I have a site!! I will be spending my next two years in a pueblito called General Bernardino Caballero, about 100 km from Asuncion. For the celebration/site revel everyone received folders with their site description, names of other volunteers that are near them, the types of resources they will likely be working with, names and occupations of contacts etc.  It's actually a ton of information but I feel that there is only so much a folder can tell you about a community, so I'm really excited to visit this weekend. One of my contacts is coming on Friday to meet me and take me back. I'll spend the weekend meeting as many people as I can, but especially the doctors and nurses that are working at the health center as they were the ones who requested a volunteer for their community.  After that, it's back to training to finish up all the odds and ends until we all move for good on April 11th.

One of things that I'm specifically excited about are the area. Paraguay is very flat, but my site is actually at the base of some hills and there is a ton of hiking/outdoorsy (zip lining?) stuff nearby.  The health center has also expressed a lot of interested in prenatal education/breast feeding/general women's health which would fit my interests perfectly, but really the opportunities will be endless.

I'll be sure to update after he visit, but for now here's a picture that I found from a google search.

www.panoramio.com

Hey all. I simply cannot believe that in less than one week I will know where I will be living for the next two years of my life. Expect an update next Tuesday with that info. I couldn't be more excited!

Long field practice has also come and gone. It was an awesome opportunity to put into practice what we have been doing in training. Katie and Brad were super guapos, (remember Spanish speaking friends, this means “hardworking” not “good-looking” here in Paraguay, although I would apply both statements to this Peace Corps power couple) and set up three different opportunities for us to present to Paraguayans. I have this fear that I will move out to my site and despite the fact that my teachers and current Paraguayan family have no problems understanding me, NOBODY will. However, on the visit it appeared that most people, both adults and children, are able to understand me. My host for the week and I even talked in depth about her interest in natural/preventative medicines, which resulted in a brief reprise from eating meat for which I was very thankful.

I also finally took a few photos.  And by I took a few photos I mean I handed off my camera to our tech trainer and he took some, and then my memory card decided it wouldn't work without being reformatted. Whoops. Instead, here’s a picture of where I've been living for the past 2 months:

My host family's home.

Favorite Flower: Copa de la Noche

Halfway There

I'm in the middle of the 5th week of our 10 week pre-service training. It's hard to believe that time is going so fast. Next Monday we leave for long field practice, which is a four day excursion to help a volunteer and get some more hands on training in a setting more similar to what we will experience in our own sites. I'm headed to Caaguazu with one of our language teachers, a tech trainer, and four of my classmates. We will be giving a charla on dental health to adults, helping with a computer class, and giving a charla on parasites to first-graders. I'm excited to see another part of Paraguay while trying out my language in a more stressful/realistic situation.

After the trip, we'll have only one more week before we receive our site placements. We had placement interviews where we talked about the kind of work we would be excited about doing, and I'm optimistic.  All of the community health sites will have a health center, a school, and some sort of commission (youth, women's, etc.)  I think having all of these resources nearby will give us a lot to start with.

Fun fact of the day: Guarani (the language I'm studying here) occupies third place for the etymological origin of the scientific names for plants, behind Greek and Latin.

Completed Fagone for a local school and my training group. Photo credit to Kelsey!

Machete Training

Safety First