Tag Archives: Daily Life

No…No…No…I Don’t Have a Boyfriend

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No, I haven’t found that special Paraguayan

No, I don’t have someone waiting for me in the States either

My answer shouldn’t come as a surprise

Because it’s the same as yesterday’s response

Does this topic really require daily discussion?

–

This is my excuse:

Clearly an excuse is necessary…who knew?

As if living in a foreign country for two years isn’t enough.

I’m not looking for one…

I don’t have time, I’m busy

I have things to do and I’m in Paraguay to work

I can’t bring a Paraguayan back to the States (unless he can support himself)

No, there’s no rule against it (that would be stupid)

Oh, I’m hopeful, but I’m not waiting

–

Well, since we’ve had this convo so many times

Your responses are of little surprise:

The man’s the one whose supposed to look and you’re pretty

But come on, you could just bring him home a few hours

Love is powerful

No rule against it? Well then…(insert critical look)

Are you really saying these things to me?

–

The inevitable conclusion:

It’s not that I’m against them, back off a bit would you?

You make it seem like without one I’ll drop dead

Which, is beyond annoying.

Yes, of course, if the perfect man crosses my path

Things would be different

–

Dear Paraguay, what I didn’t tell you:

Sure, I’d be happy to have a boyfriend

But, I’m not pining away

Feeling worthless or pointless because I don’t have one

I have nothing against Paraguayans

They are actually a pretty attractive people

–

But the thing is this…

I’m leaving in 2 years, tops 3

And I’m looking at 8-9 years of studying when I get back

Having kids is not on my agenda right now

No way in hell am I doing all the cooking and cleaning

Aggressiveness, catcalls, and any comments about my body

Are rude and a huge turn off

I don’t understand enough Guaraní and my first language is English

More important than anything is a good conversation

–

So, if you’re insistent on pairing me with a Paraguayan

Find someone who can work with all those things

Who isn’t dating or married, doesn’t have kids and has his teeth

And is genuinely a “good” person and someone I enjoy

Find someone who fits that bill

Then we can start a real discussion about dating.

Yes, I Can Cook

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I think my community lives in fear that I will starve. Part of it is cultural, it’s part of Paraguayan culture to give your guest food and share everything you eat with the people sitting around you. But, the food I’m given goes above and beyond. People ask me what I eat regularly and are often surprised to hear I cooked my own lunch.

I don’t know why they’re surprised. If I was a good Paraguayan woman I’d already know how to cook. I guess it goes to show where I fall on the scale of Paraguayan women. Sometimes I think it’s because I live alone—one can’t simply cook for one can they?

I’m not complaining about Paraguayan generosity. It’s one of the things I love about living in here. Besides, recently I’ve been almost short on money—something about a Peace Corps salary and a run of bad luck. If I’m hard-working and visit people, I almost don’t need to cook or eat at home. I don’t go hungry, that’s for sure.

But, the free food comes with a small cost: I eat the food that my Paraguayan friends and contacts are eating. Which is to say, a lot of meat and bread and yucca and rice. Don’t get me wrong I like barque and yucca as much as the next girl, but even I have limits.

In Paraguay, food isn’t a meal unless it involves chunks of meat. This might be another reason why people don’t think I can cook. I don’t cook meat in my house. When I describe what I eat, they kind of give me this blank expression as though they are waiting to hear what I ate after my rice and vegetable stir fry. Nothing?

I was never a picky eater, and my time in Paraguay has made me less so. I’m an expert at eating things I don’t like, and not showing it. My community members bubble with enthusiasm every time we eat hot dogs or sausages. I just enjoy their happiness and I’m thankful for being invited to share a meal with them. But, I can’t help but think about the diet and what it’s doing to my body. My hair is thinner and duller. I’m sure could do enough exercise to burn all the calories. Is my face breaking out because I’m stressed or because of what I’m eating? No way to know.

I know what I cook is healthier than the standard Paraguayan menu, but I also don’t want to be cut off from something as important as eating with families. It’s a balance between eating what makes me feel good and tastes good and spending time with my Paraguayan friends. My Paraguayan friends always win.

A Streak of Bad Luck

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Stairs2015 started off with a streak of bad luck. I kept thinking that each inauspicious thing that happened was the last. I’m still hoping that, but I think it’s real this time.

It started with the general homesickness that comes with being away from home and everything that is remotely like home for a year. Then, there was a lot of reflection about my friendships in site. I cracked my new cell phone screen. My computer died resulting in the loss of a lot of my data. I lost all the tracking sheets of the work I’ve been doing, which I have to report anyway. I lost my grades to the class I’m teaching. I paid almost a month’s worth of Peace Corps salary to fix my computer. I lost the keys to my house.

Despite the bad luck, fate was kind enough to work things out on its own. And, I must stay that considering the stress I felt I handled everything well and didn’t cry. When I get into a contemplative state about home and friends there’s nothing to do but ride it out. A couple nights of bad sleep, some journal entries, and numerous very intense workouts will inevitably clean out my system. The crack on my cell phone isn’t so bad, and I think if I’m very kind to it from now on it will last me a couple of years. My computer works again, and a lion’s share of my data was backed up in various places. A Peace Corps salary really isn’t that much, and what is money for if not to spend? I did manage to get back into my house and it was easy to change the lock. I got to employ my carpenter skills and enforce my feeling of security at the same time.

I still don’t understand why good things and bad things come in bunches, but I’m looking forward to the series of nice things that have to be coming my way. Through it all, I couldn’t help thinking that 2015 is going to be a great year. Maybe the greatest year yet. I don’t know the source of my positivity, but think it is worth noting because it seems like a break from my past self. Is it possible that I’ve become a person that can let negative things slide off without much lasting impact? I like to think so, and that means that since coming to Paraguay I’ve completed at least one self-improvement project. It’s also possible that the positivity comes from the constant sun or the general positive outlook that Paraguayans have. As a friend said not too long ago, sometimes we don’t have to know why we feel a certain way. We just feel.

The Day My Life Ended And I Was Still Alive

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Jesuit Ruins WindowsOkay, that title is a little dramatic, but I did draft this post using a paper and pencil because my computer bit the dust for a week. As a novelist, blogger, teaching, and lover of music the loss of my computer made me realize how much of my day I spend interacting with electronic content. But wait, don’t get the wrong impression. A good number of those hours that interaction is nothing more than listening to music while I do things like clean. I also average about 7 hours a day out of my house hanging out with people or working in my site.

Dependence on electronics is not a new topic of discussion. But, I am a Peace Corps volunteer and I have hours upon hours alone in my house no matter how hard I work. My computer is a trusty companion in my solitude and a connection to everything that isn’t Paraguay. Some people might think that calling a computer a companion is unhealthy. I invite them to join the Peace Corps and then decide.

Living without my computer for a week reminded me of my limits, humanity, and imperfections. It was a good reality check. As my sister said when I explained the situation, “Go back to the basics.” I felt connected to the people that lived generations ago. What did they do with themselves? I can tell you now from experience that it involved exercise, visiting people, the radio, and reading.

If I exercised as much as I did when I didn’t have my computer, I’d be ripped. If I visited people as much as I did when I didn’t have my computer, I’d be exhausted all the time. If I listened to the radio like I did when I didn’t have my computer, I’d only know fifty songs. If I read as much as I did when I didn’t have a computer, I’d be a genius.

Time Away

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Chasing SunsetsI went on vacation to Uruguay over the New Year. What a pleasure it was to be reminded of the salty ocean breeze and relieved of the humid heat that is Paraguay’s habitual expression. I passed the days in several of Uruguay’s coastal cities. I slept in a neat little hostel in Montevideo, the capital. I felt like I was in Europe.

It’s hard to express how amazing a hot shower with real water pressure feels after months without. I’d nearly forgotten that there are places on Earth where buses only stop at bus stops and where people only speak a language I know well (Spanish).

There were many highlights. Walking along the beach. Viewing Montevideo from the top of maybe the tallest building in the city. Swimming in the ocean. Writing #PCPY in huge letters out of sand on the beach. Taking more selfies than anyone should ever take. Glimpsing the surface of Uruguay’s historic sites. Eating a dulce de leche ice cream Sunday to celebrate the New Year. Hanging out with friends and meeting the eclectic people who fill hostels. Bringing in the New Year with zillions of mini firework displays on the beach and in the street—yes, fireworks were set off in the middle of major city streets and feet from apartment buildings.

Boat on oceanThe trip fulfilled my almost constant desire to explore new places, but I also missed my little home in Paraguay as soon as I cross the boarder. I wasn’t surprised I missed Paraguay, but the strength of the feeling was unsettling.

I found myself watching the world through a series of lenses, not just the two I usually use in Paraguay. Every night in Paraguay I look up at the stars and wonder if my family in the States can see the same stars. All I know is that Orion’s Belt is called the “Tres Marias” in Paraguay. In Uruguay, I looked up at the stars and wondered if my States family could see them and if my Paraguayan friends were outside drinking terere and looking at the moon like they do when I’m there.

In Uruguay, I contemplated how location changes reality. Watching the sun plummet into the sea, I wondered what the point of my vacation in Uruguay was. It was fun and all, but the point of it was equivocal. The answer came on the day-long (yep, 24 hours) bus ride home.

The point was to shake things up. It’s easy to fall into the bore of routine and familiar, no matter where you live. The regular makes us feel secure, but the cost of too much security is the loss of perspective.

I returned from Uruguay more tired than when I embarked. The ocean made resting impossible. But, who goes on vacation to sleep? I did come back rejuvenated. The crash of the waves lifted the benightedness of the daily same old that plagued me before the trip.

Mindfulness

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SkyI won’t live long enough to get sick of rainbows. Of Jacob’s ladders. Of sunsets. Sunsets with clouds puffed in pink against a purple glow, streaked is violet over a golden spread, and wisped in orange and gray across the fading blue of day and darkening navy of night.

I don’t think I’ll tire of thunderclaps; the flash of lightening—veins across the sky—will never lose their thrill. I will always look forward to the rain. The first drops that make the dry ground let up little poofs of dust, the sideways no-way-to-stay-dry sheets mid-storm, and the mist before the sun returns.

I don’t believe I’ll ever know anything more beautiful than the stars on a clear moonless, lightness night or the orange moon glowing just above the treetops. I won’t live long enough to get sick of the magenta sunrise.

It pains me to think there might have been times when I was too harried, too busy to notice these things when they crossed my path. To be truly lost is to forget life distilled is sunbeams and water droplets.

Sometimes Being a Woman Isn’t Fun

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ViewIf you’ve studied or spent time in Latin culture you’re probably familiar with the term “machismo” (strong or aggressive masculine pride). Someday I’ll probably talk about machismo in terms of Paraguayan men or relationships between men and women in Paraguay, but not today. Today the topic is how women talk about other women, and how it feeds machismo and everything else that’s disempowering to women.

In the States and in Paraguay you can gripe about or battle gender inequality, the complaints are justified and the fight is needed. But, when we talk about empowering women we often talk about one of two things: 1) giving women skills and tactics to get what they deserve, 2) teaching men to be less discriminatory toward women. We infrequently talk about how women treat and talk about other women, and that’s where we need to start.

I love so many things about Paraguayan culture and spending time with Paraguayan women, but there is one thing I detest and that is how critically and negatively Paraguayan women talk about other women. In truth, women bashing other women isn’t unique to Paraguay, but it is so blatant here that it directly influences almost everything women do. Women might critique other women’s weight, their dress, their house, their food, their children, their husbands…anything that can be blamed on someone could be the subject of scrutiny. I have yet to hear a conversation among women about another women that is devoid if negativism. The catty comments might be sandwiched between compliments but they’re there.

People in my community joke that women get dressed up to go to the soccer game to impress other women because the men don’t care. You might brush off women’s negative comments about other women as envy, and sometimes that is the root of it, but I think more often these comments stemmed from learned culture and are not based on insecurity.

We got to change this.

Mercy: Send Some AC, Please!

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Jesus Jesuit RuinsTraveling to southern Paraguay

 

You people of the auto-land

Of the world where buildings have central air

Don’t understand the power of the sun

The wavering of heat waves hovering

 

A six-hour bus ride is no less than an eternity

Chest covered in salty droplets

Clothes sticking, stained

Air stale, heavy, traffic blocking the breeze

 

To sit is the greatest of toils

The thought of moving painful

You must drink water, but you’re on the bus

Bags piled around making it worse

 

Other passengers sitting too close

Someone else’s sweat

Don’t think about the history if your seat

No clothes are appropriate for such travel

 

Stay strong. You can do this.

You tell yourself such things

You try to sleep to forget the fact

That it’s summer in Paraguay and you’re traveling.

White

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Jesus RuinsI thought I looked like a lot of Paraguayans—I have brown hair and I’ve tanned to be several shades darker than I was in the northlands. I sort of thought I’d done a good job blending. Nope.

I’m mostly German and Irish with a mix of other groups is my heritage. Before coming to Paraguay I didn’t stick out with my freckles and greens eyes, actually I was so nondescript in the States that I figured if I needed someone who had never seen me to pick me out in a crowd I’d just wear something interesting.

Paraguayans compliment me on my light skin. Recently, I was feeling very integrated at a birthday party. Then, several of my students who were at the party looked at me funny as I walked across what would later become the dance floor. I asked them why they looked at me that way and they told me my legs were pretty…because they are so white. I’ve never before been in the minority. It’s weird having a physical trait that people use to judge you—especially one over which you have no control.

It’s not uncomfortable when Paraguayans comment on my skin—they tend to ask if I’m German (in their minds all light-skinned people are German, just like all dark-skinned people are Brazilian)—because in Paraguay any physical aspect of your body can and is a topic of conversations. The number of times I’ve been told I’ve gained weight (or lost it) in Paraguay is mind-boggling.

It’s not something I think about all the time, but comments about my skin remind me that I’m not from Paraguay. They make me feel like an outsider. Usually the skin-color conversation concludes when Paraguayans tell me that white skin is pretty and I say that their skin is beautiful too and that I think I’ll be their color when my freckles blend together. They laugh. I don’t think Paraguayans would understand if I told them that tons of people in the State pay to go to tanning salons so that they can be the color of the average Paraguayan.

Why is light skin considered the ideal, even in regions where it marks an outsider? When we don’t look like the people around us, why do we have moments of doubt about whether or not we belong?

A Little Kindness Works Magic

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Cutest NeighborI don’t have my own pet in Paraguay. I travel too much and it’s not exactly practical to fall in love with a fuzzy friend and then spend a mountain of money to ship it to the States at the end of my service. But, there is a dog that owns me in the community. She’s my neighbor’s dog.

My neighbor has a house in Asunción so she is not always in the apartment next to me. Because of this, her dog ranges free for the majority of the week. I don’t know who feeds that dog, but someone does and it’s not me. But, I do pet that dog and talk to her and if I make too many pancakes I give her a few—she’s amazingly picky about what she eats and I don’t cook meat so beside pancakes we are somewhat at an impasse when it comes to food.

Sometimes I let my neighbor’s dog into my house—she’s allowed to sleep in the bathroom when it is unbearably hot and she is allowed to sleep in one corner of my house when it is pouring outside. She has fleas and smells, which is why she is regulated to certain regions of the house: dogs and cats are not seen here the same way as they are in the States.

Despite my minimal love the dog bounds to meet me when I come home and whines until I pet her. She often follows me around the community. She will wait for four hours at the house of someone I’m visiting so she can walk me home. She’ll brave crossing into other dogs’ turf, which could cause a fight, to go on long walks with me.

She’s a perfect example of what so many doctrines tell us we should be: giving, forgiving, unconditionally kind, and low-maintenance. We should all strive to be more like her.