In week 6 of
Pre-Service Training (PST), trainees travel in small groups to visit current
Peace Corps Volunteers at their sites and get the opportunity to practice using
the technical skills they’ve been learning.
Since we traveled with our language groups, Ben and I had two different
Long Field Practice adventures. I travelled with Cory, Stacy, Tyler, Ashley,
and our language professora Ramona. We visited Matt in Capilla Cue, a small
community in the department of Paraguari. Matt is an Environmental Conservation
volunteer in our sister G (G-37). He splits his time between teaching in the
community school and working with local farmers. During our visit we got to participate in
both!
Our first
day in site, Matt took us to meet a local farmer and help him harvest his
lupino seeds (an abono verde or “green manure” plant used to revitalize the
soil between crops). So actually, this was a blast! Picture this: the six of us
PCVs, our Paraguayan language professora, and a Paraguayan farmer all jumping
up and down on a big pile of sticks. With every jump you hear a multitude of
cracks and pops as the seed pods burst open and spill their seeds onto the
patio floor. We must have been jumping for an entire hour! By the time we had separated the seeds from
the empty shells and twigs, the sun was setting, but will still had enough time
to visit the farmer’s vegetable garden. There we got to practice spraying
organic insect repellent, made from the leaves of a local tree, on his tomato
plants. I got to taste the leaf of a Ka’a he’e plant straight from his garden.
In Guarani, “Ka’a” means yerba mate (the plant they use to make tea) and “He’e”
means sweet. The Paraguayans use this leaf in their tea to make it sweet. In
the states this plant is known as Stevia, but it originated here in the heart
of South America.
During the
nights of our long field practice, we each stayed with different host families.
My host family lived in a little house at the edge of the community. My host
mother cooked us several different Paraguayan meals including chipa guasu and
sopa paraguaya. My host father played the guitar and sang as with shared terere
in the evenings. My host brother and sister were eager to show me their school
projects and were patient when I tried to speak to them in Guarani. They spoke
mostly Jopara, (a mix of Castellano and Guarani) so there were many times when
I had no idea what they were saying to me. I did learn however, that the
community name “Capilla Cue” means “there used to be a little church”, and if
you walk along the red dirt road to the school you will pass by a large cross.
Unfortunately, I was unable to figure out the exact relationship this cross has
to the church that is no more.
We spent the
next morning practicing Guarani in language class with Ramona. That afternoon,
we drank terere with one of Matt’s neighbors before asking them if we cut down
some of their bamboo to repair the garden fence at the health center. They
quickly agreed, and soon we were hauling long stalks of bamboo down the road.
Once at the health center, some of us chopped and split the bamboo with a
machete, while the others staked it into the ground and secured it with wire. I
like to think that I was actually pretty good at splitting the bamboo. 
Matt
rewarded our hard work by taking us on a hike to a “nearby” waterfall. We
climbed through barbed-wire fences, walked through grassy meadows, and for a
large portion of the trip, wading in the river itself. All the while, Cory
whistled the soundtrack of Lord of the Rings, making this feel like an epic
journey. When the river suddenly dropped into a wide pool, we discovered that
seeing the waterfall was well worth the arduous hike. Here we found a brilliant
oasis in the rolling hillsides of prairie land. The water split into two falls
and spread into a pool large and deep enough to swim in. There was even a
little ledge behind the waterfall that was just big enough to sit on. As I sat
in the crevice behind the cascading water, watching Ashley performing impossible
yoga positions high up on the rock and the others splashing eachother in the
pool, it hit me… “This is Peace Corps. This is what we all pictured in our
minds as we suffered through the long application process. What could be more
picturesque than the six of us swimming and playing beneath a beautiful
waterfall in a foreign land?” I definitely wished Ben had been there to share
that moment with me. After spending several hours swimming in the pool and
climbing the surrounding rocks, we hiked in the dark back to our houses.
On the third
day, after another morning in language class, we visited a corn field of a
local farmer and helped him plant abono verde seeds between his rows of corn. The
plants will help to keep the soil rich with nutrients even after the corn is
harvested. That evening, we worked with
Ramona to prepare our charlas for the following day. 
The theme of
our charlas was making “Recycled Art” out of trash. For our charlas, we split
into two groups: Stacy and I made water rockets out of plastic bottles with the
younger kids, while Tyler and Cory made wallets out of milk cartons with the
older kids. Both crafts were made of recycled materials. With the younger kids,
we had to give our entire charla about the 3R’s (Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle)
completely in Guarani. We started with the game “dibujo surpreza”, which Ben
decribes in his post, to kids active and participating. Then we asked them
leading questions about what trash they usually see and how they manage their
trash. After that we introduced the 3R’s and told them about one fun way to
reuse plastic bottles- Make a Water Rocket!
You should have seen the excitement as we launched our water rocket into
the air! Afterwards we taught them how to make flowers from toilet paper tubes
(the girls loved this!). The charlas
were a success. We had a lot of fun and gained valuable experience presenting in
schools! The next morning, we said goodbye to our host families and to Matt
then boarded the bus for Tacuruty. 
