Tres

It’s me again
I am not fond of reading over my work and finding my mistakes and words that are too sarcastic and stuff like that. I am even less fond of other people reading and catching my mistakes and, horror of horrors, maybe even catch on to how I was feeling when I wrote what I did. You’d think that, given what I just said, I’d be very careful what and how I wrote. I’m not.  
I fear I have been too sarcastic and even disrespectful of people in my other letters, so I tried to do better in this one.  
 
Sunday, November 22, 2020, 1705 hours, 33°C
I sent my last letter off not 24 hours ago and here I am starting another one.
And now we’re 2 days into the week and I’ve written almost nothing. This is not off to a good start.  
Well, on with my day.  
There have been some tom cats roaming our yard lately so Rachelle and I decided tonight that it was time they started learning a bit of a lesson. We have a cat. We don’t need more. So we loaded our water guns and lay in wait for these 2 cats, who both got a bit scared and wet.  
After our crazy evening of chasing cats we still had to get up on time as church starts at 0830. Some of us were dropped off at church to make room in the van for a load from just down the road. We opened windows, took the Sunday School benches out to the shade and then waited under the mango tree for awhile. Eventually church was going to start so we all find seats on the numerous plastic lawn chairs and start singing. Soon Rachelle and the children go out to the shade for Sunday School and I follow to watch the proceedings and figure things out a bit as maybe soon I’ll be the one doing the teaching out there. Not sure just how much I’ll be able to teach..  
Well it’s 2130 and I just typed ‘sleep’ instead of ‘teach.’ I think I should take that as a sign, don’t you?  
Back to church. Well, I dunno if teaching Sunday school will be super hard after all. There aren’t many other kids who come and I live with 3 girls who would be eager to translate.  
I just can’t do this. The hour is verging on Wednesday and I have just a few lines typed. And I’m not going to be any less busy later on in the week
OK, so church. After Sunday School, the rest of the service isn’t very long. Eric (who is the only male representative besides Tiago and 3 year old Christian) has a short sermon that Rachelle translates for me. Thru out the whole service, everything is laid back, people talking, running around, threatening to take the kids to their moms if they don’t behave. And if someone wants to sing in Guarani, they make themselves known and that’s not a big deal. We also sit on plastic lawn chairs, and most of us are wearing some sort of sandals. And short sleeves. Just to give you a little bit of a picture.  
After the service, we adjoin to the back yard and talk about when the grapes will be ready and who wants mangos to take home. A few people open some fallen mangos and start eating them, leaning forwards to let the juice drop to the ground so their clothes don’t get dirty. Then we all pile into the van as all except one of the 13 of us were only from 2 different places. And she needed a ride too. The drive is short tho, and the van is big (I think it could seat 11 or 12 if the back seats were in, which they weren’t but who needs seats?)  
If it were still Sunday, I could describe everything a lot better for you. But seeing as it’s Almost Wednesday already, I should probably go to sleep and put this off longer or else tell about the rest of the day.  
It was a full day. So very worth it. We went out for dinner to the same place we stopped for lunch on the day I came. It’s a cool place were you can get empanadas or you can go thru a bit of a buffet except they dish it up for you and you would have to pay for seconds. You pay by the pound, and they scan it all onto a little piece of wood which you take to the front to pay when you are ready. It’s also a bit of a grocery/toy/tourist shop so we had a bit of fun spending money.  
Then we were off on a drive. Our turning around destination was the Paraguay River. We drove for awhile with everybody pointing out places for me. ‘This is where we do this. This is where that comes from.’ Unfortunately, I can’t keep it all straight, and so much water has passed under the bridge that I don’t remember what I should remember. We reached the river eventually,  the weather was hot but this was not a place for swimming. No beaches, the water was very low, trash littered the edges, the water was very dirty, and I think there are piranhas in it.  
Listened to a little bit of Steinbach church service but got cut off. I still find it a little funny that it’s well after lunch here when church starts in Manitoba..  
After our drive, we stopped at home for an hour or 2 and then left to go sing at Julian’s. They’re a fun loving family that Eric’s have got to know. They have a bunch of youth age kids so I’m looking forward to getting to know them too! We walked around their fields a bit and then sat in plastic lawn chairs (the standard here) and sang the evening away. I wish I could describe the evening to you. The air was warm but not to warm, and filled with laughter and teasing. The sky was dark, but clear. The singing was hauntingly beautiful.  
 
Monday, November 23, 2020, 1233 hours, 35.5°C.
Something amazing happened today. We actually sung one song in which we did not go up in pitch!  
After school and lunch today, we set off for an afternoon of shopping and visiting. We stopped at numerous places for food and clothes and gifts. I didn’t keep track of the time, but there was often quite a drive between each place. Our final destination was a little fabric/everything shop on the Manitoba Mennonite Colony. Rachelle’s friend who owns this shop, recently got married, and a wedding gift was the excuse for our visit. The shop itself didn’t hold much interest for us, but we spent a long time chatting. Or, shall I say, they spent a long time talking. I tried to listen to their conversation but I got lost quite a bit. I think most Paraguayan Mennonite women don’t know Spanish but she knew enough to converse with Rachelle and tell us all about her wedding dress. I’m so excited because it has sunray pleats on the back skirt (apparently all wedding dresses have to) and for the last year or so I have been trying to figure out how to make sunray pleats! The trick is to use hot sand to press your pleats. Who knew!  
I don’t know what to tell you about these Mennonites as a whole. They’re as cheap as any other Mennonite. They made their own rode beside a toll road so they don’t have to pay the toll. Any wonder why the Paraguayans don’t like them?  
We stopped for some very delish ice cream on the way home, and tried to sing thru the songs in the folder that’s in the van.  
 
Tuesday, November 24, 2020
I do forget what happened today. We had school. And then I think we had most of the afternoon off, maybe I sewed some, and then we went to Perla’s to sing, only it turned out that she was at her parents’ place, we just hadn’t got the message. So we went there instead. Her parents live right along the highway and she lives just down a side street a few hundred feet but her hair salon is beside her parents house. So we went into her little, bright pink hair salon and pulled up chairs and started singing. She served us some fresh orange juice, which was meant for our supper. Now, I haven’t learned to live like Paraguayans who call a glass of juice supper, and Eric’s aren’t like that either. So we stopped for asaditos on the way home, and sat outside on the lawn and ate our late night supper. We didn’t sit on the lawn itself, but in the ever present plastic lawn chairs. Also, it was maybe 2030, so not really ‘late night.’  
 
Wednesday, November 25, 2020
Once again, I should be sleeping. But I find that I write my best at night. I tried writing some earlier today when I had a bit of time but it just did not sound right. But, again, I will most likely be too lazy to go and rewrite it all.  
Today was a bit more relaxing then the last few days. For me anyways. Except that it was quite warm. The highest I saw it at today was 39.6. The thermometer said 41.something was the high but that might have been from another day. The girls went to the little store next door for ice cream during recess which was very welcome after our rather rapid paced game of 10 Steps.  
After lunch, I made some of my stuff for supper as today I was going to make supper. I had been enthused about crepes one day and I think Rachelle may have rolled her eyes a bit but probably was glad for at least one evening that she wouldn’t have to make supper so she said I could make them for tonight. (I have no clue if she actually did those things, I just had to make this paragraph interesting somehow.) So anyhow. I made Boston cream crepes for supper and added peaches to trick myself into thinking it was a healthy supper. It took me almost an hour to fry up about 15 crepes on the little burner/electric element (idk what to call it) outside, hence the potential eye rolling.  
In between lunch and supper, I washed the floor of my ‘house’ as I hadn’t done it on the weekend and the field secretary is coming here tomorrow. Rachelle and Ellie and I went to pick up Felicita for the weekly Bible Study with her, and Rachelle got Felicita’s daughter, Gloria, to look at Ellie’s toe as she thought there was a pique* in it. Turns out there wasn’t, but Ellie’s toe was given some remedio and sent on its way. We had Bible Study in the shade of the mango tree and I tried my hand at reading Spanish out loud. We sung some songs, asked Felicita questions that seem to come up when a person is with her and then we took her home again. I didn’t get much out of Bible Study, even though it was translated. I guess I’ll have to try harder next time.  
And that’s about the size of it.  
 
Thursday, November 26, 2020
I think I cracked my phone screen a bit more today. Or maybe that was yesterday I threw it on the floor, I can’t remember. But anyways, I tried doing something on my phone today and I had to tap at exactly the right spot and it didn’t work so I chalked it up to some major cracking. Luckily it wasn’t a life threatening thing I needed to do.  
Maybe I’m making the girls work too hard, but I have it figured out that we will probably be done school around December 11. That made taking today and tomorrow and a day or 2 next week off of school even easier to the people who make decisions here. I’m kind of excited about a short week of school and also excited that it means we can do some more traveling and even being with new people.  
By 0900 we were on the road to meet Karlins and Stuart and Cindy (field secretary from Roblin) in a city of which I cannot seem to remember the name. We did some shopping first in an everything store that reminded me of Shoprite in Malawi, and then we walked thru the market. The market was only half up and running, due maybe in part to Covid and probably mostly to the fact that it was raining and had been for a lot of the morning. We made sure to drive past The Fabric Store but sadly didn’t go in, due t to the fact that we didn’t have enough time (think a few hours) and they were closing for their lunch. We met the rest at a bit of a food court for lunch. I’m not sure if there were more stores or if the building just consisted of few food counters and a bank and bathrooms. Whatever it was, they had some delicious pasta. It’s sort of like Subway, where you tell the people what you want in your pasta and they make it for you while you stand there. I had gnocchi with pesto and a cream sauce mixed. It was quite very divine! If you ever want some good pasta and you happen to be in Paraguay, go there. Just don’t ask me for directions.  
We were home for a few minutes in the late afternoon and then headed off to visit Felicita before supper. She told about her church life over the years and what happened in what church. I wish I could understand her instead of having to listen thru a translator. Not that my translators are bad. They do absent-mindedly stick some of the Spanish back into the English they are speaking but either I understand those particular words already or can grasp the meaning based off the rest of the sentence.  
We picked up asaditos* from Pedro down by the Cruze* for supper. Pedro would be Julian’s see Sunday👆) kids’ cousin and he sells the most delicious ones. They always come with mandioca, I think it would be better known in English speaking countries as cassava, which sadly I am not too fond of. I’m just recalling now that I may have written about that earlier. We have a lime tree on our yard tho, and I squeeze that over the mandioca to make it better for me, and also over asaditos as that takes them up higher a couple of notches. I also made a batch of cosido so I would have something to drink while everyone else was drinking coffee. Cosido made by burning sugar and yerba and adding water and milk and is absolutely a wonderful drink.  
Stuart’s brought Nerds with them. I am quite fond of them.  
Friday, November 27, 2020
Its quite the feeling to swing from one side of the living room to the other side in a hammock, eating McDonald’s fries and drinking cosido. To have the McDonald’s just 2 steps from the hammock and the young girls who serves you gets you to hold her baby and makes anything that you ask for. Except chicken nuggets.  
Turns out McDonald’s coincidentally will not have McNuggets when I go there tomorrow.  
Can’t believe I was so lazy today. Having the field secretary at your place is a very good excuse to not have school and to sleep in and in general not make the teacher do very much. Actually I made my favorite Monster Cookie Bars in the morning. After lunch we went on a drive thru the Durango Colony and saw all the women in their sun ray pleated dresses. (I know I’m stuck on those, but this colony actually has a machine to make them. I might have to move there yet.) And all the women wore a hat over their head coverings yet. With a long black ribbon dangling by their cheek. The men weren’t so outstanding to me, I think overalls are cute. But only on little people. As in children. These Mennos are steel tractor wheels and horse and buggy people, so that was interesting to see.  
We had church in the evening. It’s actually quite intimidating when everybody around you, even those who have only been in Paraguay a few days, can speak Spanish circles around you.  
Saturday, November 28, 2020
By 1130 we were all packed up in the van and on our way to Campo Nueve (Camp 9.) Stopped at McDonald’s for lunch (even the back pocket of their jeans has the famous ‘M’ embroidered on it) and a lot of us were disappointed when we found out the fabric store was closed today.  
Arrived at Karlins here in Campo Nueve and I gave myself a small tour and we ate a delicious supper of grilled chicken and mango rice and watermelon and soon we were off to church. Tonight was convert meeting. The church was packed. This congregation is a bit different than ours at Barrio San Pedro. They have a few families in the church here and 2 young boys from 2 of these families told their experiences. There was another older youth boy who told his, and then there was Jakey. Now I don’t know the whole story. I didn’t even understand his conversion experience as it was told in Plautdeitch and translated to Spanish so every single other person in the room could understand. No I’m not feeling left out, I’m just wishing I could be able to speak Spanish without any study and without having to learn it and be able to speak it now! But this Jake or Jacob I think, has left his church and been coming to our church for awhile. He’d had struggles and victories and now tomorrow he’ll be baptised into our church. He has a wife and children who don’t come to church but say they’re home is a better home since Christ became his saviour. But for the last few days, people from the plain churches have been at his house, asking him difficult questions and in general trying to make it difficult to join our church. Tonight, his brothers-in-law from other plain groups were there, trying to give him a hard time about things that don’t even matter. I wish I could have understood that, but just being in that crowded room, trying to understand the proceedings going on, watching the youngest brother-in-law feel so proud in his place and very smart yet not getting anywhere, I almost did understand.  
There are 3 youth girls here and a bunch of guys, and after church we all walked to the house next door and sat and drank terere. One family lived in Whitemouth for quite a few years and consequently those kids know English very well and thankfully they aren’t very scared to talk. A few of the others would know English in various stages, but would tell you they don’t. But when they found out how little Spanish I could speak, they gladly talked English to me. Which is probably not good for me. Sounds like there’s a good chance of a volley ball game after church and the potluck lunch tomorrow, and maybe even more in the next few days which I am very interested in.  
I laughed at one of my friends for not wanting to share a bathroom with a lizard the other day. I got to shower with a frog tonight and was decidedly unimpressed and duly repented of laughing about the lizard. Except I having told my friend yet. But that frog climbed right up the wall, and when I disappeared for about 2 minutes, it decided to disappear as well, so I really have no clue as to where he is now. Very comforting. I imagine he’ll come find me in bed next.  
 
Just a few random tidbits about this life yet before I close off for the week. Last week I think I greeted you from the land of tall speed bumps. These Speed Bumps are a dime a dozen around here, and a lot of vehicles go over them at an angle so they don’t scrape as they go over. Well, by our place they do, not so much on the highway. We have 2 just outside our gate, and apparently a car once landed up on the grass just beside the gate due to much speed over those mountains. The noisy trucks that come by our place bearing cows or carbone (charcoal) or loads of numerous different things often don’t seem to slow down much for the Speed Bumps either, and clang and rattle and make awful noises as they race over them.  
I was going to put this in one of my earlier letters but apparently it slipped my mind. Must not have been such a cray sight after all. There’s a Covid testing station set up right on the airport yard. I saw it the day I arrived and had to look twice. It was a normal building, but sticking out of the building, at head height (maybe 2 meters/6 feet apart) were long gloves. No one was there right then so I couldn’t see just how exactly it worked, but I’m just curious how the get the testing stick into those gloves when they are inside the building and the patient and what they are working with is inside. I’m sure there’s an easy explanation and I could just ask Eric or someone but I’d rather just be in the dark about it.  
Another interesting thing here and that I wish would become popular in Steinbach is the fact that you can WhatsApp anyone. Want to order pizza? Use WhatsApp. Want to find out something about the company you bought your vehicle from (or why would a person ever call the number that you can usually find on the Fairway Ford or North End Motors or whatever sticker?) Use the WhatsApp number provided on that sticker. A lot of businesses here would have a number with the WhatsApp sign beside it, meaning you can just WhatsApp them and not call them or email them or use some sort of impressive communication like that. I’d definitely prefer WhatsApp.  
That’s a lot of WhatsApps in one sentence. Thanks goodness for autocorrect.
*Oh right I have some explaining to do yet. I’m not gunna get much sleep tonight. I have to clue how to spell these words and I told Rachelle I would blame my ignorance on her if she didn’t answer my questions and so far it looks like she’s choosing to make our relationship even more difficult and making me look stupid. Piques are tiny as in almost microscopic little bugs that like to come live in your feet. They lay eggs and apparently are very itchy and can hurt a lot to take out unless you have a Paraguayan do it for you. To the best of my knowledge, a cruse is like an intersection of bigger highways slash streets. And asaditos are delish kabobs that might also be a dime a dozen around here.
And now finally you have reached the end.
Til next time,
Addie
BTW I can’t remember if Perla’s hair salon is bright pink or orange or it’s the building beside it that I’m thinking of.  

Dos

Hola from the land of tall speed bumps,  
 
Sunday, November 15, 2020
I went to bed last night just after a major wind picked up and started crashing things around and I woke up this morning to rain pounding on my tin roof. So instead of getting up, I turned off my alarm and slept in as I knew church would be cancelled.
Since there wasn’t church this morning, we all gathered in the living room and sang a bunch of Spanish songs and then English songs. Rachelle and I duetted a few songs and were quite happy with the results. Well we were happy with the songs and decided we’d have to sing them again when we have more people. After dinner, we all huddled in the living room with blankets and sweaters as it was cold (28° C!) and rainy and we listened to Halstead’s church service. Later the girls got out a bracelet beading set and we set to work trying to painstakingly thread beads in patterns.
I was on the porch with Tiago and Aubrey before supper and the neighbor lady came to the fence and started talking to us. Thankfully Aubrey is fluent enough in Spanish that she could tell me what the lady was saying and soon Rachelle came out and I tried to pick words out of the flow that ensued between them. I followed some of the conversation and Rachelle helped me with the rest. It’s almost scary to think that soon I’ll he out there and will have to say more than just ‘si’ and not necessarily have everything translated for me. I brought in one of my Spanish dictionaries this evening and Eric was roped into giving me a bit of a lesson on conjugating verbs and educating me on the differences between what I’ve learned with Duolingo/other Spanish learning devices and how the Paraguayans actually speak. Apparently it’s old Spanish, it hasn’t evolved like in Spain or Mexico. Paraguayans would also throw some Guarani in with their Spanish. Guarani is the unwritten language of Paraguay. The little I’ve heard sounds like it is a bit of a guttural language, along the same line as Navajo.
Which brings me to an entirely new topic. In World War 2, a special code was developed using the unwritten Navajo language as it is an extremely hard language to learn and speak as a lot of the sounds are made in your throat. Twenty-nine Navajo men, called Navajo Code Talkers, developed a code using the direct Navajo translations of English words that began with the letters of the English alphabet. They also used words from the Navajo language to describe key war words. By the end of the war, 400 men had been educated in the 411 word code. The program was kept a secret from everybody, even these men’s families, to ensure that it would never be broken. It was never broken. A lot of credence of winning the war is due to this code, but these men were not bestowed with this credence till 2000, when only 4 of the original 29 were yet alive.  
The cat fight that was going on outside my window seems to have ended. So now I will have only the sounds of the drums being played on someone’s radio to lull me to sleep.  
 
Monday, November 16, 2020
Today was a total Monday. Our studies took us longer than expected and it was hard to remember stuff we had learned in our lessons earlier this week. I guess I’ll have to step up my teaching game. Aubrey joined us for a game of lemonade at recess time and for a few minutes of story afterwards. Lunch was pushed up to 1230 as we al prefer our chicken cooked instead of raw so we pulled out our spelling and did our lesson instead of working after lunch like I thought we might have to.
The day couldn’t decide what it wanted to be today. It was warm and sunshine in the morning, but at lunch time it was grey and felt like rain. Most of us felt like it had been a bit of a long morning and were tired so everybody got a chance to have a nap. I’m almost ashamed to say that I slept for 1.5 hours. On a Monday afternoon. Oh well. Hopefully I caught up on my sleep. My problem is that I don’t think I have anything to do and then suddenly I think of everything or have inspiration right when I should be going to bed. Like right now.
Ellie stayed home with me while the rest of the family went to Felicita’s after naps. I worked on cutting out a dress for her and then we played a few games of memory. Ellie is a very good sport. My memory is not super amazing but she would often tell me where a matching card to the one I turned over was and consequently I found a lot of sets.
At suppertime, we ate some delicious Paraguayan tortillas out on the front porch. These tortillas are deep fried dough with onions and other stuff inside them and we dipped them in Mayo mixed with Frank’s Red Hot. Definitely something I will try my hand at sometime.
The drums, the music is quieter tonight. Or maybe I’m just used to it by now.
 
Tuesday, November 17, 2020
I will confess this right now as there is no need to go on pretending. I shouldn’t be this way since I was a missionary kid way back in the day. But it still is a bit unnerving to feel a small itch on your leg, a drop of water dripping down your arm, the flapper of your head covering brushing against your neck, only to reach out to scratch it and come back with some sort of bug in your hand. It’s also not a super good idea to decide a few minutes before bed time that tomorrow morning you are Not going to have any more spider bites or whatever they are on your legs and go vigorously spray your room with Off or Raid or whatever brand it is. I imagine I’ll smell like bug spray in the morning. Or at least the fumes will have messed with my head and I’ll be a bit light headed in the morning.  
This morning Eric and Rachelle went with Felicita’s grieving family (refer to Saturday evening/Sunday in my first letter) to the grave of her son Rodolfo. It had been 9 days since he died and in the Catholic faith it is the custom to place a metal cross by the grave on the 9th day. I don’t know much about Catholics but I’m told that they believe a person’s soul is in jeopardy once they have died and for the first 9 days they pray every night for them and then the intervals between when they pray get longer and longer and eventually they have prayed enough and the soul is safe somewhere because they prayed enough for it. I don’t see much comfort in that.  
Anyways, Aubrey got to spend part of the morning in school with us due to the fact that her parents were gone. She was quite enthused about that and had even brought some of her school books along so I gave her a bit of work to do. Being a thoughtful big sister, Christina reminded me to give her stickers for her work and me being an unthoughtful teacher would have forgotten if not for her. So Aubrey received a few stickers for her work and before school was even done for the day she had given one away to a small child at the gate.  
I had actually got a dress cut out last night and was going to sew it this afternoon. But by the time I was getting around to sewing it, the chiropractor Werner had almost arrived. So Rachelle and I sat and drank terere with him and I tried valiantly to follow along in their conversations. Eventually Eric came home and I found him easier to understand than Rachelle. I could usually pick out the main topic of conversation. Of course, when people are standing and looking at and gesturing at a vehicle, it is not hard to figure out what they are talking about. Whatever it is, is over my head as vehicles are not at all my strong point.  
I eventually got most of the dress sewed and after the smaller people were in bed we sat in the living room and tried to figure out why my phone wasn’t able to send sms and other things pertaining to my new Paraguayan sim card. And when that was done, Rachelle and I had a grand old time looking on my favorite dress website that I’ve never actually bought from and alternating between schputting the super wide/hardly there/weird dresses and exclaiming about how cute certain dresses would look on each other.  
And then it was time for bed and instead of going to bed I wrote part of a letter. The part which you just read.  
 
Wednesday, November 18, 2020
I woke up to rain dropping on the tin roof above my sleepy head. My phone said it was 18°C outside and I didn’t want to believe it but then I stepped outside and walked right back inside for some warmer clothes. It rained all morning but then got sunny enough for the family to go to Felicita’s for Bible Study. I stayed home by myself this time and was kinda lazy.  
Mate dulce was the drink of the evening. The girls had been talking about it for awhile and it was perfect for a cool evening like tonight. It’s served like Terere, but instead of yerba and water it’s a drink made from burned sugar with milk and a few other ingredients added, and then poured over coconut and passed around the room by turns.  
I talked to my family for awhile. They updated me on life there and I updated them on life here and Keenan obediently recited the phrases he’s started using since I left and refused to sing Jingle Bell’s for me.  
Tomorrow is my last full day of isolation! As of Friday around 0930 I am officially free except not quite because I am a teacher. But there are already plans being made for Friday afternoon, and Saturday, and Sunday. So I believe this weekend will not be boring!  
We’ll the bug spray didn’t choke me to death last night. . But just a few minutes ago I found a nice shiny blue-ish and red-ish bug on my pillows. Granted they had been on the floor all day….  
 
Thursday, November 19, 2020
16°C this morning! But it didn’t stay that way long. Later I think I saw it at 28°C. But I could be wrong. It’s hard for me to keep track of temperature.  
Today is most likely the last day that you’ll get a log detailed report. Tomorrow I make my big debut into Paraguay! And I’m not planning to have lots of time to write after that. Not like I do now either. I always plan to move mountains after school is done for the day and then maybe sew yet but those mountains don’t seem to move. Maybe I’m not pushing hard enough. But somehow, I land up writing when I should be sleeping. So I’m not sure how that all works.  
After lunch today, I tackled the 4 classroom shelves that hold everything that school at home would need a whole office plus a few bookshelves and small offices for yet. Well okay. The printer is on a different shelf. I gleaned a stack of trash from that and it’s still sitting in a heap on my classroom floor. I guess I’ll be cleaning that up before school in the morning or maybe I should just have the girls make art out of it. Just kidding. We’re gunna paint for art.  
We took our songbooks outside and sang a bunch of new songs while our supper was cooking over the charcoal. Our tenor was doing double duty as waffle cook too, but we gladly sacrificed a few notes of one voice for the sake of those delicious waffles!  
 
Friday, November 20, 2020
The moment we all have been waiting for came around 0945 this morning. The moment came and went without me even taking note of the time, but from that point on I was free. No more do these walls keep me a prisoner, I can walk out of the gate and start exploring Paraguay!  
But I didn’t. Like I said, I didn’t take note of the time, I didn’t feel a change come over me at 0946. We just kept on with school. We played 10 steps for recess and we even convinced Rachelle to come join us! She didn’t take much convincing tho, as she’s a bit of a child at heart like me and likes to have fun and, dare I say, be stupid. Christina and Ellie ran next door for ice cream for all of us, and we sat outside and had about 10 minutes of story yet. It’s not easy to put Charlie and the Chocolate factory down and just leave him alone for a few days. For art, we walked around the yard picking leaves and flowers and fruits and vines and then spent half an hour seeing what sort of shapes and squiggles they’d made when we dipped them in paint and dragged or draped or jabbed them on, over or at canvases.  
Then, this afternoon came The Big Moment. I got into the van (which I hadn’t been in since I stepped out about 14 days ago) and rode off the yard! And found out how much more there is to this world than just the 2 streets and the few houses and the meat shop that fill the view from our yard. Tall, red ant hills just down the street, vehicles parked here and there, buildings and even driveways painted bright, beautiful colors, motos of every size and in various stages of disrepair driving in the ditches and dodging in and out of traffic.  
Felicita is a story all by herself. She’s a faithful old Grandma, wrinkled and grey-haired, who has the most fabulously wonderful stories about listening to her dreams and consequently being able to heal people with different plants. Her family was one of the first people in this town about 50 years ago I do believe and now the cow trail that used to run thru the town has turned into a bustling highway. She lives in a 2 room brick hut, one room of which was built for having Bible Study or church if said services cannot be held at their normal places due to weather or covid or whatever else would come up. Her yard is full of plants and flowers that she uses for ‘remidio.’* Some of her children live in different houses just stones throws away from her. Her son is the one that died while riding his moto the day I got here.  
 
Saturday, November 21, 2020
Slept in this morning! I did a bit of cleaning and put off washing my floor for a few more days as it will have to be done then due to visitors. Later on we all piled into the van for the 3 minute ride to church and then raked the yard and swept the church and Eric dug a hole for all the fallen mangos that no one wants to be dumped into. The church is a smallish wood structure. Ask me more about it tomorrow. The front yard is a mix of grass and dirt (red like all the other dirt here) with different flowers and trees and bushes growing around the edges. The backyard boasts an outhouse, a mango tree, a grape vine covering a structure about 6’ by 6’, and at the back at bunch of banana plants. Sadly we didn’t have the guampa and bombia* to drink terere while the hole was being dug, but we made due with a few cups of water and a songbook.  
We picked up some delicious rotisserie chickens for lunch on the way home. Stuffed with garlic and probably a few other spices or herbs, they were roasted over flames to perfection.  
We left the house again around 4 and picked up Felicita and another lady, Perla, and drove about 20 minutes to brother Juan’s house for Bible study. Don Juan is an older man who would be in the manor at home, yet he was waited for us outside with some chairs set up and his bibles beside him. He loves bibles. Not only does he study them and know where each verse is but he buys different versions and studies each one. Except when the print is too small for him to read. He also is full of stories about his past that he regrets and about the different things he reads in his bibles.   
I was a missionary kid for 5 years. A different lifestyle like that was just normal to me. Then I was in Canada for over 10 years before I came here. And I didn’t realize how much I forgot. Or maybe how much I just didn’t think of due to age. This place just amazes me, it is so vastly different from our privileged lives. Yes they have houses, but it seems like often with just a few rooms. The great outdoors is the best place to spend your life. The roads are just glorified cow trails, yet you know exactly which one leads home. People sit on the side of the road selling their wares and you just make due with what you got. I can’t explain my thoughts without you actually experiencing this for yourself, and also I’m trying to hurry to send this off before a new day starts and I have more to write about.

So, ciao ciao,  
Addie
 
Due to various cat chasing episodes, I didn’t get to write about everything I wanted to write about. And now that I’m out of quarantine, don’t expect such long, detailed epistles from me. You’re welcome.  
 
*Remidio is exactly what it sounds like. They grind up leaves from different plants and drink it in their Terere to cure them of their various diseases. Guampa is the cup and bombia the straw you use to drink Terere.  

Uno

 Hola,
 
 I wish I could tell you everything. I wish you could see this. I’ll try to relay thru this writing what my eyes have seen, but I’ll warn you now, I can’t tell the half.  
Friday, November 6, 2020
I left you on this day in my hotel room in GRU airport, Sao Paulo, Brazil. Well I’m not there anymore. I watched some airplane, bought some food (which was interesting as the people I found weren’t much for English speakers and I was even worse of a Portuguese speaker and much too self conscious to try much of my broken, mispronounced Spanish on them although that is what I am learning it for so I don’t know why) and eventually went to bed. One thing I forgot to mention in my first letter was that I found out that to keep the lights and AC on in my room I had to insert my card in a little slot that was just inside the door. It took me awhile to catch on. Kinda felt like a good old escape room!
 
Saturday, November 6
I managed to wake up on time to be at my gate about 20 minutes before boarding time (0550.) Well let’s put it this way. I got up around 0445, messaged a few key people that yes I was up so they would not have to call me to make sure and then packed up and off I went to see if I could find out which gate I was supposed to leave from. There was one of those cool screens that tell you all the flight informations for the next few hours In the hotel lobby so I checked that but nope, no gate number. So off I went to the gates, planning to walk around til I found it. I started walking past the first gate and noticed a bunch of people sitting there and most people who were walking by turned around when they noticed what the screen above the counter said.. So, being the smart woman I am, I too glanced up and read the word Asunción above the counter. Well, we did not board on time, the pilots and attendants were even late. There was a mad rush to make sure everybody had the QR codes from filling out a form about whether or not you were sick with covid like symptoms (I showed the code twice but it was never scanned) and then everybody was packed tightly into the plane. Maybe first class didn’t feel tight, but those of us sitting in the furthest back row you can get on a 180 passenger plane felt like it was full. We couldn’t even see out any window, so I tried to keep myself entertained by the gentle men on either side of me. The one kept laughing out loud (somewhere between snorting and actual giggling) over the movie or something on his device and the other one couldn’t decide if he should be wearing a face shield over his mask or not and he obviously thought I should be using more hand sanitizer as he offered it to me at least twice during our 2 hour flight.  Eventually after hearing many different announcements all three times (no, I didn’t understand them all as they were given in Spanish and Portuguese as well as English) and sleeping for most of the flight we landed in Paraguay! And then began the process of buying a visa (no, no, we need this exact amount, we don’t make change here, try the atm, oh that doesn’t work, look this lady speaks English, she’ll take you out thru immigration, out into arrivals, almost up to where your family is waiting for you and you can exchange this 20 for 2 10s and then go all the way back to the beginning and this time do it all properly.) At that point I felt like running outside and starting my life over in Paraguay without a visa, without my luggage, who cares. Then on thru customs (which thankfully didn’t take very long) and soon I was outside being greeted by a blazing sun and a group of familiar faces wearing (you guessed it) facemasks! Perdón. I mean tapabocas as I was soon was to find out. And then without further ado we were off toward home. Stopped for snacks and then lunch closer to home as Asunción is about a 3 hour drive from my new home. I tried to take in everything but it seems like everything that I saw on the ride somehow disappeared from my head. The ride did go by quite quickly tho, between staring in wonder out the window and trying to relay all the random information of my flights and everything back home. We stopped at a fruit stand and bought some chipa there too. Chipa is a short of cheese bread made from cassava flour, a bit dry but if it’s hot it’s quite delicious. We in the backseat had just finished up our game of Uno when we pulled into town and onto the driveway.  
Now don’t think a paved driveway that easily fits 4 vehicles, no. First of all the van that we are in is sort of a squished version of North American vans. A bit shorter, maybe a bit skinnier and, it seems to me, a fair bit taller, sort of like handy vans. (I haven’t seen a full sized vehicle here yet.) The van barely fits on the driveway and someone hops out to unlock and open the gate. But inside the gate is just grass! Not a problem, pull on and park somewhere in the shade. All the way across the yard if needed. The yard itself is about the size of a nice town lot back home, (think big side yard of the old Smidt place those of you who are Green Thumbers.) On one side of the yard is the grass and the other side are the buildings. The main house is a 5 room brick house with a peaked, burnt-orange tiled roof. Just outside the kitchen door, on a tiled pad is the quincho where most of our meals are eaten. The quincho (keen’ cho) is a round, open aired hut with a grass roof and a ceiling fan. Take a few steps on the other side of the it and you come to the long building in which my room and the school room and a few other rooms are. The bike shed and the laundry room each have doors to the outside, but the school room and my room and the spare room are all connected with a bathroom yet too. I am going to try to remember to attach a drawing of the yard to my email along with this letter. The rest of the yard is covered in grass that is kind of wide and flat. It doesn’t seem to grow very tall but I’ve only been here a week yet. There are 2 mango trees to give us shade, a peach tree that is out of season, banana plants, a passion fruit vine that should be giving fruit in not too long, and some pineapple plants!
The rest of the day is a bit of a blur. I did some unpacking and setting up in my room. It was a warm sunny day and later on Eric and Rachelle and I sat under the mango tree and drank terere together. The first drink or two was a bit bitter to me but eventually I got used to it and found it quite refreshing. The water fight that went on between Christina and Ellie and Aubrey and I that afternoon was also quite refreshing. We ate supper outside and eventually ended up in the living room talking while the girls were going to sleep. I was just thinking about heading to bed myself when Rachelle got a message that one of Felicita’s sons had an accident on his moto and was killed. (Felicita is one of the members here and a moto is a smallish type of motorbike that a lot of people own.) I got my first real dose of Spanish when Rachelle called one of the family to see if they should go there yet that night. So plans of going to bed were changed and Eric and Rachelle left for a few hours and I stayed inside the main house so someone would be around if any of the kids woke up. Finally around 1 they arrived back and we all headed for bed.  
 
Sunday, November 8, 2020
Church was cancelled this morning due to the burial and ensuing activities. The other missionaries here in Paraguay, Karlin and Shayla Hiebert, dropped Judd (4) off for a few hours in the afternoon while they were at the burial with Erics. I let the kids go get ice cream and play in water and probably anything else their parents wouldn’t have allowed if they had been here. (Insert emoji with big eyes and bright red cheeks here.) Later on when the parents and babies were back home we sat under the mango tree and drank terere and the kids bought us all more ice cream as it seemed to be quite a hot day. We had asado, barbequed steaks and chorizo sausages, for supper with mandioca (cassava) on the side.  
 
Monday, November 9, 2020
Slept in this morning. Sung a few Spanish songs with Karlins to the grieving family and then we all continued on with our day. Karlins left on their 3 hour drive back to Campo Nueve (Camp 9) and Eric showed me around the classroom as he has been the one teaching his girls these last few weeks. I changed the classroom around a bit, put up a makeshift paper tree in one corner as a job chart and hung an evergreen tapestry in another. I had a bit of a hard time with the tapestry as the only thing that works to keep anything on these walls is fun tack and it didn’t seem to keep a large piece of fabric stuck to the wall very well. I wasn’t having any of that so I decided I’d use hot glue and if I have to repaint in a few months when I take it off I’ll do it gladly! Sadly tho, It hasn’t hung for a week and its half down, maybe due to the fact that the fan is often on and blowing air underneath it.  
 
Tuesday, November 10, 2020  
We started school this morning! At 0800 I rang the bell and began my first day as a real true school teacher! We sped thru our work and even got some of yesterday’s missed assignments done.  
There hasn’t been much rain here for the last while. Yesterday I woke up to rain and it was rainy all day. It rained a lot of the day today, too. They say the weather here doesn’t stay the same for more than 3 days at a time so we’ll see if it continues to rain like the forecast is saying.  
 
Wednesday, November 11, 2020  
I’m sitting in my desk doing a bit of work before school starts. The girls all peek in to see what I’m up to. The toy chicken inside gets squished and lets out a sound that does not sound quite like a chicken but rather like a toy.   
It was just rainy enough today that we didn’t have recess outside but by the end of the day the rain had ended. The Paraguayans sleep when its raining so there hasn’t been much action lately. The radio has been turned on in the afternoons at the gym directly behind the school room but I hadn’t seen anyone there til today, I think due to the rain.
Tonight was the night of the bugs. Now that the rain has come they like to come out at night. I watched a frog debate for a few seconds on whether or not he should eat the inch long beetle and when he tried it he spit it right back out. I think it stuck to his tongue and he didn’t like the feeling.  Those beetles are quite common to see around here, as are the flying ants that lose their clear wings before the evening is up, cicadas, and who knows what else. Colorful beetles, random flying things that may or may not choose you to crawl around on, some cockroaches.. There’s a very interesting big kind that fly around that have lights in their eyes and on their under sides. Unlike a lightning bug, these lights that look to be about ¼ inch long, only blink out for fraction of a second every few seconds. There were 3 frogs having a feast, one of them was about 5 inches long. (A few nights later, these frogs were christened Ananias, Saul and Beauregard just a few hours before they took their last breaths and met death by shovel.)
 
Thursday, November 12, 2020
The gimnasio (gym) started blaring music this morning, so during our last hour or so of school we had to raise our voices to be heard. The girls are used to this so it didn’t bother them, but I was trying to read a book on grading and that didn’t go to well with loud music. I don’t know what else happened today.
It was today or yesterday that Rachelle and I were talking and decided to try some fun stuff. We taped some pencils to an empty pop bottle as a sort of stand, dumped some vinegar and baking soda in and tried in vain to get some sort of cork into the opening so we could launch our rocket. After too many futile tries, we found a stick that almost fit and enlisted some manpower to manhandle the stick further into the hole as it had been leaking around it. This time the rocket built up enough pressure to launch itself high enough to hit the tin of the roof of ‘my house.’ So in the end our experiment did work, just half the height of what the instructions said it should.  
 Sometimes I feel like I have lots of time but I still don’t get stuff written down so I can remember to tell y’all. And there’s so much to take in that I don’t remember it all much less tell you about it.
 
Friday, November 13, 2020
School has been good but I think we were all happy it was the weekend. Aubrey came to school around 1115 and helped us with our art projects. I had brought wooded letters (C+E) for Christina and Ellie to wrap pretty yarn around and Aubrey and I covered the tin can pen holders on my desk with yarn. Erics went to Felicita’s in the afternoon but Christina stayed home with me. I found out that missionary kids today play the same games they did back when I was a missionary kid. We spent the afternoon playing Old Maid!
 
Saturday, November 14, 2020
It’s officially been a week since I arrived here! Some days I can hardly believe it, it still feels like it must be a dream! I slept in a bit this morning. Eric and the girls went to clean church and church yard to make it ready for church tomorrow. Tiago (11 months) is finally becoming comfortable with me and he played in the school room for a long time while I was figuring out some school stuff. We had a sort of Paraguayan spaghetti for lunch. It had fewer tomato stuff and more other veggies in it than the spaghetti you would be used to. And it had chicken parts in it. As in bones with meat on them, which were a bit tough, as Paraguayan meat is typically. Paraguay is a country known for exporting meat, but they send the good stuff and keep the not so good stuff here for the rest of us.  
Now this brings me to now. It’s Saturday afternoon. The family went to the Juan, another member’s house for Bible Study and Aubrey stayed home with me. We are now baking cookies and dancing around the kitchen in excitement. Well I’m not dancing as I’m having a bit of difficulty figuring our how to turn on ovens and how to use these ingredients. It does seem to be working, but I did burn the bottoms of the first batch.  
 
I’ve been in a sort of isolation since I came here. I haven’t left the yard since I first arrived here via a certain Hyundai van. But we have had visitors and I’ve been teaching school and Erics family has been going away like normal. There’s so much to take in even just on the yard, and even so much to talk about that I so far haven’t been bored. I will be happy tho, when I can step or even ride off the yard and start meeting these people that I hear about everyday. I am slightly wary of using my tiny little bit of Spanish but I’ll learn.  
 
Adios,
Adorae  
 
Barrio San Pedro mission
Eric and Rachelle Toews – Twin Rivers
Christina – 9 (Grade 4)
Ellie – 7 (Grade 2)
Aubrey – 5
Cody Santiago who is called Tiago – 11m  
Me - teacher
 
Camp 9 missionaries
Karlin and Shayla Hiebert – Rosenort
Judd – 4
Gabe – 1
 

In Limbo

Hola, mis amigos,

 Last time I left, I was poetic. Last time I wrote poems and concocted eloquent sentences on the subject of Gone. Last time is passed. 

This time I promised myself that I would remember little details. I promised myself that I'd make it interesting for the ones who have to read this. To remember them is one thing, but to make them into sentences that people will actually want to read is totally different. Plus I'm not used to this keyboard and I'm making a lot of mistakes that I may or may not correct eventually. 

My first flight left at 1345 on Thursday. Five people in a 4 person vehicle (okay there was a car seat involved) and a drive through McDonalds drive thru later (those fries tho!), we arrived at the airport where my sister was already waiting. I didn’t want to wait around so after I checked in I gave my family hugs and headed thru security to where I was chosen by ‘random selection’ to have my bags searched. Wonderful start to an already scary (not the right word but I can’t think atm) trip. I found my gate, watched my suitcases get thrown roughly onto the conveyer belt up into the belly of the plane and watched the same belly spew out legs and then the body of the man who was loading the suitcase. I make it sound like he was hurt or something. He wasn’t. It’s just not every day you see a pair of legs dangling from the plane you are soon going to board. Or any plane for that matter. The flight itself was full. My carry-on was stored somewhere towards the back as I was one of the last people on and every compartment by my seat was already stuffed. The front of the plane smelled of weed and those of us towards the back were scattered in between a large family or 2 of East Indians. I tried to see my hometown from the window but the gentleman who was sitting by the window didn’t want the shade open so my efforts were a bit futile. The lady with the English accent on the other side of me kept her earbuds in until my water bottle delivered forth a bit of a fountain of water and then she pulled them out long enough to exclaim ‘Oh! Your book!’ which indeed had been splattered. I took that as an invitation to watch her movie with her till my book dried, except it became too gory for me. By the way, the window shade was opened towards the end of the flight and I was able to watch the sunset. 

Right now I’m sitting in Toronto airport, waiting for my next flight. I have a few hours here but he waiting area by the gate is a bit different than I am used to. Long tables with devices at every seat to keep you busy while you wait, or to make sure you don’t think too much and chicken out of what you are about to do, or maybe to keep you updated while you are away from the outside world. Close to me a small child threw up all over his dad. Off to one side, a trio that can only be co-workers discuss the details of Covid that they are not impressed with and also tell stories in which they call people whom they thought thought they were better than them, names. That was confusing. I talk to an old Ecuadorian lady who thinks that my dress looks pretty and comfortable, and tells me I should go to the beach when I’m in Sao Paulo. I eat some normal food. People bustled around me. A few Mennonite families walked by with 6 or 9 children in tow. It feels almost unreal, to be in an airport, getting ready to board a 10 hour flight, by myself, to spend 3 months in Paraguay, while everyone at home is going about their normal business. Here time is measured by how many minutes to your next flight. Not by the sun or even the lack thereof. You count the hours since you last slept and calculate in when you can sleep again to figure out if you should try to sleep. Same thing with eating. Its hard to imagine yesterday or even last week when you went to work and slept and ate at appointed times and departures and arrivals and destinations were under your control. You are not at home, yet you aren’t at your new home either. Neither here, nor there. In limbo. 

Some of the last paragraph was, obviously, written while waiting to board in the Toronto airport. I didn’t feel like changing the wording so I lied a bit and finished writing it in present tense when really it is tomorrow morning already. 

My next flight was quite uneventful. I boarded at 2008 hours, EST, November 5, to a half full flight. I almost had 3 seats to myself but then a kind lady with pug faces on her socks, switched seats to give a family another seat so their boys could sleep. We faced almost 10 hours on this flight. We were almost ready to back away from the terminal when the intercom dude came on and said that due to a security issue inside the terminal, we were being held at the terminal for an indefinite amount of time. Within half an hour we were taking off, so the wait wasn’t bad. But who knows, maybe we all literally flew away from death. Or maybe someone was refusing to wear a mask. There were 2 small children right near my seat but neither of them were super loud. One of them remind me a bit of Keenan at home, a very active boy. Soon after take off, we were all handed a long rectangle box with our supper in it. Supper consisted of Eggplant Parmigiana Salad, with kale salad and a small loaf of refrigerated bread on the side. Some of us had already eaten supper but tried the food anyways because the package asked us to please be nice to the cook. Or maybe that wasn’t the reason, whatever. The nice pug-sock lady beside me puts her mask on between every bite. Eventually the lights are dimmed and people drift off into fitful sleeps. Random men and old ladies who would normally be too dignified to nod off in public now stretch out on their 3 seats to sleep. Once again my water bottle erupts when I open it and I decide its due to altitude of cabin pressure and it was not smart to bring it along. This time everybody is sleeping so no-one exclaims over it. We change two hours on the flight, so now I am 3 hours ahead of omen time. After some amount of sleep, people start waking up and moving about. Have you ever seen a sunrise from above the clouds? It’s super beautiful, shades of unnatural pinks and purples and then the windows are switched from night mode into day mode and you realize that’s exactly what it was. Unnatural, and a sunrise looks much the same from above as on the earth. 

And then I arrived in Sao Paulo. From the window on our decent, I could see a bumpy, maybe rocky landscape with burnt orange roofs huddled so close there were just glimpses of their colorfully painted walls. Every few blocks there were a handful of skyscrapers with what looked like swimming pools scattered around. I made my way through the airport with the help of a few people and at one point had the choice to either drink the rest of the contents of my water bottle or go back to a bathroom to empty it and come back thru the line again. I drank the water, but they didn’t take any notice of me after I was given the choice so I could have just stick it back in my bag. 

And once again, that has brought me to the present. I found the hotel that had been booked for me for today and here I am, writing this long, boring epistle that is full of useless facts. I could have just attached my itinerary and sent that and that would have done the trick. My flight to Paraguay leaves at 0550 (UTC-3, which would be 3 hours later than CST) tomorrow (Saturday, the 7th) morning. I think I’ll take the chance to eat and sleep and shower and maybe walk around the terminal, find my gate for tomorrow morning so I know where to go when I’m half asleep. And hopefully I’ll send this off later, too. 

Adios, amigos.

 

By the way, I did not really proofread this so take what you read with a grain of salt.