On the move in October!

Yes, a new home was found shortly after posting my previous entry (thanks for sending along those positive housing vibes!). I´m now living with three generations of a family, and the house is located right between the City Hall and my main school, the two places where I spend most of my time. The town plaza is just a block away. My "pieza" (aka room) is more like two, for it once housed a family business attached to the house. Just love my new set up; I feel so very lucky that everything has worked out so well!

"On the move in October" included more than the usual number of trips to Villarrica, the largest city in our state of Guaira. Just as I was in the midst of my house move, I received a call from the Peace Corps office in Asuncion to let me know the US Ambassador to Paraguay would be visiting Villarrica, and that I was invited to attend some of the events. Her itinerary included the presentation of a large book donation to the Centro Cultural Paraguayo-Americano (CCPA), where I´ve been volunteering a couple times a month. It was great to see her again, and to meet several members of the Embassy staff, including its new director of the Information Resource Center. Several other PCVs in the area were able to attend too, and we all held new books in front of us as we posed for a picture with the Ambassador. The cultural center´s library received the donation with the understanding that it would convert its collection into a circulating one, since all the materials must still be used in situ. I´ll be helping to make this change happen for the CCPA-Villarrica´s library.

My monthly trip to Asuncion was extra interesting this round for it coincided with the national conference for libraries and librarians. ABIGRAP (the Paraguayan equivalent of ALA) doesn´t hold a conference every year, so I lucked out that one was held now, to coincide with the National Day of the Librarian on October 16. I stayed with one of the LIS professors who helped organize the conference, and met some really neat folks, many of whom I´m sure I´ll be writing about in future posts as I hope to follow-up with them during my work here.