some random thoughts

Has it really been over a month that I’ve been in site or is the calendar lying to me? I thought when I moved to site time would slow down and I would have to start making a paper chain to help count the days. Granted, many of those days have been long and seemed endless, but as a whole it seems like the month flew by. I finally feel like I’m actually settled and belong (mas o menos) in my community. These are some random stories and thoughts about my first month in site.

I am in a constant state of changing emotions and have possibly never felt so conflicted in my life. It seems that with every step along the way, Peace Corps has managed to bring me joy, anger, frustration, a sense of accomplishment, confusion, and peace. I didn’t know it was possible to feel all of that at once… for days on end. It’s truly amazing how quickly my feelings can change about the exact same thing within minutes and sometimes seconds. I will have days when my feelings swing from extreme opposites and back about every 5 minutes. This type of experience is a common occurrence for me and is proving to be an extremely growing experience. My emotions bounce back and forth between being lonely to feeling like I’m accepted in the community, feeling like me being here is pointless to feeling like I’ve accomplished something and made a difference, and feeling like learning Guarani is impossible and pointless to feeling like I’ve actually made headway and understand something. The only comforting thing in this confusing mish mash of feelings is that I’m not alone in strange experience and most volunteers feel like that. I have the expectation that the following 23 months will be a similar experience.

I built a fogon with only the help of my host brother and my training manual. I didn’t expect to do something like that for at least another 9 months or so, but someone bought the materials and two days later we got to work. I wasn’t completely sure that I knew what I was doing and was afraid that once we got to the oven and chimney I would have to call a friend to come help finish it. After two days of hard labor (aka a break every hour or two for terere and or food) the fogon was completed. What do you know, training actually did teach me something!

I’m changing. Maybe that all started the day I got on the plane to Miami but I haven’t felt that change too strongly up until now. I think a piece of me is becoming Paraguayan and that’s funny and scary at the same time. I can actually sit down with my family and chow down on the tallerin (greasy noodles and typically fatty meat) with a fork in one hand and a piece of mandioca (the closest thing I can compare this to is a potato) in the other. This might not mean that much to you, but if any of you ever come to visit the campo in rural Paraguay, you will know exactly what that means. I have also been known to mimic my family and pick up a bone off my plate to try and gnaw the rest of the meat off. I feel like it’s a treat when I get warm water for a shower. And sometimes I find it easier to think in Spanish than in English. There are things that I do or accomplish almost every day that I didn’t think was possible. I am finding a strength I never knew existed and sometimes I have to search long and hard for that strength, but I always find it.

Four months down, 23 to go! I don’t have any inkling that these next 2 years will be easy by any means, but I’m home.