Site Assignments

This post is what I wrote to post last week but the internet wasn´t working so here it is...

After eight grueling (or maybe not so grueling) weeks of training the time has finally arrived, G-26 (my training group) now knows where they will live for the next two years. Friday afternoon we received out site assignments. Friday morning was spent distracting us by driving us around the country to various places. I went to see a 200 year-old Church built entirely from wood, the home of a war hero and former Paraguayan President and an Artesinal School where they teach how to make the material for hammocks and blankets. We also went to a market where they sell a lot of hammocks and I was able to buy one for pretty cheap. After all of the distractions and anticipation I found out my site, which is located pretty centrally in the Eastern part of Paraguay. It is halfway between Asuncion and Ciudad del Este and is at the crossroads for people to turn off and head north or south from Ruta 2. The city is the birthplace of the current president and has about 85,000 people. I will likely be working with a program that assists kids who work on the street, a community center and a school. My site is also the former site of my technical trainer, although I will be in a different neighborhood. They did not provide us with a ton of information, just enough to get started. On Tuesday I will meet my main contact and then travel to my site to spend a week there getting to know the area, trying to find housing and trying to figure out how I can start my work there. It will be another awkward week of meeting new people and staying in a strange place but this time there won’t be any other Americans… which means nothing but Spanish for almost a whole week! Scary!!