5 Things You’d Never Guess About Living in Rural Paraguay

                Every time that I am about to go on a long trip to a new place, the advice of one of my wise creative writing professors always comes to mind. She always encouraged me to keep a journal from the point of preparation for the journey and throughout (at least) my first few months in a new place. Why? Not so much to remember what I did every single day, but because whenever a person goes to a new place, their senses are heightened to all the differences: in people, culture, nature, etc. After a few months the novelty wears off, and for example, you assume that having assigned seats in a movie theater, and all the exasperation that it causes, is just a normal part of life. The second year the changes in nature happen and you don’t even notice anymore. After almost six months Paraguay, I am beginning to experience this process of assimilation and normalization. A chicken pecking my leg while I am eating breakfast is no longer a surprise, but rather just one of many expected mishaps. Luckily, I have kept a journal, and would like to share five things that have now become part of the norm, but that I (and perhaps you?) would have never expected about living in rural Paraguay.

1.  Some of my future tomato crop may be stolen by the howler monkeys that live in the trees of my site. However, all bananas are safe despite the stereo-type. According to one of my many host-mothers, the monkeys here don’t eat them.
2. Certain fruits: grapes, mangos, and watermelon are considered “delicado” (delicate) in Paraguayan food culture. Attempting to make a fruit salad with all these ingredients indicates (to my many host-mothers) that I am in fact suicidal. Legend has it that if a person mixes watermelon and wine (grape product), they will okapu (explode!). I love how the word okapu sounds like the (yiddish?) caput—it’s over.
3. Most families in my site own an assortment of farm animals (chickens, geese, ducks, pigs, cows, sheep—usually each family has a couple of each). The catch: these animals are generally free-range. This often makes great “animal tv”—like the particular white chicken who liked to follow my host-family’s dog to pick off of his food. In return, the chicken compliantly acted as the dog’s chew toy. My favorite free range moment: one time I was hanging out with a family and drinking terere in their entry-way. There was a loud rustling noise and barking from a distance which quickly became louder. Suddenly we all threw our legs up in the air as a tiny, yapping dog chased a huge, squealing pig across the entire house and then right between our legs. The minute the animals had cleared the front door (and were outside), the dog went off to some new amusement and the pig lay down for a nap in the mud.
4.  The buses. Getting on a bus in Paraguay is always an adventure—while many of the long distance buses are pretty new and occasionally have AC, short distance buses, especially those that come (nearby) my site, make me question if it is safer to just stay home. Imagine, a mini-bus that is a least 50 years old. It drives on both dirt and asphalt roads and has a wooden floor. Underneath the dashboard, there is a huge gap to the outdoors. It makes many suspicious grinding and clanging noises. The bus driver is generally drinking terere with one hand (though luckily there is a person on the bus who collects the fares, and he is serving the tea). The bus is stuffed to the brim with people and groceries (50 kilo bags of flour, Cosco sized bags of noodles, chicken feed, children holding new pets in flour sacks etc). If your house is on the route, the bus will stop at your door, and the guy who collects the fares will help you off the bus and bring down your belongings. The bus is also painted bright yellow, bright blue, and bright red. There is no signage, and you know it’s your bus because you recognize the driver and know exactly which side road the bus parks on before leaving about a half-an-hour later than its scheduled time.
5. Despite the four facts above, if I don’t want to cook one day, I can order a decent pizza for pickup from a family that lives about a 10 minute bike ride from my house. 

A Host of Hosts

                I’ve just moved (again!!). I am now living with my third host family—well more like a host-grandmother—in my site. Next stop, my own house! One of the most challenging but also interesting parts of being a PCV is that I have to live with a host family both during training and during the first three months in site. Though in some countries, like Peru, volunteers must live with a host family for their entire stay in country, after those first three months I have the option of renting my own house. Starting with a host family gives me some amount of “protectsia” in site, helps me integrate (whether I like it or not), and also helps me connect to the resources in my community.

                The first host family that I lived with, I chose because during my first time visiting site (all volunteers visit their sites for 5 days, then return to stay after a couple more weeks of training) Na V was the only person who seemed to understand that if she spoke a little bit more slowly (versus loudly) I would be able to understand what she was saying in guarani. I love her house because she has these two gigantic mango trees. They are perfect for hanging a hammock right down the middle (I may have spent the majority of the month in that hammock) and have the magical mango-tree air-conditioning. It is definitely about 20 degrees cooler under those mango trees at all times and there is always a breeze. Her house is also on the top and edge of a hill, so there is always an amazing view of rolling hills, palm trees, and distant houses. Na V also really loves animals. She always has a million chickens around, cows, pigs, and even a sheep. Everyone would always threaten to slaughter the sheep for her daughter’s quinceneara (15’th birthday), but Na V would hear none of it. She taught me most of what I know about medicinal herbs and also introduced me to about thirty families in my site on foot in the hottest part of the summer.

                The second family I lived with really wanted me to be with them for all two years! Three out of five of the children still live at home and they are just the best kids. They are so full of life and I enjoyed just sitting and watching them at play. Backyard soccer could be pretty intense. My host mom Na R has so much love for all of them (and some left over for me too) and is always super-enthusiastic about trying out different agricultural techniques. She is the oldest of ten children, many of whom still live in my site, and is super boisterous. Her father and mother are pretty much the patriarch and matriarch of half of my site (probably because they have so many kids). My contact is married to one son, two sons renovated my future house, and I am renting my future house from a son-in-law. Also the father is a really impressive farmer and hopefully I will be collaborating with him in the future. Living with Na R, I got to know the whole family better. Also Na R has really delicious grapes. Everyone else’s grapes ran out in January, and we were still harvesting well into February.

                Finally, my current host-grandmother Na S lives on the complete other side of town. Living in her house, I am realizing that even though I have lived in my site for two months (and it’s not that large), I still have so much more to explore. Just being physically present in another part of town has helped me meet so many new and kind people. Many of them just show up to visit Na S and I get to sit in on the conversation. Yesterday, one of the neighbors visited. This morning I returned the visit and went with the neighbor’s daughter to visit yet another new family. As we walked down a hill (where I had never been before), suddenly the path opened up to an area of flat fields, with barely any houses or trees and lots of cows. I thought I knew my site’s scenery by now—hilly with lots of different types of trees—this was the complete opposite. And I got to meet a family who grows rice! I don’t know anything about growing rice and I think they may be the only ones left in my site who grow it.

                Much love from the other side of town (or as my 2^nd host mom would describe amooooite = waaaaay over there).--Emily

A typical (?) day in Paraguay

So what does a typical day in site look like? Well everyday definitely brings its own adventure but as time goes on, things are beginning to fall into a general structure (which of course will change beginning on the ives of March when I move out from my final host family).

                I wake up between 6:00 and 6:30am every day. By this point, my host-dad has already gone off to work (he is a farmer and is currently working on a cotton crop at a nearby agricultural school). As I stumble out into the light, I usually run into my host-mom sitting in the ogaguy (essentially a roofed porch between the room for the kitchen and the bedrooms/overhang?). She greets me with the traditional morning salutation mba’eichapa neko’e (how did you dawn?). After this little guarani quiz, we sit together and drink mate.

Though most of my host families don’t eat breakfast until a couple hours later, my defiantly American stomach starts grumbling for breakfast around seven. The most common Paraguayan breakfast that I’ve seen in my site is the infamous tortilla—essentially a savory fried dough made with home-made Paraguayan cheese and home-grown scallions. Unfortunately I have discovered that the aforementioned defiantly American stomach and the tortilla do not get along. So, following in the footsteps of many other PCVs in Paraguay, I have introduced my host-mother to oatmeal. She was both somewhat frightened and amused as she watched me the first time I attempted to make (non-instant) oatmeal in a soup-pot on a wood fire. Unfortunately the oatmeal box only offers microwave instructions. Hmmm.

As I make sure that my oatmeal does not boil-over while hoping that a little more of the water will boil off, the children begin to wake up and my host mom goes to milk the cow. By the time the cow is re-tethered, I’ve eaten breakfast, and the kids have started their first round of soccer for the day, it’s usually around 8:15. 8:15-11:00am has become my “work time.” While the sun hasn’t yet reached its full strength, I take the opportunity to visit neighbors (sometimes visiting neighbors can involve an hour walk to get to them, other days I just go next door), dig my mini-field/demo-plot, monitor and turn the two composts that I helped build, or whatever else needs to be done. During my visits with neighbors, in addition to terere-ing, I am attempting to learn the agricultural practices in my community and community needs. I have been learning what crops are most common, what pests are most common (currently the bean crops are being attacked by a bug called purgon), what people feed their animals, etc.

Generally, I get another round of terere-time with my host family around 11am. While at first, I sometimes found the amount of terere overwhelming, now that the sun has reached its full power , I’ve found myself asking for an extra pitcher after my host family has had enough. January and February are the hottest months here and it can be over 100 degrees farenheit for days at a time with no AC. Lunch is usually at noon and the most common dish is hot stew (either beef, chicken, or beans) with either rice or noodles mixed in.  And then siesta (yay!!). Coming from a siesta-less culture, it’s always a little funny/surprising to see my entire host family all asleep at the same time in the middle of the day. Siesta is only about 2 hours (everyone is awake by 2:30) but it is generally too hot to really get moving until 3:30 or 4:00.

During this siesta/hiding out from the heat time, sometimes I get some sleep in, but when it’s too hot, I read about gardening and work on my ao poi—Paraguayan needlepoint. Right now I am copying patterns from another woman in the community (she has hundreds and copying them will probably serve as my down-time entertainment for the rest of my time in Paraguay). On Fridays at 5:00pm, I attend the meeting for the women’s commission who requested me. Right now I am still observing and learning, and they are working on fund-raising and organizing a project to get modern bathrooms sponsored by the local government. On other afternoons, I generally go on a visit to next door neighbors or help out with some of the agricultural chores around the house (which currently includes harvesting, husking, and pulling kernels off of corn). It’s always much easier to ask people questions about their agricultural practices while I’ve got an ear of corn in my hands (and am sharing the work).

8pm is dinner—usually something light (I make salad or have a little bit of leftovers). Similar to my experiences in Israel, lunch is the heaviest meal, with a light breakfast and dinner. And shortly after dinner comes the bucket bath. Attempting to get water from a bucket onto me and soap/shampoo from me back into the bucket without flooding my bedroom (where I take said bucket bath) is always a bit of a challenge. By 9pm, after a quick glance at the stars (the constellations are different here and I can see the milkway!!) I am off to bed. 

Paraguayan Xmas and New Years

A couple of folks have emailed to ask me about how I spent Xmas, Hannukah and New Years in Paraguay. So here goes. Hannukah was pretty quiet since PY is a rather Catholic country and I have to take it slow on bringing up/sharing the Jewish stuff with my community. Luckily (when related to Hannukah) fried food is extremely popular in PY and though I didn’t have any latkas this year, I got a good share of empanadas (hot pockets), tortillas (fried dough pancakes),and Paragauyan schnitzel. I am confident that sometime in the near future latkas will be a big hit here.

Christmas in Paraguay is quite different than Christmas in the states and one of the main reasons is because we’re in the opposite hemisphere. All the imagery of pine trees, hot cider, cinnoman/savory smells, sitting around the fireplace, and of course, dreaming of a white Christmas, doesn’t make much sense here in the 100+ degree weather. Christmas falls near the longest day of the year and markets the beginning of the harvest season for watermelon, melon, grapes, pineapple, squash and corn.

Most of the Christmas celebration takes place on the evening of the twenty-fourth, where families get together to wait for the doce, midnight. I watched my family gather together a gigantic bag of watermelon and squash for the pesebre, nativity scene, that they were going to build at their grandmother/grea tgrandmother’s house. I saw another one at a different family’s house: first they placed dried corn stalks against the wall, then a little platform with some grass and decoration and a little cradle with a baby Jesus doll and Mary and Joseph figurines. Around the base of the platform was the semi-circle of squash and melons. I tried to figure out what the fruits represented but wasn’t able to quite understand/get a straight answer. Will try again next year.

I expected families to start the cooking/food prep early in the morning (like Passover?) but most families started around four or five in the afternoon (“We have plenty of time!”) and spent the morning slowly, hanging out with the trickle of relatives arriving from other cities and towns. When the food prep did begin, my favorite part was making the clerico, Paraguayan Sangria/Fruit punch. We used chopped up apples, oranges, melon, banana, pineapple, grapes, red wine from a box, and pineapple soda. Yummm. Stick in the fridge and marinate until around 8pm when the wait for midnight begins! A bunch of Paraguayans asked me if people drink Sangria in the states for Christmas as well and they all thought it was pretty funny when I told them no because there is no fruit in season and it’s too cold!

Around 8pm I headed over to my neighbor’s house to wait for midnight. They had the radio going with Christmas music and call-ins and everyone was sitting in a circle enjoying the clerico. At nine we had a big dinner (schnitzel, rice, chipa guasu—corn quiche, and empanada) and then we just waited until 12am. As the clock hit midnight, everyone jumped up and began hugging and wishing one another a merry Christmas and then we each had a glass of champagne. The next day, we had a big lunch and then just rested. Another surprise: no presents!

New Years was very similar. One of my favorite moments from New Years was listening to a particular call-in on the radio. Paraguayan-diasporaniks were calling into my local radio station from all over the world (well mostly Spain where there is a large community). Every time that someone called in the broadcaster would ask “so where are you calling from,” and as the night got later, “so what part of Spain are you calling from?” Suddenly, I hear this woman correct the guy, “No, I’m from the states.” “What state?” And I just knew. New Jersey! 

Ogres Are Like Onions

Hello again! I have been living in my site, a small rural village about four hours south of Asuncion for a little over three weeks now and I am having a wonderful time. One question that has come up from both family, friends, and the Paraguayan families that I meet every day is “what exactly is your job?!” (other than sitting in the hammock under the mango tree?). The overall goal: my job is to build capacity, to work with the people in my (new) community to give them opportunities, skills, experience to improve their own lives. Sounds a bit vague/let’s all sit in a circle and sing kumbaya? Perhaps. For a few more details: I help the community analyze what it needs through a “Community Needs Assessment.” After presenting this information back to the community, I work with interested/motivated community members on some of the needs/goals that came up in the earlier interviews (as I am in the agriculture sector, most of these projects are related to agricultural production). The idea is that as I am facilitating these projects I am also handing over the leadership/organizational skills and contacts with any outside organizations to my host-country partners.

                Right now, I am just working up to step one: Community Needs Assessment—I am about one month into the six month process (which also means that I have no idea yet what actual projects I will be working on).Currently I am turning into a social butterfly (which is in many ways ironic). I have to visit at least half of the families in my community (about 40 families), perform a census (number of people, ages), ask about forty questions related to agriculture (what plants & animals people currently own, how they feed and upkeep animals, production rates, soil quality for planting, household finances, and interest in new crops/ animals), and ask them what they like/dislike/want to improve in their community. I have to visit any committees (in my site there is a farmers’ committee and two women’s committees), teachers, and any “outside” organizations that interact or could interact with my community (for me that means a representative from the municipal department of agriculture, an agricultural school, and a hotel).

I’ve started out by trying to visit 40 families (at least once) to present myself and get to know them a little before even beginning to ask questions. I want people to know who I am first and feel a little more comfortable talking to me before I start asking them about their successes and struggles. Since I don’t have a bike yet, that has meant a lot of walking in very hot weather (and you have to cover up, I never imagined myself walking around in a hundred degrees farenheit in long pants, long sleeves, and a hat!), a lot of terere (ice-teaish stuff), a lot of guarani (they DON’T speak Spanish in my site), and a lot of awkward moments (luckily Brandeis prepared me for awkwardness).

And so far it’s been going good. I have been picking up so much guarani. When I first started the house visits, things were a bit rough language-wise, since the only comment I could really manage was “so, I see you have chickens.” Generally not much of a conversation starter. Luckily, many of the families/people I have met seem enthusiastic, or at least curious, about my presence in the community, and during many of those first visits they helped me expand from the chicken topic. Three weeks into my site and I can already understand many of the questions thrown at me and respond in a way that people almost understand! Woot. Also I can understand many of the conversations around me, which is super-helpful. I’m catching a lot of little details about the community that way. Also, my lovely host-mom Na Vicenta has insisted on accompanying me to almost all of my visits, and as I am more used to her intonation, and she is more used to my chicken-scratch style of speaking, when there are major misunderstandings, she has been helping me out. She is one of the few people in my site who figured out right away that if she spoke slowly (as opposed to regular speed but with added volume) that I would understand what she was saying.

I (aka a Peace Corps volunteer) was specifically requested to come to my community by one of the women’s committees in my site and my contact (aka the person who has all my emergency contact info and set up my initial host family) is the president of the committee. Therefore, I have been using the committee and its participants as a sort of “home field.” For example, they aren’t uncomfortable if I write down the answers to the census questions (whereas when I visit other people I can only ask as much as I will be able to remember, and then I write responses later). Also I have been using a couple of different mapping/graphing tools with the members to get to know the growing seasons, the lay of the land (community maps), and the strengths and weaknesses of the commission itself. Unfortunately, unlike my guarani skills, my drawing in straight lines skills have not improved just yet. Eventually, I will also be using some of these tools with other community members and groups to help them prioritize their needs (what do we want to work on first/what is more important to do/what project has the most interested participants and organizers), and lay out the steps towards reaching their goals. Eeek!!

One of the many great things about my site is that within a forty minute walk of my current host family is another volunteer, Andrea, from the Environmental Education sector (lots of overlap). She lives in the neighboring community, and has helped me out a lot with her year’s-worth of insight into the community. A couple of days ago I went to visit her and after I asked her a million questions about the community, we ended up watching Shrek. I couldn’t stop laughing. I realized that in my community I AM DONKEY! Like Shrek, most of the people in my site did not ask for me to be there, and now I keep following them around, asking lots of annoying questions, eating their food, and accidently setting off dragons (well, perhaps not dragons, but I do seem to have my fair share of somewhat entertaining misadventures).

And now for…the moment(itos)

•  Not being able to get off the bus at my site because my backpacking pack couldn’t fit through the doorway.
• The three laughing women (my contact, my current host-mom, and my next month’s host mom) who greeted me at the roadside with a clamber of guarani.
• Learning all the right noises and hand-motions to dispel the legions of free-range chickens/ dissuade them from their favorite past-time of pecking my knees in the middle of serious conversations.
• Walking with my current host-mother through the fields to visit new families. To me we are walking through weeds and grass. To her, the earth here is a pharmacy. She points out and explains each different bark and weed with special properties, and soon the landscape opens up for me as well and we collect the herbs together to put in terere and mate.
• Watermelon season! Holding half a watermelon cradled in my lap and eating the whole thing with a spoon like a bowl of ice-cream. Placing the finished half on the ground where a dog laps up the remaining juice and seeds and chickens peck away at the juicy parts of the rind, leaving thousands of little indents on the inside.
•  Spending many a siesta in the woven hammock which hangs between two gigantic, wild mango trees.
•  Watching my contact’s  daughter climb to the highest branches of the mango tree (at least forty feet up) to throw down the first sun ripened fruit.
• Learning on Christmas Eve that my new favorite Paraguayan dish is mondongo milanesa aka schnitzel of a particular cow stomach (cows have more than one stomach, mondongo is the white bubbly one)
•  Attending many birthday parties for 90 year olds and watching tipsy family and neighbors (who are essentially family, the way things go in the countryside) dancing together in the backyard to the blast of Paraguayan regaton and polka.
• Falling flat on my face (chin that is) in front of my contact while trying to cross a wire fence. Luckily (as one of the other volunteers pointed out) there were no cow patties nearby.
• Learning how to do ao poi, Paraguayan embroidery, from one of my neighbors.
• Watching my host mom unwind the pig. Essentially the pig is kept on a long leash tied to a post. At some point the pig had just wound himself around and around until he had gotten himself into quite the situation. So my host mom grabbed him by the back two hind legs, and as the pig screamed bloody murder, she walked him around and around the post until he was free again. 

Sworn-in!

I’m officially a volunteer!! Yay…and now my two years begin. Training ended with a very nice swearing-in ceremony in the municipality near our training-center. Two people from each host family were invited to attend (so we got to see all of our host-mamas dressed up in their finest).We had to take some oaths (to defend the US constitution, and an oath in Spanish, which unfortunately none of the volunteers quite understood), we ate a gigantic cake (apparently you only get this special cake for swearing-in and close-of-service).We also got another chance to shake hands with the American Ambassador (who gave a speech and made a joke in broken Spanish about how Obama’s swear-in oath was messed up). Then Peace Corps took us for our final ride (in our vans that we used during training) to Asuncion, where we got our bank cards and were suddenly volunteers.

Swear-ins (which take place a couple of times a year since there are four different sectors of volunteers beginning their service after a training cycle) are also the time for volunteers all over Paraguay to meet up in the Capitol. Friday afternoon, I attended two club meetings—one for the Seed-Bank club, a free resource for volunteers to introduce green manures/cover crops into their communities, and the other—a gender and diversity club, which organizes summer camps for Paraguayan youth so that they can learn about gender, religious and other type of diversity in Paraguay as well as receive leadership training. I also went to Ahendu (“I listen” in Guarani), a concert by volunteers/for volunteers. This year Koika, the Korean Peace Corps, were also invited to attend and perform—so I watched a bunch of Peace Corps volunteers rocking out to the Korean version of “I Feel Pretty” from West Side story.

On the way to my hotel, I saw my new favorite billboard, an advertisement for Jäger Condoms! This is their website (I wouldn’t open this at work): http://www.jagercondoms.com.ar/. Yeah, way better than jagermeister/McJagger/the Jaeger menswear store.

Also, realizing that I will soon be about 4 hours outside of the capitol in the Paraguayan countryside, I decided that this Saturday would be a good time to meet/find the Jewish community of Asuncion. In order to enter the Synagogue, I had to send them a letter from Peace Corps proving that I was a volunteer and they also scanned my passport at the gate. Despite this intensive security, the congregation that I met inside the Hebraica compound was really sweet. It seems like Friday night services are more egalitarian and Saturday morning services are leaning more towards Orthodox. Since I went to the Saturday morning services, it was very small, less than 20 people, and everyone was very welcoming. I was surprised to find out that this week was my bat-mitzvah portion (va’yeshlach), though unfortunately I wasn’t able to whip out any of my skillz because of the denomination of the services. After the prayers were over, there was a small kiddish, where we all sat around a large table and talked about the Torah portion.

It was very interested to suddenly change perspectives—most of the congregants (all Paraguayan) had no idea where Misiones (my site’s district/departmento) is located. They kept asking if it was in the Chaco (the desert/wasteland in the middle of the country). This was surprising since all the people in my rural training community (who generally don’t have access to maps and internet, and also are rarely able to travel the countryside) all know where it is. Also, since the Torah portion described the story of Jacob’s daughter Dinah attempting to date/marry non-Israelites, the conversation turned to intermarriage. It was pretty interesting to listen to this Paraguayan congregation of 20 (there are only about 1000 Jews in Paraguay) discussing intermarriage/ asking about non-matrilineal descent, and generally “what does it mean to be Jewish?” The Rabbi was in a bit of a bind, since it was technically an orthodox service, but he tried to present a spectrum of Jewish-law responses to the questions of matrilineal/patrilineal descent. Hopefully as I get to know the community more, I will have more of a chance to ask them what it is like to be Jewish and Paraguayan.

Not exactly sure when I will next have internet connection since I still have to find the cyber-café nearest to my site…but hopefully I will have up some more posts later this month!!

Yerba Mate aka the Diuretic Nectar of the Gods

So, I’ve been meaning to write a little something about Yerba Mate since arriving in Paraguay. For those of you who have heard of Yerba Mate before, I’m sorry that this may be a bit a repetitive, but then again, in Paraguay, where you can have three different variations of Yerba Mate before lunchtime, Yerba Mate is intrinsically a bit repetitive. Yerba Mate is a type of tea leaves (made from a Yerba Tree) that is very common in Paraguay as well as other places in South America (so folks from/who have been to Argentina have heard about it). In Paraguay, especially since coffee isn’t really a thing, Yerba Mate is kind of a staple/how you drink water. So far I have had four different preparations of Mate.

1. Mate—a hot drink. All you need is a thermos of boiling water, a cup (guampa), about ½ a cup of Yerba Mate leaves in the bottom of the guampa, a metal straw (bombilla), and two or more people. To serve, one person pours the hot water into the guampa containing the Yerba Mate, then dealing to the right, passes the guampa. The receiving Mate drinker/participant, sips up the boiling serving, and then passes the guampa back to the server. Server drinks last. There is a special verb for this type of Mate in guarani: Akay’u= I drink mate. This type of Yerba Mate tea is had first thing in the morning (while still picking sleep out of your eyes) and is more of a cold weather tea.
2. Cocido—this is Paraguayan tea. Take a metal spatula/fire mini-shovel. Place a couple spoonfuls of Yerba Mate on the shovel and in some cases sugar. Place coal from the fire on top of this mix and burn the Yerba Mate/caramelize the sugar. Dump this mixture (including the coal!) into a pot of boiling water. Pour 1 part water through a strainer into one part milk (preferably the milk should be straight from the cow, that you milked after drinking Mate) and eat with cookies or some other breakfast bisquity things. This is a breakfast drink!
3. Terere—this is Paraguayan ice-tea. Extremely essential in this hot country (last week it was about 110 degrees out and nobody has AC). Pull out that guampa (cup) with ½ of Yerba Mate leaves, bombilla (straw), and thermos of icy water (preferably with some mashed up remedial herbs mixed in). Server deals to the right (in the same manner as Mate, except this time the gringos don’t burn their tongues). Terere also has its own verb in guarani: aterere= I want to drink terere. Around nine am, Paraguayan snack time, is the traditional terere drinking time, but any “coffee break,” hangout time with family, or boring class, also qualify as good times to start passing the guampa.  Terere is both meant to relax (essential to the Paraguayan slogan of “tranquiiiiiilo”=everything is chill man) and to perk you back up (with the help of some remedial herbs like mint, lemon grass, etc).
4. Mate Dulce--this is a winter drink/its been raining for for days and it could be winter I'm so cold drink. If you take the instructions for Mate (category 1) and replace the thermos of boiling water with a boiling milk+sugar combination, you've got Mate Dulce. The combination of the bitter/earthy flavor of yerba mate and the sweet/creamy flavor of some fresh frothy milk is definitely my favorite, however, drinking boiling sugar through a metal straw (if the hot sugar doesn't burn the top of your mouth off, the blazing hot metal straw will) is not my favorite. A bit of a give and take situation. Luckily there are only two months of winter in Paraguay!!

In addition to the four different preparations of Yerba Mate, there are about three bazillion and seven traditions related to drinking (some form of) Yerba Mate in Paraguay. For example, the youngest person in the family is technically the server in the case of Mate, Terere, and Mate Dulce (which all involve passing the cup) and the order of serving is always to the right with the dealer last.

Here are two of my favorite traditions/stories of Yerba Mate that I have encountered so far in Paraguay

1. Santa Tomas (Saint Thomas)--the first serving of Terere (that's the "ice-tea" one) is traditionally reserved for Saint Thomas (and nobody gets to drink it). Since this serving is the first time the yerba mate leaves have had any water in them (they've just been scooped out of the tea box and placed in the bottom of the cup), the liquid produced is pretty bitter. In that case "Saint Thomas' Serving" is sipped through the straw and then spat over the shoulder. Sometimes, the dry tea leaves absorb all of the first serving of water as they rehydrate. In which case, it almost looks as if someone (perhaps a Saint) has drank all the water. Why Saint Thomas (and not Elijah)? It's a pun. In Spanish, "toma" means "he drinks" therefore Santa Tomas (pronounced Santa Toma) can also mean "The Saint drinks."
2. Terere + Watermelon = death by stomach explosion. A large part of Paraguayan food traditions have to do with bad mixtures, aka don't drink cold water while eating hot soup, don't eat hot dogs and ice cream in fast succession. The idea being that certain extreme opposites of temperature or types of food will cause a stomach-ache or fever. In terms of Paraguayan food tradition, watermelon is a very volatile fruit and is best had alone. But no matter what, one MUST NOT mix watermelon with Terere. Of course, after 3 months of intensive training and attempting to learn guarani (a language where at least half of the letters are pronounced nasally, and if you switch two letters you end up cursing someone out) a Peace Corps volunteer may begin to rebel/crack and purposely eat Terere and Watermelon together to annoy the language teachers/ wait to see if an explosion will actually occur. The results where definitely disappointing because a. no one exploded b. this seems to be breaking point which occurs with every group of PC trainees, and therefore the language teachers had a very "been there, done that, bought the t-shirt" sort of reaction.

That's all for now...

--Emily