Well, this is completely unrelated to anything involving Paraguay… But, I feel the need to complain about it for a bit and this feels like a good place to do it.

Apparently Sketchers shows has come out with new “Bobs” shoes. A new style of canvas flats, advertising that with each purchase a  free pair of shoes will be given to a child in need. All I would like to say to Sketchers it “I think you confused the word ‘Bobs’ with ‘Toms’”

Not to say that Sketchers is not doing a perfectly legitimate job delivering shoes to children in need, I don’t know that they are not. But a part of me is disgusted with the fact that they are trying to take from the market share of Toms- a company that in my mind was created with a sincere desire to make the world a better place, not just as a marketing gimmick to sell more shoes.

This seems to be fitting in with a new trend of fake do-gooder products. Cleaning solutions branded as “natural” or “green” even though they are no different that other products. Fake micro-lending corporations that charge high interest rates to the people with the most need. And, meat sold as “grass finished” in an attempt to get in on some of the free range, grass fed movement.

As someone who hopes to generally do good in the world in her life, I am simultaneously angry and terrified by this trend. So from me to all of those companies hoping to make money off of people who are trying to buy responsible products- please stop. Thanks.

Well as it turns out my blogging abilities have not improved very much since India. In fact, I didn’t think it was possible, but it appears as if they have gotten worse. The good news is that  you will all be surprised when I come home and have all sorts of new stories!

I will try and summarize the last month (month and a half?) as quickly as possible. If fact I think I can do it in one word: busy. Seriously busy. The end of June disappeared in a blur of planning for supervisor arrival, training supervisors, going on survey and finally welcoming the volunteers into the country. If I thought I was busy before the volunteers arrived, I don’t even know a work to describe what I have been doing since they got here. You would be amazed at the amount of problems that arise when you send 52, 16 year olds who barely speak Spanish into rural Paraguayan villages… or maybe you wouldn’t be amazed. When I put it like that I am more amazed with the things that don’t go wrong. There have been visits to the doctor, overnight hospital stays, innumerable trips to hardware stores and brick distributors and days spent delivering supplies and volunteers to community. Essentially my job is a glorified logistics specialist, planning the delivery and distribution of people and materials on the not always reliable Paraguayan public transport system.

The good news that comes out of all of this is that the volunteers are all awesome. Happy, healthy and doing amazing work. They are teaching educational camps, building fogones and being champions dealing with the crazy weather fluctuation. There have been both 0 degree Celsius days and some seriously sun burn inducing afternoons within a 2 week period.

Now things have settled down a bit. We are falling into a routine and starting to learn how to have fun while dealing with the stress. I’ve even decided to use this time to improve my bread baking and have made baguettes and cinnamon rolls in our sketchy oven with some pretty impressive results, if I do say so myself! I have an amazing staff of 8 of the greatest people I have every met. We spend the long hours in staff house playing endless games of cards, cooking and attempting to download illegal movies.

This seems like all the updating I can think of right now… I promise that more than this has happened since June, but very little of it is blog worthy. You will just have to hear all of my stories when I come home, cause I know how much you all love it when I start a sentence with “this one time on AMIGOS…”

Paraguay is amazing. I was a little dubious at first, I had not necessarily heard the best things from other AMIGOS projects about Paraguay, primarily because it is so cold. However, after a perfect 70 degree day of walking around Santaní I am happy to report that Paraguay is awesome! Now they do tell me that winter is coming and I have seen my fair share of puffy coats but I’m hoping that my hearty Minnesotan roots will keep me toasty through the winter.

I landed in Asuncion Wednesday afternoon after leaving my house at 4am Tuesday morning. I had a very epic day of travel- 10 hour layover in Miami, overnight flight to Sao Paulo, 4 hour layover and then 2 hours sitting on the runway before my 2 hour flight to Asuncion. As you can probably imagine I was not particularly alert or excited when I arrived in Asuncion and may have not had the best attitude… but after a nap, seeing my wonderful senior staff team Maya and Ashley and some of the best Italian food I’ve eaten recently I was in a much better place.

We have a to-do list of about 12 million things from emergency evacuation procedures for the volunteers, to establishing contact with the embassy and partner agencies, to booking hotels for the arrival of the supervisors and volunteers. Maya, Ashley and I have been doing a great job dividing and conquering our giant list of reminders.

The city that I am living in is called Santaní and it is about 3 hours northeast of Asuncion. Santaní was described as me as “small” and “a little boring” but I would prefer to say that it is “quaint” and “cute”. In all seriousness though it is a really adorable town and I could not imagine more helpful, kind people. Yesterday we pretty much just spent on the bus getting here and acclimating to our new city. Today we got an amazing amount of stuff done, Maya and Ashley worked on our budget while I started planning for supervisor briefing and then we all went together to find a staff house.

Finding a staff house in one of the most daunting tasks for a new member of senior staff (or for me at least…) essentially the plan is the we, a bunch of gringas new to the city, will somehow locate and rent a house that is both safe, well equipped and within our budget. Like many things on amigos I am never quite sure how they could possibly work until they do, flawlessly, in front of my eyes. We wondered around the city making friends and contacts asking if anyone was renting. We ended up meeting the sweetest old couple who referred us to a neighbor, who referred us to a friend, who referred us to another neighbor who showed us a beautiful house with orange trees in the back and 4 bedrooms, which is seriously unheard of for those of you in the amigos world. The only downside to the house is that it only has one bathroom but we can deal with that. The neighbors are super sweet and its on a really beautiful side street right off the main town square.

I am completely and totally on top of the world right now. Being on amigos again is absolutely amazing and I am SO EXCITED for the supervisors to get here next week!!

Well, not quite. I will be there on Tuesday. If you don’t all already know I applied (while still in India) for a position with AMIGOS De Las Americas working as a Senior Project Supervisor for this summer. I was offered a PAID position working for the summer in San Pedro, Paraguay. As you probably are aware, because I cannot go more than 3 seconds with out talking about about much I love AMIGOS, it has been a huge part of my life and who I have become as a person. I am so excited to get the opportunity to work with them again, especially now that I am on senior staff!

My project this summer will focus on reforestation and malnutrition education in rural communities in San Pedro. I will be directly supervising only a few (2-4) volunteers and spending much more time doing managerial/planning work for the project. This will involve meeting with partner agencies, government officials and donors, as well as planning all of the infrastructural elements and emergency procedures. I am really excited for my work, I know that it will be the biggest challenge that I have ever faced but I am SO ready for it.

I leave Tuesday morning and after a very long 28 hours of travel will touch down in Paraguay on Wednesday. I will try and update when I can and have good stories!

Abrazos y besos (hugs and kisses)

Oh, for those of you who need a quick geography refresher…

A few of the best pictures from break

Alright. So as we all know by now that I am not the world’s best blogger, but only two weeks late (which I think is pretty good, given my track record) here is the short version of my two week travel break to North India.

On a random note, before I begin my story, I’d like to point out the word ‘blogger’ is not in the Word dictionary. Crazy.

Anyways, I went on my trip with 6 other girls from the program: two from Lawrence, three from Colorado College and one from Knox College. These girls are some of my favorite people in the entire universe and they are all insanely amazing. I don’t think there are many groups of seven twenty year old women who could handle being together 24/7 in a high stress situation for 16 days and never get into a single disagreement. But we somehow managed this amazing feat. So, I have to say that a HUGE amount of the success of my trip is due to the amazing, wonderful women who I was traveling with.

I’ll just do a quick recap of each place we went and my highlights, because the whole version would have to be a small novel- just check Katie’s blog, she wrote six pages on Amritsar alone!

Amritsar- we got to Amritsar 7 hours late after nearly 48 hours on a sleeper class train. I don’t know how many of you have been on an Indian train, so for those of you who haven’t I will describe. They are dirty, crazy crowded and super smelly. Even so, the people are (almost) always super nice and you usually end up making train friends who share snacks with you and help you get off at the right stop. No matter how clean and comfortable a train is, after two full days on it it’s difficult to feel particularly put together. And, given the fact that about 90% of this train ride smelled like poo, we shared our 8-person berth with about 12 other people and it was 7 hours late, none of us were in great shape. We got to out hostel and after all showering, we started to feel like real human beings again and set out for our first adventure.

We went to the Golden Temple, which is the most important Siekk temple in the world. It was the most gorgeous temple that I have every seen. The whole complex is made of white marble and then in the middle is a huge prayer pool and a temple made of pure gold. After sitting around for a few hours, literally unable to tear our eyes away from the gorgeous structure, we realized that all we had eaten in the past two days were train samosas (fried dough filled with spiced potatoes and peas) and peanut butter sandwiches. Luckily there is a community cafeteria there that serves free, delicious food for all visitors, so we ate a delicious free lunch and then headed off to our next activity.

I promise you that this next part is much safer than it is going to sound. We went to see the closing of the border ceremony on the Indo-Pakistan Border and it was craaazy! It is a whole pomp and circumstance with guards doing high kicks and thousands of cheering spectators on each side. It happens every single night at sun down when the giant ceremonial gate seals each country for the night. We were so close we could actually SEE into Pakistan. I never thought I’d be able to say that. It was crazy and weird, but really cool to see.

We spent another day seeing the sights in Amritsar and celebrating Halloween by dressing up as old men and eating candy in our hotel room.

Dharamsala and The Himalayas- This was by far everyone’s favorite part of the trip. I think that I can confidently say that it was not only one of my favorite parts of the trip, but one of my favorite parts of my life. The fist day it was a 4-hour hike up to 10,000 feet to a camp called Triund where we spend the next two nights. The hike was pretty much like climbing stairs for 4 hours in high altitude and with very little oxygen. The feeling of getting to the top was absolutely insanely awesome because I definitely was not sure I was going to make it up at some points. The next day we hiked up to the snow line and saw caves and a few beautiful lookout points over the mountains. From where we were, you could see the whole Himalayan range just spread out before you. It was crazy.

After a few days in the mountains we spend a day in McCloed Ganj, the town where the Tibetan Government is in exile and where the Dali Lama lives!!!!!!!!! I went to the Dali Lama’s Temple and spun the prayer wheels, which was another thing that I never thought I would ever get to do. I also ate about 16 momos (Tibetan dumplings) a day, which was delicious.

Agra- we took another overnight train to Agra where we spent the day seeing the Taj Mahal, which I was afraid would be just a tourist trap and not as cool as everyone says, but I was very pleasantly surprised. The Taj itself is as beautiful as the town of Agra is dirty and crowded. Tickets to get in were 750 rupees (about 15 dollars) and it was by far the most expensive thing I did all trip, but it was totally worth it.

The Taj complex has two mosques and the Taj building itself, which is actually a mausoleum for an Indian king and his wife. It was beautifully maintained, which is surprising because a lot of other Indian historic sites are not. We all took the obligatory ‘standing in front of the Taj’ picture and had a great time wondering around the site.

The day in Agra was a complete marathon because we left on another overnight train ride that same night and headed to Jaipur and then Jaisalmer, so I can’t say it was my favorite day of the trip.

Jaisalmer- Jaisalmer is in the desert state of Rajastan and is called the sandcastle city. They are not kidding with the name, the entire city is made of sandstone and is built in the Arabic architecture style. I seriously felt like I was in the movie Aladdin the whole time. The old fort is in the center of the city and is made up of all these cool winding streets and bazaars. We stayed in Jaisalmer for two nights and one in the desert on a camel trek.

The camel trek was SUPER fun. My camel was named Raj and he was very pretty and about 14 feet tall. Ok, I completely made up the 14 feet, I have no idea how big he was, but he was super freaking tall and it was scary at first. We rode for about 3 hours the first day and then set up camp in a sand dune. Our guides cooked us dinner, made a campfire and sang us traditional Rajastani songs. We returned the favor by singing them Disney songs and bad pop music. When it was time for bed they pulled out bedrolls and blankets and we lay down under the stars. It was one of the most memorable nights of my life, by far.

Getting back on the camels in the morning was suuuuper painful, because all of our legs got so sore from riding the first day, but we rode them back to where we started and headed back into the city. On the way back our guides had of gallop and if you though galloping on a horse was fast, times that by like four and that’s what it was like to be on the camel. I thought I was going to fall off most of the time and was screaming my head off, but it ended up being really fun (more in retrospect than at the time it was happening).

We spent one more night in the city and drank some delicious and interesting lassi’s and ate really good Rajastani food. We got up early the next morning and boarded the train to Delhi.

The last two days of break were essentially spent on trains to Delhi and then to Pune so they were not especially exciting, except for the fact that one of our trains hit a cow and we got delayed for a few hours. But, that was more annoying than anything cause we thought we might miss out connection. Luckily everything worked out fine and we got back to Pune pretty much as scheduled.

This was the super short version, so expect to hear more stories when I get home in just over a month!!!!!!!! I love and miss you all very much and can’t wait to see you very, very soon.

I am reblogging a reblog… I didn’t even know this was possible! My wonderful roomie Sammi made this map to show where we are going over break so now you know where I am and can see why is is taking me so long to get everywhere!

After a brief hiatus from blogging (mostly cause I forget to, partially cause blogging really annoys me) I want to share a quick update about my life. I am about to embark on my long awaited two week break and my schedule is as follows:

Thursday Oct 28th- Bus to Mumbai and then board train to Amritsar in the far North

Friday Oct 29th- Still on the trains… its about 36 hours to get all the way there

Saturday Oct 30th- Arrive in AMRITSAR!!! See the Sikkh monument The Golden Temple and some other awesome stuff in the city

Sunday Oct 31st- Dress up as a German Tourist and go see the changing of the guards at the Pakistani boarder

Monday Nov 1st- Bus to Himachal Pradesh

Tuesday Nov 2nd through Saturday Nov 6th- Trekking in Himachal Predesh!!!!!!

Sunday Nov 7th- Train to Agra, see Taj Mahal, train to Jaisalmer

Monday Nov 8th- Arrive in Jaisalmer, hang out in the desert

Not that anyone will be very surprised by this, but the food here is outrageously awesome and I absolutely love it. Be prepared for a 400 pound Mattie when I get home (just kidding, I’ll probably only be 300 pounds). Anyways, Pune is a very cosmopolitan city in the middle of the country so we have an delicious mix of north and south Indian food, as well as food from most of Asia. I’ll give a quick description of my every day food, as well as my favorites since I know that most you all (aka my parents) are major foodies and will appreciate it! Daily food- Breakfast here is not really anything special, or really all that Indian for that matter. We usually have toast with jam, Chapati or fruit. Sometimes we have Maggi noodles, which are pretty much ramen and are not exactly something I am interested in eating at 8am. Lunch is the best, we aren’t provided meals by our families so we either eat in AMC, meaning peanut butter and honey sandwiches and bananas, or we go out. My favorite place to eat out is called Baba’s Food Palace and its a 5 minute walk from campus. All the food there is between 30 and 70 rupees and comes in huge portions. Lunch usually ends up being less then a dollar, even when I get a fresh lime soda! We have quite the tradition going at Baba, we always get Kaju Masala (Spicy Cashew Curry), Aloo Gobi (potato and cauliflower), Paneer Tikka Masala (Spicy Cheese in Tomato Curry) and Egg Curry (exactly what it sounds like. The meal comes with fresh hot roti and is perfect with a fresh lime soda- fresh lime juice, sugar and soda water. You can see how lunch is my favorite. Dinner at home is always some variation of bhaji, chapati, salad, chutney and water to drink. It is simple and delicious. The bhaji, which just means cooked vegetable, varies from day to day. I always love potato, ussal (sprouts) and okra, which they call lady finger which I think is hilarious. Salad is some kind of fresh veggies, usually with peanuts and curd mixed in. Its what you may associate with raita from Indian food at home, but is about a million times better. Dosas- Dosas are like a more delicious Indian version of a crepe. They are usually filled with potato and some other filling and sometimes cheese. They are usually pretty big, the size of a dinner plate, but folded over in a big U shape. You eat it with a spicy masala sauce and a coconut curry and it is the best thing ever. Moduk- I’m sure you all know that the month of Ganesh just finished (duhh) and for Ganesh the typical sweet is called moduk and is super delicious. Anyone who will be seeing me over winter break will be force fed moduk because I learned how to make them and I have the recipe. It is a steamed rice flour bun filled with spiced sugary coconut shreds. It is sticky and sweet and chewy and amazing. Be prepared to eat a lot of them. I have to go to the jewelry store now cause people are getting their noses pierced… don’t worry I’m not. I already have enough holes in my face! Love and Miss you all!!!