Yes I have a machete in my backpack, don’t you?

The last couple days of training ended quickly with many goodbyes and much laughter. On Friday morning we all headed to Asuncion for the swear-in ceremony which I’m pretty sure was the single most official event of my life. At the Peace Corps office, we all went through security and packed into vans and once we were in the van we could not leave the van until we got to the United States Embassy lest we wished to all go through security again. Though the embassy was just down the street, we took a very long detour, which included several turns. I was told that we had to take an indirect route in case we were followed, although I’m not sure how that would make us less conspicuous as there were 4 cars in the caravan and if someone had really wanted to follow us, they could have just met us at the embassy, but I guess that’s government policy. The actual ceremony included speeches from the Peace Corps Paraguay director, the Peace Corps Paraguay vice-director, the ambassador of Paraguay, and a pre-chosen trainee. We were thanked for being there from each speaker and reminded over and over again how unique our job is and how memorable that day should be. At the end we took an oath following the prompts of the ambassador to change our titles from Peace Corps Trainees to Peace Corps Volunteers.
All us newly transformed Volunteers hung out in Asuncion the next few days, enjoying the freedom we finally had after having our lives programmed the last few months and we lived it up in the hotel enjoying the hot water as if we’d never had a hot shower in our lives. Monday morning my friend Lauren and I left the hotel to travel to our sites and took a city bus to the Asuncion terminal in order to catch another bus to site. She had about five small bags and I had a very large backpack that is about have my size and weight with my sleeping bag strapped to the side, as well as two other rather heavy bags in my hands. To add to the already ridiculous picture, she had a machete sticking out of one of her bags because our trainer had given each of the 10 trainees in our group a machete on of the last days of training. I luckily had stowed mine in my enormous backpack so it wasn’t visible. When I stepped onto the city bus I could barely fit through the door and as luck would have it, the bus was extremely full. We both barely fit inside and she ended up standing on the steps by the door while we were both hoping she wouldn’t fall out the open door at any sudden turns or stops. I came very close to falling over with the backpack daring to pull me down every time the speed changed and because the bus was so full poor Lauren had to step out of the bus and quickly hop back on almost every time anyone else wanted to get off the bus. We literally couldn’t turn around and could barely move because we were weighted down by our baggage. After about 40 minutes the torturous ride, we finally arrived at the terminal, bought tickets to our respective sites, and I had to rush to catch my bus as it was leaving a minute after I purchased my ticket at the counter. Oh, and by the way, just to top it off and complete the nightmare, it was going back and forth between drizzling and raining the whole morning, it was quite uncomfortable.
By now it was 12:30 and I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, so I spent most of the ride (until I bought chipa from a vendor who hopped on the bus) listening to my stomach growl and feeling quite weak, especially after toting all of my stuff all over Asuncion. When I got off the bus at the entrance to my site, my host sister and brother were waiting for me with an ox cart to load up my stuff and take us back to their house. Yes, seriously, I rode home sitting on a chair roped down to the cart watching the ox poop as they pulled the three of us and some random old man who caught a ride with us, hoping that all of my stuff wouldn’t be soaked by the time we got there. It might have been a good idea to take a picture of that, but I’m not even sure that would have done the sight justice and considering the fact that it really wasn’t all that surprising to me and that wasn’t the first time I’d traveled in an ox cart just shows I’ve been in Paraguay for too long. As if that wasn’t enough, we stopped at a neighbors house to pick up the puppy that had been promised to me and I had to hold her collar to keep her from running around and jumping off the cart. And so I left the capitol where I had hot showers and friends that spoke English and came to dirt floors, latrines, and constant Guarani, with an ox cart, a puppy and a machete. What else could I possibly need? Of course, I don’t actually get to keep the ox cart… or the oxen…