Month 20: Parading around South America

Hey hey!!!! Making my way through the archives, so let’s get to May!

We started off with a bang this month, heading to Bolivia for a quick girls trip.

After spending a few days sandboarding in the dunes outside of Santa Cruz, hiking to a beautiful mountain lake on the outskirts of La Paz, exploring the city by a series of cable cars instead of buses (think ski gondolas instead of subways), and seeing some spectacular views, I cannot recommend Bolivia enough. Not only is it an affordable and beautiful place, but there is so much rich culture and history there. 

We did have a bit of a hiccup during our travels, however. Due to protests over the current president, our travels from Santa Cruz to La Paz (the two capital cities of the country), were a bit interrupted. 

Bolivia is a small country, and as such has one main highway running through the entire nation. Due to this, in order to protest, residents put up roadblocks outside of almost every major city to prevent buses or cars from going in or out. This means that in the middle of our bus ride from Santa Cruz to La Paz, we got stuck on the side of the highway for 9 hours. Thankfully we made friends with the owners of the restaurant we were stopped outside of, and had a very lovely afternoon with them as we waited for the roadblocks to clear.

Also due to these protests, a lot of the main excursions we had planned, such as visiting the iconic Lake Titicaca, were canceled as the tours could not leave the city to reach the lake. Despite all this, we had a fantastic time and would 100% return for another visit.

 

We arrived back in country just in time for Paraguayan Independence Day, celebrated with a parade! I had the privilege of representing my school and marching in the parade alongside my other profes, and was able to support my students such as Mariel and my host sister Susana as they marched, played the drums, and were “Chiroleras” (baton-spinners).

Remember that 2nd year site visit I talked about last month? Well, my programming team was so impressed by my Charla that they decided to invite me to help with a training event for the newest group of volunteers. This in service training (or IST for short) combined some volunteers with their Paraguayan work counterparts, joining together to plan future projects, as well as see some example of projects from past volunteers. 

I was able to present to them about my waste reduction projects in my site, as well as lead them through some ice breakers and games I use with my students to get them interested and engaged with environmental topics.

As you can see, I also snuck away during some breaks in the sessions to work on my crocheting. This little hobby has very quickly become one of my favorite things to do in my free time, and one that I am very excited to bring back to the states.

After IST, I had the pleasure of going to my friend Isabel’s site to celebrate her fiesta patronal, or the celebration of the patron saint of her community. Myself and a group of lovely volunteers spent the day at San Bernardino, a lake near her house, and then went to see the torrin, a combination of bull fighting and horse riding. There was also a church service with music and fireworks. It was interesting to see the differences in celebration between somewhere like Isabel’s site, which is a little more urban and bigger, and my own. For our fiesta patronal, for example, there’s simply a small church service. 

The final event of the month was the JEEN, which was essentially a giant indoor soccer tournament between middle and high school teams in our region. Our girls U17 team went all the way to the finals, and so we trekked to the sporting center in the center of Caacupe, braving torrential downpour, to cheer them on as they played. We finished second place overall, but it was such a fun and exciting week to be able to celebrate and support the school!

And with that we wrap up May!

As the temperature dipped down, our activity spiked! Stay tuned for the next 2 months :)