Sonidos de la Tierra
In the early part of February, over 2,000 youth from throughout Paraguay and Northern Argentina, gathered in Ayolas for "Sonidos de la Tierra" or "Sounds of the Earth". Sondios de la Tierra was founded in 2002 by the musician and composer Luis Szaran. Luis Szaran was lucky enough to study composition in Europe after a prominent Paraguayan musician recognized his talent. As the eighth child of a farming family, he was extremely grateful for the opportunity, and he went on to become an internationally known composer and the conductor of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Asuncion, Paraguay.
Wishing to return the favor, he founded Sonidos de la Tierra to inspire local towns to form musical ensembles for young people. The organization travels throughout Paraguay during the year with their "conservatory on wheels" to lead workshops for Parguayan youth interested in enhancing their musical abilities. Some of the youth in Paraguay have never seen a violin or harp, let alone have the opportunity to the learn the basics of playing such an instrument. Every year, Sonidos hosts a national music camp that is open to young musicians from all over Paraguay. Children from rich and poor families eat, study and perform music together for one week. Ayolas was lucky enough to host this annual event for Paraguay this year.
For one week, the town was full of youth praticing their instruments by day and performing for the community by night. During the day, the youth were scattered around Ayolas, practicing under mango trees in the town plazas or inside emptied schoolrooms alongside new friends from across the country. While at night they preformed pieces ranging from Motzart and Vivaldi to traditional Paraguayan folk songs. Not only was I am greatly impressed by the advanced level performers, but also by the beginner students that took to the stage to play "Twinkle Twinkle" after just three days of playing the violin.
Itaipu
The previous volunteer in my site created a jovens or young adults (15-29) group called EcoAyolas. The group focuses on raising awareness about environmental issues in the community and exploring the natural environment of Paraguay. So during this summer vacation the group decided to travel to the Itaipu dam, located outside of the Ciudad del Este along the border of Paraguay and Brazil. The Itaipu dam is the worlds largest operational hydroelectric power plant in the world. The group petitioned the dam in early December to receive an all expense paid trip to the dam for the day in early February. And we got it!
At 1am in the morning, the bus arrived in Ayolas to drive the six hour trip to Itaipu. All 37 of us loaded the bus and prepared for the sleepless ride. When we arrived the day started with a bus tour of the dam, followed by a trip to the dam´s museum and zoo. We spent the afternoon at the Refugio Biologico Tatí Yupí where we relaxed in the shaded, took a horse buggy ride, rode horses and enjoyed the view of the Itaipu Lake.
Yes he is texting while driving our horse buggy. Got love technology.
After a rest full afternoon we got back in our tour bus and headed an hour outside of the city to Los Saltos de Monday. These beautiful waterfalls were a refreshing site to visit. While not nearly as big as the famous Iguazu Falls that I hope to visit in the near future, I did enjoy the sights and sounds that the waterfall blessed us with that day.
As the day came to an end we headed back to the Itaipu dam for a second time for the evening light show. Since we arrived a little early with a few hours to kill before the show started, we decided to start an impromptu dance party in front of the visitors center. We even got some other visitors to the dam to join in with us. After the lighting of the dam tour ended, we loaded the bus for one last time and traveled the six hours back to Ayolas. It was a day full of adventures and new friends in Paraguay.
SuperBowl
While most Paraguayans do not understand the complicated rules of fútbol norte americano or football to us from the USA, they do understand the importance of a partido or game. So when Super Bowl Sunday approached, us volunteers in site decided to take the opportunity to cook up some tasty traditional Super Bowl Sunday food and watch the game together. Since we are Peace Corps volunteers, none of us had a TV or the cable connection needed to watch the game at one of our houses, so we took the opportunity to share a little bit of our culture with some local Paraguayan firefighters while we watched the game on their TV in front of the firestation in town.
The game started around 7pm here in Paraguay, so Mandi, David and I, took the afternoon to cook up some chips and salsa, hot pork sausage dogs, an apple salad, and for dessert Mandi prepared buckeyes in saludos to her home state of Ohio. Unfortunately, that Sunday ended up being one of the hottest days in Paraguay, making the food preparation almost unbearable in the 105 degree heat. But the sweating was well worth it in the end. For at the nights end our stomachs were full and we all cheered on the New Orleans Saints to their win.
Olympics
It was only last year I was living a little more than an hour drive away from Vancouver, Canada, the host city for the winter Olympics of 2010. Now I am living over 5,000 miles away...
While I was a little sad during those two weeks of ceremonies and competition seeing all the snow and beauty of the Pacific Northwest, I had a great time watching the games with my host family and neighbors down here in South America. Paraguay did not have any competitors in the games, but Paraguayans still took some interest and luckily I was able to watch a lot of different events. During those two weeks I became the town`s walking Winter Olympics encyclopedia. I was asked to explain many of the rules for the events, where certain countries are located in the world, what language they speak in those countries, and what the hell is curling to at least five different people. I can hardly explain that in English!
My favorite memory I will take from watching these Olympic games will be sitting with my Guaranì teacher for three hours on two different days watching the ladies figure skating. During both of those days I was supposed to be learning more Guaranì, but instead we had a great time watching each routine, commenting on their outfits, country they were from, the choreography of the routine, etc. The best part of all was that it was a Brazilian channel that showed the skating, so everything was in Portuguese!
Next
So with autumn just around the corner, I am going to say that I had a great first summer in Paraguay. While there were definitely challenges in the first few weeks with language, holidays, and new host families, I learned a lot about my community and about myself. While it wasn`t easy and I wouldn`t want to do it again, I did learn more from things being challenging.
Almost all Peace Corps volunteers say that the first three months of service in site are the most uneventful, lonely, and awkward months of service you will ever have during your two years. After three months my calendar is starting to fill up with activities at the schools, I have a handful of close friends and families I can rely on, and as for the awkwardness....that will never change.
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