Ever wondered what a 300 year old religious statue would look like with a live human head? Me neither and before you start thinking along gory lines allow me direct your thoughts in the right direction. The 12^th of June in Paraguay is a national holiday known as ‘Paz del Chaco’ which celebrates the end of a war with neighboring country Bolivia. Knowing this ahead of time our group took advantage of the 3 day weekend and split to the south border of the country to a city named Encarnación. Within a half hour bus ride of this city lie 2 ancient Jesuit ruins which now make attractive tourist locations.

Upon arriving at the first site around 8 in the morning we were presented with a much more eerie side of the ruins than any of us had expected due to a dense fog that sat heavily on the site. We spent most of the morning at checking out the old stone structures of ‘Trinidad’ and referring to my opening line, found the location to be surprisingly unrestricted in the sense of supervision as one can see from the inserted photos. The second location, Jesús, was a half hour bus ride away if you take a local Paraguayan’s bus and is settled next to an appealing farm town with the same name. This site was noticeably smaller and I was told it was only an operational colony for a short period, something like 5-10 years.

While we are in the topic of short periods of time, the 27^th of June designates the one month mark of our disembarking. The following is a rough reference of the remaining time:

From now until July 3^rd – Normal schedule of teaching classes

July 4^th through the 10^th – Time to tie up loose ends and spend time with the group

10^th through the 19^th – Global Youth Summit and Mennonite World Conference

20^th through the 26^th – Last days to spend with the host family and group

27^th – Flight to Chicago from Asunción

I remember thinking one of the neatest inventions was a cd alarm clock my friend had in college. This nifty device could be programmed to play any song that you happened to have on cd to wake you up in the morning. While it wasn’t quite the same being that I couldn’t choose the song or alarm time, 2 weeks ago I was awakened to a lightly strumming guitar and a small chorus of Molinas singing ‘Que los cumplas feliz, que los cumplas feliz, que el Señor te bendiga, y te haga feliz!!!’ followed by hugs, congratulations, a big birthday sign and a brightly colored gift bag.
In case you don’t know the tune in Spanish, yesterday was my birthday and the Molinas were not going to let me forget it. After the sunrise serenade my day was sprinkled with birthday wishes from the family, friends, church members and any person that dropped by the house. After a specially prepared lunch that was made according to their direct probing of what food I liked best, María spent most of the afternoon preparing for the barbeque like ‘asado’ dinner meal while I taught classes which each informally started with the students singing ‘Happy Birthday.’ In one of the classes I was actually given presents by the majority of the students!

The climax of the day came when I returned home from teaching my class to a good 20 guests boisterously singing that all familiar tune followed by a train of people each presenting me with a gift (I should mention here that the dinner party was a joint party between me and my host sister who had her birthday 2 days earlier). We spent the rest of the night chatting over a huge dinner and was sung a grand finale ‘Happy Birthday’ before we cut the cake. A few days before this I was talking to my mom and before hanging up she told me to enjoy this day and make it memorable because it could be the only birthday I ever have in South America. I can say I took her advice and enjoyed my day but with such a personal celebration who wouldn’t?!?

Picture blog - Theme: Recent Travels

Following the current trend of my fellow bloggers and having little new to share I've posted a picture blog! The majority of these pictures will be from my recent trip to the Chaco region of Paraguay which, as you will see, is much drier than the 'Colonial' area where I am located. Since the 1920's the Chaco has been home to a group of Mennonites who have now established 3 main 'colonies' which produce a good majority of dairy products for the country. I've also thrown in a few bonus pictures at the end from our group retreat to Uruguay and Argentina.

Secundino at the Chancheria

My host parents and their friend Pedro drinking tereré on his property in the Chaco.

In the hollowed out trunk of a Samu'u (in Guarani) or Palo Borracho (in Spanish) tree, a species typical of the Chaco.

Standing in the 'Command Post' at a musuem of the 'War of the Chaco.'

Another fine example of the abounding love of my host parents.

One of my favorite pictures of my host parents.

A massive, suspiciously placed and eerily abondoned international airport on a small army base in the middle of the Chaco.

Pondering the origins of the airport with Secundino and Pedro in the background.

Team Paraguay from the left; Scott Bergen, Tyler Doerksen, Becca Willms, Kelsey Shue (adopted member), Krista Shue Mast and Craig Mast

Our supersquad team in Argentina.

The Estadio Centenario in Montevideo, Uruguay where the first World Cup was held in 1930.

A Uruguayan Rodeo.

On the frustrating side...

Only days after I posted the last blog I was confronted with my most challenging obstacle of this year; considering to terminate classes.  If I haven’t mentioned it already, teaching English here has probably been one of the biggest fish out of water experiences of my whole life.  First of all, English grammar has never been my strong point which produces a bit of struggle trying to teach it.  Secondly, I have no formal teaching training but only a few weeks of classes with language professors, help from my host sister who teaches English and 16 years of school attendance (all of which have proved helpful but still lacking).  On top of all this, I am faced with so much inconsistency in attendance that many times I find myself teaching 1 or 2 students in a class that theoretically should have 10 or more. 

And inhere lies the problem, after a good few weeks of having so much inconsistency that I could barely advance with the material I was ready to end it; ready to close the classes and work with the few that had shown the most interest and were most consistent in attendance.  This had me pretty worked up and consumed all of my thoughts the following day with questions like, ‘What can I say to students?’ ‘What did I do that made them not come?’ ‘How should I go about classes?’ etc.  Basically, I was at a complete loss in how to handle the situation and it showed.  So much so in fact that my host family easily detected my change in attitude and by lunch had probed me enough that I finally told them what was bothering me.  Having vented my frustrations I was able to talk through possible solutions with Laura, my oldest host sister who has a sort of organizer role for my classes, which helped calm my anxiousness and give me a decent direction in which to proceed.  When it all came to rest I didn’t end up closing any classes, attendance somewhat solidified and I continue to teach the classes I started with.

Although I contemplated not posting this blog because of its possible negative perception, I reconsidered hoping it would give a more complete image of what I’m experiencing and it also gives me the chance to tell you what an excellent and perceptive host family I’ve been given and share how valuable there help has been with not only this exlusive event but the year in its entirety.  I leave you with a recent photo of us in our normal routine of hanging out on weekday nights.

Just the same old new things

While I’ve officially passed the halfway mark of my time here, which I believe was March 7^th, my life has reached a comfortable rhythm of normal routine peppered with intermittent original experiences. To know more about my regular routine one can refer to my previous entry because this blog I would like to dedicate to recount a few new happenings I had the past few weeks.

A good starting point would be ‘The Week at the Airport’ sponsored by a few of our group members and Darrell Gascho, the infamous director of the Radical Journey. The last week of

February there was an overabundance of airport trips due to Dorothea going back to Canada, Scott returning from his aunt’s wedding in Mexico and a week visit from the leader of program, Darrell. The rest of the week we found ourselves spending a lot of time with Darrell talking over group subjects, playing cards and going to the local zoo which, by some standards could be considered a petting zoo (Although I’m not sure if it’s recommended to pet hippos or pumas).

The following weekend I was invited to a wedding in the neighboring town of Villa Hayes which happens to be the town where Becca is living for this year. To reach Villa Hayes one has to cross a pretty decently large bridge that spans the Rio Paraguay, a pretty neat sight at night. We arrived, the sisters, some of their relatives and a member of the church who drove us, to find that the wedding had already started and was actually half way through the ceremony. After getting a table we enjoyed the tail end which included the vows, the signing of the license, food and pictures.

After not getting much sleep because of the late night wedding, I found some energy the following afternoon when I met up with one of my students who was taking me to my

very first Paraguayan soccer game! By an intelligent move on his part, he chose a game between two teams that don’t have much of a rivalry because otherwise I could have come back with a few unwanted souvenirs. The game was between Olympia, one of the fan favorites,

and 12 de Octubre, a ‘dying’ club according to some and was held in one of the nicest stadiums in Paraguay. The game itself was pretty exciting being that we were decently

close to the on field action and even closer to the ‘barra brava’ the fan section known for their undying faithfulness to their club which they show by continual cheers, stadium covering banners and outrageous brawls.

Tyler in Paraguay

Unfortunately, unlike the rest of my blogs, I have no new adventures to share. Within the past 2 and a half weeks I have not traveled to a different city to see host relatives or giant dams, went to a birthday party or holiday celebration, not even do I have new photos to share with you (that is more likely because my camera broke a few months ago and none of my fellow group members have taken photos of me that I could kindly rob). It is true that the majority of our group did go to a church camp for a day and a half, I watched the Cardinals and Roger Federer lose in the same night and the Swiss Family Portmann has been over for just about a week now, but I would rather use this blog to let you in on a quick glance of what a typical week looks like for me; my classes, responsibilities, free time, family time, what I do, who I talk to etc.

From the way I see it, my week starts on Monday because this is when the weekend stops and I kick myself back into gear. I usually wake up between 7 and 8 am to have a light breakfast with whoever stumbles into the kitchen at the same time I do. This usually consists of a few pieces of bread with some sort of jelly, a piece of fruit and a hot drink called cocido which is semi-similar to coffee. I spend most of my morning planning for my classes and by 11:30 I sit outside under the porch drinking terere with my host mom and sisters while letting the food cook. When 12:00 rolls around we find ourselves a little ‘apurados’ or hurried to set the table and finish preparing lunch for the rest of the family. Lunch is the important meal here where the entire family shows up and eats big, as apposed to dinner in my home. Proceeding lunch my host father leaves for his work again and I help wash and put away the dishes which is immediately followed by the siesta. Siesta is a relaxing time of the day where the people… well I’m really not sure what the people do because I’m always napping. I wake up sometime around 3 to either work on the internet or continue preparing for my classes.

I teach class everyday of the week and most of my classes are at night. Below I've posted my schedule.

Now in comparison to a full time teaching job at a local highschool or middleschool, this may look like a piece of my host mother’s torta but considering that I haven’t had any substantial teaching training and there is no set curriculum, I find most of my time during the weekdays (and a little bit on the weekends) being used to come up with teaching material and lesson plans.

Weekends are another world which usually end up sticking in my head as vague memories of one big hang-out-and-drink-terere session. Saturdays, if I don’t go somewhere, are pretty chill in the mornings. I usually use this time to read, hang out or complete leftover tasks from the week. Also, Saturdays are cleaning days for the Molinas so I generally find myself sweeping or mopping some part of the house. We eat and have an even more relaxed siesta until about 5 when young adults from every corner of the neighborhood start congregating at our house awaiting the Saturday night young adults service which consists of about an hour or so of worship and a lesson followed by soccer and terere on the churches two mini-soccer fields. Sundays seem so much like the previous night that sometimes I feel like all I did was doze off a little during our Saturday night service and woke up to find that the party was still going. We have a 9:00 church service which is followed up by lunch, siesta and another ‘terere/soccer’ meeting at night with the young adults.

I hope you enjoyed this recap of my life here in Paraguay and we'll see you again in two weeks!

Sin Titulo

The last moment we shared together I was retelling my Paraguayan Christmas which happens to be an excellent starting point since the New Years festivities, from my experience, are very similar. New Years Eve day about 15 young from the church and neighborhood congregated at the Molina's household. We talked, made food, ate and lit fireworks at midnight similar to Christmas except this time I was more experienced with native explosives. After 2009 arrived we past the night away chatting, munching on the leftovers and watching movies until daybreak making New Years Day more like a lazy day at the beach.

While we are on the topic of beaches, I was able to dawn, for the first time in Paraguay, my swimming suit on the sand swept coast of the Rio Paraguay just a few hours from my house in Formosa, Argentina. Dorothea, René (the son of one of the Pastors of our church) and I headed there so that we could renew our visas. We stayed at René’s cousin’s house where we enjoyed close to a week of Argentine experience. This included a few days at the beach and local pool, meeting René’s cousins, meeting missionaries from the States that are working with local indigenous tribes and staying out every night until 3 like, from what it seemed, the rest of the city does.

I returned from this vacation feeling refreshed and eager to pick up on the English classes. As of right now I’m responsible for teaching 4 classes, 3 in my congregation and 1 at a sister church 10 minutes down the road. The mainly consist of first time beginners with a very limited knowledge of English but I also have the privilege of teaching an ‘Adolescente’ class with kids 12-14 years old and an advanced class with those who have already have conversation skills. For the most part classes are flowing pretty smoothly for me. There are always the few obstacles that reveal themselves now and then; my lack of teaching experience and training, the inconsistent nature of Paraguayan culture and clear direction or goals for the classes. But with these obstacles come student’s patience, straightforward class coordinators, advice and support from teachers, hostfamily and leaders, and, the sometimes unnoticed, sustentation by God’s strength.