Bienvenidos a Paraguay!

Walking to my host families house in Santo Domingo![1]

I’ve been in Paraguay for a week now and it is a little bit of an adjustment, but it helps to be here with other Peace Corps Trainees. We flew into Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay, where the Peace Corps headquarters is. Then we went to the training facility in Guarambare to meet the training staff. It’s about 45 minutes south of Asuncion. This will be our main training facility and we will meet there at least twice a week. That same night they took us to meet our host families. Mine lives in the district of Villeta in a smaller town outside of Guarambare, called Tacuruty and they live in a very small community called Santo Domingo/Inmaculada. From the main training center it’s about a 30 minute bus ride and then a 50 minute walk down dirt roads. We each are staying with our own host family, which is really nice. Mine is very big and are so wonderful. I have a Father, Mother, Sister, Brother-in-Law, two nieces and one nephew, plus other family members and friends who are always visiting. My father is a farmer, so they have every type of animal you can imagine and also grow vegetables and fruit (I have fresh fruit juice every day; DELICIOUS!!). The first day I was there and my niece was showing me the outhouse/latrine, my nephew was climbing all around and fell into a huge pile of crap that the cow had just dispensed of. It was really funny! The stable area kind of surrounds the cow area and the animals just kind of wonder all over their property.

Read more about Paraguay on Treasures Of Traveling Website.

-- Luke Keeler