Pues, me encanté Yuty...

Well, I loved Yuty. What a wonderful little place...actually not that little. With about 4300 people in teh center and another 23,000 in over 80 different campañias (rural communities), it´s hardly small. There´s the Municipalidad and a rockin´library and a huge plaza with a grand church. There´s a pretty little traffic circle and resturants and even a couple of small hotels! (there´s not even a hotel in Itá!)

Kara is the volunteer who has lived and worked here for 2 years, she leaves in August. She worked on the cultural center, the library, with some neighborhood groups (notably one of women who make detergent, soap, and other things to sell locally).

She is "llevar-ing" her boyfriend (spanglish for taking him back to the States) and they will be married in Februray. Paraguay has a rather high percentage of volunteer marriages to host country nationals. Many stay here. (I can´t imagine this now, but vamos a ver and nunca dice nunca - we will see and never say never.) He´s fantastic, works at the Muni and is studying English now.

This town is 90k off the paved road, so if it rains, there´s no coming or going. The island of Yuty, más o menos. There´s no internet here, yet, although, there may be soon. To get from here to Asuncion is 90,000 G round trip, a small fortune on Pace Corps salary. But, I felt at home there. At peace more than in Itá. No sé porque. (I don´t know why.)

Someone from my group of 7 is going to be placed here. We don´t know who yet. There´s another site close by called Buena Vista. It´s much smaller, but supposed to be cute. We´ll see! I find out Friday, July 28 where I´m going to be living for the nxt two years. And the following Tuesday, we go on a 2 day retreat with our sit-contacts (each of us is matched with someone in the community). Then we travel with them to our future sites on August 3 for a week. We return to Itá on August 8 for only 10 more days before we swear in! I´m getting really excited and less nervous as time goes on.

My host mother in Yuty not only fed me gloriously, but she did all my laundry in her Machine! Amazing. And, she´s a teacher and we had a great conversation about studnets and learning and politics and stuff. Her husband is Argentinian and he is there working with her son who´s 19 who is studying. She and her 14 year old daughter are in Yuty. There´s lots of family splitting her because of lack of stady work in Paraguay regardless of education level.

Otras cosas:

- I haven´t mentioned the Paraguayan sky. It´s AMAZING. It looks fake sometimes, sort of like the Grand Canyon or the Annapurnas. Some days I can´t believe it isn´t a backdrop.

- Music. I cannot believe the noise pollution here. NO matter time of day or night, music blares - out of cars, trucks, houses, bars, restaurants. You name it. There´s this Paraguayan called cachackra. It´s everywhere. The most popular song is called ¨Dame duro¨ translated as ¨give it to me hard¨more or less. There´s no chance of it´s popularity fading, and in fact is playing right now in the internet cafe.

-Español, also known as Castellano. I´m coming along. I learned a lot in site this week. Everyone I meet seems to understand me. Now if only I understood them back! Hee hee.

NOTE: I tried to upload other photos and can´t! Sorry!