I decided to make a blog at first, because it's quick and free. I think that it turned out okay, but it still needs further tweaking to be more visually appealing. The tweaking will take place once I get some help on the more technical stuff, I ask everyone I meet if they know how to make webpages. If I come across the right people and get the right programs, I would really like to make an actual website, ie www.fundacionmitai.org. I still have three weeks until Jill gets here, so I think that that may be possible.
Over the weekend I talked to everyone about ideas for more development of volunteerism here in the hospital and feel like I made a lot of progress. One of the suggestions that I recieved was to start up a patient visit program with the young adults of the church. It just so turns out that Osvaldo Lopez, one of my friends that lives really close to the hospital here, has the church responsibility of being president of the young adults for the entire city of San Lorenzo and the surrounding area. The idea would be to have him organize the volunteers from the church so that the come for an hour or two each week. Here at the hospital they would have a tupperware bucket full of toys and materials for drawing so that they can come and play with the patients that are staying here at the hospital. The visits would be good for everyone involved; the children themselves recieve the treatments they need, but for the rest of the day they often really don't have anything to do. Being weak from the chemothearapy doesn't exactly let them run around outside, and they really would benefit mentally and physically from more human interaction. The volunteers themselves would of course benefit by fulfilling a need in others. Those that work here at the hospital would benifit by having happier patients and less work for them to do. It would also be great missionary work.
Yenny Figueredo, the mother of the family that I am staying with, did a humanitarian aid type project a few years back involving toys that people sent from the US. They sent so many toys in fact that there are still boxes full of leftovers. I talked to her about it and she would love to get them out of her house and into the arms of the kids here. So that is another awesome thing.
Another possibility - I met a missionary that came here to Paraguay to work in the temple with her husband. She also organizes projects with the church's women's organization, the Relief Society, in which the ladies make blankets and take them to kids at the hospitals. So far they have only taken them to one of the nicer hospitals in Asuncion, but I am going to try to get some of her blankets out to our little hospital.
Interesting story not related to volunteering... On Saturday I met an (apparently) really famous Paraguayan soccer player, Nelson Cuevas. So one of my Paraguayan friends' name is Raul. He is a very successful real estate agent and on Saturday he drove me around to some of the properties that he is dealing with, and introduced me to one of his clients. Imagine meeting a South American soccer star. Okay, it was exactly like that. As we pu
lled into one of the houses, a guy walks out of his beautiful house with palm trees and everything, all decked out in unbelievably white, brand new, as in I am going to wear this once then throw it away high tech looking soccer clothing, and at his side, is his 6 foot tall woman/trophy wearing sunglasses bigger than her head. The only thing missing was a toy dog under her arm.So I shook his hand and of course women greet people with kisses down here, so the 6 feet of woman did the double kiss thing and I don't know if I was more scared that she was so beautiful or that there was so much of her. Cuevitas tried his english and said something like "hhhouu add youu?" Then, without waiting for my answer, put all of his energy (he had a lot of energy) into saying "eeeevrytin auu riideee!!!" After that, I was kind of glad that everybody ignored me as Nelson showed Raul some things about the house, and when we left we had to do the hand shaking and kissing and "auu riideee!!!" thing, this time as a farewell instead of as a greeting.
