Dead people and soccer. (Football. Whatever.)

Emily’s currently trying to fix a vase of dying flowers. I have tried to explain that death isn’t something that one can generally fix, but she’s quite determined.

Ah. It appears that her solution is to chop the stems off and put about six non-wilted blossoms in a coffee mug. Interesting.

We got up this morning at about 8:30, and had a leisurely breakfast before heading out to see the sights of Asuncion. Because it’s Sunday, that means that practically nothing is open instead of the usual seven. But! We had a genius plan. Because there’s a big cemetery in Asuncion with weird old mausoleums and Emily had never been there, and honestly. History-type people like cemeteries, okay? It’s weird and morbid, but we do.

So we caught a bus to the cemetery, and wandered around taking pictures for a while. Apparently, burial practices in Paraguay are a little like they are in some places in the Caribbean– that is, most people aren’t buried in the ground; they mostly have mausoleums. And what blew my mind was that I probably saw some of the nicest and most elaborate architecture of my whole trip– in the cemetery. Honestly, the mausoleums were more like little houses with ornate statues and iron work. (If you happen to live in Atlanta, think of the mausoleums in Oakland Cemetery. Only everything in the cemetery looks like that.) We spent a little time looking for the big war memorial for the War of the Triple Alliance, but decided to duck out before we got to the military section– which is probably where the dang thing was– because everything was starting to blur together.

They’re like little houses. But for dead people.

Blue art deco mausoleum.

After, we had lunch, and jumped on a bus to head over to the Peace Corps offices– only to realize after we got OFF the bus that, since it was Sunday, the offices would be closed. Thus foiled, we decided to throw in the towel and head to T.G.I. Friday’s (one of three American restaurants I’ve seen in Paraguay) in order to watch the final match of the World Cup.

We wound up sitting in the German fan section (Paraguay has a fair number of German immigrants, so I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised at how many fans there were), and the Argentine fans mostly congregated around the bar. It was a fun match to watch, because when either team took a shot, about half the restaurant groaned, and the other half went insane with glee. Thankfully, everyone handled the German victory with aplomb, and Em and I headed back to the hostel. We’ve since been sitting around with some other PCVs, watching illegally downloaded episodes of New Girl and trying to figure out who is best at ordering Chinese over the phone in Spanish.

(It’s not me, by the way.)

And tomorrow’s my last day in Paraguay. My flight heads out at 9-something in the evening, and I’ll be in Miami by 6-something in the morning. And then there’s a brief layover, and then it’s home to Atlanta. And my insane year of traveling will be over.

Campo bingo and one last bus ride.

We’re sitting in the common room of the hostel in Asuncion, watching ridiculous YouTube videos, because apparently that’s what Peace Corps volunteers do on their free time.*

There are some interesting folks hanging out at the hostel tonight– a group of four musicians from Spain walked out of here all dressed up in… you know, I don’t even know. It’s like a matador’s traje de luces, only without all the sequins. You know– velvet knee britches and epaulettes and short jackets. It’s… definitely a look. They came down the stairs, and Emily and another PCV immediately sat up like meerkats and stared at them like the poor guys had three heads each. (Apparently, being in the Peace Corps not only makes you addicted to YouTube; it also makes you incapable of any subtlety at all.) One of the PCVs, Julia, ran after them, skidded on the front door mat, and proceeded to demand an explanation for their attire.**

I think she might have frightened them a little, because she’d been nursing a Nalgene of G&Ts since about three in the afternoon.

At any rate.

We caught a double-decker bus from Encarnacion to Asuncion, which was a long and pretty boring trip through ranch country. When we got in to Asuncion, we dropped our stuff at Casita and then went out for lomitos (sort of like falafel?), and then hit up the local supermarket for some chocolate. We got back the hostel in time to see Brazil lose to the Netherlands, and then sat down to work on a game of Peace Corps bingo.

Emily decided that there needed to be a version of bingo for Peace Corps folks out in the countryside, so we’ve worked on a new version called “Campo.” Just to give you an idea:

* The free space is, “I’m going to kill the rooster.”
* Plumbing is optional.
* Machete accident.
* You’ve raised (and named) your dinner.
* Your road is impassible after rain.
* Staying in a hostel is like staying in a five star hotel.
* When you see a bug, the first thing is to determine if it will eat your other bugs.

And that was basically our day! Very chill. And tomorrow, we’re going to mess about Asuncion and go take some photos before heading down to watch the World Cup final. And then we’ll do some last minute shopping and museum-ing on Monday, and then I’ll head out on Monday night!

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* There’s also a bottle of tequila being passed around between some folks, because it’s one of the guys’ birthday today. I’m refraining– not out of any objection to tequila in principle, but because I’m not convinced by the idea of Paraguayan tequila in particular. (The label is distressingly pink.) But the tequila is definitely making watching Joseph Gordon Levitt lip-syncing to Nikki Minaj way more interesting.

** Explanation: they’re musicians. The outfits are what they wear to perform. Really not that complicated.

A day with no buses!

Again, sorry for the lack of an update yesterday; I’ll blame it on the fact that we were had to cross two borders and took a bus from Ciudad del Este to Encarnacion for most of the day, and I just didn’t feel like writing by the end of it.

In fact, I think I can do most of yesterday in the form of bullet points. Here’s how it went:

* Woke up, packed, and checked out of the hotel by ten;
* Did a bit of shopping in Puerto Iguazu before heading to the bus terminal;
* Got on bus to take us back to Paraguay, which was full so we had to stand;
* Bus smelled strongly of onions and one of the passengers kept whistling the Argentine national soccer team’s fight song;
* Brazilian border patrol guard was EXTREMELY interested in a large package in the luggage area near where Em and I were standing and cut it open, only to find packages of cookies inside;
*Arrived back in Paraguay and our bus drove off while we were getting our passports stamped;
* Hired a taxi to take us the rest of the way to the terminal and bought tickets to Encarnacion;
* Spent five plus hours on the bus listening to iPod, staring at soybeans and cows, and playing peek-a-boo with the baby in front of me;
* Arrived in Encarnacion, found hostel, ordered a pizza (v. traditional Paraguayan fare), watched the Joss Whedon version of Much Ado About Nothing on Em’s computer, and crashed.*

Today, we took a day trip out to the Jesuit ruins a little to the north of the city. We hired a taxi for the day, which meant that we didn’t get on a single bus all day, which is kind of magical.

The city of Encarnacion is on the rio Parana– which I’m pretty sure feeds into the rio de la Plata– making it one of the oldest cities in this region, because the river is broad and navigable and good for trade. Because of the relative ease of traveling up the river, the earliest Jesuit missions began being constructed in Paraguay in the early to middle seventeenth century. We visited two of them today, one in the village of Trinidad, and one in the village of Jesus.

Emily doing an impression of an enthusiastic pillar.

Jesus is the larger structure, but to my mind, Trinidad was more interesting. While most of the structures have collapsed, the outer walls and arched doorways remain on several of the buildings– including the dormitory areas for the indigenous people the Jesuits were attempting to convert, the church itself, the school building, and a few other out buildings. The ruins stand on the top of a hill, and with the wind blowing through the trees it was easy to see why the priests would have chosen that location– especially if one tried to add dense jungle to the deforested hills, and imagine the baking heat of a Paraguayan summer. Of course you’d build where you could feel the wind on your face. And the fact that it was the high posing and visible for a long way off couldn’t hurt either.

View through a doorway at the ruins in Trinidad.

Ruins are odd things, if you’re interested in history. There’s something beautiful about the decayed and broken down bones of old buildings– I think that the visible effects of weather and neglect make it easier for me to see the way time passes over a place. I mean, I can look at the ruins at Jesus and see that the sacistry is unfinished, which makes sense: by the middle of the eighteenth century when the construction of the church was abandoned, Spain was already pretty much broke and losing colonies the way the Braves lose playoff games, and there was also some drama with the Hapsburgs which made things complicated and expensive, which meant that the mission to bring God to the natives (leaving aside the whole bit about how indigenous people had their own beliefs which deserved more respect and consideration than they were granted) had to go on the back burner.** And then there was Napoleon in Spain, and Buenas Aires did its we’re just going to act like we’re independent now, okay? thing, and there were the Provincias Unidas del rio de la Plata, and then San Martin and Bolivar and full independence, and then Paraguay tried to fight a war against Argentina AND Brazil AND Uruguay because they wanted a coastline and something like eighty percent of their young male population died, and then, really, who had time or the money or the heart to finish a massive church in the middle of a jungle? And so things fell apart, and time passed, and people took the stones from the priests’ dormitory to build their houses, because they were there and the priests weren’t.

Decorative niche.

It is, of course, extremely cool to be able to visit old sites that have been meticulously preserved through the years– Notre Dame, maybe, or the Catedral Gotica in Barcelona are good examples– because it reminds us of the ties that bind us to the past. That there are things that stay the same. That people, at heart, are essentially the same as we were hundred or thousands of years ago. But I think I like ruins better, because they tell me that things can– and do– change.

Remnants of the mission.

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* It was good, but I still like the 1990s version with Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson better, even if it does have Keanu Reeves. Thompson’s Beatrice is flawless.

** There was always drama with the Hapsburgs. The Hapsburgs existed to make European history slightly less boring to people like me, I think. This particular drama was over the Austrian succession, or at least the stuff that led up to the Seven Years’ War.

Ro’y.

So on Friday, the high was ninety. Today, it was rainy and cold and Em’s wearing a winter hat inside and now I’m willing to believe that July actually is the middle of winter in Paraguay.

We woke up to rain this morning– the sound of it pattering down on the tile roof, as well as the cold splash of it on my face. There are apparently several leaks in the roof, and one happened to be riiiiiiiight over my pillow. So I woke up in a hurry.

After a slow morning– Emily was in blanket burrito mode and was less quick to wake up than I was– we bundled ourselves up in our rain gear and trekked out to Em’s first host family’s house for a visit and lunch.* It was about a kilometer walk– up the highway, past the school, and down the lane from the local church– and it was remarkably quiet. Because it’s difficult to clean clothes or keep warm when it’s rainy, people tend to just batten down the hatches and stay inside.

The house where Em initially stayed in Oriental (the name of this community) is pretty charming. Adilida, one of Em’s host mothers, showed us into the front room, which was pretty obviously for guests– lots of bright faux flowers and paintings with religious themes and china ornaments. We sat and talked for a while– Adilida told us today was a bit of a sad day for the family, because there’d been a moto accident the night before, and one of their neighbors had been killed. He was a young man, she said, about twenty-seven, and one of her son’s friends. Apparently he’d been drinking, and ran his moto off the road and sustained a massive head injury– wasn’t wearing a helmet. I gather that sort of thing is not entirely uncommon around here.**

After a bit of idle chit-chat, Adilida brought us some fruit to snack on– something similar to a grapefruit, only with less juice. It was really good, but it was already a bit chilly, so we couldn’t eat all of it. We took a bit of a tour of her garden, which was lovely– she has poinsettias blooming all over and some beautiful purple flowers climbing over her trellis. In the back of the property is a fogon, a domed structure that is used to burn wood into charcoal, which the family sells for extra money, and a pen for some massive pigs.

Seriously. They were kinda frighteningly huge. I was thinking more along the lines of Babe, but these were more like shaved bears with hooves.

 

 

After looking at the property, Adilida brought us in to the kitchen where her sister and niece were cooking over a wood-fired stove.*** I imagine that’s a miserable task during the summer, but today it was quite lovely. Em and I went in and sat down near the stove’s heat, while the food finished cooking and chickens ran about around our feet. Which I was somewhat amused by, considering that one of their brethren was simmering in the pot three feet away.

Lunch was warm and filling, and while I would have liked to stay and chat for longer, we didn’t want to impose and we needed to take care of some things back at the house in advance of tomorrow’s Bus Adventure.

Tomorrow, you see, we will be arising at four in the morning in order to catch a bus that will arrive sometime between 4:30 and 5:30 AM, which will then take us to San Estanislao. Then, we will jump off the bus and catch one going to Oviedo, and then transfer in Oviedo to a bus going to Ciudad del Este, which will take us through Brazil and into Argentina. If all goes right, we’ll be in Puerto Iguazu by 5:00 PM. So happy birthday to me! I get to spend twelve hours on various buses. Should be awesome.

But so we came back to Em’s house and made mate (pretend there’s an accent on the e, please) because it was hot and drank it while making granola for bus-snacking purposes. After granola-ing, Emily decided to take a nap, and I– oh boy– decided to check my kids’ AP scores. Which has no bearing on the contents of this blog, but I’ll just say that I feel much more relaxed, now.

So now we’re packed and ready, and we’re waiting for some boiling water to cool down a little so we can wash up a little before bed.

It’s a good thing I like camping, dude. This would be a little rough if I didn’t.

But I will say that a s’more wouldn’t go amiss right now, either.

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* Because the soil here is a fine powder blowing over a base of clay, rain turns everything into a giant, sticky mud puddle in about five minutes. Since it began raining yesterday evening, it was pretty sloppy out there. So: rain jackets, sweaters, and pants tucked into socks to keep them out of the muck. And I was very glad I’d waterproofed my shoes before coming. I’m also glad that they were already orange, because if they weren’t before today, they are now.

** Motos are basically dirt bikes– light-bodied motorcycles– that nearly everyone uses to get around here. In Asuncion, there were plenty of people using motos, but I saw an awful lot of helmets. Out here in the camp, I haven’t seen any. But I have seen whole families on the back of one, including infants. So that’s a good idea.

*** Note to Eli: it was totally a Little House moment. I was very excited.

Sweeping, like resistance, is futile.

On the face of it, we really didn’t do much today. I probably didn’t go farther than fifty yards from the house in any one direction. But we took care of some things around Em’s house which needed to be done before we leave on Monday morning for Iguazu– burning trash, cleaning out the wardrobe, sweeping the house, and planting the garden.*

After a long period of rain in the past several weeks, Emily’s wardrobe had developed a rather impressive case of mildew, and she was eager to take advantage of the sun and wind today to air it out and wash it down with some bleach water. So while she took care of that, I decided to sweep the house. You know– help out a little, take care of some of the housework.

Yeah. Well.

The thing is, in order to make the cement go farther, it’s common practice here in the countryside to mix in a significant amount of the local dirt into it. Unfortunately, the dirt here is a fine, rust-colored powder, so when it’s added to the cement, the cement tends to wear away. Which means one can sweep and sweep and sweep until the eventual decay of the universe, and the dirt pile will get bigger, and bigger, and bigger– but the floor will always be dirty.

So I swept the house, which was an exercise in futility, and then we sat had had terrere for a while (this is a major daily event), and then Em decided to be ambitious and plant her garden. Isi, her neighbor, had paid her nephew to dig out the beds for her, so Emily just needed to get some fertilizer from the fellow across the street who has some cows, rake it into the beds, and plant her seeds. I stood around and looked decorative– I felt a little like Baby from Dirty Dancing. You know, “I carried the watermellon,”– and Em planted carrots and lettuce and peppers and tomatoes and herbs so that she’ll have something other than rice and chorizo and oatmeal to eat during the summer.

Preparing the beds for planting.

Watering the garden from the bedroom window. Like you do.

She actually picked a pretty decent day to plant– it’s just now starting to rain, so hopefully her seeds will get some decent watering. Forecast looks like it’s going to rain tomorrow, too, which would be okay– so long as it’s a gentle rain, and not a bucketing down like crazy thing.**

The rest of the day was pretty quiet; we sat on the front porch and watch lightning strike out to the south until it got dark, and then headed over to Isi’s house to have dinner. She was kind enough to invite us over yesterday afternoon, so we had a nice meal of empanadas and manioc, and drank a very Paraguayan mixture of Coke and red wine. (It wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be, although it’s not going on my list of favorite cocktails anytime soon.)

Now, Em’s watching an episode of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries on her computer, and the power’s flickering on and off as the storm rolls in. Here’s hoping it’s not a bad one.

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* Yes, burning trash is not a good thing. But she composts everything that’s organic, and there’s no place anywhere nearby to responsibly dispose of inorganic materials that she can’t reuse or upcycle. Burning’s the best of a few bad options.

** Also, I hope that it doesn’t rain too hard tomorrow, because we’re slated to go and have lunch with one of Em’s host families tomorrow, and if it’s raining a lot the roads will be awful.

Vamos al colegio.

Esta muy tranquilo hoy. I’m sitting with my feet up in one of Em’s chairs, listening to Billy Bragg and Wilco sing about California stars while watching a chicken peck around the base of a bitter orange tree, and thinking about the differences– good and bad– between the States and Paraguay.*

Emily and I just finished taking terrere with her neighbor, Isi (short for Isidora). Isi’s a sweet lady with long dark hair with laugh lines around her eyes, and she and her husband and their two sons (one seventeen, the other five months– quite an age gap) live in the house just next door to Em. It’s a very nice house by campo standards, with a flush toilet and shower and a separate open-air kitchen with a wood stove out behind the house. Isi spends her day with the baby, cooking and taking care of the house, and her husband is the director of the escuela (primary school) up the road.

Emily playing with Rocky, the neighbors’ dog.

My Spanish has been holding up okay; the Paraguayan accent is a little more slurred and closed-mouthed than I’m used to, but I was able to talk to a number of people today without making a total fool of myself, so we’ll call it a win. I went with Emily up to her classes at the colegio (high school, approximately), and talked with her kids a little bit about the differences between school in Paraguay and the United States. I’d downloaded some photos of North Cobb — the school, my classroom, the library, the football stadium, the band, some general student pictures– onto my iPad last night, so I had something specific to talk about. The topic which got the most interest, however, was the size of North Cobb– the idea that there could be a school with nearly three thousand students made the kids laugh. After all, the total size of the escuela and the colegio is about two hundred students, and that’s not considered particularly small.

Em in one of the classrooms for the upper grades.

Singing the Paraguayan national anthem before classes.

School is madatory here until sixth grade, although most students go through at least the equivalence of ninth grade. Em’s students, however, are older– basically the same age as my students back in the States, which would be about fifteen to sixteen. Her classes are much, much smaller than anything I’m used to, though– she only has five in one class (only three showed today), and seven in the other (all present). The teacher in me was extremely jealous; think of how easy it would be to differentiate! Individual learning plans for each student! It would actually be POSSIBLE to do all the data analysis and everything that we’re supposed to in that sort of classroom. Then again, it would be awfully difficult to get a decent discussion on the reading going with only three kids.**

After discussing how high school works here and in the U.S., I let the kids borrow my iPad to take a video and record a virtual tour of their school that I could take back to the States and cut together and into something I can show my kids back home– and if I put the file up on Dropbox, Emily can download it and show the finished video to the kids.

So that was what we did today– it’s now five thirty and the sun is going down, and I need to cook dinner.

Simple things, yeah?

Happy Fourth.

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* Good: it’s so quiet. Bad: except for the loud music coming from basically everyone’s house, because music is something to be shared. At full volume. Good: everything happens in its own time. Bad: OMG WHEN IS SOMETHING GOING TO HAPPEN? Good: the people are incredibly friendly. Bad: people sometimes are a little too involved in the lives of their friends and neighbors. Good: no television. Bad: no television. Good: everything’s pretty simple. Bad: so is the plumbing. And so on and so forth. It’s a mixed back.

** Also problematic: the low level of literacy, the tendency of schools to close when it rains (or when the power’s out, or when the teachers are on strike, or when it’s too cold, or or or…), and the complete lack of any sort of supplies.

Waffles, no pancakes.

(Don’t worry about the title; I might explain it later. Maybe.)

Emily is currently standing in her bedroom, brushing her teeth as she looks at a milkcrate nailed to the wall with a bunch of books in it. You might wonder why she’s not brushing her teeth in the bathroom– a reasonable question, dear reader! But that would require there to be a bathroom. Which there is not, because we’re out in the campo.

Em’s house, complete with ribbon birds hanging from the ceiling. It’s a thing.

The campo, in this case, is Oriental– a neighboring community (I was going to say “suburb,” but there’s not enough <em>urb</em> for that to qualify) to Santani, which is about 160 kilometers northeast of Asuncion. This is where Em lives and works.

We got up a decent hour this morning and had a late-ish breakfast at Bolsi, the same restaurant as yesterday. I suppose we could have gone adventuring, but Emily assures me that most of the PCVs have hit up basically every restaurant in Asuncion, and Bolsi is the most reliable. Plus they had waffles, so. Obviously that’s where we went for breakfast.

We then returned to the hostal to pack up (and in the midst of packing, I evidently left my glasses; not a huge deal since we’ll be headed back there on my way out of the country) and chill for a little while, before calling for a taxi to take us to the bus terminal. We could have taken a city bus, but that would have taken an extra hour of winding our way through the streets of Asuncion, so while the taxi was expensive by Paraguayan standards (about $10 USD), I think it was well worth it. We were at the terminal with plenty of time, which meant we could jump right on our <em>chuchi</em> (expensive, fancy) bus.

The bus we took was a double-decker, and our seats were up front by the big picture windows. The bus qualified as chuchi because it had air conditioning and in-bus entertainment. Which was a DVD of 1970s disco performances. And not, like, ABBA. This was the disco that was deemed SO BAD by American popular music standards that it was shipped off to the developing world in the hopes that no one here would notice.* And the music was playing very, very loudly.

It took us about an hour in order to realize there was a mute button above our seats. Granted, it didn’t turn off everyone else’s speaker, but it certainly made life more bearable.

The bus ride took about three and a half hours– it probably should have taken about three, but another bus hit ours about ten minutes after we left the terminal.** So! Things I saw on the trip: fields flooded up past their fenceposts, cows along the road, cows in the road, secretary birds, a pickup truck with another pickup inside it (a matrayuska doll truck!), people fishing in the floodplains, a <em>wild guinea pig</em>, a police officer with his gun in the front pocket of his jeans, a group of fishermen with their catch and a skinned armadillo, and black market cellphone sales.

We got off the bus at about 4:30 PM, which means that it was nearly dusk. So we caught another taxi to take us to Emily’s house, and then she gave me the grand tour. Which basically consisted of her opening the front door, because you can see pretty much everything from that point. I’ll give everyone a detailed tour tomorrow, because I don’t want to spend too much time on my iPad tonight.

But it’s been a pretty good day– and tomorrow I’m going with Em to her school, so I need to download some photos of North Cobb and such to show her students. Should be pretty cool.

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* I am no fan of disco in general. So please understand when I say that this is bad disco, I am by no means suggesting that disco in general is a valid musical form. This is just <em>by comparison</em> even worse. Which is sort of like saying that some root canals are even more awful than others.

** They side-swiped the driver’s side and clipped the mirror. It was barely a touch, but we had to do the insurance-and-wait-for-the-cops dance, like you do. Wouldn’t have happened if there were, like, enforced traffic laws, but whatever.

Em’s house, complete with ribbon birds hanging from the ceiling. It’s a thing.

Mba’eichapa!

(Emily says that’s what I should title this entry. It’s Guarani, and I think it means something between “Hello,” and “What’s up?” I have absolutely no idea how to pronounce it, however.)

Attention world: I managed to get about two hours of sleep on the flight from Miami to Asuncion, so that’s basically amazing. I don’t think I’ve ever slept that much in a moving vehicle of any sort. I chalk it up to the fact that the ONLY empty seat on the flight was in between me and the guy sitting on my aisle. So that meant we could both put the armrests up and sprawl— about two inches. But those two inches matter, man.

I got into Asuncion around 8:00 AM, and then had to immediately get in line to get my visa, which was just as sketchy as I thought it might be.* Customs was pretty non-existent, which was good, because I was tired and did not want to have to fight the system any longer. Granted, “the system” in Paraguay involves an airport with approximately four gates and two x-ray machines.

Em met me just outside of customs, along with about fifty other people (they weren’t there for me; they were there for the other passengers), and we quickly grabbed a cab and drove into the city proper to the hostal. Asuncion feels a lot like some of the Cuban cities I visited in 2004: there’s a lot of visible poverty and problems with trash disposal, but there’re also the fading remnants of beautiful Spanish colonial architecture and the broad rio Paraguay. The cab dropped us about a block and a half from the hostal– a very friendly place called la Casita de la Abuela with bright paintings on the walls and a hammock out front — and then I took a shower and crashed for a couple of hours before getting back up around noon, feeling much refreshed.

I met some of Em’s fellow PCVs when I rejoined the world– Elliot, Rachel, and Sunny– most of whom I’ve been hearing stories about for two years. (Sunny, for example, is either “the girl with the horse on the bus,” or “the girl with the worm in her head.” Really. Peace Corps stories are weird.) Being as it was lunch time, we all hopped on a bus and went to lunch at a sidewalk restaurant in the business center of town (that is, there were people wearing suits in between the people sitting despondently on the stoops of buildings, possibly displaced by the flooding down by the river). The restaurant, Bolsi, was very nice, although not necessarily Paraguayan. But I’m not entirely sure what that means, yet.

Emily and Sunny at Casita!

Following lunch, Em and I made our way to the Peace Corp office– after a quick detour for an ATM for me– so that I could see where she hangs out when she’s in Asuncion, and so I could meet her boss. Most of the administrative staff were in meetings when we got there, so I explored the building a bit, and then we sat around and drank terrere for a while until we could stick our heads in and say hello.

After our brief meet-and-greet, we caught a bus back to the Casita, and hung out for a while before heading out again for dinner at a pub downtown.** The pub was nice– open air and theoretically British– and the food was half off for some sort of promotion, which meant that there were a fair number of PCVs hanging out there. And because the food was half off, everyone ordered FAR too much; there wasn’t enough room on the table for all the dishes. I suppose it makes sense, though– Em says that most Peace Corps conversations eventually wind up being about food, so suddenly having access to a variety of foods in the city that one can’t get in the campo would be extremely tempting.

And now we’re back at Casitas, and Em and some of her friends are playing a card game out in the living area. I can hear Emily laughing at something, so I suppose it’s going well. For my part, my traveling’s caught up with me, so I decided to turn in and do a bit of writing before bed.

So. That’s day one of my fifth continent in one year, guys.

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* Basically, this involves a super rigorous process of making a copy of my passport, taking a picture of me with a webcam, and taping something official-looking in the passport. And then they charged me $160 USD. Yay?

** A note on buses in Asuncion: you quite literally must hop on, because the second the last person’s foot is on the bottom step, the driver guns it away from the curb. Which is frightening enough without the fact that (a) the driver is trying to do this while making change for passengers and (b) gunning it down roads that have no discernible speedlimits, stop lights, lanes, or… pretty much anything else. Thankfully, I’ve been pretty tired all day, so the panic reaction I might have otherwise had was basically gone.

Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.

As much as I enjoy traveling with students– it’s extremely cool to see them experience new places and ideas– I’m much more suited to the “What do you want to do today?” sort of adventure. Don’t get me wrong– tours can be great; they’re like sampler platters of a country. But I like having time to be lazy on trips, and to not have to obsess about missing a train or what have you.

To that end, I’m headed to Paraguay (with a side jaunt to Argentina) on Tuesday. My sister is currently a Peace Corps Volunteer stationed in San Estanislao, working in Environmental Conservation– she’s working on a tree-planting project right now. Her term is up in December of this year (assuming she doesn’t re-up for another year. any decision yet, Em?), and I really want to be able to get a feel for the place where she’s been living for the past two years. My mom and dad went down to visit her last September, and she came home for Christmas this past year, but it’s going to be great to get to spend some time with her that’s (a) not over Skype or (b) interrupted by my work schedule. I’m looking forward to meeting her host families, seeing her house– I hear there’s a kitchen now, even if there are also bats– and meeting some of the kids at the school where she works sometimes. Assuming they’re not out for vacation or flooding or whatever. Anything else we do is really a bonus.

But Em’s a planner, so right now our rough schedule looks like this:

July 2: I arrive in Asuncion, Paraguay. Hopefully she will let me take a nap before we go adventuring. Goals for this day include visiting the Peace Corps office to meet some of her co-PCVs and the office staff, maybe wandering the city a little to get a feel for it. Assuming it’s not all underwater.

July 3 – 7: We take a bus to Em’s site on the 3rd. The next few days we’ll knock around her village and meet people. I foresee much terrere during these days.* We’ll get up early early on the morning of the 7th (which happens to be my birthday), and catch a bus to Argentina to see Iguazu Falls.

July 7 – 10: Basically the 7th will be a wash with traveling, but we should be in Argentina by the evening, leaving us the 8th and 9th to explore the falls and surrounding area. Again, this is all assuming that we don’t need snorkles, because there’s MASSIVE flooding going on in this area right now. The news reports I’m reading, however, suggest that the floodwaters should be receding in the next three days or so, so we might be okay. If the falls are too dangerous to visit, however, I still think we should go to Argentina and knock around. Just so I can say I did. We’ll leave Argentina early on the morning 10th, and head back to Paraguay.

July 10 – 12: After leaving Argentina, we’ll get on another bus and go to Encarnacion, Paraguay, so that we can visit the Jesuit ruins in that part of the country. We’ll visit the ruins on the 11th– it’ll take all day, I think– and then we’ll get up on the 12th to head back to Asuncion.

July 12 – 14: We’ll spend the last few days of my visit in the capital city, and I’d like to visit the hippie market, and some of the (very tiny and weirdly curated) museums, and maybe see the Cathedral of the Martyrs? It’s dedicated to Paraguay’s national heroes, and has a very weird combination of religion and nationalism that I’m interested in seeing. And then I fly out on the evening of July 14th, and I’ll be back in Atlanta by the morning of the 15th.

(And then I’m going to crash for a week, and it’ll be about time for pre-planning!)

So. That’s hopefully the plan. But there are a few things that might make it a little complicated. Firstly, there’s been heavy, heavy rains in the southeast of Paraguay right now, and given that there’s very little infrastructure in the country, this has resulted in some serious flooding– particularly in Asuncion. So that could be a little complicated. Secondly, even if the floodwaters recede by the time I get there, the roads are going to be an EPIC mess– they’re mostly dirt, so they may be impassible.

Thus, the watch word for this trip is flexibility. Would I like to see Iguazu? Of course. Will I be devastated if I don’t get to? Nope. We could just hang out at Em’s site for the full two weeks, and that would be cool with me. But here’s hoping the weather cooperates, there are no national strikes, and that Argentina isn’t eliminated from the World Cup while we’re in-country.

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* Terrere is the national drink of Paraguay, and it’s similar to mate in Argentina or a number of other South American countries. It’s a cold herbal tea with a LOT of caffiene, and it’s a hospitality thing. Unless you’re sick, you should drink the WHOLE guampa (cup) as it’s offered to you. So everyone uses the same bombilla (metal straw with a filter at the bottom), and you sit around and drink the stuff for hours, apparently. Em made some while she was home over Christmas, and it’s not bad. I should be able to drink it without offending anyone, at least.