Ha'upei aha'arõ la oky - And then I wait for rain @michellejoyyoungblom - Tumblr Blog

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I will very much miss moments like these, teaching about cover crops in the school garden. The hardest goodbyes will be with these hardworking young ladies!

My road 💕

A friend and I took a lovely afternoon walk around my community last Sunday. I'm taking in all the sights and sounds of the Paraguayan countryside before heading out in just two days!

Last week I attended my host sister, Belen’s first communion. Pictured to the left are her sister and aunt. Afterwards we celebrated with pizza, empanadas, sandwiches, and cake!

Over the past few months I’ve been preparing to host a training in my site for a group of four new agriculture volunteers which entailed finding four host families, planning activities with counterparts, and preparing supplies we would be using. This week they finally arrived! It was very satisfying to be able to share all the knowledge I’ve accumulated in two years with others who can continue sharing it in their own communities. It was also positive for me to have others see and recognize all the work that I’ve done in my site. Between guarani language classes I was able to share with them some of my favorite cultural and agricultural activities.

The first night we made traditional foods mbeju and sopa Paraguaya with the family of one of my work contacts. The trainees were all in great spirits and even started to learn traditional Paraguayan dancing. Below they are watcing Na Gloria cook the mbeju.

The second day we planted cover crops in the school garden while the students were at recess. Afterwards they came to my class and watched me present about broccoli.

That afternoon my community contact came over and we taught the trainees how to make yogurt from scratch!

The next day was dreary but despite the power going out due do the storm, the trainees kept working and preparing for their presentation on the summer garden in Paraguay. Opposed to summer gardening in the US, it can be a difficult season to find produce in Paraguay because most plants die due to the heat unless appropriate precautions are taken. Because of the rain that day only six Paraguayans showed up but the trainees did a wonderful job on their first presentation in guarani!

The fourth day was stormy yet again but luckily our activities could work well indoors. I gave a lesson on preserving avocados, tomatoes, and limes using resources found in Paraguay and then we made a small solar dryer out of a vegetable crate.

It was refreshing to have the company of these positive and energetic trainees and I’m excited to see how they shape their own Peace Corps services.

I met up with some friends to enjoy the city of Villarrica. We sat at the terminal and drank terere, walked through the park and saw the capybaras, drank some sangria in the park, ate mbeju burgers (a fusion food), sang karaoke, did yoga on the balcony of our hotel, and watched the storm pass over the Yvyturuzu mountain range in the distance.

I recently attended an event at the school called the Olimpiadas or Olympics which reminded me a little of battle of the classes or homecoming coronation at my school in New Ulm. During the event each grade picked a “queen” to represent themselves and a panel of judges picked which one would be the overall queen. Afterwards many students began running around the room in a train, following the leader who held a flaming torch and eventually lit Olympic rings. This was followed by a dance competition among the grades, pictured below. The dances included both traditional and zoomba style dancing.

I harvested a little broccoli from my garden today!

One cup of broccoli has the same amount of Vitamin C as an orange! That’s 135 percent of what we need in one day. It also contains 245 percent of the Vitamin K we need in one day, boosting heart health and working to prevent cancer.

I was happy to be able teach about broccoli in school this past week and and loved seeing the kids faces as they tried it for the first time!

Watching and waiting for the rain again.

A few weeks ago some friends invited me and a trainee that was visiting me to a jineteada, and although all I knew about the event was that it involved horses and men I decided that we’d take the walk through the countryside and under the hot afternoon sun to get there. I packed up veggie stuffed empanadas and some pineapple in case we got hungry or bored, grabbed the baseball cap my dad had left me, and we headed out the door. As we got closer to the event our shoes became dusted in red dust from the road and we started to hear a band blasting Paraguayan polka music. We walked through fields and over streams, watching the hills grow bigger in the distance.

When we arrived it was clear that we had come to a Paraguayan horse show! Men were riding their horses to the polka band, showing off their agility and dexterity. We watched, taking in the festive spirit. A friend came over with his horse and I took advantage of his offer to take a little ride the beautiful white steed.

At the two year mark of living and working in Paraguay, I’ve been trying to reflect on a few of my favorite moments of service.

The beautiful blooming lapacho (or taju) the national tree of Paraguay surrounding Cerro Tres Kandu, the highest point in Paraguay.

Biking through the countryside with my host dad to visit his old friends or pick fruit was always a peaceful experience. This time we biked for two hours to visit a farmer selling sesame seeds. On the way back we stopped at another friend’s farm to drink terere and harvest avocados.

I used to drink either yerba mate tea or terere, iced yerba mate, at least once a day with my old neighbors. We didn’t always understand what the other was saying but we always laughed. EeeeeeeeOoooo.

I taught these elementary school kids about composting and we later made a hanging bottle garden.

I helped Christina, my community contact, to obtain and plant 15 strawberry plants for her family’s consumption. We also worked together to set up a container garden on her patio, get a bee box, and develop a yogurt recipe.

I celebrated my 23rd birthday with two of my closest volunteer friends. We went into a larger town for an artisan market and made veggie enchiladas.

One hot afternoon my host mom and I rode out to the field to bring lunch to my host dad who was working there since the early morning, planting green manures that could also be used in animal feed! We had a lovely picnic and took a walk around the farm where they used to live as they have since moved into town.

Having my parents visit was so important and we had a nice picnic in the park!

One of the neatest places in Paraguay is the Pantanal, the largest wetland system in the world. I was so pleased to spend a week there canoeing, looking at birds and otters, swimming, and taking time to chill out and reflect on my service.

Na Olga has one of the most beautiful and diverse gardens that she cultivates to sell at the local market. It was always a joy to plant together and share gardening knowledge. I hope her dream of expanding her garden comes true!

My main project this year has been working in the elementary school in my community, teaching about gardening and developing a school garden the first semester and teaching about the nutrition facts of each vegetable and how they can be incorporated into everyday meals during the second semester. For me, the garden and the kitchen should be understood as one flowing system which is why I designed my garden class to include both planting and eating. I see encouraging the younger generation to support local and fresh foods as a great need in my community because there has been a decrease of local food production as more people are financially supported by a nearby sugarcane factory. Although this is positive for individuals’ financial stability, there would be even more benefits if there were more family gardens and local producers to add to the local markets. As Prince Charles said in his article Agriculture: The Most Important of all Human Activities, “Imposing industrial farming systems on traditional agricultural economies is actually destroying both biological and social capital and eliminating the cultural identity which has its roots in working on the land.” I hope my work in the schools can encourage healthier diets, restorative land practices, and a sustainable local economy.

In order to teach the “eating” portion of my garden class, I had the 4th through 6th graders make little vegetable books by using old yearba mate (a popular tea) boxes for the covers and tying the pages together with twine. This way they could share the information with their families or use the books as a way to target specific health issues. The first few weeks we covered various vitamins and minerals and how they contribute to health within our bodies. Now we are covering information on a new vegetable each weak including what vitamins and minerals the vegetable contains, a fun fact, and suggestions or recipes of how they can eat it at home. I also give my classes time to draw each vegetable and I bring samples for them to try.

I love seeing such excitement for eating vegetables (as seen in the photo below) and kids being able to try something healthy that maybe they’ve never even seen before. After giving the samples each week I ask all the kids to give me thumbs up, more or less, or thumbs down to see if they liked it and sometimes I receive an excited response of all the kids yelling “we love it!” with two thumbs up high in the air. I never expected to be able to get so many kids to try the vegetables, much less love eating them. Now they have the skills to both grow the vegetables and prepare them for themselves. In one of his articles Michael Pollan said, “It is one thing to produce a wonderful pig or green salad, but unless it is cooked well and eaten with pleasure, it will soon vanish from the marketplace and the fields.”

A few days ago I walked up to the corner store and the owner, who’s 6th grader is in one of my classes, told me she was so surprised when her daughter came home from school asking for cucumbers after never wanting to eat a vegetable in her life. Little moments like these make all the difficult parts of living in a strange place far away worth it.

Feeling a much needed peace after spending a week with some wonderful beings isolated in the largest wetland area in the world. Our days were spent searching for river otters in canoes, watching sunrises and sunsets reflect on the Rio Negro, watching parakeets make their communal nests, practicing mindful breathing and yoga, getting growled at by mysterious animals in the woods, and swimming near our caiman buddy. Thx 📷: @maggielaviajera (at Los Tres Gigantes - Pantanal)

My parents and I had a sweet little picnic with corn empanadas and cream filled donuts at the park 🌸 We could spy on the ROUS's (capybaras) from our picnic bench too! Just missing @kristin.k.y. (at Parque Manuel Ortiz Guerrero)

We saw this powerful place during the day and by the light of the full moon 🌝 (at La Garganta Del Diablo Iguazú Argentina)

Mom & Dad are here for a visit so we bussed over to Argentina and had a good time hiking around the largest waterfall system on our planet 🌎 Dad said, "These are the biggest waterfalls I've seen in my whole life." Mom said, "There's a tucan up in that tree!" (at Cataratas Del Iguazú, Misiones, Argentina)

Likin' lichen 🌚💙

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Ha'upei aha'arõ la oky - And then I wait for rain