 other Peace Corps Volunteers stopped by the city where I was staying, so it was nice to meet other people and hear about their experiences here.

Have any of you seen Paraguay in the news recently?  There´s a lot going on!  In 30 minutes from right now, the President might be impeached!  I wanted to let all of you know that I am safe, and that there are procedures in place should anything become unstable here.  Other than that, things here are great!

Yours Truly, Julie G