Month 5: Carni, Casa, and Charlas
Bienvenido de nuevo! Welcome back! February may be the shortest month of the year, but it was FULL of experiences and changes for me. To start things off with a bang, I had the wonderful opportunity to travel south to Encarnacion to celebrate Carnival's colorful, exciting cultural event. You may only know about the big Carnival celebration in Rio de Janeiro (or maybe you're like me and have seen the Pixar movie Rio too many times). Still, the truth is it's celebrated all over South America. It's a parade filled with music, floats, and dancers wearing sparkles and feathers. It was also an amazing opportunity to reconnect with most of my fellow volunteers for the first time since we separated after our swear-in in December. Getting down to Encarnacion is a long trek for volunteers like me who are much closer to the city of Asunción. For me, it's a 3-hour bus ride from Caacupe to Asunción and another SEVEN-hour bus from Asu to Encarn. Because of this, we haven't...