Che yoga mboehara hy´eguazu pora.

The title of today´s blog means ´´My yoga teacher is beautifully pregnant.´´ Though this will be a random utterance to some of you, I hope to reach out specifically to my brother and other Phoenecian yoga disciples. I also want to draw attention to the verb ´´to be pregnant,´´ which belongs to a special class of verbs: the ´´chendal verbs.´´ Chendal verbs are basically verbalized forms of nouns or adjectives that express sentiments that, in Spanish, would involve the use of the verbs ´´estar,´´ ´´ser,´´ or ´´tener.´´ So, to be pregant, to be mean, to wake up well, and to be thirsty are all verbs of this class. They´re pretty easy to conjugate to boot, so that´s an advantage. This brings me to:

But I Do Speak Spanish. First of all, it´s not called ´´Spanish´´ here; the language that you labored over in high school is known as Castellano, and most Paraguayans can speak or understand it. However, as is the case for widespread languages like Castellano and English, some words change meaning across geographical space. This stirs fascination in linguists and frustration in Peace Corps volunteers.

For instance, one of Paraguay´s signature words is ´´guapo´´ (which, if you say it in Arizona, means ´´handsome´´). In Paraguay, guapo means hard-working or impressive. It´s a high compliment to say ´´nde guapo´´ (you are guapo). Appropriate times to do so might be upon witnessing a well-hoed field, a good idea put into practice, etc. And, as I learned a few weeks ago, it´s also a pleasantry used in greeting. The agroforestry group took an excursion to SEPA, an agroforestry institute and center started by PCVs but now run by Paraguayans. On the way, we met a current volunteer and visited the farm of one of her community´s families. The mistress of the house, on welcoming me, cried ´´nde guapo´´ and I have to say that I blanched in embarrassment. Despite all my Peace Corps language training, my initial response was to feel that I´d been hit on by a Paraguayan farmer´s wife in front of her whole family. When the volunteer we´d visited came to visit us the next week, she told me that I had become an inside joke between her and this family after she´d told them how most Americans interpret ´´guapo.´´

My other tale of linguistic confusion occurred shortly after I got to Paraguay. My host mom didn´t serve juice with dinner and let me know that it was because we were having dessert. She then ladled out a delicious glass of sliced fruit in sugary syrup. I asked her what the fruit was and she replied ´´mamón.´´ After several repitions of the word, I confirmed that she was saying ´´mamón,´´ which my (biological) mother uses all the time to describe sycophants, butt-kissers, and others of an obsequious bent. ´´Mamón´´ was delicious, but I was disturbed when my Spanish-English dictionary yielded my American mom´s definition instead of my host family´s. I even was shown the mamón tree in our yard. It took a few days of asking around before another trainee in our group told me that mamón is used in some places in Latin America to mean...Papaya! I hadn´t recognized the taste because of all the sugar and ended up feeling, if a little embarrassed, happy that I hadn´t been fed sycophant or dessert.

There are other tales of linguistic confusion (´´frutilla´´ is strawberry instead of ´´fresca´´ and ´´autobúses´´ are either ´´micros´´ or ´´collectivos´´) but none too troublesome. Worse are the occasional Guaraní translation errors. My name for instance means ´´we go to sleep´´ when pronounced correctly in Guaraní. Jake jake!

Future Plans. Training has been intense so far, and I think the remaining four weeks are going to go by quickly. I´m leaving with the other agroforesters on Monday for five days in rural sites in the Department of Caazapá. We´ll be living with host families and working during the day with current agroforestry volunteers. It will be my last taste of real ´´campo´´ life before site assignment a week from this coming Wednesday. At that point, I´ll find out where I´ll be living for the next two years. The next day, my main contact from said site will come to visit my current host family, and we´ll then head out to visit my future home. So things feel like they´re accelerating and I´ll hopefuly get a chance to post with more information as it is revealed. As it is, I´m excited to find out about my site and to get going with my service as a volunteer (swearing-in is 11 December). At the same time, it will be sad to say goodbye to my friends from training and a little scary to jump in to my project with only some meager Guaraní and good intentions. To use the Guaraní translation of one of my favorite English AND Spanish expressions (´´we´ll see´´ or ´´ya veremos´´): jahechata.