Anna and Cole share their typical day in Santa Rosa, Paraguay

6:30 AM: Wake up and go for a run, usually to the bridge. Running is not very common here, and sometimes it can be pretty hard because of the big hills. But we have to work off the carbs!

7:00 AM: Return from our run for a cold shower. It helps to get our body temperatures up before we get in!

7:30 AM: Help Mamá Tomasa in the kitchen make cocido, best drink ever! It’s mate tea with milk and lots of sugar. For breakfast, we have tortilla, an egg dish. And don’t forget the side of mandioca!

8:30 AM: Get ready and leave for campamentos at the school

9:00 – 11:00 AM: Campamentos! We spend the next two hours of our lives watching the kids from our community get really excited over stickers. They are always asking to play their favorite game, Red Light Green Light.

11:15 AM: Walk down the hill back to the house to prepare for lunch. Our host mom feeds pretty much the entire community, so we help with some of the cooking and a lot of the cleaning. We can almost guarantee that our meal will be meat and noodle soup.

12:30 PM: Finish up some lunch stuff and walk around to talk to community members about our Community-Based Initiative Project (CBIP). All the moms in town would like the project to be a community kitchen, and a person to come teach them some more recipes. We are still unsure what it will turn out to be but we are super excited about the process.

2:30 PM: Walk over to Nora’s house to meet up with our families and go the the prayer. Our community is Catholic and has many traditions, especially when it comes to a death. Today we were participating in one of the days of a nine day prayer.

5:00 PM: We stop by our host aunt’s house and receive countless bananas. Sometimes we drink mate with them.

5:45 PM: Walk back to the house and cook with Mamá Tomasa. Today, we have leftovers from lunch and some more tortilla.

7:30 PM: Start to get ready for bed and reflect on the day.

8:30 PM: Bed time!