More than halfway through training...

Random facts that I love about Paraguay:
1) Instead of doorbells, you stand at the gate of the door and clap your hands
2) Driving by a random house in the country to see a cow being born…Yes, it is awkward to see two hooves coming out another cows butt.
3) Learning how to make soy milk and soy meat out of soy beans
4) Everyone loves to play not only soccer but volleyball
5) Since my friend has linda blue eyes, our project gets more attention from the local government
6) Beef, fat, noodle, soup. Add obscene amounts of salt and sugar to everything else.
7) Our Peace Corps doctor being in a major soda commercial for Paraguay
8) Hearing Red, Red, Wine on the way to school
9) Watching a family of 5 drive by on a moto
10) Walking around in 100 degree weather zig-zaging back and forth on the street from shade spot to shade spot

Where to start….Training is still going on as we learn more Guarani…Mba’echapa! This language is actually pretty difficult, but the nice part about it is that just about everyone mixes in Spanish words to it so I can understand some of it better. Technical sessions of training are going well as we are learning so many new things everyday from creating didactic materials in schools, to making gardens, to teaching nutrition, to making recycled paper and glasses from old wine bottles. Last Wednesday we went on a technical excursion overnight to another volunteers site to learn more about what they do. It was great to see another place as we met the kids in the school he worked in, equipped with separated trash canisters, and a garden, and got to go to the famous Basillica de Caacupé. Caacupé is the most famous virgin in Paraguay and has a very similar story to that of the Virigin de Guadalupe in Mexico, yet she is celebrated December 8th. The church was very impressive, as were the surroundings.
We met the President of a reforestation NGO and saw his vivero (I guess this translates to a tree nursery) where he grows all his trees and gives them to groups or cities who will plant them. It was beautiful there and he had so many different types of trees. That evening, we all went to separate families to stay the night with. Only in Paraguay would a family randomly allow a stranger into their home for the night and give them food for free…My family was awesome with a ridiculously large 5 month old baby. Random story, I have never witnessed breast feeding in the same way, my host mom for the night just whipped out her boob at the dinner table to breast feed the Michelin baby…nuts. The next morning we all met up once again to go on a fieldtrip to a national park with about 40 high school students on a Saturday. I thought it was amazing that the students were eager to come on a Saturday for Environmental Education….So we went and hiked to see overwhelming views of Paraguay. Apparently this is the only place like this since Paraguay is mostly flat. The secretary of the Environment also went with us to help educated all of us. When we were hiking down, naturally, it started to downpour rain. Well, that made things interesting as a part coming down was a rock straight down where we just had to slip on our butt, but then all the rain water was forming a river down this rock. Fun times. At least when we got to the bottom, and were all completely drenched, we had an hour bus ride back to Guarambare.

Time goes by so quickly, I can not believe we are almost halfway done with training. In about 3 weeks we will be told where our site will be for the next two years which is very exciting.