Llegadas y Comidas

Before I left I had a conversation at work with Reuben about thinking about the question “Where will you be 2 days from now? Or a week or 10 days?”. Well, it’s been 10 days since that conversation and wow has a lot happened in those 10 days. This is my attempt to share some of the things I’ve done, thoughts, maybe #thefeels, without boring anyone or writing a novel. Upon revision, I’m sorry, it turned into a novel. If you don’t have time, I don’t blame you here are the bullet points:

• Family: I’m living the Executive Director, Mary, and her family (husband and 2 daughters in their early 20’s), they’ve been incredibly accommodating and wonderful hosts
• Work: I work in the Administrative office in the Resource Development Department researching grants and foundations in English and translating materials from Spanish into English. The translating I enjoy, I’m not finding much in the list of International Organizations and I’m glad I’m not a fulltime grant writer and get to interact with people in my job
• Language: I’m getting better quickly with the language but group settings are still a big struggle
• Weekend: This weekend I got to spend Saturday with the Global Village team of Canadian Firefighters and Sunday at a celebration for the National Military Day 

For anyone else still here (read: mom) it has certainly been an exciting, emotional and thought-provoking week.

During my stay I am living with the Executive Director of Habitat Paraguay, Mary, and her family. Her husband, Basilio, just celebrated 25 years in the Military and this week was promoted to Comandante (I’m not sure what level that relates to in the US Military, but it’s my understanding that after one year he will be at the highest level). They have two daughters, Katrina and Yohana, 23 and 21, respectively. Both live at the house, are in school and working fulltime. Mary, herself, just finished her bachelor’s degree last week and also visits her mother every day to bring her food. So, here I was coming down to Paraguay to try and learn to take it all in, live a slower life and take “me time” (some strange concept people have told me exists, but I’ve never entirely known what it means), to find myself with an one of the busiest families in the country. That’s not entirely true, this lifestyle does not seem uncommon for Paraguayan families, several of whom are working multiple jobs with long hours. Mary and Basilio have made it clear they are not a traditional Paraguayan family. Upon my arrival they offered me beer, whiskey, red wine with coke (that’s how it’s drunk down here and it’s not bad!) and I said, I think we’ll get along just fine. They also eat a lot more vegetables and don’t have red meat with every meal, which is what I had heard was the norm. That being said, when I arrived there was chicken, pork and steak on the grill for lunch, in addition to some salads.

Basilio and Mary. 

The house is bigger than I expected, especially after the 10-minute drive from the main road on a rough rocky dirt road. It is 2 stories with 3 bedrooms, living room, dining room, family room, kitchen, open garage and really nice backyard full of plants including a mango tree and a lime tree, a table that could seat up to 8 or 10, a small bar and, of course, the grill built into the stone wall.

Backyard patio with bar and grill in the back. This is where I sit and journal most nights. 

Katrina, the older daughter, also works at Habitat as one of their Architects and has been deemed my tour guide. After a nice family lunch on Sunday she took me downtown to the “centro” where we walked around a museum with some Paraguayan history and culture. We also took a fun short boat ride on the Paraguay River, which runs through the city. Back at the house I got unpacked and then, for literally the first time since I can remember, I didn’t know what to do with myself. No homework, no work, no laundry, cleaning, or cooking. The Internet was down because of a storm. The house is a little outside of the city in a smaller town called Mariano Roque Alonso and I’ve yet to approach the idea of walking around by myself. So I got out my journal and started writing. I have so far written every day but I won’t share that all here because first it’s a boring account of what I did every day and ate for every meal, and also it’s in Spanish.

Me and Katrina on the Río Paraguayo with Asunción (and our new teenage friends) in the back.

The Habitat office is not far from Mary’s house. 15 minutes with no traffic, but there’s always traffic. The workday starts at 7am and everyone is pretty much gone by 3:30 or 4pm. Quite a difference from our office with no set schedule but you can’t count on most people to be there till 9, if they’re coming in at all that day. There are 55 people who work there; so far I think I’ve got down the names of the nine people in the Resource Development and Volunteer Mobilization Department where I work, but even that has taken me all week.

This week I was working primarily on researching grants from a list of International Organizations and Foundations that have English websites to see if we should apply for any. It’s been a lot of searching without finding much and has made me really glad I’m not a fulltime grant writer and get to actually interact with people in my job. After a day and a half of just that I asked my supervisor if I could switch off between that and something else because it was starting to wear me down. She gave me some material to translate; family profiles, grant reports and applications. The last couple days went by a little faster as I started to find a balance between both tasks and with the translation I feel like I am producing something. However, despite sharing an office with the rest of the department, I still don’t really interact with anyone; staff, volunteers, donors, as a part of my job.

T-shirt exchange! New coworkers with Habitat shirts I was going to get rid of. 

At the beginning of the week I would count down until I could take my lunch break, only to discover that lunchtime in a 55-person office with everyone speaking rapidly in a language you are just learning is incredibly overwhelming. I’ve never looked forward to and dreaded something so much in my life, except maybe my driving test. One day I took lunch late to avoid the chaos but not being around anyone at all during lunch in addition to not interacting with anyone during the day just made me depressed.  

Casual horses in the Botanic Gardens. 

Almost every day after work I’ve gone for a run with Mary at the Botanic Gardens, which has felt very freeing. On Tuesday it rained all day so we couldn’t go. This was one of the days I had researched grants to little avail all day and had lunch late. I did one of my favorite boot camp workouts in the garage, then offered to make dinner because Mary had a late meeting, and made a red sauce pasta with sausage that everyone liked. While making dinner and then waiting for Mary and Yohana to get home I talked with Basilio for probably about 2½ hours, all in Spanish. I think went through at least 4 phases of group development in about 6 hours, from forming to storming, norming and performing. I always forget the last one because it doesn’t rhyme.

I’m sure it’s all just the settling in process that comes with any job…only in a new language in a new culture.

It’s amazing how quickly you can learn a language when you are living it 24/7 and have no other option. I have an app on my phone that doesn’t need wifi to work and will translate one word at a time. It has come in handy several times when I am in a conversation and can come up with enough words around what I’m trying to say. Yohana commented that she could tell I was speaking better after just 4 or 5 days. I am sure I still butcher grammar and my vocabulary is limited, but I noticed yesterday that I’ve said a couple things without thinking about every word before I said them, and realized that I said it correctly, verb conjugation and adjectives agreeing and everything.

I am able to talk with people one on one pretty well, especially when they know I am learning Spanish and speak slowly and use simple words. I’ve probably gone from understanding about 35% to 70% on this front. Where I struggle is group settings. I probably only pick up 5-10% of what two or more people are talking about when they know each other well. I am probably at about 20-25% understanding strangers or people who don’t know each other very well, as long as I understand the context. I keep telling myself this is week one and things will get better. As an extravert who recharges my own energy off of the energy of others, it’s been a challenge to have that limited.

On Saturday I spent the day on site with the Global Village team from Canada that had been on my flight from Miami to Asunción. They were a group of firefighters from Ottowa, a mix of fulltime and volunteer, young and old, men and women, plus a handful of spouses. Since it was their last day we only worked a half-day and then had a variety of activities in the afternoon. Despite the fact that I spent the majority of the morning moving sand from the road, where it had been dumped, closer to the house in broken wheelbarrows, it still felt great to sweat, get to know the volunteers and be a translator.  

Proof I did some work down here. I'm not sure why I look so awkward posing, I think that was the wheelbarrow you had to hold up with your leg. 

There was a small ceremony after lunch to recognize the families and the volunteers and all the hard work that had gone into the home. The ceremony was very nicely done. It’s always great to see how Habitat changes lives, not just of the families, but of the volunteers. I love seeing a group of mostly Habitat newbies who leave at the end of a weeklong build knowing that they’re taking back with them far more than they brought and they’ve become lifelong advocates for stabilized housing. It’s how I got involved with Habitat and with affordable housing and why I stuck around and, I guess, how I’ve ended up in Paraguay.  

Other afternoon activities included visiting a Paraguayan Fire Station, the central market, getting the best empañadas in town from the oldest restaurant in the country, and a Brazilian Steakhouse for dinner. I wasn’t intending to stay for dinner, but the volunteers invited me to come along and since I didn’t know when the next time was I would be speaking English, I was so glad I did.

It was interesting to compare the GV team’s week to mine. Even though I had been living the Paraguayan life with a Paraguayan family for a week, there were a ton of things that they knew about that I had no idea, like the 3 Paraguayan beers that are at every restaurant or why all the dogs have really short legs. They had done so much; played soccer, gone to a traditional harp concert with a bottle dancer, taken a city tour, gone out dancing and seen live music. A small part of me felt like I had missed out on something. But I remembered that they have 18 people to ask questions about the country and the culture as opposed to just me, AND they could ask things in English. The information I gather about the country is based on the limited words I can use to ask questions, and the 30-70% of what I understand when I get my answer. Regardless, my favorite part of the week by far was facilitating conversation between the volunteers and the families so they could share pictures of their kids and talk about what they do for work. I felt I had served a purpose and helped a connection between two people from very different backgrounds that would have otherwise never happened.

Part of the Canadian team with the future family of this home. 

Lastly, the name of this post is Llegadas y Comidas, which means arrivals and food, so seemed fitting for my first week. It’s also the name of the text group between me, Mary, Katrina and Yohana which is primarily about rides and most importantly, food.

Despite the look on my face, I'm enjoying some Paraguayan sopa, like cornbread, but denser and not sweet and usually with cheese.