Anita Little Peace (Corps)

 Hi everyone!! Welcome back. Apologies for the delay on this month's update. The longer I'm down here, the faster time seems to pass. The month of April had two major highlights: Reconnect and Semana Santa. We'll dive into both, and I'll give some general life updates from my time in the campo. We'll get into what Reconnect is and what went on during that week below, but we made a couple of pit stops on the way to that training. First was another trip to the waterfall in a neighboring site. We had another lovely barbecue, watched a beautiful sunset, and spent a night on a horse ranch! The second pit stop was in Asuncion. Our Country Director (the head of PC Paraguay - shoutout Terry) was kind enough to open his doors and invite all our cohort to his house for a little lunchtime snack. We all gathered in the city the night before. I went through another Paraguayan rite of passage - attending my first futbol match! In this household, we are Club Olimpia fans (it's...

Hola! Welcome back. To all of you on the other side of the equator, it should be just starting to warm up from that frigid winter y'all have had. However, it's just cooled down to the point where I'm no longer sweating through my shirt multiple times a day. It turns out that when you get used to 100+ degree days, 75 feels like 50.  Thankfully, that means I can break out some of my longer-sleeved shirts and not have to wash half my closet once a week. Unfortunately, it also means that the laundry I hung out to dry on Monday is still not dry (today is Thursday).  But I digress. Apologies that this post is a few days late; this month may have been the fastest-passing one since I've been down here. To begin, I finally started my environmental Charlas and English classes! I give four environmental Charlas and teach 11 English classes weekly to kids from grades jardin (preschool) to 9th. We've had talks about biodiversity and animals and are now starting to move into tras...

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...

  One month into 2025! Welcome back. As the summer sun tries its best to melt everything and everyone down here - Paraguay was just deemed the hottest point on the planet at the World Day of Action against Global Warming, so I assure you I'm not exaggerating - I'm slowly starting to build up my sense of community and integrate more and more. My favorite part of my day is wandering around the neighborhoods and introducing myself to people. To my host family's delight, I usually come home with armfuls of fresh fruit, eggs, beans, and whatever else my new friends have a surplus of and are happy to share. The other day, as I was sitting in the school waiting for my class to start, one of the workers doing construction on the roof came in with two beautiful ripe papayas ("mamon" down here). The Paraguayan people never cease to amaze me with their generosity and kindness. My English classes have been going well; I teach about four weekly classes, which keeps me busy. M...