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.