First Post From Site!

I have been in site for almost two weeks now. The first three months in site Peace Corps wants you to live with host families, more than one if possible so you get to know the community better. Also in the first three months they don’t want you to start any projects, just go around and meet people and learn about your community.

Well the first 4 or 5 days into site it rained every day, sometimes all day. In the campo when it rains nothing much gets done, people just kind of sit around and wait for it to stop. Kids don’t go to school and adults don’t go to work, sounds great right? Could you imagine if we didn’t have to go to work when it rained? Well a day or two of it is nice. But after 5 you start feeling a little claustrophobic. I was ready to get out there actually start meeting people. I spent a lot of those first few days reading, I actually read four books.

Luckily, it finally cleared up. But, the rain had brought in a cold front that I was not at all prepared for. One of my suitcases was still in Asuncion and was going to be brought to me at my site presentation. (Which I’ll tell you more about in a minute) So for a couple days I looked quite ridiculous with the most bizarre arrangement of layers on to keep warm. Everyone who saw me had to have thought, “Great we get stuck with the crazy Norte volunteer.” But, the good part was that I was finally out meeting people.

One day my host mom came to my room and was like get ready we are leaving in a few minutes. This was one of the first days that was actually sunny so I jumped at the opportunity to get out of the house. We were going to lunch at another ladies house in my community. There were A LOT of people there, at least 60. After lunch everyone just sitting around and then we were all gathered to pray around this makeshift altar. I realized that we were at an “anniversary” gathering, to honor the anniversary of someone’s death. After we had prayed and sang and the ceremony was over the widow broke into an uncontrollable fit of tears and sobbing. It was a very overwhelming situation and I didn’t really know how to act. It was quite an introduction to my community.

Next week is my site presentation. This is where our APCD (for the life of me I cannot remember what this stands for), the director of the Health Sector of volunteers will come to my site and basically present me to my community. Tell them about Peace Corps, what it is, what we do and why I am here in their community. It hopefully will be very helpful because I am a first time volunteer so a lot of people might not know what Peace Corps is, and a lot of my community doesn’t like to speak Spanish, they prefer Guarani so he will be able to explain to them as well.

I’m currently living with my main community contact’s (the person PC sets you up to possibly work with in your community) mother-in-law, who lives right next door to her. They are a great family, I have two little host brothers (12 and 7), host parents, and host grandparents. They are all incredibly welcoming and warm people and I already feel very included in their lives.

There is this penguin game on my computer that they love to play.