Contact with Home

Congratulations to all the exchange students who've made it through a quarter of the year! If you're in the US, you've already experienced homework, homecoming, and Halloween, and most of you probably cannot wait for Thanksgiving break!

How's it going?

Seriously, how are you doing? Take a minute and think about it.

...

I hope you're having a blast and learning a ton. I hope you're making great friends, getting involved in clubs or sports, and getting along with your host family. A lot of you definitely are! Keep doing what you're doing!

But not all of you are having the times of your lives.

A lot of you in the US are really, really cold right now. Winter came early this year for a lot of the country. You're probably also bored. You're probably not a "new kid" at school anymore, and things might not be so exciting. Maybe you've met everyone in your classes, you're you've already tasted most of the food you're served, or you're sick of your host family yelling sports that you don't care about. Maybe you're already thinking about Christmas, New Years, Hanukkah, and wishing you were going to spend them with your family at home.

This probably isn't what you pictured. Even if you're having a great time, it's probably not exactly what you thought it'd be. Hopefully, you're happy with that! It can be really, really frustrating when you're not happy though. Sometimes there doesn't need to be a big problem to be unhappy- your host family is fine, school is fine, your English is fine, the food is fine, fine, fine, fine. But you're sick of sharing a bathroom with your host brother, eating corn at dinner, stupid questions about your home country, or any other little thing. Or things. And if you don't feel like you can complain to anybody here, you're probably doing it to someone at home, or from your home country.

Sometimes that's fine. It's OK to talk to your family, and other exchange students are awesome because they understand what you're going through. If you're doing this every week, every day, or more than once a day, I want you to stop and think.

If you're sharing something with someone at/from home before someone from the US, why?

How many hours per day are you connected to home? Not just how long do you spend on Skype or whatever app you're using, but how many hours are you able to receive messages from home?

Very few people have tons of super close friends at this point in the year. It's hard to build a lot of trust with someone in just 2 or 3 months. It's normal to not feel so close to your new friends yet, but if you're not careful, you're never going to get there. New friendships take time, but more than that, they take effort. If you're choosing to spend your time talking with people from home instead of people in your host country, you're wasting time building up new friendships.

I'm not naïve enough to think that never ever going on the computer or using your phone makes sense for most people. That's probably how people in your host country communicate too. That just means YOU need to limit YOURSELF though. Turn Facebook chat off. Delete the Messenger app. Disable notifications on your phone for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, whatever it is that you use. Spend some time organizing your Facebook friends, and set your newsfeed to only show posts from people in your host country. Turn off the computer/phone at 10pm. Or 8pm. Or 6pm. If you can't hold yourself to it, ask your host parents to help. Make it harder to interact with people from home.

Talking to people from home is hurting you in the long run, even if it makes you feel better right now. It makes you feel better because it's comfortable. It's easy. It's familiar. Of course that's what you want when nothing else seems comfortable or easy!

But why are you here?

Did you want to make friends? Improve your language skills? Become a family member? The ever-so-vague "experience the culture" that we all wrote about in our applications?

That's not going to happen if you leave one foot in your old life. Of course it can be uncomfortable, difficult, and strange sometimes. You need to confront it though. If you let it keep being a little uncomfortable while relying on home to get through it, you're not going to have time to make great friends, speak fluently, integrate into your family, or truly "experience the culture."

I know it's hard, and I know you might not think it's a problem right now. I did the same thing. In retrospect, I spent WAY too much time online that I should have spent talking, studying, walking around town, watching TV, literally anything would have been better than sitting on Facebook.

If you can relate to any of this, please consider the following:

• Put your phone away unless you're using it to talk to people you met in your host country.
• Keep pushing new friendships. You need to keep trying to make plans. 
• Get involved. If you don't know who to make plans with, join a club or team to meet new people. Ask a teacher if you don't know how, and don't be afraid to try something totally new. Dance, stage crew, swimming, volunteering, why not? 
• Stop posting so much in your native language. If over half of your Facebook is in your native language, your new friends can't interact with you! 
• Make contact with home a treat. Set up a weekly or monthly Skype call with your parents or a best friend. Write down things you have to tell them so you don't forget in the mean time. 
• Write a weekly or monthly blog or newsletter to tell people what you're up to. If every seventh grade classmate and second cousin is sending you messages asking how you are and what it's like, you're probably wasting a lot of time repeating yourself! 
• Unless it's a true emergency (your health or safety is threatened) wait a little bit to tell someone. Try to solve/get over it by yourself, and if it's still bugging you in a day or week, *then* tell someone about it. 
• If your host parents have set rules about when/where you can use technology, it's because they see this as a problem now, or it was one in the past. They want to spend time with you, but you're on your phone/computer. Don't ruin your relationship with them over some Facebook messages!
• If it's your family/friends back home who won't leave you alone, you need to talk to them about why they can't contact you so much. If you need to, ask a volunteer in your home country to talk to them as well. 
• Remember that host parents, liaisons, volunteers, etc. are there for you. Most of them would be more than happy to talk with you when you're feeling homesick or unhappy. 
• And for the love of god, GET. OFF. NETFLIX. Unless you're watching it with someone else, you should barely be on it!

Your friends from home with either be your friends when you get back, or they won't. What you do now probably won't change that. You have the rest of your life back home, if that's what you want. This is your only time to be on exchange.You're 1/4 of the way done with your year. Don't wait any longer to start to change something you're unhappy with. 

Lists

Things Paraguay has/commonly has now that it didn't/almost didn't before: hand sanitizer, WiFi, Pepsi, helmets, seatbelts, women with short hair, hostels, 2,000 Gs bills, cell phone contracts, pear juice, political graffitti, posters about the minimum wage in every workplace.

Things Paraguay has less of now: kids trying to clean your windshield at every intersection, stray dogs, Lino Oviedo, annoying ringtones, confidence in the government, citizens working in Spain and Argentina, internet cafés, cheap food, horses in the city.

Things people tried to sell me on the bus today: toothpaste, bananas, laundry detergent, dulce de leche, cooking oil, pears, movie tickets, alfajores, cough drops, chipa, pirated DVD's, powdered milk, pre-peeled oranges, instant coffee, plus a live musical performance by two young Colombian travelers.

Things I've eaten with dulce de leche: palitos, bread, packaged alfajores, cookies, bakery alfajores, medialunas, ice cream, wafer cookies, gelato, tarts.

Empanadas I've eaten: homemade, VitaPan, Don Vito, Lido Bar, Honey, street vendors.

Buses that are not mine but look exactly like mine: 56A, 56B, 56C, 45.

Bus that goes past my house: 9.
Bus that goes past the office: a completely unrelated 9.

Halfway

So, my computer either didn't like the humidity or the electricity here, and I've been out of a computer for the last couple weeks meaning that I didn't get around to updating until just now.

Just after my last update, I went to the AFS Intercultural Learning workshop. It was at an absolutely beautiful place called La Quinta between Piribebuy and Paraguarí. Most of the time over the weekend was spent in different workshops and activities that broke down different definitions of culture, common adaptation cycles that students go through, and cultural differences that most often cause conflict on exchange. Following the workshop, I returned to Asunción to stay for the week with a very generous AFS volunteer who offered me her spare room.

Beginning that Monday, I began to intern in the AFS Paraguay office. Most of my time for the first two weeks was spent visiting various community service organizations all over Asunción and the suburbs with a German intern who has been here since August. So far, I've visited TECHO, Fundación Ko'êmbota, A Todo Pulmón, Paraguay Educa, SOS Children's Villages, Hogar Infantil Santa Teresita, Guardería Tia Annetta, ABRAZO, Fundación Tierranuestra, and several special education schools to meet with staff to distribute surveys and information about the Weltwärts program (where the majority of community service participants come from), and also to bring profiles of the volunteers who will arrive in August to the foundations that already have a confirmed placement. I'm also working on updating the information in the online database about each organization, in particular the job descriptions and the contact/supervisor information, so that future volunteers will be better informed about their sites before arrival.

After a week in Asunción, I moved to a host family in San Lorenzo with parents, two married sisters with one son each (11 months and 6 years) who live on either side of the house, two sisters in college, a cousin, a tiny dog named Gaston and a Great Dane named Fester. I'm about 2 hours by bus away from the office now in rush hour traffic, meaning I wake up at 5 or 5:30 every day. I'm on the bus from 6-8, at the office from 8-4, and then often run errands in the city. Today I went to the centro (downtown) to start shopping for a termo and a hammock, and ended up falling in love with some purses that I shouldn't buy. Yesterday I went to the bus terminal to check out prices and schedules for buses to Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Afterwords, three separate buses passed me because they were too full. When a Paraguayan bus driver thinks their bus is too full, they're not lying. There have been a few bus rides that I haven't been fully inside the bus for, plus one where I sat on the dashboard. After deciding to just wait out rush hour, I went into the mall that I was waiting in front of for some food, a caipirinha, and the Argentina-Ecuador game on a big screen. It's hard to get into the games now that Paraguay has been eliminated from the World Cup, but soccer and a drink definitely beat standing on a curb and being passed by buses.

The time here is passing quickly- I only have a week and a half left in Asunción. After that, I'm planning on going on a quick trip to Bolivia to see La Paz and visit an AFS friend in Santa Cruz, and then to visit my host family in Pilar. I fly back to the US on July 8th.

It's now 11:30pm and my alarm is going off in six hours, but at some point in the future (possibly after I return) I'll hopefully be writing about:
-Food! The posts about food are by far the most-visited on the blog. I've been taking more pictures this time.
-Cute things in Paraguay
-Exchange student FAQ
-Paraguay FAQ: An Unofficial Guide for Participants from the US
-Travels in Bolivia and Paraguay
-Changes in the last 2 years.

Hola Paraguay!

I'm back! I left Chicago yesterday evening, stopped in Miami, and arrived in Asunción earlier this morning. I had an empty seat next to me on the international flight, which meant that I actually got sleep. I took a taxi to a hostel (where I am right now) for a rest and shower, and will be leaving shortly for a weekend-long workshop about intercultural learning in the town of Paraguarí, about 50 miles outside of Asunción.

While I'm here, I'll be volunteering with AFS for probably about 5 weeks, then taking a week or two to travel. I'm definitely going to Pilar, I'd like to go back to Ciudad del Este, and I'd like to visit Concepción. I'll figure that part out later. My Spanish is still a little rough, but it works. It's definitely lost some of its Paraguayan-ness in the last couple years, but I'm guessing that'll come back.

It's crazy how much more visitor-friendly Paraguay is now than it was just four years ago. The first time I came here, I could barely find a Guarani dictionary to buy online. I have a translator app on my iPod now. In 2009 and 2011, I had to apply for my visa weeks in advance with a bunch of paperwork. Now you can get a 90-day visa in the airport- no application, no money orders, no FedExing passports. The first hostel in the country opened a few months after I left in 2009. There were two in 2011. Currently, there are ten or eleven in Asunción alone plus a few in Ciudad del Este and Encarnación. There are direct flights from Miami to Asunción now- you used to have to stop in São Paulo, Santiago, Lima, or Buenos Aires (often in addition to Bogotá, San Salvador, or Panama) to get here from the US. The cover story in the American Airlines magazine this month is about Paraguay. Paraguay is definitely getting more and more "on the map" for tourism.

The hostel I'm in right now (El Nómada, 1156 Iturbe, Asunción) is great. I changed my reservation at the last minute, and they've been incredibly helpful. Central location free breakfast (medialunas, crepes, fruit, and coffee), free WiFi, comfy beds, hot showers, and an adorable kitten for about $12USD/night. I'm not actually going to be staying the night here, but I'd definitely come back.

Plans for the rest of the day: eat empanadas, drink guaraná, assemble a working cell phone, figure out how to take a bus to the AFS office with my backpack, go to Paraguarí. 

Che ahata otra vez?!

I don't know if anyone is still here or not, but the flag counter tells me I'm still getting hits, so here I am.

A few general updates:
I'm in my third year of university, studying Education and History. My study abroad plans have changed several times, but it currently looks like I'll be in either Puebla or Guanajuato, Mexico from August to December. If that doesn't work out, I'll be in Istanbul from September to January. I'm focusing on Latin America in my history major, and writing my education thesis on international education, and more specifically high school exchange programs.

I just received a letter, informing me that I have been awarded two separate grants to fund volunteering in Paraguay this summer! Nothing is set in stone yet, but I plan to volunteer with AFS in Paraguay for 4-6 weeks as a start to my thesis fieldwork. I'll update with details as I figure everything out, but for now I'll just leave you with the name of one of the grants for a laugh: Bacon Super-Vision. 

Kurepilandia

Thursday I pretty much just hung out in Encarnacion. It's definitely one of the nicer places in Paraguay, in my opinion. As much as I love Pilar for the people and tranquilidad, it's a town, not a city. I like Ciudad del Este for the activity factor and how easy it is to get around the country/continent by bus from there, but the safety issues are definitely a downside. Encarnacion seems to balance the activity with the tranquilidad. It's a big enough city to have, for example, a real supermarket (sorry Pilar) but everywhere I went (mainly in the zona alta) felt very safe, and was well-lit at night and clean. Being on the border with Argentina, there are plenty of buses to everywhere in Argentina, plus Uruguay, and pretty much everywhere in eastern Paraguay as well.

My bus to Buenos Aires left about 2 hours late, thanks to delays in Asuncion. Once we finally got going, we drove about 5 minutes, and got stuck for over an hour in Paraguayan customs. (WHY?! Since when does Paraguayan customs care about anything?) Then we drove over the bridge, and spent almost an hour in Argentinian customs. After about 10 minutes in Argentina, we stopped for dinner. I had a screaming baby behind me this whole time. After about another hour on the road after dinner at around 1AM, I decided that I needed sleep and went downstairs where it was quieter. All was well for a few hours, and one of the bus employees decided that I needed to re-learn the entire political history of Paraguay rather than sleep. He never said for certain if he was involved or not, but he talked a lot about the Somoza assassination and definitely there when it happened.

My relearning of Paraguayan politics continued until we passed a broken down bus and picked up some of their passengers. My previously quiet bottom floor was then filled with porteños who WOULD NOT SHUT UP. The lady behind me literally did not stop complaining about being on a Paraguayan bus (because, you know, all things Paraguayan are inherently inferior to all things Argentinian) despite it being identical to the bus that she had been on. My various other fellow passengers had an awful cough, a cell phone that apparently did not have a vibrate mode, and an urgent need to listen to cumbia without headphones at 5AM.

After finally making it to Buenos Aires and checking into a pretty awesome hostel, I met up with a few other travellers and walked around the city. Saturday I went to La Boca and Recoleta, and today I went to Retiro and did some more sightseeing with a Polish girl from the hostel.

Amazingly, in this city of 14 million people (the entire population of Paraguay couldn't fill half the city) and thousands of buses, I ran into an AFS Paraguay volunteer on a bus in Recoleta. Just proves how small exchange makes the world...

In a few hours I'll be heading to Montevideo, Uruguay. Chau!

Cerro, CDE, Encarnacion, Trinidad

I'll preface this entry by saying that I'm shivering in a hotel lobby in Encarnacion, and it's a little hard to type on the ancient keyboard with freezing fingers, so give me some slack if there are typos.

While watching one of the Copa Libertadores games my first days in Paraguay, I mentioned that I would like to someday go to a soccer game in Paraguay. Amazingly, there was an excursion of Cerro Porteño fans from Pilar heading to Asunción for the game against Santos (Brazil) just a week later, so I got to go with my host sister and a few of my friends. We left the afternoon of the game, a bus full of Pilarense Cerristas, and drove the 7 hours to the stadium. Along the way I learned the team's songs, and that bus ceilings make great drums. We got to the stadium about an hour before the game, but it was already packed. We somehow found room in the first few rows after a bit of searching. The next three hours were full of chanting, singing, fireworks, smokebombs, and dodging bottles that were being thrown onto the field. At half time, the Santos fans started getting really riled up and throwing things at the Paraguayan fans, and had to be cordoned off by not just the fences and walls that were already there, but a line of riot police. The game ended in a tie, but it assured Cerro´s elimination from the Copa, so it was really more of a loss. Despite essentially winning, the Santos fans decided to trash everything, and some of them are still in Paraguayan jail for what they did after the game. The game was amazingly fun despite the tie/loss, and since everyone is still talking about the Santos fans, I get to talk about the game a lot. :) After the game, we wandered around Barrio Obrero for a good half-hour looking for our bus. Eventually we found it, and amazingly, the ride back took 4 hours. FOUR. F-O-U-R. The ride normally takes 7, maybe 6 if the road is in good condition (which it wasn't). I really don't even want to know how fast we must have been going to make that kind of time.

After a few hours of sleep, I headed back to the bus terminal to once again go to Asuncion, on my way to Ciudad del Este to visit my friend who was an exchange student in Muskego last year. After a breakdown somewhere in Misiones, and almost running out of money, I finally got to Ciudad del Este around midnight. My friend's family was amazingly welcoming, and picked me up at the terminal at midnight, showed me around the city, took me to the countryside, drove me anywhere I needed to go, and fed me way too much.

On Friday, I went with my friend to her university in Brazil, and absolutely loved it. Saturday, I had asado, went shopping in the centro, and went to a bar called Liverpool with my friend and a bunch of her classmates, listened to good, English music, and played the Paraguayan version of Jenga. The Centro is absolutely insane. I personally find it lively and entertaining, but I shudder to think that this is most people's image of Paraguay, since so many Brazilians and Argentinians come to shop, and tourists to Yguazu Falls visit just to check another country off their lists. It's absolutely NOTHING like the rest of the city (which is actually quite nice, easy to navigate, and full of parks and green space) much less the rest of the country.
Sunday, we went to a friend's farm somewhere in Alto Paraná. I had an awesome lunch, saw some adorable piglets and lambs, and turned my shoes red thanks to the dirt.

Monday, I decided to finally go to Yguazú Falls (also spelled Iguasu, Yguasu, Iguaçu, and Iguassu), the tourist attraction that Paraguay claims, despite its firm location in Brazil and Argentina. Getting there was a bit of an adventure. First, I had to wait a half hour to find a bus that wouldn't let me off in Brazil, but take me straight through to Argentina. After waiting for that, I had to get off the bus in Paraguayan customs for my exit stamp, and wait for another bus (45 min) and was kept company by some old, obnoxious, racist porteños (people from Buenos Aires) who only came to Paraguay to shop. Argentinian customs went smoothly, but it looked like they were gearing up for some sort of strike or protest. (Argentina, please pay your border guards. I need to be able to get back into Paraguay in a few weeks, and can't afford to go through Brazil or Bolivia.) The bus from Puerto Iguasu, AR to the falls came quickly, and I practically had the place to myself. The falls are absolutely breathtaking, despite the creaky metal catwalk over the river you have to take to get to them. Getting back was somewhat more of an adventure than getting there. The last bus from Puerto Iguasu to Ciudad del Este ran early or didn't run or something, so I ended up essentially sneaking into Brazil and being saved by having waited so long on my way there, but that's a story for another day. The bus left me at the bridge to Paraguay, which is sketchy in the best of times and downright dangerous at night. Luckily, a Paraguayan family who had also missed the bus to CDE offered to take me across the bridge in their taxi. From there, it was all straightforward.

Yesterday, I came to Encarnacion. The bus I was supposed to take had issues and didn't run, so I ended up in a bus so bumpy that I literally could not listen to music, because my earbuds kept being shaken out of my head. After leaving the terminal relatively on time, we sat in CDE for 45 minutes going nowhere. Then at a rate of literally about 10km/h we made it to Minga Guazu, where we spent 20 minutes. Then in Santa Rita, we sat for 30 min. At some point, we went through a customs checkpoint, and I saw the driver pay the inspector what wsa at least 100,000Gs. We also sat in Maria Auxiliadora for 30 min, but the bus wouldn't start when we went to leave, so we all got to wait another 25 min for the next bus with room. I finally got into Encarnacion a little before midnight, almost 3 hours behind schedule.

Today, I went to the Jesuit ruins in Trinidad, about a half hour outside of the city, To say that Trinidad is a one horse town is an understatement. I saw one cow, one cat, lots of chickens, lots of parrots, and three dogs, but no horses. I was literally the only person at the ruins, which made for some great pictures. There is no map, no brochure, no guide, and no sign has more than 3 or 4 words. This is Paraguay's major tourist attraction. It was interesting, and I can now officially say that I have done everything Paraguay has to offer tourists. I didn't have to wait long for a return bus, but it was the EXACT SAME bus that broke down in M. Auxiliadora last night. Same driver, same bouncy, stuffed, valentine heart hanging from the ceiling, same sticky floor, same jesus sticker on the window. Thankfully, we made it to Encarnacion this time. On the bus, I met a German couple and spent the afternoon helping them find a hotel and plan their time in Paraguay.

Now, I'm off to find some dinner, and I think tomorrow I'll be heading to either Montevideo or Buenos Aires. I like Encarnacion a lot and would love to stay, but I only have 2 weeks until I'll be back in Wisconsin.

Chau!

Update

So these last few weeks I've been back with my host family in Pilar. Very little about the city itself has changed. A few more streets have been paved, there's a new dispensa across the street, the "Castiglioni Presidente" signs from 2008 are now pink instead of red, some different stray dogs follow me around, Hamburgueseria Milenio is actually indoors now, but that's about it. Mostly everything is exactly how I remember it, with the added bonus of not having to deal with school this time around.

My first weekend here in Pilar was my cousin Lauri's fifteenth birthday. As in most of Latin America, 15th birthdays are a huge deal in Paraguay, so just after midnight on the day of her birthday, I got to go with a group of her family and friends to her serenata. The two singers who came with guitars did an amazing job, and the celebration went on for a few hours, though I left around 2am.

I've been watching a lot of soccer (Copa Libertadores). Cerro Porteño, a Paraguayan team, beat the Jaguares (from Mexico), but unfortunately lost to the Brazilian team Santos. They still have the regular season though, and this wednesday I'll be at their game in Asunción! I'm super excited since this will be my first real soccer game in Paraguay. After the game in Asunción, I'll be heading to Ciudad del Este to visit a friend, then to Encarnación to see some Jesuit ruins, and then on to Argentina and Uruguay for a week or two.

In the time that hasn't been taken up with wandering aimlessly around the city and hanging out with my host family, I've been working on the project that got me the grant to come here. I'm doing research on bilingualism in schools by talking to teachers and administrators, observing classes, and analyzing print materals. I've visited a few schools and looked at a bunch of books/notes, and so far everything is going well. The teachers here have been amazing about having me drop by with little to no notice and giving me the information that I need. Most of my work so far has been with schools in the city center, but I have one last visit lined up tomorrow at a school on the outskirts of town, where the students are coming from a much more rural environment, so hopefully I'll be able to get some contrasting information there.

For my part in Paraguayan-style bilingualism, I've been studying Guarani as much as possible and I feel like I'm actually making a bit of progress. I'm obviously still far from fluent, but I've been picking up bits and pieces in conversations, and a lot of what I learned last time and forgot has been coming back to me. I hope to be able to actually continue studying once I go back, now that there are so many more materials available online than there were a few years ago. I love the language, and I love those triumphant moments that come when you actually understand something that you hear all the time, or can deconstruct a phrase that you've known for a while and see how it's actually put together. The random Guarani trivia for this entry is that the word for "pray" also means "learn" and that the guarani word for "mass" (as in church) breaks down into "big prayer".

The weather here has been almost identical to how spring was in Beloit, except with the important difference that in Beloit, we were celebrating the warm weather and wearing summer clothes, and here in Paraguay, people are wearing hats and boots. I've mostly been in jeans and short sleeves, but even so, nobody can seem to believe that I'm not freezing. I'm getting slowly accustomed to the climate though, and had to break out sweaters the last few days (though not today). It'll also be colder as I get further south into Argentina and Uruguay, plus I'll have the ocean to contend with.

I've also been enjoying Paraguayan food again. I've been on a veritable empanada tour of not just Pilar, but half the continent thanks to the 2-day trip it took to get here. Paraguay's empanadas are by far my favorites, though the Colombian ones weren't bad either. I was not a fan of the Peruvian mushroom-chicken-pepper concoction that was made into an empanada, but I think they were trying to be fancy, so maybe more normal ones are better. I've already had most of the foods that I missed, including sopa paraguay, mbeju, chipa, mandioca, chipa guasu, bori bori, terere, dulce de leche, guaraná soda, and the Turkish-Paraguayan hybrid of Lomito Árabe/Döner Dürüm. I'm still not quite sure how that managed to retain its popularity as fast food on the voyage with immigrants from Syria and Lebanon to Paraguay, but it did, and no matter what continent it's on (and I can speak for 4 of the 6) it's good.

There are significantly more exchange students in town now than when I was here. There were only two of us for the vast majority of my time in Pilar, but now, I know of at least 5. There are also a few new Peace Corps volunteers around town, including a volunteer who's working in a school, which gives me some hope that I might actually be placed here should I ever make it into the Peace Corps. Paraguay LOVES its PC volunteers. Everyone in town seems to know them, and the national governement dedicated a series of stamps to the 40 year anniversery of PC in Paraguay. I hope that I'll be back in Paraguay as a volunteer in a few more years, but we'll see.

I started trying again, and promptly gave up on making sense out of so much here. There's still the eye doctor in Pilar who advertises for contacts with pictures of blue-eyed lemurs. Bus number 18.2 is still running in Asunción. Furniture and cell phones are naturally sold in the same stores, exclusive of anything else. I saw a guy riding a motorcycle in circles-- on the back of a flatbed truck. I passed a business in Asuncion called "Pizza, pero sólo para llevar" which means (Pizza, but only for takeout). The guy I sat next to in the Asunción bus terminal had "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" as his ringtone, in English and in May. I bought lunch from a place called "Soon" in Asunción. I just don't get it sometimes, but I think that might be part of the reason why I love it here. It doesn't make sense, and nobody seems to think that it should.

I'm here!

I'm back in Pilar with my host family. =)

Everything is going well so far. I slept about 15 hours last night, so I'm feeling a LOT better today than yesterday. The layover in Lima was long, and the Lima airport is entirely indistinguishable from Munich, Santiago, and so many others. I ended up making friends with a little Chilean girl who yelled "Mamà, creo que ella es NORTEAMERICANA!" across the aisle of the plane. I also found a group of Americans from Iowa who are doing some sort of biological research in Paraguay this summer, and bizarrely, my friend Abbey's Paraguayan host family! There are 7 million Paraguayans. I know what, 50? And three of them are on my flight. There were also a lot of Mexican fans of the Jaguares soccer team, who will play against Cerro Porteño, a Paraguayan team, tonight in the Copa Libertadores.
After landing in Asunción, I slept in the airport for a few hours before taking an overpriced cab to the bus terminal. Luckily, I only had to wait about two hours there for a bus to Pilar. I slept the entire bus ride, only waking up momentarily in Ità and Paraguarí, and not again until Pilar.
Tomorrow I'll actually start my research, now that I can stay awake. =)

Almost there..

Hey all, I'm currently in the Bogotá International Airport in Colombia. I'll apologize in advance for typos, this keyboard is really sticky.

The trip started off with more than a little bit of drama, but since Milwaukee, all has been well. My flight from Milwaukee to Atlanta was delayed by over an hour, which meant no connection to Miami. Delta was going to rebook me, but that would have gotten me to Miami sometime around right now, when I obviouslty need to be in Bogotá. After frantically running to every ticket counter in the airport, Delta found a seat for me on a flight from Alanta to Fr. Lauderdale. After another mini panic aboutt how to get from FLL to MIA, they gave me a voucher for ground transportation. The flights went smoothly, I met a nice Haitian driver, and shaved 2ish hours off of an almost 8 hour layover, which was nice.

The airport is pretty small tghanks to construction, and as far as I can tell, isnt air conditioned. Oh well. I{m going to go get some coffee, maybe some chocolate, and hopefully get a nap in before I leave for Lima. After Lima its on to Asuncion! Im halfway there!