A beautiful day

Sorry for the drop in posts, I´ve been extremely busy as of late. I have another post on my computer that I will post at a later date from when I visited another volunteer out in the field. This week I am out on long field practice. We stay in a volunteer´s community for a week and shadow there life while doing charlas in a variety of places. I have also been working with a fellow trainee and a group of high school students. We had the director of environmental action in the local govt come and talk to the kids about recycling global warming and a bunch of Paraguay related issues to the environment. We are also organizing a scholarship packet of all the scholarships in Paraguay that high school students can receive as well as those offered to study in other countries often times through special programs from embassies. It is astonishing at times at how often all available information is not presented to promising youth. I know in the states, parents and children dont know about the college process, and often miss out on great opportunities. Similar issues exist here only at an extremeley higher level. There are a lot less class based initiatives here as to be expected but surprisingly the kids here who often have the grades to go to college and would get full rides simply dont know that such scholarships exist. As volunteers one thing we can do is make sure people are as educated as possible. By doing this Paraguayans can then teach other Paraguayans, making for a sustainable project. The idea with the high school students I am working with during training is to get them up to speed and then have them teach their fellow classmates and other high school students throughout their community.The epitome of paying it forward perhaps.

I am on my first day of long field practice in the neighborhood of Puerto Botanico a neighborhood in the capital of Asuncion. Currently chilling at the community center. This week me and fellow volunteers have to teach about Parasite prevention, dental health, nutrition, geography, and global warming. we will be in schools the community center and comedors which feed very poor families. I am taking the lead on geography and global warming. For geography, I´ll be trying to get kids to have a basic knowledge of the continents and certain countries by using current teams entered in this summers world cup. for global warming myself and a fellow trainee are hoping to show an inconvenient truth followed by a discussion. It´s excellent getting to meet people in communities and see how promising things are. Right now I´m, sitting next to a 17 yr old who got a scholarship from the US embassy to study english and wants to do so many big things. The family Im staying with has a son who is a great leader, wants to go into public service and has been trained a lot by peace corps staff. His family lives very modestly and yet his passion and hope is so apparent. It is truly motivating.

On another note being able to keep up with health care the little i have is amazing. I love being young and having the optimism that it brings. I hope to never lose that.I was just explaining to my language teacher the magnitude of the bill. i talked to her about where i came from what i aspire to be and how thankful i am to be here. I had the ability to follow my dreams and there are so many who cant.I hope on some level for that to be my lifes work. For all the ills of politics I am truly amazed with our President and all the unsung heroes of this era. There is no time for apathy we can each do our part and stretch ourselves, challenge our assumptions, and never stop learning or being curious. Striving towards greatness and a greater compassion daily. We can make it better we really can.