IST

In Service Training. For this we all went up to a little agricultural high school in the chaco about 40km outside of Asucion. We all (at least tried) to bring a contact from our communities to come with us and learn about farm management techniques. My contacts name was Juan de rosa Riveara, and we had a great time. Looks like I´m gonna be planting some abonos verdes (green manueres) with him come spring. Also I think we´re gonna get a plan going to grow some avena negra (black oats) for seed next year. It´s a good winter cow forage, and the government gave them seed for this year, won´t be giving them more seeds for next year, so we need to set up a sustanible system were people grow some for seed.


San Juan


San Juan is a holiday here and i think in other spanish speaking countries too. I don´t know why or what it is celebrating, but I do know what they do. In my commuity we drank much wine and soda, made chipa asasdor, kicked around flaming balls, and got chased by a flaming cow skull. (see pics) Great fun! Other things that are done around Paraguay for San Juan: walking on coals, kids trying to climb a greased pole (with goodies on top), burning an effigy of someone, sack races, ´´lick the skillet´´ (I have no idea), and I´m sure there are other games played as well


Fouth Party

Not to much to say here. There was a party at the embasy (actually on the 2nd, a friday). Mostly I just played Eucher. (a midwestern card game)



- Stuff I´ve seen chickens eat: Soap, Styrafoam

- Animals I¨ve seen: Rhea (Ñandu guasu) from a bus window, but still pretty cool and Apere´a, a tailless rodent that lives in the feilds, sorta like a guinea pig

- Rural sayings we use but don´t really understand that now I do: Pissing match. I watched two dogs pissing on the same spot one right after the other for like 5 minutes. One of them was growling the whole time and the other one would wipe his feet, like dogs are wont to do, right in the other one´s face, real slow like. It was clearly an insulting maneuver.


ALSO NEW PHOTOS ARE AVAIABLE AT http://s632.photobucket.com/home/stevenpy

(should I bother sorting these fotos into albums or not?)