Brazil

I just got back from brazil with Aram. Here are a couple pictures. This one is us at a waterfall near Ubatuba.



Here is Copacabanna in Rio.

Here's Jeus looking for a hug.

More Random Pictures

Here is a snake that we found in the road. I think this is the poisonous kind that is around here.

Here is downtown Asuncion from the balcony of my parents hotel room.

Here is a plant that is all around my site. Go Vols!

More Pictures

Here are some more pictures. This first one is of the bridge I cross to get to the second school (San Jose) that I teach at. It is a 30min walk to get down there and this is how I get across the stream.

One day I showed up at San Jose and they had taken the roof off. It was pretty sureal looking espcially since there was only 2 or 3 kids in each class. Luckly for them it didn't rain while the roof was off.

Por fin

Hello again. It has been a while but I have had some time to get settled in and start to get some work going. I am living alone in my house and it has been a nice change. I am not exactly alone since my neighbors are very close and always stopping by but I can do as I please and I am cooking my own food which is nice. My house is by no means done. In true Terry form it is a work in progress and probably will be for two years. But it is livable. I am hoping to do some more work on it this coming week but I have said that many times (again in true Terry form). As far as work goes I have started teaching in one of the two schools in my community. They gave me the PE time which is 40mins once a week. Right now I am teaching dental health and I will be moving on to other topics such as nutrition, hygiene, and parasites prevention in the coming weeks. I am still working with the Water commissions that are trying to bring running water to the community. Right now there are two of them but my first goal is to get them to join so that it will be cheaper per house. They don't believe me yet but they will. I am hoping to start having talks about random health topics soon. There is one lady who is in the hospital right now because she had a attack related to her high blood pressure. That might be a good place to start. Here are some pictures of my site:

This is where me in my neighbors get our water from. It is a spring or ycuayvy in guarani. There aren't any amoebas here so it is relatively safe. I use a little bleach to treat my water each time I take a bucket out but none of my neighbors do and I drink at their houses almost everyday. Hopefully one of my future projects will be to build something to protect this
This is my house. It is one room 4m x 4m. The shack next to it is going to be my kitchen when I get a door on it and fix it up.

This is me in my latrine hole. It was really hard to dig this thing first of all because we are in the middle of a drought and the ground in dry and hard and also because after about 1.4m I hit rock. Luckily their is a guy in my town who looks for buried treasure (no joke) and he let me use his wrecking bar. That is the wrecking bar to my side.

1 month in

I have been is my site for about a month now and have been busy doing very little. I am trying to get to know the community, figure out where I am going to live and also figure out what I am going to do work wise.
Last week my boss, Don Pedro, and his assistant came to present me officially to the community and explain what I can do for them. It went really well. A lot of people showed up to the meeting and I think they are all willing to work with me. I already have had many people ask me about making soap which is one of our side projects but I think it will be a good way to get started. The only problem is I don't really know how to make soap. We did it one time in training and it didn't come out well. I guess I will have to learn the hard way now.
After going back and forth a bit on whether or not I was going to build a house I have finally decided not to. After talking to the community about it no one seemed to want me to do it. It is fine with me because I am ready to have my own space after four months of living in other peoples houses. Not to mention I will save a good bit of money as well. There is a house available for me in the corner of someone's property. It is one room that is 4m by 4m and a shack next to it that I am hoping I can use as well. It needs some work which I am going to do in exchange for letting me stay their rent free. I still have to live with a family for another month which will give me time to get everything done.
Other than that it has been drinking Terere and trying to learn guarani. Sorry no pictures yet. I didn't want to whip out my shiny camera right away but I will take some soon.

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.