First Full Week, First Impressions, First Giant Slabs of Meat

After having been in Paraguay for not even two weeks, I feel almost like I have been here for a month. I guess time is easily misconstrued in an unfamiliar place. I´ll try to hit the major points of the week with this post although there have been a ton.

Last Saturday, unbeknownst to me until about 8 pm and I was expecting to eat dinner in the house, my Paraguayan mama took me to her Grandson´s birthday party slash Asada. An asada is just a party with a ton of meat at it. Upon getting there I had a pretty good conversation with my host-uncle named Raul in which he explained to me his entire philosophy on life, which is ´why so much?´. I on a good role with my Spanish, and when some more people got there he invited me to play this crazy card game called ´truco.´ At this point everyone began speaking Guarani, and as a result I still do not understand the rules of truco even after playing for about an hour and a half. I think it is something like bridge because you play it in partners, but who knows. After that came the meat of the party, which was unlimited slabs of cow, I´m not sure which cut it was but it was good. The guys who I was eating with got a pretty big kick out of my estimation that the meat we were eating might cost like 20 dollars per plate in a nice restaurant in Chicago. And they insisted that I eat several slabs of it. Needless to say I had some slight gastro-intestinal problems for a couple days after that as my stomach tried to remember how to digest South American meat.

That was Saturday, Sunday was spent recovering from the discoteca the previous night and just sitting around my house, siesta-ing, and drinking load of terere. At about 5 I got up the strenght to head over to my friend´s pool, where another PVC and I succesfully taught Sharks and Minnows to the kids, which was a blast and the kids loved.

This week has been the first of getting into a daily routine. For me this includes getting up around 7 (well first around 5 when the roosters start crowing but I eventually fall back asleep) to go to Guarani language classes until 1130, eating, then heading back to school from 1 until 5 for educational studies ´technico´ classes. Basically we sing elementary school songs in Spanish, which sometimes feels a little ridiculous but is fun. After that I usually play soccer, study, head to my uncle´s pool, or some variation of those three. Dinner is around 8 and usually turns into a sit and chill session until 9 or 930 after the food has been eaten, and I head to bed after that, maybe read a bit and go to sleep.

A couple of nights this week I played my eleven year old host brother in Connect four. I beat him the majority of the times, but he is pretty competetive and keeps getting better. We also started a reading club this week, and 15 people came which was a pretty good turnout. The other PVCs and I interspersed games with reading. Another first impression notable is that there are soooo many moto´s driven here. If I had to guess I would say about half of all traffic is a motorcycle of some sort. Even my 11 year old brother drives one locally.

So overall, besides the fact that I sweat through a couple of shirts a day, life is good. The pace is wayyyy slowed down compared to the city of Chicago or even the suburbs, which I like. It´s amazing how much time I have spent just sitting around this past week watching the traffic go by and talking about the heat and/or rain. This coming week we are going to Asuncion, and next week we will all be visiting a PVC somewhere in Paraguay.

Tim and Paul, thanks for the questions. I will look into the bundles of hundreds and typical food situation. I am going to tenatively say that if you put the hundreds in a teddy bear and sewed it shut it might make it. Don´t quote me on that though. As for your question Tim, lots of meat, and also fruit. I will get you a more specific answer in a week or so.

On a final note, my older host brother just asked me my favorite American food and I explained to her the greatness of the Chipotle burrito. They don´t have burritos in Paraguay except for in the big cities, and actually ´burrito´translates directly has ´little donkey,´which definitely does not accurately describe the contents of a burrito. I know sometimes in the U.S. we think of Latin America as a whole, but burritos are definitely a mexican, not paraguayan, food. Oh and it is 97 degrees here right now, feels like 107. That is all.