It´s avacado season

I didn´t know I was going to use the Intenet today so I have nothing written to post. It´s easier for me to write in my room as opposed to a hot cyber cafe where I always feel slightly rushed. Tomorrow is the anniversary of Villeta, the town I´m staying in, so tonight there is a grand festival. I´m not sure what that entails, but I know that there will be lots of dancing and art and the whole town is going to be there to celebrate. It´s also a holiday in Villeta tomorrow, so nobody has school so they can party as freely as they´d like tonight. Unfortunately, for the Americans, that isn´t the case. We have school at 7:45 and will either miss out on the celebrations, or be very out of it during language class. Oh, language class. Still not my favorite topic and I´m still bitter about it since I really would like to master spanish before confusing myself more, but it´ll be okay. I think as time goes on, I´ll pick up both languages a lot easier than now. And if I study more, perhaps?

This past weekend I traveled to another city to stay with a volunteer. It was a very interesting experience, and I was very happy to be home on Tuesday after riding on three different hot buses for a total of five hours. I miss train travel. ha.

Anyway, whenever I explained to the ¨chaueffer¨ where I needed to be dropped off in the new city, he dropped me off at an intersection (not like one in the US, but it was technically an intersection) and off the bus drove. A few girls stared at me from in front of the dispensa(store) while sipping their soda. ¨Is the police station this way?¨ I yelled to them. One of the girls pointed out the right direction and I walked away in what looked like the middle of nowhere as it started to rain. At that moment, three large pigs crossed the street in front of me and I could hear music in the distance. A band that sounded like a Paraguayan version of mariachi was practicing, blaring their horns outside. It was so beautiful. It was then that I thought, ¨Wow. I´m in South America.¨ Even though I was a little uncertain if I was going the right direction and I had no phone, I felt pretty calm. I stopped by another store and asked every other person on the way to ensure that I was headed the right way. At last, after turning down another road and heading up a hill, I found the other volunteer. Apparently she meant to tell me to get off at the bus terminal, but I was happy that I was able to take that walk and have the strange realization that I was in Paraguay. It was really beautiful.

Today was fairly easy, my friend Stephen and I went to the radio station in town and did a sort of interview, and we plan on visiting them next week with a script to do a radio show with our host siblings. We aren´t sure what topics we want to talk about, but we are super excited. I would really love to have a radio show when I get to my site. A lot of volunteers have a program because it´s such a useful resource here. The director told us that 70% of the town listens at a certain hour and it´s a great way to rech everyone. Naturally, we want to have fun with it and plan on getting creative.

Afterwards, we visted the fire station and talked to the ¨bomberos¨ there. They went to great lengths to show us everything. They do everything from deliver babies to rescue animals. Their firetrucks are really old, one even looked antique, and their uniforms and gear are always passed on from other countries because they have such limited funding. They do a lot of first aid (if you can call it that, it´s a lot more intense than first aid) and deal with a lot of moto accidents here. The driving here is pretty scary, to say the least.

We had a longer break this afternoon and when I woke up from my siesta, my host mom stopped me and a lady started measuring me for a dress. I was a little confused. I showed her what material I liked best and...I think I´m going to have a dress now. I had mentioned once that I wanted something like my little host sister had, and that´s all it took. I told her I love avacado, and now what is on my plate every moring and afternoon? Avacado. A ton of it. Which I do love, but for breakfast...I´ll take what I can get, really.

I still have no sort of routine here but I plan on working on that. It´s pretty difficult during training, but once things calm down and I´m on my site, I´ll have time for a lot more things. I don´t want to get too far ahead of myself, I really love the people in my group and it´ll be a lot more difficult without their support and breaks to talk English.

I love all of you and will write again soon!