Job Description: PC Volunteer Aka Bunny Raiser

You’re probably thinking, hmm I didn’t realize that Lyn/Lyndsay went to the Peace Corps to play with bunnies and kittens. Ahh, if only that was good enough to count as work. I do feel like my work related energies are currently focused on training bunnies and kitties to be polite and training Paraguayan’s not to kill them, at least not accidentally. No one at the Muni who is nearly as cute as my two little fuzzy pocket pets and official work has been slow. This is a challenge because I’m far better at working than doing anything else. Heck, I’m so bad at mindless small talk that I’ve created a community survey to help give my conversations a purpose and give me a reason to knock on strangers’ doors errrr… clap at their front gate.


(Lila drying herself on my computer fan after her bath, and then I learned you aren´t supposed give rabbits bathes. Evidently it stresses them out. Woops)

I will admit that it took me a long while to write the questions for survey for the funcionarios and community members. I blame the great Teresa Purge of August 2009 that spilled over into September. But then it took almost 2 weeks to get copies of the surveys printed because Nelson’s printer didn’t want to work…And there was rain for almost an entire week, nothing gets done during the rain. I also made the invitations for my site presentation on Tuesday and handed those out to all of the funcionarios. I’m going to have Marcia talk about it on the radio in the morning and the tv on Sunday.

I intended to start my community surveys tomorrow morning…but it is raining again…and the world stops turning for rain. At least I did my laundry yesterday.


I got my first pesado text message the other day from some guy commenting on how my skirt fit me that day. I didn’t know who it was at first, but then he called me, asking to speak to Nelson, the guy I work with most right now. Turns out that Mr. Pesado is a guy who works in the Muni who has been pesado since Day 1, asking me one more than one occasion if have a boyfriend, do I like to drink, to I like to go out, the normal pesado things that pesado guys ask. Oh brother.


Nati talks all of the time. I mean all of the time. She follows me around and talks. She doesn’t really say anything, she just talks. Most of it is nonsense to me because she mixes in ‘hina’ and other random Guarani words where I don’t think they belong. Smile and nod. Smile and nod.