1 month down

I have started makeing my self little notes on whats happend over the past week, so I hope this post goes michimi (Guarani for a little bit) smoother.

Last sunday was another trainee´s birthday, so a bunch of us went over to his house in the afternoon for a little fiesta. I drank a little beer and a little wine, ate a little fruit salad (a must for parties here), kicked the soccer ball around with some little kids, and talked in spanish, guarani, and english. After that party there wound down we decided we should move it to the disco club. About 17 of us piled into the bed of an old truck (with some sort of break problems) and made the trek into Ypane. It was fun, although we were all hurting monday morning. And that was the first time I met my neice who (and I think we´re all a little jelous here) speaks spanish, english and portugese fluently. Addtionally she also speaks chinese, korean and french a little bit. Jeez. oh and understand Guarani, but doesn´t speak it ´so well´.

Things did not go so soomthly on the bee front this week. On tuesday when we went into the apiary to do a hive division, I got slamed by the bees. I had forgotten my suit, so I had to borrow another trainee´s (who brought a suit from home). Unfortuanly she wears a med, where as I wear a lg. So the veil touched my nose, and a bee found it. That was the most painful sting i´ve ever had, it made my eyes waterup. After that I kept getting slammed and 3 bees found their wayinto my veil. I was able to kill 2 of them before they got me, but the 3rd nailed me right on the forehead. Also it took me about 20 min to shake the rest of the bees following me trying thier best to sting me.
And then we tried another wild hive capture (trasiago). This one was located in a living palm tree (which by the way have spines and make little tiny tiny coconuts which they use to make coconut oil). So we hacked a hole in the tree, breaking one ax in the process. Then we pulled out the comb and atached it to the frames and began the search for the queen. She was as the say ´runny´. We were never able to capture her and eventually all the bees swarmed and landed in some 15 feet up in an extra spiney palm. Bee´s- 2 Us- 0

Also I got sick for the first time this week. A little 24 hour number which had me throwing up and with fever. Luckly the next day was a ´dia de practica´ so we didn´t have actual class. After sleeping most of that day, and all of the night , I was back to my old self. Unfortually while I was down, my fellow beekeeper Caleb had his birthday. All us beekeepers went over to his house for a party, of which I mearly observed. However I did get into a good fight with his 3 year old nephew, who dissapointed after being out manuvered, sucker punched me in the back.

And on a possitive note, we finally got to visit pigfart farm. In one of our frist sessions here we went over some of the things we´d be doing durring training, one of which was visiting a farm where they boil their milk with pig farts. We´ve been waiting for this eversince. It was a super cool farm, located right next to assunsion and only on one third of an acer. They had cows, pigs, chickens, rabbits, quails, dogs (with puppies). Also a couple of awesome composting systems, one of which produced biogas which they used to boil their milk. They made cheeses and youghert and ice cream. I´m running out of time so this will have to do for now..


One last one. NO more pics untill I can get to use the peace corps computers. these internet cafe ones are way to virusy. I had to format my camera last time i plugged it and and lost everything I had already taken..

Well its been about 2 weeks or so since my last post. Last weekend I went to visit a volunteer who lived down south in a little community called Isla Ro´y, which means cold island. And it was cold at night. We didn´t really do to much, but I did find a legless lizard which lives underground and looks like a huge earthworm. Unforutually I found it while hoeing, and I broke its back, accidently, while hoeing. I had some bus trouble getting out there (and getting back). The bus we were going to take to Pilar (the closest large city) so me, justin (my host volunteer) and another trainee who was going to stay in Pilar had to stay the night in Ascuncion. We stayed in this hotel called the alps in a special PC room, called the attic which is just a bunch of beds in an attic room. It came with a bathroom and free breakfast (with cake and pie) all for only 500 mil Gs.

Some other things I´ve been up to. We tried to do a wild hive capture last week. We found one that was located underneath a termite mound. We showed up with an axe, a shovel, a top bar hive (a bataea) and lot of determination. Unfortuanlly it was all for not. Eveytime we thought we had found where they were, they moved into some other chamber. We only found about 8 pieces of comb, and it was all empty, but there were lots of bee. They must have had some huge chamber like 10 feet underground, but we never found it. We´ve found a couple of other wild hives to capture, so we should be doing that soon. Also there are these stingless bee´s which live here and we´re gonna go a wild hive capture with them too.

I think thouse are the main highlights for right now... oh, I won´t be able to upload any new pics untill next week. And here a map i´m working on.. ( ok we´re not suposed to show where people are living publicly (for safty reasons), so if you wanna see my map, email me)



I hope that worked

A Shot at Pics

I can´t figure this out...

maybe later untill then go here..

http://s632.photobucket.com/albums/uu45/stevenpy/

I´ll finish adding pics soon and get nice labels and everything

Settling in

Well it´s saturday, so I have half a day off from classes. Time for a brief update. Things are starting to settle into a routine here; Guaraní class, lunch, bee class, dinner, sleep. We have a half day saturday and nothing on sundays. Luckily so far my family is always doing something fun un sunday. Last sunday we went to a birthday party for my brother (who lives in san antonio, paraguay). This sunday we´re going to a belated Karai Octubre party and then after that to an eight year olds birthday party. For those of you no in the know Karai Octubre (or Mister October) is a big lunch held oct. 1st for to ward off Mr. October and his month of bad or no harvest. People eat a jopara (mix) soup. We didn´t actually do anything on the first, so I hope we make up for lost time.

For those of you intersted here´s a bit more cultural education. Some gestures. My personal fave is the emongaru, which has the same heart as our ´high five´. For emongaru you put all your fingers (including thumb) together and touch tips with your buddy. one person goes from above and the other below. After contact you point your fingers towards yourself. When inniciating the emongaru it is important to take the top position, so that nobody thinks your telling them to fuck off, which your fingers together pointing up means. Another new one is the ´moto´, which is making a gesture like you were reving a motorcycle. THis is to indicate your desire to have sex with a girl. There are others, but those are all I can remember right now.

We also had our first bee work this week. It went good. The bees are definatly more aggressive (a lot of veil ´pinging´), so i´ll always be working in full gear. I´m trying to upload some pics right now, so I´ll make another post with them and some captions. Its gonna have a castration I saw today.