A Trip to Cerrito

Por fin, an update...

This last weekend (and then some) I finally took a trip out to visit my good friend and second closest neighbor (1 hour by bus), Caleb. He lives in community 8km outside the town of Cerrito. If you don't already know cerrito means "little hill" in spanish. Down here in the departmento de Ñeembucu the landscape is as flat as can be, so the existence of a hill (even a small one) is somthing worth naming a town after. At the same time Caleb's friend from college, Sam, was also visiting.

Things we did -

1. Tapezua* hive capture : I've been dying to do some work with stingless bees since I've been here. They don't have back home so this really my only chance to get to experience them and I want to take advantage of that. Unfortunately Ñeembucu is a little bit cold for the main stingless bee which people keep, Jate'i. But the slightly hardier tapezua does. Caleb's host family knew were a couple of hives were located. Caleb had already constructed the hive to put them in. We stopped by his host family's house to see who wanted to come with us (only one guapa teenager (ps guapa/o means hard working here in Paraguay)), and then we headed out the the hive. The hive was located in an old Karupa'y stump, which is very very hard wood. After alot of axing we finally were able to get our hands into the hive, which we manhandled in a bad way. We never found the queen, but after moving all their brood into our hive and bunch of their pollen and honey pots, and back filling the hole in the stump with wood chips we seems to have induced them to move into our box. Only time will tell if the queen somehow moved in, or if they can make a new one or what. Tapezua keeps their honey in little wax 'pots', which are quite fragile and broke open quite a few of them. By the end there was a lake of tapezua honey in the bottom of the stump, which Sam diligently spooned out for our consumption. By the way, tapezua honey is delicious, much more viscus than honey bee honey and kinda sour.
*This page is not actually tapezua, but its close enough (although the hives look way different)

2. Soccer:
We played a little game called "25" with the kids of Caleb's host family and I enjoyed it so much I thought I'd pass along the rules to ya'll. The basic set up is one goalie and everybody else trying to score on him/her. Those in the feild can only touch the ball once consecutively (eg. if I kick the ball I have to wait untill somebody else touches it before I can touch it again) {It would be an interesting variation to have it where everybody could only touch the ball once and if you don't make a goal by the time everybody had touched it the last to touch it would become goalie}.If the ball ever goes out of bounds, or if somebody touches the ball twice then they (the toucher or kicker) become the goalie. When the fielders make a goal they (as a collective whole) get points according to how they scored the goal. A simple kick is 5 pts. A head or knee is 10 pts. A backwards kick is 15 pts. And last but not least a "bicycle kick" is the full 25 pts. If the fielders manage to score 25, then the goalie has lost and has to stand backwards against the goal post while everybody gets a chance to kick the ball at him/her. Whenever the goalie changes (eg somebody took a shot on goal, missed and the ball when out of bounds) all points so far earned go away. One final twist to the game. When the fielders have 15 points (and only 15 points) the goalie has the power to yell stop after he catches or picks up the ball to yell Stop! and everybody must freeze. Then without moving himself he can attempt to hit any of the players with the ball. If he secedes than that player must either remove one article of clothing or they become goalie. If he misses play continues (the goalie has this power the whole time that the fielders have 15 points). Its super fun you guys should go out and play once the weather gets nice.
Oh also if you're interested in this sort of thing, when we played this at Caleb's site, I was the losing goalie.

There's plenty more that we did, but I can't write anymore right now... Untill later..