Carpinteros in Caacupe

3/17/2011

Rose, Silvia (our language prof.) and myself

Trip Numero 2 is called ¨LFP¨ (Long Field Practice) and usually involves visiting yet another city or town in Paraguay BUT together with your language class and teacher. My class and I went to a city called Caacupe, which is a pretty big city. It´s located right along the ruta (highway) which has it´s ups and downs. For example: Easy access to Asuncion= Up; School on one side of the ruta, playground on other =Down. We met up with another volunteer named Alyssa who is going to swear-out (finish her 2 year service) this month. Our schedule pretty much consisted of either going to the local elementary school and reading a story with a different grade level or going to the colegio (local high school) to play a dinamica (dynamic game) with the students. We had a lot of fun, yet in the lower grades like kindergarten-2^nd most of the kids only spoke the local language (Guarani), so to communicate with them our language teacher had to step in. The trip in itself was a LOT of work. Before visiting the schools, our time was spent planning our lessons for the day, and after visitations our time was spent in language class. It was nice to have a change in setting for language class, but frustratingly enough the days were planned out to be just as long as if we were back at the training center. Also we all fell in love with the “carpintero” (carpenter ) family and were partly anxious to spend more  time with them. For each of these trips, the Peace Corps volunteer we go to visit must find a “host family” for us to stay with. Indeed these families are always reimbursed for our usage of food, water, and electricity yet sometimes it’s still not an appeasing offer for whatever reason. Por suerte (luckily), this particular group of woodworking families were kind enough to take us in for a few days, and they turned out to be THE nicest people I have yet to meet in PY. I ended up staying with Rueben and his family, Rose stayed with A and his family, and our other classmate stayed with the parents of these two men. SIDE NOTE: Of course our language teacher Silvia was put up in the city’s nicest hotel, despite her jokily telling those we encountered that she too was an American, specifically from Los Angeles). I was boarded up in a room with Rueben & Emmi’s 4 children: 3 daughters-Mari (butterfly ), Adi (+), Monica ($), and the only son- Abel (a bell ). Big families here are very common so to help me remember everyone’s names, I created a word/symbol for each person (as seen in parenthesis above).  As well there was Sandra, Emmi’s niece who hangs out a lot at the house and is clearly best friends with Mari, but doesn’t live with the family. Also roaming freely were two dogs, a puppy, a mama cat that gave birth to kittens in the backseat of the family’s idle Volkswagon and who could forget… “Abuela” This loving elderly woman and mother of Emmi, had a small apartment behind the family home and could consistently be found either busy making the sweetest Guava jelly you could ever imagine or insisting on conversing in Guarani with me. Adi (+) loved to pass us by while giggling “Grandma, she doesn’t understand you.”, and although she was right Abuela always shooed her away and carried on with our chat. I’ll admit I still have no idea til’ this day what we discussed lol, but I know it was surely pleasant because afterwards I was always given a big wet kiss on the forehead. On our final day in Caacupe, instead of the usual lunch with our families, we were instructed to pack the night before so that after visiting the schools one last time we could leave to have lunch in the city. I attempted unsuccessfully to have the plan changed so that we could enjoy one more lunch together with our families, but thankfully we were given some time for goodbyes. Abuela gave me another kiss for the road, as well as, some of her delicious marmalade. All of the girls wrote me notes which I found in my bag later, and Emmi handed me her phone number with tears in her eyes insisting that I call anytime and better come back to visit. How could one not adore such a warm and welcoming family? After hugging them all and slipping notes into each of their hands, I reassured them I would at least make a special trip back for Mari’s Quince (15^th birthday) in May and then my group and I all had to leave. Our last stop in the heart of Caacupe was SUGU; a German owned and run Swiss café. The owner spoke fluent Spanish, French, English and obviously German. He served us a full 3-course meal: salad, entrée, and dessert for 20 G’s (Guarani is also the name of PY money). This cost converts to about 5 U.S. bucks therefore well worth the price and the walk. The salad was drizzled with vinaigrette dressing, the pasta had fresh basil atop, and the dessert was delightful peach sorbet. The restaurant décor and not to mention the meal itself had us all forgetting what country we were in. All in all, it was a great trip, amazing people, and a fantastic meal to end on, wouldn’t you agree?

Love Notes from my adoring (and adorable)  host sisters