well then

Okay so the days are passing and currently my life is still moving forward in Paraguay. I missed Thanksgiving a few days ago though which was one of the weirder feelings i have ever had seeing that life is moving on without me back in the states and that i moving on without it down here. I got to talk to my family and it was not the type of resolution i thought it would be by talking to them it becomes more clear all the time how our lives are so separate now which makes me pretty sad.  

   I have been playing volleyball with a beach volleyball team! We practice at least five days a week from about 5pm to 9pm which is really fun but also it tells my body ¨hey your fat¨ every time i step out on the court so hopefully after a few weeks of it i will be able to shake that feeling. But, it is really fun and it is also great for my Spanish to be able to only speak Spanish for four hours a day along with meet new people and friends.The picture above is where i play volleyball it is dark because it gets dark around 6 here but that i really nice because it is so hot on the sand and outside to play before it is dark.Fun fact! it is a Paraguay law that during the summer you can not organize sporting activities (in the tense of a team, not just playing with friends) between 10am to 4pm because a large number of people die between those hours from the heat...yay i cannot wait until summer. 

  This weekend i went to some new city in Paraguay with my family i found out later the real reason was just to go to a German doughnut shop, sometimes i wonder if my family is not secretly American... Anyway we went out to lunch at a very nice place and had delish pasta, i had fetuccini  Alfredo (yes Joanna nothing has changed that much :p) haha  

This was on the way to the restaurant the lake behind us is sadly not clean enough to swim in this year :( because there are a lot of toxic chemicals and different pollution in it. These are two of my sisters on left Saida and on right Naila. 

  

the German doughnuts we went to get!

This was the view from the restaurant we ate at... Pretty rough view... 

And then yesterday i went to Lady Gaga! My parents surprised me and my sisters with the tickets! It was such an awesome show and it was also cool to see her bring diversity to this country by having black dancers and supporting the gay population.  

My weekend!

So I had such a fantastic weekend that i figured this blog will be able to mas o menos show you what i did and what happened. So read each caption for the photo and continue reading for the rest of the story in each photo caption...

Anywho me and a few friends decided it would be fun to go to Salta Cristal for the weekend camping and here is how it went.

on the road! We all met up at 8:00AM (it was supposed to be 7:00AM but we are on Paraguayan time) we went to the supermarket to buy food for the weekend and we on our way. I was in Sergio´s car with Elien and Charleen the two other cars were set and we begun the trip!

About seven minutes into our adventure Sergio´s tire popped. I can not say it was a complete shocker considering that only three out of the four doors opened, two windows worked and there was only one seat belt.

Then our other car buddies came over to help fix the tire,  which worked and we put on a spair in order to drive it  to a gas station but we ended up only having two cars because spair tires are not good to drive for long distances.

While we were dropping off the car at the gas startion me and my new car buddies raided the snack isle and purchased ROAD TRIP MUNCHIES! thank you father for training me how to travel by car haha :)

There was just a little bit less space with six people in a five seated car...  So every one had to get comfortable with eachother really fast.

This is our other group of people on the trip and my friend David realizing how lost we are after driving for three hours in 115F degree weather with none working AC

Then David and Fernando went to ask dirrections. Funny fact about Paraguay you can ask anyone directions and they will always give you them, but most of the time they just mess with you and say it is 50km south when its really 15km west... This was one of the situations where they messed with us; so we then paid this guy on a motor cycle to show us how to get there.

Then we ran into a road block and had to wait, and wait, and wait some more.

Finally we got on the dirt road to the correct place!! Which was slightly terrifying considering Fernando´s car is not much better than Sergio´s and the bottom grinds on the ground when you go over a rock. 

We made a pit stop at an old famous iron processing plant that was used when there was the big war in paraguay to make iron for the wepons used.

This was the area inside where it showed all the people that worked and the things that they made.

How to produce iron, for future use if any of you need it!

POR FIN! We arrived!! After our one hour and fourty minute trip turned into a five hour one, sitting and sweating on top of each other in the car we made it!

It was worth every extra minute of the car ride. The place was enchanting i had to take so many pictures beacuse i could not even believe it myself. Me along with all my my friends kept saying things like ¨We live in Paraguay!¨or ¨We are swimming in South America!¨ In the space below the falls we swam and played frisbee and volleyball. The water was quite chilly but felt amaizing next to the hot summer day.

After a swim we set up camp! With the very limited camping supplies that we had, we made do. I was really happy that we were not in colorado because all anyone had was sheets and shorts because of the 50LBS limit that AFS puts on your suit case requirements haha

Finally it was night time! After a long day of summer we hung out and played cards and talked. Mind you it was only in Spanish beacuse our Paraguayan friends get VERY angry when we speak english or Holandés. Which i am realizing we do quite a lot considering i am starting to understand Holandés...quite sad. But this was some of the group that was camping with us, some awesome people! (left to right, David, toto (blue shirt both are Paraguayans), Lieselot, Elien, Charleen, Agnese, ME!, and two guys in the front at Ruben  and Simon in the blue shirt).

This was the beautiful fire that the guys made. They were on fire duty and the girls were on dinner duty steriotypical paraguay culture 

Sunday morning! everyone was pretty tired but ready for the day and the trip back home. The weekend made everyone really understand how cool it is to be in such a beautiful country muchless live here as well. For me it showed me that there is so much more to see. And also helps me see that though  i miss my home i am seeing and doing things here that i cannot do there. 

changing the way i think

             Well today I went to Asuncion with Alicia, my American friend from Las Vegas which is also my best friend here in Paraguay, to meet up with Jack, a fellow Coloradian!! We were going to go see Sky fall the new 007 movie and i was dying to see it but we arrived and sadly it was not at the theater we choose; we could not have looked in advance because there is no Fandango of Paraguay, so very sad. ANY WHO! It ended up being for the better because we all got to have a good conversation on what different perspectives we have gained in our short three month time here; this was also nice to do with people´s whose first language is English. I shared with them how I think I have changed sense this has started, not a ton but in some ways. Things like in the past I talked ALL the time and now that I am here, though I do have my talking moments with my fellow English speakers, I am comfortable with silence. When you do not have the knowledge to reply very thoroughly you learn to listen very well and I think I have gained that skill. I also feel like my appreciation for the United States has grown tremendously. Sense I have been here just seeing the opportunity of education that I have in the U.S.A. is astounding. In the past I would return from a day of school with the usual question ¨what did you learn today? ¨and my normal response is ¨nothing¨ but living here and looking back I can say I learned a ton! When someone asks me that after a day of school here if can say with all confidence that I have learned NOTHING! Because most of the time the teachers do not even care to show up. Also, while I am here I have decided at some point in my life I want to reach my education to the point of a masters and bachelors degree just because I have the chance to do so. And I would also love to join the Peace Corps one day in hopes of giving back to the people in the same situation of the Paraguayans. Along with education seeing the family aspect here gives me a new sense of the meaning family. Though I have always been close to certain parts of my family it is not something I would do to just hang out with my family (as a first option) and being here it really is. Family here is the most important thing and they show it by the pure friendship they all have with each other which I love. By now seeing myself I fear of what it will be like to go home. Though I am not a totally different person just the matter of the people I used to be friends with, though a few exceptions, my group of people will be very different. It will even be so different arriving back to the U.S. and being a minor. Because here when you are 18 you are considered an adult and here I am. I am my own person and though I do have a host family support system I am pretty much on my own. Making my own choices and choosing my own path.  Going back I feel like I will be with these people that are so new to the idea of being free and they simply want to party and go hard and I feel like after living here I do not want to waste that time because there is so much more to life than getting wasted. But I will say with honesty that down here I will occasionally have a drink with my family when there is a party or when I go to a bar I will get  a cocktail but it is not a I am getting drunk it is the social aspect of it. I see people starting at age 6-85 that spend their days selling gum and bread on the streets. They always wear flip-flops and they feet are cut up and covered in mud; they do that all day every day just to make ends meat. And the thought of wasting my time of getting messed up is just disrespecting all the chances that I have in U.S.  I also really wonder what the adjustment will be into the social aspect of society for me with people my own age. Because, even here I have my fellow AFS people who are on the same mental age as me and all of our Paraguayan friends at least 23 years old and older. It is only month 3 and ½ and I feel this way but it is a great thing to see. I am becoming more at peace here every day. This last Thursday I was meeting with my AFSers from the cities around me as we usually do and we went to get ice cream before dance classes, OH YA! F.Y.I. I take dance classes now twice a week with AFS students from this local lady who did not get much business before us now she is booming! Any who the Belgians taught us a new card game called President. It was just a good fun time and that’s when I really realized, though I miss home and that will never go away, I am okay with everything I like it here. 

Here is the picture from my birthday with some of my friends! Left to right Fernando (AFS volenteer), Jolene (germany), me!, guy up front David (just a friend of PY), girl next to me Rebecka (Sweden), Ruben (Belgium), Charleen (belgium), Lieselot (Belgium), And nick (germany).

Eating a little differently...

Ok so I feel like I have been holding out on you guys about the food here because it is such a HUGE part of Paraguay. So this will be your enlightenment on new food and how to eat normal food but a little differently. the best way to do this is pictures so here we go! To sum up the normal food i eat i only need a few words and please take them in total reality, MEAT, BREAD, CORN, SALT. This is also why people (exchange students) get fat while coming down here because all the food is so dense and the amount of vegetables is lacking.

Okay so this was one of the first differences i noticed about how they eat food differently. For cake  the cut a big circle in the middle and cut around that so the pieces are not as large unlike the thin pie like pieces we cut in America. I do not like the way the cut it here because then you miss out on the frosting

.

Okay so this was one of the first differences i noticed about how they eat food differently. For cake  the cut a big circle in the middle and cut around that so the pieces are not as large unlike the thin pie like pieces we cut in America. I do not like the way the cut it here because then you miss out on the frosting

Okay so this was one of the first differences i noticed about how they eat food differently. For cake  the cut a big circle in the middle and cut around that so the pieces are not as large unlike the thin pie like pieces we cut in America. I do not like the way the cut it here because then you miss out on the frosting

MELON! Ok so this is the most common especially rite now is watermelon. We eat at least 2 a day in my house and it is more of a, how much melon can you shovel into your body, literately. Instead of cutting the melon here they just use spoons and hallow it out. So when dinner ends they bring the two halves to the table and everybody starts spooning it out. However, this is slightly ineffective because when there are large groups they have to pass around the giant melon and it takes more time but if they simply did slices it would be melon for all. But, the way the eat the melon even more reflects the culture because everything is a whole.

ORANGE! they eat oranges in a way here that get under my skin! It takes ten minutes to eat an orange it is quite frustrating. First you have to peel it like above..Then...(below)

You cut off the top and squeeze the sides and suck out ALL the juice. Once all the juice is gone then you open the orange and eat the insides... So much time.

This is my new favorite fruit it is called mburucuya in Guarani, or passion fruit as we all know it. I defiantly did not know passion fruit was a fruit i just thought it was a flavor that you could get in smoothies.

it is filled with these little seeds and you eat the insides with a spoon. It is very tart but delish the juice it makes is to die for!

once eaten you can see the insides where the seeds were made.

this is a mburucuya flower (i did not take this picture) but this is how the plants look really pretty.

Now we are at classic Paraguay comida. This is Chipa. EVERYBODY EATS CHIPA. It is a type of bread with a different flavor but i love it! The photo above (i did not take it) it what i see all the time. They are these baskets with Chipa that the venders have a walk around with them on their heads to sell Chipa it is 3mil Guarani´s for a chipa (less than a dolar) and you can buy them everywhere on the busses, streets and parks.

This is Sopa Paraguaya. It is the oldest most traditional food of the country. They think of it as the only solid form of soup but its like corn bread SORRY not soup... 

This is where you cook the sopa. It is called a tatakua. Almost every person in Paraguay has one of these in their back yard, including my family. Because this is how you CAN cook sopa and Chipa. Though you can also cook it in the over the flavor is much richer when you cook it in the tatakua. To see more on it go to: http://brittanygoesglobal.com/2011/06/12/recipe-and-video-for-chipaguazu-a-paraguayan-delicacy/.