I’ve never really been too into the whole party scene and I’ve never really been too into the whole dancing thing… as in, it’s actually somewhat painful for me to try and pretend like I know what I’m doing out on the dance floor and I’m pretty sure it’s painful for others to watch me. This last weekend there was a fiesta, or fiestahápe as we call it in the campo, in my site and I think I danced with about 10 guys (mas o menos, I lost count after 5) and said no or “later” to about as many guys that I said yes to. …But I get ahead of myself, first let me tell you a little about the fiesta Paraguaya.
They may differ a little, but generally there are two types of fiestas, quinciñeras (the “coming of age” party for 15 year old girls) and the fiestas that include the entire community. There are a few differences, but to me, they both have the same feel. The only difference is that the quinciñera tends to include a younger age group, a 15 year old in a white dress, and awkward group photos in front of the cake. I still haven’t figured out why they think this is a good place for pictures, but apparently it’s tradition. Both types of fiestas typically begin with an awkward hour or so of sitting around staring at the ground, the table, or your neighbor before anything actually happens. I have found that cleaning the dirt from under my nails and picking at my cuticles is a good use of this time, although that usually only takes about 15 minutes depending on how dirty my nails are. Sometimes there is a dinner, or some kind of a show that goes along with these community fiestas but whether there is or not, the main portion of the fiesta is devoted to dancing to blaring music until 3 or 4 in the morning.
We had a big fiesta in my community this weekend and I went with my mom and sister hoping that maybe I could put off the whole dancing thing for at least half the night. That of course didn’t happen and I don’t even think it was 6 o’clock before someone asked me to dance with him. After I said yes to the first guy (aka basically dragged onto the dance floor after my family told me I should dance with him) the offers never stopped. I don’t even remember how many guys I danced with, but I think it was close to ten and I gave quite a few excuses to many more offers. Luckily about 90% of Paraguayans dance as badly as I do (yes friends, it’s possible), so I really don’t look like a complete idiot while I’m dancing, just sort of like an idiot. I might not know what I’m doing, but apparently no one else does either so they’ll never know I really can’t dance. Dancing more than a couple of dances with the same guy is a sign that you are interested in him, so rather than show too much interest and to save myself from further embarrassment, I excused myself from my dance partner after one dance. Every time I sat down though, someone else would come up, or their friend would shove them over, to ask to dance within about 45 seconds after taking my seat. It was like there was a constant, unstoppable stream of men. I think every guy I danced with told me I was pretty, I had about 5 guys ask if I would be their girlfriend and then didn’t understand why I said no, I had 2 guys ask if I wanted to leave with them, and I had one guy practically beg for my number. That same guy also literally stopped in the middle of dancing to see if my eyes were blue or not. Lucky for me, a huge thunderstorm was headed our way, so the fiesta ended at the early hour of 8 and I got to not only leave the continuous offers to dance, but I also got to get a good nights sleep.
I guess I could be flattered by being the coveted dance partner, but I find it annoying for many reasons beginning with the fact that I don’t like to dance. It seems to be fact here that being “rubia” equals being pretty but I’m still struggling to understand that concept. They seemed to think that just knowing my name, my nationality and whether I’m single or not is enough to qualify someone to be my boyfriend. Unfortunately, attending community events, like fiestas is part of my job now. I guess I need to either learn to like dancing or make up some better excuses.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Not for the faint of heart… or stomach
Mothers day came a week later in Paraguay than it did in the United States, so I spent this past weekend spending some good quality time with my host family. In addition to the 4 kids that live here, 4 of the other 5 children came to bid their mom happy mother’s day, so needless to say, there was a houseful. One of my host brothers had been joking with me the last couple days that he was going to have me help kill the pig for this special occasion. I told him yes while shaking my head no. While I can enjoy a good BBQ’ed fresh pig, I didn’t think I would have the courage to actually take the butcher knife and stab the pig in the heart which was exactly what my brother did while another brother was holding it down. I think it’s safe to say that was the goriest thing I have seen in my life and the whole time all I could think of was the movie “Babe” and couldn’t help but feel sorry for the pig while covering my mouth with my hand as my eyes widened which made my brothers laugh at me. I spent a good couple of hours watching my brothers de-hair (they used kitchen spoons by the way), skin, and cut up the pig. After it was fully slaughtered and parts separated (and I won’t go into detail, but yes I saw all of the insides), they threw it on a BBQ (aka sheet of metal on the ground held down my bricks, burning coals, and a raised square metal object that vaguely resembled a BBQ). A couple hours later, we ate said pig and I will say it was quite delicious.
When they had removed the intestines I had thought they brought them into the house but hadn’t done further investigation into the uses of pig intestines because I really didn’t want to know. That night my mom asked me if I was hungry for dinner and guess what was on my plate when I sat down? Yep, I sat down to dinner with my mom and dad with a plate full of pig guts. “It’s a specialty here,” my dad said, “don’t worry, it won’t do anything to you” (he likes to say this when I say I’m not hungry. I think he thinks I’m worried about getting fat, so he tells me that things like potatoes and fatty meat won’t make me gain weight. I’m not sure thought what he thinks would make me gain weight since he says that about pretty much everything.) I grabbed a big piece of sopa (Paraguayan corn bread) and cut off a little piece of meat. Unlike the meat I’d eaten earlier, this part of the pig is not so yummy and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get the picture out of my head of my mom removing the intestines from the pig earlier that day which made it all that much harder to eat. Somehow between large bites of sopa and carefully picking out all the green peppers on my plate, I got through one small piece and felt like I had been sitting down for long enough to excuse myself. I sat there for another minute to let my dad finish whatever he was talking about and as I was spacing out, I looked up and lo and behold, there was the pigs head hanging on a beam right by the kitchen table, gore and all. It was all I could do not to let my jaw drop to the floor at the site and I wasn’t really sure whether I wanted to laugh, be disgusted, or just be straight up confused. When I later asked my brothers why the pigs head was in the house, they seemed confused by my question and they just said, “we eat it.” So the next day I was again treated to unidentifiable pieces of pig meat. Seeing that I wasn’t exactly scarfing down my food, my brother asked me which part of the pig I liked and as I looked down at my plate, the only thing I could think of was, “the part that doesn’t still have hair on it.” He thought this was pretty funny and agreed that he wasn’t too keen on pig guts or skin either. While he started searching for actual pieces of meat for me but I found that I’d already lost my appetite. I feel like there’s supposed to be a moral of the story, or a lesson learned type of thing, but that’s really all I’ve got. I watched my brother kill a pig and I ate unidentifiable pig parts. End of story.
When they had removed the intestines I had thought they brought them into the house but hadn’t done further investigation into the uses of pig intestines because I really didn’t want to know. That night my mom asked me if I was hungry for dinner and guess what was on my plate when I sat down? Yep, I sat down to dinner with my mom and dad with a plate full of pig guts. “It’s a specialty here,” my dad said, “don’t worry, it won’t do anything to you” (he likes to say this when I say I’m not hungry. I think he thinks I’m worried about getting fat, so he tells me that things like potatoes and fatty meat won’t make me gain weight. I’m not sure thought what he thinks would make me gain weight since he says that about pretty much everything.) I grabbed a big piece of sopa (Paraguayan corn bread) and cut off a little piece of meat. Unlike the meat I’d eaten earlier, this part of the pig is not so yummy and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get the picture out of my head of my mom removing the intestines from the pig earlier that day which made it all that much harder to eat. Somehow between large bites of sopa and carefully picking out all the green peppers on my plate, I got through one small piece and felt like I had been sitting down for long enough to excuse myself. I sat there for another minute to let my dad finish whatever he was talking about and as I was spacing out, I looked up and lo and behold, there was the pigs head hanging on a beam right by the kitchen table, gore and all. It was all I could do not to let my jaw drop to the floor at the site and I wasn’t really sure whether I wanted to laugh, be disgusted, or just be straight up confused. When I later asked my brothers why the pigs head was in the house, they seemed confused by my question and they just said, “we eat it.” So the next day I was again treated to unidentifiable pieces of pig meat. Seeing that I wasn’t exactly scarfing down my food, my brother asked me which part of the pig I liked and as I looked down at my plate, the only thing I could think of was, “the part that doesn’t still have hair on it.” He thought this was pretty funny and agreed that he wasn’t too keen on pig guts or skin either. While he started searching for actual pieces of meat for me but I found that I’d already lost my appetite. I feel like there’s supposed to be a moral of the story, or a lesson learned type of thing, but that’s really all I’ve got. I watched my brother kill a pig and I ate unidentifiable pig parts. End of story.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
lost in translation
As I am currently writing this, I have been in site for almost three weeks, and have only had one conversation in English with a volunteer a few kilometers away. Its really not that bad except that now when I go to bed I start automatically translating my thoughts into Spanish and then random words into Guarani. But as much as my obsessive and unconcious language habits are affecting my normal sleeping pattern, Im still struggling to actually hold a conversation in Guarani. My brother has taken it as his personal duty to teach me the language, but him speaking to me usually consists of him saying a sentence five times and me staring at him with my eyes scrunched up and my mouth kinda hanging open because even after the fifth time, I still only understand a word or two which means I have no idea what hes saying. It`s also a fun story when I get intoduced to someone new and the family has the conversation for me in Guarani as if I can understand anything which is actually usually true except for the introduction part. That part I understand well. This is usually how the introductions go in Guarani,
Stranger to family member "Whats her name?"
Family member "Alison."
Stranger "O, Alison. Shes rubia, pretty."
Then the family member usually looks at me with a little smile and a little sense of pride at their rubia sister.
Stranger "Where does she live?"
Family member "Shes living with us, but she will be living with someone on calle´i soon."
Stranger "E´a! Is she happy here?" (As if my family member was more qualified than I am to answer this question.)
Family member, "Yes shes happy here" (then in Spanish to me) "Right Ali, you´re happy here?"
Me in Guarani, "Yes, I´m happy here"
At my sudden input in Guarani, the stranger´s eyes widen a little, jaws drop and then they quickly turn to the family member again.
"Does she understand Guarani?"
Me "Yes, I understand a little Guarani." This then always gets the biggest reaction.
"Ha! A little! I understand a little Guarani!" After they have repeated what I said, they then either grab me by the shoulders and shake me a little, turn to the person behind them and say, "She speaks a little Guarani!" or I get a mitakuña´ipora. (That literally means pretty little young lady and is quickly becoming a favorite nickname for me among the older women.) No matter what I say, they always repeat it and it always puts a smile on their faces.
Of course, not all my conversations go all that smoothly. The other day I went to visit my future neighbor and was feeling pretty good about how the conversation was going even with the typical pauses of silence that are typical for Paraguayan conversations. I was feeling pretty good about my Spanish abilities and even throwing in whole Guarani phrases and sentences. She had said something about my dog and then apparently changed the conversation to her daughter without me realizing what had happened and I continued talking about my dog. A couple minutes later I realized we were both confused and with a little bit of embarassment and laughter, and a few "wait who?" and "wait, what?" I realized I had just been describing her daughter as a dog. We both laughed a little and Im sure she went and told her husband what I said when I left and I have no doubt that she told her daughter when she came home. I could be super embarassed about that, but I think Ill just add it to the list of stupid Ali moments that is getting longer and longer by the day, like calling my ears a very specific male body part in Guarani, leaving a store with a half kilo of raisins because they looked at me funny when I said "I want this much," or telling my brother that I was hot (as in attractive) instead of telling him the water felt hot to me.
During training, our trainer often said that he came to Paraguay able to speak one language and will leave not being able to speak three. I think the same thing applies to me. I have had more than one person tell me that my English sucks now and I fully believe them. When I write in Enlgish I usually have to sit and think about how to spell perfectly normal, every day words, and when I speak in English I find myself throwing in random Spanish verbs. I guess theres not much to do about that except keep struggling through the Guarani and try to avoid describing anyone else as a dog.
Stranger to family member "Whats her name?"
Family member "Alison."
Stranger "O, Alison. Shes rubia, pretty."
Then the family member usually looks at me with a little smile and a little sense of pride at their rubia sister.
Stranger "Where does she live?"
Family member "Shes living with us, but she will be living with someone on calle´i soon."
Stranger "E´a! Is she happy here?" (As if my family member was more qualified than I am to answer this question.)
Family member, "Yes shes happy here" (then in Spanish to me) "Right Ali, you´re happy here?"
Me in Guarani, "Yes, I´m happy here"
At my sudden input in Guarani, the stranger´s eyes widen a little, jaws drop and then they quickly turn to the family member again.
"Does she understand Guarani?"
Me "Yes, I understand a little Guarani." This then always gets the biggest reaction.
"Ha! A little! I understand a little Guarani!" After they have repeated what I said, they then either grab me by the shoulders and shake me a little, turn to the person behind them and say, "She speaks a little Guarani!" or I get a mitakuña´ipora. (That literally means pretty little young lady and is quickly becoming a favorite nickname for me among the older women.) No matter what I say, they always repeat it and it always puts a smile on their faces.
Of course, not all my conversations go all that smoothly. The other day I went to visit my future neighbor and was feeling pretty good about how the conversation was going even with the typical pauses of silence that are typical for Paraguayan conversations. I was feeling pretty good about my Spanish abilities and even throwing in whole Guarani phrases and sentences. She had said something about my dog and then apparently changed the conversation to her daughter without me realizing what had happened and I continued talking about my dog. A couple minutes later I realized we were both confused and with a little bit of embarassment and laughter, and a few "wait who?" and "wait, what?" I realized I had just been describing her daughter as a dog. We both laughed a little and Im sure she went and told her husband what I said when I left and I have no doubt that she told her daughter when she came home. I could be super embarassed about that, but I think Ill just add it to the list of stupid Ali moments that is getting longer and longer by the day, like calling my ears a very specific male body part in Guarani, leaving a store with a half kilo of raisins because they looked at me funny when I said "I want this much," or telling my brother that I was hot (as in attractive) instead of telling him the water felt hot to me.
During training, our trainer often said that he came to Paraguay able to speak one language and will leave not being able to speak three. I think the same thing applies to me. I have had more than one person tell me that my English sucks now and I fully believe them. When I write in Enlgish I usually have to sit and think about how to spell perfectly normal, every day words, and when I speak in English I find myself throwing in random Spanish verbs. I guess theres not much to do about that except keep struggling through the Guarani and try to avoid describing anyone else as a dog.
Monday, May 10, 2010
pictures
Hey all, I have found that it is easiest for me to post all of my pictures on picasa, so I have uploaded most of them to my site. I think but am not completely positive that this is a link to that site. Hope you enjoy the pictures. Miss you all.
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…
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…
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