Food, a Spider and the Rain

Well it's been another two weeks here in Paraguay- time seems to pass very quickly since I'm in class all day, everyday- thank god for the sabbath, our only free day during the week! This is the day I come up for air, wander around the neighborhood, go for a run, try and use skype at the very loud internet cafe/school supplies storefront (a whole other story) and I've been trying to keep up with my e-mail even though I only check it once, sometimes twice a week, which makes me feel normal and somewhat connected to my previous life. Speaking of e-mail, I recently received a "request" for a blog post, of which I am accepting, so if any of you are interested in hearing about something specific, I would be happy to address your request in a future post. My first, and only, request so far has been about what the food is like here.....and to sum up this part of my life in Paraguay, I have two words: meat and fried (and in no particular order). Basically if something can be fried, it is, and if something can have meat IN it, ON it, next to it, or by itself, the better. The Paraguayans are not ashamed to talk about how much they love meat and how weird they think you are if you don't....story of my life. Everyday my 6 year old sister asks me if I want meat ( as a joke, of course)- I'm pretty sure she thinks she's the funniest person she knows- I, however, thought it was funny the first time, maybe the second time- after that, the charm wore off. I thought when I got here I might be so overwhelmed by how delicious the meat was, that I would get over my total dislike for eating it and indulge, but no such luck. Since that hasn't happened yet, I instead just live with the harassment, which I’m fine with. I do, however, eat a lot of things here with pig fat in them because that seems to be another key ingredient in the cooking here. I'm starting to understand why people like bacon so much- pig fat really does makes things taste a lot better. Who the hell knows what else I've been eating, I have a feeling that just because I'm not eating big pieces of meat doesn't mean that I'm not getting my daily intake of meat products on a daily basis.

As for other food items, I'm pretty sure we get our milk from the neighbor´s cow, as do the families that other volunteers live with. Someone just comes by the house every couple of days with an old Coke bottle filled with milk and none of it's pasteurized, of course, but I drink it every morning in my tea. So far nothing terrible has happened and I'm not exactly sure how that that's worked out for me, but I feel like it's better not to ask questions when you're scared about how something gets from "the outside" into your mouth. The same goes for Paraguayan cheese- the smell could not be worse and I continue to eat it...again, better not to question. As for fruits and vegetables, I thought that maybe they were scarce since I wasn't getting very many of them in my first couple of weeks at my house, but as I wandered around I saw lots of families with gardens and found a little store that carries some vegetables. I also inquired about some of the other volunteers "vegetable situations" and realized that my host family just didn't like to eat them. I'm sure it's not very "culturally competent" of me, but I couldn't take not eating vegetables any longer so I started buying vegetables on my way home and making myself salads and various other vegetable-laden things. Long story short- my host mom got the point and now buys lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, green pepper, radishes, etc. which I'm extremely grateful for, and I ask the neighbor for avocados. He has a really big avocado tree in his yard and doesn't ever pick them because nobody eats avocados here- which I can hardly believe because I love them so much! Me eating avocado happens to be another really fascinating thing for my host family. I tried to explain how expensive avocados are in the states and how much people love them but it didn't seem to convince them that they should also eat them. I even tried making guacamole…no luck there either. Needless to say, I'm pretty happy about the avocado tree next door. There's also a mandarin tree, a lime tree and a pomelo tree in the backyard- all fruits that they DO eat on a regular basis. The last and, most important, food item to mention is mandioca, which is a root vegetable that looks like a sweet potato when it's pulled out of the ground. They skin it, boil it, and serve it in a dish like we would serve bread and it´s at every meal. It's mostly just starch, but I happen to think it's delicious so lucky for me because there´s lots of it and the Paraguayans are happy that I like it. My last comment about food, while I'm on the topic- the two things I miss most from home in case you are wondering are peanut butter and Peet's coffee.

In other news- my group went to visit a volunteer in her site last weekend. She's mainly working in the schools in the more rural part(s) of her town so we got to go and hang out with some really awesome Paraguayan kids for the afternoon, we saw their school garden, attempted to sing some songs in Guarani, and then the highlight of my trip, which was getting a photo of, and then promptly killing a gigantic spider above the bed I was sleeping in that night. I hate killing things, but I just couldn't let it hang out there all night while I dream with my mouth open....sorry spider- R.I.P.

In sticking with the nature theme- I have found that trying to avoid dealing with "the elements" here is much more difficult than it is at home. For example, today after lunch I went for a run close to my house and noticed while I was running that it was getting warmer and warmer, more humid, and a bit more overcast than it had been. I haven't been here a long time, but long enough to know that when this happens, it means the rain is coming, and fast. I started for home because I had seen earlier, on my way out, that my host mom had washed a lot of my clothes and put them out on the line to dry...I'm sure you all can guess what I was thinking as the rain started to come down hard? I picked up my pace to get home in time to save my clothes from being washed again by Mother Nature. (She's helpful and all, but my host mom had done a fine job the first time). When I got back to the house I started grabbing everything I could, as quickly as I could, just as two of my three sisters flew out the front door to help me, the whole time laughing and screaming because it was raining so hard. I thought it was pretty funny too, but only because we got there just in time to save the clothes from round two of the wash cycle....now, everyone go into your laundry room and say thank you to your washer and dryer.