Now I don’t even know where to start or how to write this letter. I guess it always helps to start at the beginning so I’ll try to remember that far back.
Sunday, February 7, 2021
The whole congregation (Felicita, her 2 daughters, 2 granddaughters and 1 grandson, and Perla plus all of us) piled into the van after church and came to our place for an asado for dinner. Felicita had sent some meat for this a few days ago and we supplied a few sides (including chorizos. Insert heart eyes here.) They also brought boiled sweet potatoes and some absolutely delicious chicken milanesa (meat pounded flat and fried with a coating.) We girls played variants of Uno while the adults talked and drank terere and waited for the meat to cook. Later on we played a bit of volley and ate cake and drank more terere. I forget what we did in the evening.
Monday, February 8, 2021 We’ve been wanting to go down to the river with Perla for a while and today was the day it worked out for that. Or whatever you want to say. We got to Perla’s just after 1000 and she said ‘Oh you’re here already? I thought we were going this afternoon!’ But she was ready anyways and hopped and in directed us where to drive. We parked in some shade on someone’s yard and started the walk down to the river. The ‘path’ took us thru tall grass, under fences, thru pastures; most of the way was quite sunny and having learned the Paraguayan way, most of us sot any shade we could find which was rare. We were almost down to our spot when a farmer came briskly down the path to get his cows out of our way so we could be there in peace. The part of the river -or should I say stream- where we stopped had a small waterfall with a bit of a deep spot where the girls could pretend to swim. The rest was quite shallow and not flowing very rapidly. Although the sun was shining, the water was kinda chilly and I didn’t stay in very long. I read my book on the bank and Perla and Rachelle found clay to mold into pitchers and bowls. We had ourselves a bit of a picnic lunch and soon headed for home. The way back to the van seemed hotter and longer then the way down and we stopped for a few water breaks. We went a bit of a different way back and this time one of the pastures was occupied. The cows didn’t seem to mind us tho. Again, I’m not sure what else we did today. Maybe we went to San Pedro (the restaurant with the globo locos here in town. Directly translated, globo loco means crazy balloon, which is what bouncy castles or whatever you want to call them truly seem to be.)
Tuesday, February 9, 2021 Left for Camp 9 this morning. Bought chipa and cocido for breakfast along the way. Every town seems to have at least one chipa stand. The girls running these stands will hop into busses with baskets of food and get off at the next town or somewhere to catch a ride back on another bus. I think maybe they don’t have to pay to do that. We stopped in Colonel Oviedo at the fabric store where they have big wire baskets filled with cut pieces of fabric which you buy by weight. We also stopped at the market where I spent more money. McDonalds for lunch and we were on our way again. For supper, we went to some of Erics’ Mennonite friends who live in Sommerfeld colony close to Camp 9. They have children close to the girls’ ages and they have a lot of fun together riding bike and quad and playing all sorts of games. Supper consisted of pizza and ice cream out in the garage and then we women went inside to the women’s sitting room to chat. The house is amazingly grand. A small kitchen off the garage with some sort of pizza oven or bbq, a bigger kitchen inside with a breakfast nook, 2 living rooms for separate seating when company comes over, a playroom with a built in playhouse, a big sewing room with a industrial sewing machine and at least 1 more normal sewing machine and a serger, a few more closed doors that were never opened to me, and apparently I only saw half of the house. Anyways, enough about the house. We sat and chatted in a mix of Spanish and German with some English thrown in about healthy eating and I forget what all else.
Wednesday, February 10, 2021 Our destination today was Itaipu Dam just out of Ciudad Del Este along the Paraná River which forms part of the border between Paraguay and Brazil. We arrived in time to watch the IMAX or movie or whatever it was to get the details of the dam. My memory being my memory doesn’t take in the facts it should remember such as the measurements of the dam, but instead remembers random details. If I remember correctly, one of the 20 generating units supplies 90% of Paraguay’s power. Most of the power is used by Brazil. It is the largest producing dam in the world and could supply the whole world with power for 32 days. At it’s tallest, the dam is 60 some stories high. The steel used in building it could build (my brain remembers 30+, online it says 300+) Eiffel Towers and the amount of truckloads of rock hauled in could stretch around the world 3 times. My facts seem to be kinda jumbled so you might want to look it up or visit it yourself if you want to know more. After the movie, we boarded a bus which took us to view the dam. We stopped at one lookout where we could see a lot of the dam. There are 3 spillways, but none of them were open. Back in the bus, we took a tunnel underneath the spillways and beside the 20 turbines used to generate the power before turning around and coming back across the top of the dam, which concluded our tour. We had eaten lunch and done our fabric shopping (I don’t think I can ever have enough fabric. Not enough room in the suitcase, yes, or not enough money, but never too much fabric.) before going to the dam so we headed back to Camp 9 from there. The regular Wednesday evening youth singing was changed to an everybody evening due to us being here. We sang as a congregation for awhile and then we youth sang for awhile. A lot of the songs in their folders I knew in English so that was nice for me. The school year has just started here, due to the fact that we’re nearing fall, so I got to meet the 2 new teachers have come to teach at the school in the Florido congregation. One girl is from Guatemala and the other from Dominican Republic. After church we stood around and talked for awhile and eventually everybody left and we went to a churrasqueria for supper and stuffed ourselves with delicious grilled meat. And ate grilled pineapple with sweetened condensed milk.
Thursday, February 11, 2021 Eric’s had some documents to work out and sign so some people ran around trying to get that done this morning. The rest of us ran around to green houses and succulent green houses and eventually we all went to town for lunch and then some of us set up the volley ball net while the papers were finally read to be signed and eventually Erics left for home, leaving me at Karlins. That’s how I remember the morning anyways. Shayla was going to take supper to the teachers so she messaged them and they said we could drop it off at church as they weren’t’ home right then and didn’t know when they would be home and Shayla said we wanted to eat with them cuz I was around and they never read the message and eventually we find out that they were at Walter’s eating popcorn with his mom and sisters so we go over there and sit and drink terere with them all (this is probably after 1800 already) and eventually we play a few games of volley and it gets dark and Karlins and I took the teachers home and ate supper with them and went home to bed ourselves.
Friday, February 12, 2021 Ran a few errands today and sat and drank terere at Walter’s again. There was ball in the evening.
Saturday, February 13, 2021 We left the house around 9 this morning and made a few stops to pick up the rest of the youth and their backpacks. The ultimate destination was home (Barrio San Pedro) but first we stopped at some small falls for a bit of a hike and our lunch. We were there with Karlins a few weeks ago and since then a storm had ripped thru there and took down a bunch of trees. Now they’re fixing it up nice and adding some benches in the water and a nice quincho to eat your lunch under. Some of the guys went swimming and hiked up a tall set of falls that feeds into the river/stream and us girls got our feet wet. The hike back up to the van was quite brutal but we all made it eventually. And we stuffed back into the van (10 people on the 9 seats and the 3 guys in the back. Plus backpacks.) and carried on our merry way. We stopped to sing a few songs for Don Juan and soon all piled out of the van at my house. After 3 hours in that van we were all happy to be free. Arlin who is about 14 loves to talk and I don’t think he was quiet for more than 5 minutes the whole 3 hours. He had us all singing at one point but mostly those of us in the back seat were either laughing or rolling our eyes at him. (I was in the back seat with his sister and cousin.) Everybody kept asking me if we were going to play volley ball while they were here. We sipped a few rounds of terere and headed off around the corner to play. We haven’t played volley here in town but the neighbors play a lot so we asked if we could use their court. Well they wanted to play with us. Especially the one lady who wanted to play her way. So we tried to figure out their way and showed them what we could do, too. The Florido youth play a lot of volley and consequently are quite good and play well together. We had quite the group watching us by the end. Eventually we came home for supper and when we should have been getting ready for bed we started playing Dutch Blitz. Which is one of my favorite games, but not every body knew how to play. It got quite loud; everybody was shouting, some were singing to try to distract the others, the people who knew how to play were trying to help the ones who didn’t even if they weren’t on the same team... Eventually we were told to go to bed and we all found our mattresses and settled down for a few hours. Between the two houses, we had 19 people to find beds for.
Which brings us to Sunday, February 14, 2021 We were all up and milling about by 0700 this morning and shortly after 0800 we were all off the yard, heading for church. Instead of Sunday school, we youth sang a bunch of songs. The sermon, given by one of the Florido guys, was about Moses, and due to my having my English Bible along and him reading lots of scriptures I could understand most of it. It was truly very inspiring. Especially from a guy who joined our church just a few months ago from some sort of an Amish church. The church was quite full and the fan was running quite high to try to keep us all from getting too warm. But it almost felt like the church services we used to go to back in Manitoba. A full church, the songs are sung in 4 voices with multiple people to each voice, the song leader, preacher and Sunday school leader are different people, children sitting up behind the pulpit -wait, what? I guess that’s not a North American sight but neither are the plastic lawn chairs that constitute our benches and the short sleeves and sandals that we wear. The big circle we sat in while drinking terere outside after church was another not so North American sight. Thais and Marivel came home with us for dinner and soon after dinner dishes were over we hopped into the vehicles again to find another volley ball court to play on. Our destination was a sand court beside a soccer field bearing the name Manchester in big letters along the side of the field. The sun was shining brightly and the sand burned the feet of those of us who were stupid enough to want to play barefoot but we all got a few games played and Sara showed up with her brother Gama and eventually we convinced her to play a game with us. She kept saying she didn’t know how to play volleyball which didn’t turn out to be true. The van for Florido left around 1600 with most of them hoping that Arlin would sleep all the way home so they wouldn’t have to listen to his constant chatter.
Monday, February 15, 2021 I spent about 2 hours on the phone with various members of my family. Keenan and Sophia wanted to talk to me and later I called my sister for advice on something I was baking. I think other wise we mostly recuperated from the weekend. One of these days we went to a pizza place in town called La Rustica which was decorated in wood and had delicious pizza. Also I think I cleaned the fridge in my house either today or tomorrow.
Wednesday, February 17, 2021 Went visiting this morning. First of all to some Mennonite friends I hadn’t met yet where only the man knew Spanish and Rachelle tried to understand the lady’s Plautdeich and the girls got to go feed the cows and then to another place where we were fed a delicious lunch. Bible Study at Felicita’s in the afternoon.
Thursday, February 18 2021 We went to visit one of Rachelle’s friends from town named Suni. The driveway into her yard is a narrow strip between two buildings that opens up into a big yard full of plants and flowers. She takes care of her dad who is old and forgetful and ‘acts like a child again’ and who thinks that I should know Guarani already. For some reason my inspiration is run out and I can’t think of more to write about today.
Friday, February 19, 2021 We went to visit Doña Felicita today and when we arrived the yard was bustling with activity. The children were getting ready to go next door to help their uncle and aunt clean their yard so they can fix up the house and move in. So I joined the throng and when we get there Thais finds 2 chairs and her and I sit down and drink terere and the offers I make to help are turned down because ‘there aren’t’ enough machetes’ so we sat and talked and Monica (one of Thais’s cousins who is 17) stood and chatted with us until her mom called her to work again. I had never chatted with Thais like that as she usually is with Christina or one of her cousins and I take an effort to talk to, and I found her quite amiable. We had a bit of an English/Guarani lesson where I learned (and promptly forgot) Guarani words for the things around us and they reached into their brains and remembered how to spell words like ‘cat.’
Saturday, February 20, 2021 Rachelle was popular this morning. Two sets visitors with promise of more tonight and Monday morning. I sat and listened to the neighborhood gossip and served them terere. Christina and Tiago stayed home with me in the afternoon as there isn’t enough room in the truck for all of us to go to Bible Study.
There you have the last 2 weeks. My inspiration to make it interesting and not just unemotionally write the bare facts was gone by the time I finished as I waited til the last hour to write and didn’t even get it sent off on schedule. Not sure why I have to have such a rigid schedule. Maybe cuz I don’t count myself a missionary teacher lol.
Ciaocito Miss Addie
P.S. I remembered another name that I had been going to write about last time and forgot. Rodolfo. Which is Rudolf in English. Quite common I think.
No comments:
Post a Comment