Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Neice chuu mit ju chuu

So it´s been a couple of months...funny how it sneaks up on you. Febuary included my first trip back to Asuncion to treat an infected spider bite. The scab only just came off this week. I´m continuing to stay with different families even though I can legitimately stay in my own house now. After all, it´d be rude to turn down the invitation, and these are families I really do want to get to know better. The title by the way is what it sounds like when you try and teach high schoolers in Paraguay to say nice to meet you too and their Paraguayan professora keeps insisting on the wrong pronunciation. Lucky for them I´ve decided to come in once every couple of weeks to help out and spice up the class a little bit. Although I think I was initially invited there because the English teacher is from the community and single. I think I may pass though, the class and on the offer.
I also may or may not have eaten endangered giant river otter this past week. If that is what it was (I may reasons to suspect so are good), it was mighty tasty! A dark meat, good fried, if you have wine that´s fine. I didn´t and it still was good to eat meat for the first time in a few days.
I also had my first experience with africanized bees this past week. The paraguayans were stung, I was not. I also never swung a machete or used an axe during the wild hive capture...go figure. It didn´t work though because the people I was working with weren´t actually interested in the work, they just wanted honey. I don´t think I´ll trust to work that particular town drunk again (Cayo).
In the garden, the bugs are eating the spicy peppers, but I´ll be putting a stop to that and hopefully they can recover. And I´m about to build my seed beds to kick start the winter green fest. Luckily I have good advice from the community and the volunteer before me on some general planning ideas.
Also, it´s Easter in the hugely Roman Catholic country, so starting Thursday it´s like a four day holiday where there is lots of Paraguayan food and meat many days. Should be fun, I already have an invitation to go visit a family.
Skipping over a lot of fluff that covers most of it and I need to once again go buy groceries.
Interesting side note, I went dumpster diving today in a wood pile for scraps to use back at the house...just goes to show that even in Paragauy I can find things being trashed and put them to use.
As for April, I´ll be in the capital for a week for business conference, a good time to call if you are someone who has my number, or I´m hellbent73 on Skype. I have no ones skype info but sometimes I´m there...like now. Other April events include more cotton picking fun, literally, and started to develop a demonstration plot, basically my own little placew where I can do agroforestry.

All for now, for later from Asuncion in April.
Michael

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