The Stinky Girl Travels

Here's a running list of the words and phrases I've encountered so far in Paraguay! The Guaraní is spelled phonetically, in terms of Spanish pronunciation. Che - yo Nde - tu/vos Ha'e - el/ella Saludos Mba'e chapa :  Como estás Mba'e chapa nde coe : Como estás? (Mañana) Mba'e tekoiko : Like qué tal, used between friends Mba'e la porte: Same, casual greeting Nya-mongarú: Not sure exactly, it's like awesome! Cool! And you do it with a special hand gesture where you make a scooping gesture with your fingers all pinched together like you're making a talking hand, and you brush your fingers against someone else's. He: delicious, also means yes. Sometimes Paraguayans will say a drawn out "he" in agreement instead of using "si". It can be confusing at first if you don't know "he" means yes, because it almost sounds like they are surprised. Eterei: very, muy Hetereí: very delicious! Muy rico! Iporã eterei: v...

Cerro Cora Got a lift in the back of a motocaro, a hybrid camioneta-motorcycle, and rode sitting on the ledge along with a lady from the community and her two elderly tias. As we bumped around together, we talked about mandi'o chiriri and how she just came back from villarica to take care of some papeles. They dropped me off where the road parts into two, and I walked the rest of the way into Cerro Cora. It was the first time I had seen my host family dressed in shorts. Everyone was outside, trying to cool off on this warm day. "Hola Pinche!" "Hola Laura, dice!" Pinche is the nickname of my host family's one year old baby. I think it's a variation on principe. "Mi tesoro! Tesoro del mundo entero!" Showering at their house was fantastic. I was super sweaty, hot, and since our water at staffhouse cut out again, I hadn't really showered in a few days. The boys had a funny idea for the campanentos to teach about caveties. They stuck pieces ...

When they said we would be busy this summer, they definitely weren't kidding! These past few weeks have been filled with planning for the arrival of our volunteers, surveying communities, doing a three-day long training with all 37 volunteers, then finally dropping them off at their respective communities. When we finally brought them to their host families, everything became real. Strangely, it felt a lot like how I would imagine dropping off your kids at their first day of school would feel. We were excited for them, eager for them to learn and grow and tell us all about their stories. We also felt a little nervous, hoping they would be okay even though we know they would be. The way we decide who goes to which community is a fun but crazy process where we not only consider which pairs of volunteers will be compatible as partners for the summer, but also consider which families can take boys and/or girls, and whether the community as a whole will take two boys, two girls, or ...

This summer I'm working for Amigos de las Américas as a Project Supervisor (P-Sup) in Paraguay! So far, this week we have been training at the staff house, cooking meals together, and getting to know the tranquil city of Villarica. What am I going to do as a project supervisor? To be brief, my job will be to take care of our high school summer participants, who will each live in a community with 1-2 other participants. They'll have to do their own CBI (Community Based Initiative), plan out activities with local youth related to our project themes (Community Health and Children's Rights), work with our partner agencies, and overall, integrate themselves as fully as possible into a warm and welcoming community, a new culture, and a very different way of living. Each week, I will be traveling on a route and visiting our participants in their communities. Monday through Thursday I'm going to stay the night in each community, and Friday through Sunday I'll be at the...

My first two weeks were spent traveling with family from Modesto, hitting up some of the tourist sites of Hong Kong and eating lots of wonton mein, the famous Cantonese noodle dish featuring a savory soup broth oftentimes containing some delicious MSG (it does Make Soup Great, after all), yellow wonton noodles that are chewy, eggy, and have that characteristic gum may, or "golden flavor" from the alkaline solution it is soaked in, and of course, the won tons themselves - glorious little packages of shrimp, pork, and seasonings. Being a vegetarian, I was happy with just the mein and soup with some vegetables. The next week, we headed to Huanan, China for my aunt and uncle's wedding reception. A few days before our flight, I came down with this terrible flu that had been floating around Hong Kong. Many people in the streets were wearing hospital masks, especially when riding public transportation, and at times it felt like we were in the set of a movie about a horrible p...

 After seven years since my last visit, I decided to come back to Hong Kong, the skyscraper city perched upon islands along the southern coast of China, where I used to live when I was about three years old before I moved to California. Throughout my childhood, I spent several summers flying back to Hong Kong to visit family, enduring the stifling hot and humid weather while relishing in the opportunity of having so much good food to eat (a sushi lover's paradise) and so many interesting places to see. Skyscraper apartment buildings with homes on the 50th floor, noisy chaotic "wet markets" selling live seafood and fresh vegetables, crowds of people shuffling along the street like schools of fish -   Hong Kong was always a fascinating contrast to the relatively quiet, humble city of Modesto, whose name in Spanish aptly translates to "modest".  So there I was, back in the city I spent part of my childhood in. Even after 7 years of being away, Hong Kong still h...

I've been avoiding writing this post for a very long time, because the thought of trying to express everything into one conclusive blog post...it is a truly formidable task.  The incredible, unforgettable people I met and was lucky enough to call my friends and family....the challenges, many times difficult but sometimes humorous, of being a Chinese-American girl in Nicaragua...how I arrived, excited to experience the adventure of living in a foreign country, and left with tears streaming down my cheeks because it felt like I was leaving home.. For this, I am afraid that in my attempt to express this entire experience in writing, I will not only fail to capture the essence of something so life-changing and beautiful, but also could never fully fit it all into words. I fear that the words could never completely say what I want them to say, could never make you feel or understand what I would like you to feel and understand. It is an attempt at describing the indescribable....