Paraguay

This last weekend was the festival of San Juan in all of Paraguay.  It´s a big celebration here in every town, involving many games and unique foods.  A lot of the games are about predicting your future, like whether you will get married, how many kids you will have, etc.  The most outrageous game I saw was a ball lit up on fire that the kids were kicking around.  They pour tons of gasoline all over a ball, light it up, and gather everyone from about ages 7 to 12 to play!  Kids do actually get burned playing this game, but it´s the most popular one!  Another interesting game was for kids to climb a pole, which was about 30 feed high and covered in oil!  There were prizes at the top.  I watched about 10 kids try to climb the pole, but nobody was successful. 

My favorite food at the festival was the mbeju (pronounced em-bay-jew).  It´s a mixture of mandioca flour, egg, paraguayan cheese, and some other things.  It´s difficult to explain what exactly it´s like in the US, but it´s delicious!  You eat it with your hands by ripping off little pieces of it.  At the festival, they also served asaditos (meat on a stick), and empanadas de mandio (mandioca empanadas filled with meat and eggs). 

My favorite Paraguayan moment so far: A few days ago, my 8 year old host brother, Enzo, was helping me study my Guarani flashcards.  He is also in his first year of Guarani, but is much  better than me.  He gave me high fives every time I got one right to keep me motivated.  I told him that I was so lucky to have a friend that wanted to study with me.  He just laughed hysterically at me and said “I´m not your friend, I´m your brother!”  He is so cute!  I also brought him along to play soccer with a bunch of my friends over the weekend and he loved it!

Update on Political Sitiuation:  Some of you may have seen the news that the President of Paraguay did get impeached!  Although it sounds pretty crazy, there has been very little violence.  The protests are all happening in Asuncion, and I´m about an hour away from there by bus.  We are not in any danger here, and we are not granted permission to go to Asuncion at this time.  We might be going into the capital to attend a 4th of July party at the US Embassy, but it´s a little up in the air right now. 

Yours Truly, Julie G

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