2018 Resolution Check-In

Well, here we are in mid-July already. There is a saying here with some of the volunteers that the days go slow but the months go fast. There are some days here where it *literally* seems like forever (said in Chris Traeger voice, because we’ve been bingeing on too much Parks and Rec). But then we blink and it’s July. With that, we wanted to do a resolution check-in. We talk a lot about accountability, and now it’s our turn.

Overall, the first 6 months of 2018 have gone really well. We have worked on our language, moved into our own house, and are continuing to make some great friendships here in the volunteer community and with Paraguayans in our site. As far as our resolutions go, we are going to give ourselves a grade of B- for our efforts. There were some that we passed with flying colors, some that proved to be unreasonable, and some well, we don’t have an excuse – we just didn’t do. Below we list our original resolutions, our progress, and if we are going to continue or change them for the second part of the year. Remember, just because it is July doesn’t mean you can’t make a new resolution, or think about something new you want to try. Accountabilabuddies are the best type of buddies 🙂

Environment 

• Plastic Bags – We will practice waste reduction by bringing our reusable bag/backpack to the store.
  • We have done really well with this goal. We bring our backpacks/reusable bags to carry everything in, and we reuse all of our plastic bags for produce. Because we have to weigh our produce in a separate area from the check-out, we can’t just cut out the bag, since they put the price on the bag. We hope to continue this and share with more people in our community.
• Eco bricks – As it may not be realistic (hint hint) to completely cut out plastic bags, we are going to utilize ecobricks as our trash management for all inorganic materials, such as plastic bags and wrappers.
  • We brought a lot of our plastic packaging waste to one of our schools to make ecobricks. We currently have a (kind of gross ) large pile of plastics that we need to put into more ecobricks!
• Compost – We are going to build a compost at our new home that we will move into in the first two weeks of March for all organic materials.
  • Our compost pile is poppin’! This is definitely one of the practices that we want to bring back to US – keeping a compost is seriously so easy, and we’ve used a lot of our compost in our garden, and given some to our neighbors.

Fitness

• Workout/run at least 4x a week.
  • We fell off the boat for a little while on this one, but are back at it. Dylan got a training schedule from a personal trainer in Denver, and it’s something we’ve been able to stick to.
• Find, train and run one 1/2 marathon in South America this year!
  • This has not gone so well…. Turns out that Paraguay has very few races, and travel wasn’t feasible while getting integrated into our site. But, we are looking at doing a 10k race when we are home in September. Definitely hoping to do a race during our second year of service!

Health

• Mental health –  Start using mindfulness/meditative/relaxation exercises 2x per week for 15 mins
  • Big fail. We were doing yoga pretty consistently for a bit, and then fell off the wagon. We want to re-incorporate once a week yoga videos for the second part of 2018.
• Nutrition – Make one new healthy recipe once every 2 weeks
  • This one has been really successful. Cooking continues to be something that brings us joy, and quite frankly, structure in an otherwise unstructured program. We plan our days around food, and have tried a lot of new recipes, usually multiple times per week.

Reading

• Read at least 15 books
  • We are on track to hit this goal at this point. We are both at 8 books so far for the year.
• Read 3 of the HP books in Spanish to further improve our Spanish language skills
  • LOL big fail at this goal! We abandoned Harry Potter in Spanish after Chapter 14. Not sure if we will get this going again – we have found that smaller Spanish articles help us more – both in attention span, and because they use more applicable vocabulary/language structure. We are now trying to do at least 1 article a week.
• Read and discuss 2-4 research articles/month on topics of interest to further our general education.
  • We have not read research articles per say, but we have hopped on the podcast bandwagon, and listen to a few episodes from different shows every week and discuss them. This has been a better mode of learning for us, because we can listen while we cook or do laundry. We are really enjoying the podcast Stay Tuned with Preet – thanks for the recommendation Dan! We have gotten some great other recommendations, but are always looking for new ones, if you have a favorite!

Culture & Art

• Photography – Take camera out 1x per week to try a different setting, and shoot at various locations in our site.
  • We have not been keeping with this goal, and we are disappointed with ourselves. We want to reinstate this goal for the second half of the year, with a modification of 2x/month.
• Travel – to Argentina and/or Uruguay
  • Will accomplish this next month!
• Practice Guarani 3x per week for at least 1 hour to improve skills
  • NOPE. Dylan has been more diligent at practicing Guarani than Alli has, but we are definitely not dedicating 3 hrs/week to studying. We don’t really have an excuse – but we have been trying to improve our Spanish. We have spoken with some friends about getting a weekly language practice sesh going but this is still TBD.

Activism

• Vote!
  • We have voted in every local election in Colorado, since leaving, and plan to continue!
• Sign one petition per week/or email a politician
  • This has not happened. This has proved to be a little more difficult due to accessibility of internet, viable petitions and limitations as a part of a government program. We were diligent for the first few months of the year, but fell off in March. We will not continue with this goal, however, if there is an issue that we really care about that we can make a difference with our voices, we will.

Social connection

• Meal with Paraguayans 1x/week
  • Yep! We have different friends and community members over at least once per week to try our cooking concoctions.
• Call parents/families at least 1x/2 weeks
  • Check. Calling our mothers, like good children J
• 1 blog post/ 2 weeks (y’all can help keep us accountable on this one!)
  • Not quite… but at least once per month. We are close, and really want to strive to stay with this during the second part of the year.
• Cell phones banned from the bed! Once we are in bed, and ready for sleeping, no cell phone use!
  • Started off rocky on this goal, but have been much better about it recently. We leave our iPhones in another room, and only bring Paraguayan phones into bedroom for alarms.

Outside of these goals, things have been going well. We went to Asunción last week to pick up a few things at the Peace Corps office. It was a revelation for us that we really didn’t want to be there, and we wanted to get back to site, because every day it feels more and more like home. We held a leadership workshop for a few of the young leaders in our community, which was a really awesome day, and felt like one of our biggest accomplishments to-date. We have a couple other project-related things in the works that we are looking forward to. We continue to put a lot of time into our garden and patio area, and spend time talking to, taking pictures of, and generally thinking about, our cat. Michimi is doing well – he had to take a big trip to Encarnación to get fixed, and get some vaccines a few weeks ago. He did SO WELL on the bus, even though he chewed a gaping hole in his cat carrier. Here are some pictures:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hope you are all beating the heat, and enjoying the summer sun.

Much love,

Dylan & Alli