Cheers In Every Language: Three Miracles

Because I am selfish and uncreative, I am stealing this title from my grandmother, who used to use it to tell the story of her and my great grandparents’ escape from Nazi Germany. I realize the blog entry of my second week in Paraguay is not worthy of such a title, but it felt like three miracles.

On Monday, after another monotonous day in the office, it must have seemed like something was wrong, because during our run in the Botanic Gardens Mary asked me if I had been bored at work. I tried to respond respectfully with, it’s not that I’m bored necessarily, just that I don’t talk to anyone during the day. I think she understood immediately and expressed that she wanted me to enjoy my experience, and that if something wasn’t working we could change it. I hope that I effectively communicated that I wanted to help the affiliate wherever their need for me was most but also wanted to understand the affiliate as a whole. The next day Mary, my supervisor, Azucena, and Milena, the Volunteer Coordinator took a look at my work plan and collectively realized that I did not actually need to be in Paraguay to do any of the things on it. She said it was Milena’s idea to have me spend more time with volunteers, so I am spending the entire week of November 23^rd in the field with the Global Village team.

The whole week got better from there. I spent the majority of Wednesday with Milena and Laura getting tools from the worksites the week before and taking them to the worksite for the next week. I got to spend about 6 hours in a truck with them and learned a ton about Habitat Paraguay’s Volunteer Program, their strengths, weaknesses, and goals. It was interesting to compare volunteer programs; they were both very interested in how things work at our affiliate. Milena was especially interested since she will be leading the first ever “reverse” Global Village trip when a group of Paraguayans come to Colorado to help with Flood Recovery builds next summer. I was also able to learn some about each of them. It was great to spend the day practicing speaking Spanish, rather than just reading it.

This week my Spanish has continued to improve but group settings are still incredibly difficult for me to understand. Thursday morning (this is the day of miracles) I overhead a conversation that I was not a part of, understood what was happening, offered a solution and they took it! Miracle number one. Then someone from the family services department asked if I wanted to attend an orientation with her, so I could learn more about that side of the organization as well. I ended up having lunch with her and two other people from that department and kept up with the conversation for at least 15 minutes! Miracle two. After that the lunchroom was completely empty but rather than sitting there depressed and alone I watched the Pitch Perfect 2 trailer (thanks Lara, Laura and Melissa for each sending it to me separately). Yes, my third miracle is the Pitch Perfect 2 trailer and I am okay with that.

This week I also got the opportunity to see a several new towns including Y’pacarai, Guarambare, Limpio, Luque, and J. Agosto Saldivar (all of which I’m still working on pronouncing, specifically the first two, which are in Guaraní) between the errands for the worksites and the two family services meetings I attended. Mariene, the family services employee who took me around with her, was happy to answer my questions and shared tons of information about everything from working with the families, to the cities and towns we went through to government and policy. I had my first experience with a family that spoke almost entirely Guaraní, which still sounds like garbled vocal inflections lacking any actual pronounced syllables to me, but at least I can tell the difference between that and Spanish.

Family services orientations happen in libraries in Paraguay too!

Saturday I went with Katrina to the town of Caacupé, famous for their Basilica with the largest sanctuary in the country. December 8^th is the day of the Virgin of Caacupé in which thousands of Parguayans make the 50-kilometer pilgrimage from Asuncion to the Basilica in Caacupé to touch a statue of the Virgin Mary. The basilica was very impressive with stained glass windows and an observatory deck with a great view of the region.