Swearing in

This is a picture from our swearing in ceremony. The guy who is standing behind me to the left is the US ambassador here. I talked to him for a while because he held the ambassador-like position in Cuba before he came here. He said that the status in Cuba is pretty bad.
About a week before the ceremony I asked my host dad if I could buy a shirt and tie from him because he sells clothes for a living. He refused to sell me anything and insisted on lending me the shirt and tie I have on in the picture. They are both pretty ugly but not quite ugly enough to be funny. Just ugly enough to imply that I have bad taste in clothes. Oh well.

Chaco pictures... better late than never

After many atemps here are a couple pictures from my chaco visit. The first pretty much what the chaco is like. Long, straight road with nothing on it. The second was the traranchula that I found next to my sleeping mat. That is my sleeping mat on the left there.

Horse show

About a month or two ago I went to a horse show with my dad my brother and one of my peace corps friends. At the time my Spanish was still pretty primitive so I thought that we were going to ride horses but when I showed up it was just a bunch of people dressed up in cowboy clothes and riding around in circles on their horses. There was a band that would play a ranchero song while a group of 3-6
horses would around in the middle of the ring for a couple minutes. Then the announcer would say something that I couldn't understand then they would do it again. This went on for 6 hours. There was nothing to do but watch the horses and drink terere. It got old pretty quick but I got some good pictures out of it.

Training is over

I am finally done with training. It was kind of a long three months but now I am officially a peace corps volunteer. This picture is of me and my host family on the last night I was at their house. From left to right they are Hector (my brother), Agueda (my mom), Alfredo (my dad), Me and Geraldo (my uncle). I am in Asuncion now, hanging out for a couple days before I go to my site and I thought I would take the spare time to update the pictures here. I don't have any of my site yet but I will have plenty of time to take them over the next couple years.

Mariscal Lopez

I went to visit my site last week for four days. I was a good trip and it was nice to finally see the place I will be living for the next couple years. It is a tiny community which is about a 45 minute walk from Piribebuy. As of now there are alot of tree there but they are in the process of cutting them all down. Most of the houses were made out of mud but there are some people in the comunity that have some money. Most of the people spoke or at least understood spanish but no one did unless they had to. I spent most of the time sitting and listening to guarani. Occasionally they would ask me a question in spanish and I would answer then they would discuss my answer in guarani. It is kind of frustrating after having more or less learned one language I still can´t understand what anyone is talking about. As far as work goes I don´t think I will have any shortage. They want me to work in bringing running water to the community. At this point I know very little about getting this done but I guess I will learn. There is certainly plenty of other work as well. Building latrines and fagons could keep me busy for a long time. There is a good chance I am going to end up building my own house too. All in all I think it will be a good site for me.

Site Assignment

First off here are some pictures of my family here. That is my dad Alfredo in his cowboy hat and his gun. He really likes cowboy stuff. When he first showed me the gun I thought it was a cap gun because it is really small and kind of cheap looking but one day he opened it up and showed me the bullets in it (it's not loaded in the picture). The other picture is my mom Agueda, one of my sisters Rosana, and one of my brothers Hector. Hector is the only one of my sibling that lives at home. He is in high school as his shirt suggests. It is his favorite shirt and he had no idea what it said until I translated it for him (It just says "High School" in case you can't read it).
I finally got my site assignment yesterday. I will be living in a community called Mariscal Lopez which is close to the town of Piribebuy in the department of Cordillera. It is only a couple hours from Asuncion and also is close to my host family. I went to a site near there to build a fagon and it seem like a nice enough spot. The community is about 700 people and supposedly I will be able to use both Spanish and Guarani to comunicate. It has electricity but no running water and that is about all I know about it at this point. I am going to visit next week for about 4 days so I guess I will be able to say more at that point. Other than that not too much new going on here. I am just trying to keep my sanity for the last little strech of training. Chao.