Time for a lil vacation

Alright! Tomorrow Im heading off to Asunción for a little R and R, well sorta. I have to visit the dentist and get a tooth looked at as well as run all around town picking things up for my community. I need to get a couple forms from the national news agency to receive free seeds for my two womens committees. Also, im buying some bee gear, hopefully a suit that wont let ANYTHING in. Im going to try and relax, the hotel we are staying in has a pool! You have no idea how wonderful that sounds to me. Also, I can eat decent food...this will be good.

Things in site are movin along, im not too happy with the house Im staying at currently but I will survive. Ive been working a lot more with farmers in the field, lots and lots of hoeing. Overall I am a pretty slow hoer (that doesn´t sound correct) but the other day something happened and I was able to keep up with the farmers. One of them looked at me in slight astonishmentat the fact that this gringo was keeping up with the rest and said ''David, ne koéporápa???'' (David, did you sleep really well??). I must admit....I was pretty darn proud of myself, it´s the small things in the campo that will make you feel good. Of course it was hotter than hell outside and I was completely drenched in sweat afterwards, but we hoed an entire hectare which is serious work.
One good thing from all this work is that I think I´ve finally gotten used to the heat, you just kind of except it and move on.

I finished 'This is your Brian on Music' by Daniel Levitin, which was quite interesting. The Peace Corps office has a library so once I get there im going to go to town and bring back tons and tons of books.

Oh, I almost forgot...on the walk over here I got cat called by a group of 10 adolescents, turns out girls in Paraguay know how to say some seriously vulgar things to guys at a young age. They made ME blush!

Howdy

My friends Perla and Rubito (pedro) Walking home with dinner by the ears.

It rained, finally. It has been raining off and on for three days and it has been great. The weather has cooled down, the roads arent all dusty...it is nice. I moved in with another family to get to know others in the community better. The family is a farm family so the living is different. My room is bigger and I have a door this time, but my bed has a mattress that is maybe 2 inches thick..if that. Needless to say, my back is pretty sore. Work on the house continues..but slowly. I have a rough and the walls are almost done. Im working with two womens committees now, I´m not sure why there are two...either some type of rivalry or simply because the street is pretty big and there would be too many in one group.

The other night we were eating tortillas for dinner and the mother offered me milk. I don´t like milk, but she milked the cow that morning and I didn´t want to offend her or be culturally insensitive so I obliged. She poured the milk and big chunks of....stuff came out with it. I was scared, what the %$@! was that? She didn´t seem to be bothered by it so...I tried some. It was DELICIOUS!! I dont even LIKE milk. It was slightly warm from being boiled earlier and sweet, the chunks were some type of biproduct from boiling but it tasted like the freshest, sweetest mozerella ever.

Im keeping this one short. I hope everyone is doing well. Email me if you have time

Ants in my pants!!

Freshly picked pineapple, bananas, newly harvested peanuts, mangos andddd fresh honey! Yum



Vaka ojukava pyahu. The newly slaughtered cow.


Thats right, ants in my pants. The other day when getting dressed I was surprised to find a colony of tahyi pyta´i living in my clothes. I had heard they ate clothes but these guys just wanted to dry, dark coziness of my jeans....I wonder why they didn´t go for my underwear???? Also, I was harvesting peanuts with a farmer and I pulled a plant that had an ant colony living in it, they freaked out and went apeshit on my hand...not pleasant.

Things overall are better. I have my days of frustration but I manage. Running REALLY helps so I run everyday and try to run an extra minute. Today I ran 34 minutes, tomorrow 35 and so on. Also I just keep busy, thoughI am out of books which is a serious bummer. Everyone should read A walk in the woods, super funny and would make you almost want to hike the App trail.

Now that the holiday season is over people are starting to get to work. Hoeing in the field sucks, its REALLLY hard work. Makes you really appreciate farmers. I started a youth group, we have a bunch of projects lined up. Got some families interested in using green manures, things are moving along slowly and frustratingly...but they are moving.

Latest food incident. For breakfast I had mondongo fried with eggs, which is cow intestine with eggs....and guess what? it wasnt that bad! of course I could only eat a couple forksfull before I could take no more, but it was pallatable. Lots of pineapples...its that time of year. Lots of peanuts as well. In the morning for breakfast I have warm milk with crushed peanuts in it...its really really tasty.