annatravelsblog

As many of you know, I have ended my Peace Corps service early and returned home.  Life in the Peace Corps is challenging for every volunteer.  Because I experienced many life events shortly before my service, including losing my father, I missed my family and friends back home even more than most volunteers.  I returned home to St. Louis on October 7th, just in time for my cousin’s gorgeous wedding (please see the pictures above and to the right)!!  I was also able to visit my brother at the University of Tulsa (see the picture below).

I now plan to pursue a career teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) to immigrants here in the U.S.  Teaching English was my favorite part about my job in Paraguay, and I have a passion for working with people from other cultures.  Next week I will start out as a part-time ESL teacher.  In the future I hope to pursue a master’s degree in TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language).

This blog probably gives the impression that I had a very happy, productive year of service in Paraguay.  I am proud of my service in Paraguay, and I would like to point out that there are challenges that every volunteer faces that are not shared on social media.  The best way to learn about a volunteer’s service, without joining the Peace Corps yourself, is to take an hour or so to sit down one-on-one with a volunteer to let him or her tell you the whole story.

Once again, it’s been a while since I’ve posted here. Usually when I come across good internet access, my first priority is calling friends and family back home. But I know it’s important to keep up this blog and document my experience in Paraguay. In this post I’ve included my favorite Paraguayan dish, pasta frola (a dessert, of course).

 

In other news, this winter break, another volunteer and I organized a short day camp for the kids we teach (because the seasons are opposite in Paraguay from the U.S., they have a three-month summer break in December, and a two-week winter break in July). At the camp we made recycled art and played soccer and ultimate Frisbee. The picture to the left is of me helping two hardworking kids cut a glass bottle with wire to make a drinking glass.

 

The other volunteer who helped me taught a zumba class, and I taught two healthy cooking classes (in the picture to the right). We made yogurt, carrot cake, whole wheat bread, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Before joining the Peace Corps I would have never volunteered to teach a cooking class in front of a big group of people. This job certainly teaches you that you’re capable of more than you think. Once I learn some zumba routines, I will probably start teaching zumba classes in December, at our farmers markets, something that I never would have considered doing in a MILLION years in the U.S.

The recipe below uses dulce de guayaba, which a lot of Paraguayans can make at home because guayaba (guava) trees grow so well in people’s yards.

Ingredients

3 cups self-rising flour (or flour and baking powder)

1/3 cup butter

1 tsp. vanilla

2 eggs

about a ¼ cup milk

1 ½ cups sugar

at least 1 cup dulce de guayaba

Combine all ingredients except for the dulce de guayaba. You may need to add more or less milk to achieve a thick dough that you can flatten with a rolling pin. Butter and flour a baking dish. Press a layer of dough into the bottom of the baking dish that’s about 1 inch thick. Top with the dulce de guayaba (the more dulce you use, the better it tastes 🙂 ). Roll out the rest of the dough with a rolling pin and cut it into strips. Place the strips in a cross-cross pattern on top of the dulce de guayaba, as you would when making a pie. We used the remaining dough to make dulce de guayaba cookies. Bake at 425°F for 15 minutes, or until the top is browned.

It’s been a while! I don’t have any recipes ready yet, but I think it’s time to update you on what I’ve been doing in Paraguay. On Wednesdays and Sundays I teach an English night class (my students are in the picture above). I use a classroom at the elementary school in my community, but the class is open to anyone from the community. The students who usually come are ages 12 – 16.

 

On Thursdays I teach English to grades 3 – 6 at the school. On Fridays I work in the school vegetable garden that I made with the students in grades 3 – 6. To the right is a picture of the students transplanting lettuce seedlings into the garden. The students should be watering the garden every day during the week, but I water it on the weekends.

 

 

Another big highlight is that my boyfriend came to visit me last week. Because I have very little access to phone calls and video chats, it often seems that my friends and family are very, very far away. It was so wonderful to see to see my boyfriend, and having him visit made me feel less disconnected, and more hopeful that I’ll be able to see everyone I love soon.

I hope to write again soon, with more recipes and updates on my projects. I’m currently working on a donation of trees to plant with the younger students at the school (preschool through 2^nd grade) and a field day where a Paraguayan agricultural engineer will come to my community to talk to farmers about cultivating melon, watermelon, and beans. But sometimes projects that seem very possible don’t work out, so I have my fingers crossed, and I’m not going to post any more details until I know that these projects will succeed.

I have moved into my new home! My house has four rooms, and indoor bathroom, electricity, and running water. My current projects in my community are teaching English, working with bees with my contact’s husband, making a garden at the school, and trying to motivate the farmers in my community to renew their committee for the coming year.

My landlord (and neighbor, and member of the farmers committee) allowed me to make a demonstration garden next to my house. In the picture below, my garden looks incredibly empty. BUT I planted hot pepper to make homemade insecticides, marigolds to attract beneficial insects, onion interspersed with beets (to demonstrate companion planting), and some rows of green manures (plants that aren’t edible but add nitrogen to the soil). If all goes well, soon enough these will all sprout.

My neighbor, known in the community as Medico Juan, or ‘Juan the Medic,’ was nice enough to give me three young banana trees from his grove to plant next to my garden. These are ‘banana de oro’ trees, and their bananas are smaller and sweeter than common bananas.

Below is the recipe for Paraguayan tortillas. In the US, tortillas are flat and used to dip or roll up with other foods. In Paraguay, tortillas are a type of fried dough, eaten as a snack or light dinner. Many people put vegetables, ground meat, or cheese in their tortillas, but they are often eaten plain. Of course, I’m partial to vegetable tortillas. In the picture above, there is yucca next to the tortillas, because Paraguayans often serve boiled yucca with tortillas, and with most other snacks and meals.

When I started this blog, I anticipated taking beautiful photos of the food I make to go along with my recipes. However, I tried for 4 days to get a good enough internet signal to send photos from my camera phone to my computer, and it didn’t work. In fact, every time I make a blog post I have to walk around the room for 20 minutes or so with my modem in order to find a spot with good signal, and sometimes I never find it.  All of the photos I post will have to be from my Paraguayan cell phone and not always the highest quality, but hopefully the recipes I post will turn out delicious just the same, for anyone back home who tries to make them.

Ingredients:

1 cup all-purpose flour

2/3 cups water

1 egg

½ tsp. salt

¼ cup finely chopped vegetables (I used tomato and onion in the batch in the photo above, but Paraguayans also recommend lettuce, green onion, chives, and chard.)

Heat oil in a pan over medium heat. It’s only necessary to cover the very bottom of the pan with oil. Mix all ingredients except the vegetables, then add the vegetables. Spoon into the hot oil and fry until golden brown.

 

 

I apologize for the delay in submitting a post, but the charger for my laptop stopped working. All here is well! Later in March I will be moving out of my host mom’s house and into my very own house. I decided to wait until I move in to post more recipes. When I have my own kitchen and gas oven, I will be able to make each of the recipes a second time before I post them and double check that all of my instructions will work in a U.S. kitchen.

My future house (in the picture above) belongs to my neighbors. They are building it for their son, who may use it in three or four years when he returns from Argentina. In the meantime, the family told me I could live there. They will put a cement floor and windows and doors in two rooms, and the bathroom. They also told me that I could make a demonstration garden next to the house.

The family who owns the house also owns the 100 m dirt track where my community gathers to watch footraces. People come to buy food and drinks from their store and bet on which runners will win. The owner of the house stretches a piece of string across the finish line, and they have a mechanism that shows which person finished first, so it’s impossible to have a tie (see the picture below). They adjust the finish line so the runners have an equal chance of winning. For example, if an adult is racing a child, they will put the child’s finish line closer, so when people bet there is a relatively equal chance of both parties winning.

I’ve raced once, against a man in my community. My finish line was 5 m closer than his, but I still lost, just barely. Most people here own sneakers, but they race barefoot, and so did I. However, I jog on the track almost every morning with my 11-year-old neighbor, and I wear running shoes.

A lot of people back home are asking about the work I’m doing. Right now, I’m finishing up visiting every house in my community (there are about 70, and I’ve visited about 50). Other volunteers say that it’s best to visit everyone early on, so no one feels left out. I’m also working on preparing a request to the Ministry of Agriculture to ask for a Paraguayan researcher to come to my community to give a presentation on how to grow melon, watermelon, and squash. My community members already grow those products, but they have a lot of technical questions that I can’t answer.

I’ve been in county for over 5 months now, and I’ve learned so much and adapted an incredible amount. But I still miss everyone I left back home. I hope all is well with all of you, and that you are enjoying your jobs and appreciating any new experiences you are having as well.

Two weeks ago the farmers committee in my community asked me to give a presentation about homemade organic pesticides. The bucket next to me in the picture below is the pesticide I made. It consists of chopped garlic, hot pepper, onion, and the leaves of a native tree. The Peace Corps teaches volunteers how to make this insecticide during training.

My community contact is the head of the farmers committee, and the woman holding the poster looking away from the camera is her sister, my host mom. The farmers here are very interested in using homemade insecticides because often their squash and melon doesn’t produce at all because there are so many worms. The meeting went relatively well, but I’m going to have to learn more Guarani before I can effectively communicate with the farmers. I could only say about one fifth of what I wanted to say in Guarani, and the farmers who understood Spanish translated the rest into Guarani.

 

Chipa (CHEE – pah) is one of the most popular foods in Paraguay. Many people make it at home in brick ovens like the one shown in the photo above. But fresh chip is more commonly purchased on busses and on the street. I made this chipa at the house of one of the members of the farmers committee. However, I had to take so many liberties with the recipe that I’m not sure how much it will taste like real chipa…a lot of the ingredients used are hard to find in the U.S.

Ingredients

1/2 cup pig fat (vegetable oil can be used as a substitute)

2 eggs

1/2 cup of cheese, shredded (mozzarella cheese is the most similar to queso Paraguay, the only cheese used in rural Paraguay)

1 1/2 tsp salt

1/3 cup milk (Paraguayans substitute half of this with suero, the clear liquid that rises to the top of raw milk)

2 cups all-purpose flour (Paraguayans use almidón, flour made from yucca, but I don’t think that’s widely available in the U.S.)

1 ½ cups corn flour

½ tsp anise seed

In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs and oil, and add the cheese. Then add the flour and corn flour. Grind the anise seed in your hand and add that as well.

In a small bowl, mix together the milk and salt. Add this mixture to the flour mixture, a little at a time. Paraguayans knead the mixture for a long time, up to 20 minutes. Then they form it into long rolls, flatten it, and cut it into triangles as shown in the picture above. It can also be rolled out and formed into rings. The dough will not rise when cooked.

Paraguayans always cook chipa in a brick oven, which is very hot. I would guess that you could cook it in a conventional oven at 400 degrees F, for 10-20 minutes. The chipa is cooked when the tops are well browned.

* The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps.

I’m so excited that some of you were able to make some of the Paraguayan recipes this Christmas! My community was very excited too, and my community contact had me come over and take pictures while she made pan dulce, because she wanted me to send those pictures and the recipe to my family too. In fact, I have to attribute the picture at the beginning of this post to her.

Most of the people at my site have cell phones with occasional access to Facebook and other websites, but I’m not sure they understand exactly what a blog is. But they do understand that I’ve been sending Paraguayan recipes to my family and they’ve been sending me pictures of the food they make on Whatsapp!

This week I’m making a compost pile so I can have compost for the demonstration garden I will make for the community. I also spent a lot of time with my host mom’s family members who came in town to celebrate Christmas. And I’m continuing to visit members of the community and write the report about what projects I can work on in the community. But life in the Peace Corps is not always easy! I have a newfound respect for all PC volunteers.

Like clerico, pan dulce is only made around Christmastime, up until January 6^th, the day of the three kings.

 

Ingredients:

½ cup candied fruit

½ cup raisins (can be substituted with chocolate chips)

1 tbsp cognac

½ cup warm water

½ kilo cake flour

20 g yeast (roughly 1 ½ tbsp)

¼ tsp salt

2 eggs

¾ cups sugar

½ cup butter, softened

 

Mix the candied fruit and raisins with the cognac and let sit for about a half hour. Combine the yeast and warm water with 1 tbsp sugar and 1 tbsp flour. Let this mixture sit and rise for about 15 minutes.

Combine the eggs, ¾ cups sugar, and butter. Add the yeast mixture. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and salt, and add the dry mixture to the wet mixture. Knead for 5 minutes, adding more flour if necessary.

Paraguayans bake pan dulce in tall, round tins specifically designed for this type of bread. My contact insists that since those don’t exist in the U.S., you can use an extra-large soup can or another large tin can with the label removed. Paraguayans prepare the pan with papel de madera, similar to parchment paper or the paper that fancy bakeries use to wrap sweet bread. But if this paper is not available, you can grease and flour the pan instead.

Then put the dough in the pan and allow to rise until doubled in size. Bake at 350 degrees F until the top is golden brown.

 

 

I finally have a good enough signal to make a Christmas post! A very merry Christmas to everyone back home!! In Paraguay, some traditional Christmas foods are pan dulce and clerico. Pan dulce is sweet bread with raisins and dried fruit. I have not had the chance to make pan dulce, but I have made clerico, which is very similar to sangria. There was a farmer in my community who was very excited to invite me over and show me how to make this drink. Paraguayans will include any fruit available in clerical, except for watermelon, mango, and papaya, because their ancestors believed that would make them sick.

This December, I also got the chance to work with bees. I put on about 3 layers of clothing and helped harvest almost 30 liters of honey. I was extremely excited to be doing some work related to agriculture in the community.

Development workers tend to encourage farmers to keep bees because honey is a very good source of income. In Paraguay, a 2 liter bottle of honey can be sold for up to $16. Pineapples, which many farmers at my site grow, sell for 50 cents or $1 each and require much more physical labor to produce.

Below is the recipe for clerico. I hope you enjoy it!

Ingredients

Apples, finely chopped

Oranges, peeled and finely chopped

Melon (similar to cantaloupe), finely chopped

Grapes (instead of chopping them, you can squeeze them to separate the peel from the insides and include both in the clerico)

Pineapple, finely chopped

Bananas, finely chopped

Plums, finely chopped

Red wine

Cider

Sugar (to taste)

Combine all of the ingredients, and add sugar to taste. Paraguayans use roughly equal parts wine and cider.

 

This week some community members and I walked to the beautiful stream in our community. We met some fishermen there, and my host mom and I picked up some bamboo poles and tried to fish with them. The only bait we had was flowers that she had picked on the way there to mix with our yerba mate tea. I think everyone would have been very surprised if we had caught anything. But the fishermen reminded me a lot of my Dad (also a dedicated fisherman). Speaking of which, I forgot to mention when I posted the picture in my last blog, thanks for the hat, Dad!!! I love you so much.

My daily schedule consists of visiting neighbors and trying to write a ‘Community Needs Assessment’ detailing what projects I could work on in the community. My host mom and I also spend almost two hours every morning drinking yerba mate, and we prepare food at least five times every day. That leaves little time for much else. Nevertheless, I decided to try to write a food blog with Paraguayan recipes in my free time. Please comment if you happen to try these recipes! And best of luck replicating these…Paraguayans do not use measurements when cooking, and almost always cook over a fire. The measurements I’ve written below are complete estimates, and I’m not sure how well the recipes will translate to a U.S. kitchen.

On Friday we prepared a food that’s very common in Paraguay, called vori vori. This is a caldo, or soup. Most Paraguayan foods that are popular today are fried and include very little vegetables. Diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart problems are unfortunately very common. The Paraguayans say that their ancestors lived longer because they ate less fried food, and instead ate caldos like vori vori.

Vori Vori is a soup made with balls of corn meal, known in Guarani as avati kui (ah-vah-TEE coo-EE). You can purchase corn meal in Paraguay, but a lot of Paraguayans like to grind cooked corn in a molino (shown in the picture below), which is what I did, with my host mom and my community contact’s daughter.

Ingredients

1 tbsp oil

Half of a green bell pepper, chopped

Two small tomatoes, chopped

Half of a white onion, chopped

2 green onions, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 tbsp salt

1 chicken breast

3 cups of water

½ tbsp fresh oregano (whole leaves)

1 ½ cups Avati kui (corn meal)

1 tbsp all-purpose flour

 

To prepare vori vori…

Heat the oil and sauté the vegetables, salt, and chicken over medium heat for about 20 minutes (This is a complete estimate. We cooked this over a fire.). Add the water and the oregano and bring to a boil. Let simmer over low heat while you prepare the corn meal balls, or vori.

To prepare the corn meal balls, add a few spoonfuls of the broth to the dry corn meal. Mix well and roll into ½ inch sized balls. Add these balls to the simmering broth and cook for about 5 minutes more.

Buen provecho!!

* The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps.

 

Yesterday I arrived at my site, where I will be spending two years as a Peace Corps volunteer! I live in a community that grows a lot of pineapple, watermelon, and melon, and also produces milk for a Paraguayan milk company. My community contact grows pineapple and produces honey, and I live with her sister, a super awesome single woman :), who is in the above picture with me.

Many more posts about my community will follow, but in this post I’m going to attempt to explain the work I’ll be doing as a Peace Corps volunteer. My fellow trainees and I agree that even though most US citizens recognize the term ‘Peace Corps’, very few people understand what we do. A lot of Paraguayans also don’t understand what the Peace Corps is. In fact, most of us volunteers did not know what we would be doing before we got here.

Before I came to Paraguay, I was under the impression that after training, I would be placed in a rural community and given a project to work on. This isn’t exactly the case. The Peace Corps placed me in a community that requested an agriculture volunteer. They also connected me with a contact in the community that has ideas about projects I could work on. But in some cases, Peace Corps volunteers reach their site to find that their contact has left the community.

During my first three months in site, I will live with my host mom, try to get to know the community, and find out what development projects they would like to start. Peace Corps sends volunteers to a community for a maximum of six years. We serve for terms of two years, so we could be the first, second, or third volunteer that has worked in the community. Some first-time volunteers are the first people from the U.S. the people in their community have seen. It usually takes about a year for first-time volunteers to integrate into their communities and start a project.

I am a first-time volunteer, but three community development volunteers have worked in a nearby town, so the community is familiar with Peace Corps and with foreigners.

After three months, most volunteers move into their own house, although many of them continue living on their host families’ properties. Some of them build their own houses. Throughout our service, the Peace Corps staff gives us resources to guide us, but we are in charge of making our own schedules and deciding what projects to work on.

I may teach at the local school, give presentations at famers committee meetings, or work with individual farmers, but I will have to seek out that work myself. Some development work can do more harm than good, and the Peace Corps has found that this system promotes the best results.

If this job sounds intimidating to you, it also sounds intimidating to me and to a lot of my fellow trainees. One skill the Peace Corps definitely teaches you is to confront tasks that are out of your comfort zone or seem downright impossible.

I miss everyone from home, and I hope all is well!! I have access to wifi at my site, and I will certainly try to blog more often!