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