One week left....

It's hard to believe that in one week I will already have been in Florida for a day. I fly out next Tuesday the 24th at 1am and get in at like 4:30 in the afternoon.
It is amazing how quickly 3 years can fly by. In some ways in seems like I have been here forever and in other ways it seems like I only been here for 5 minutes.  My plan was to come here for 1 year and I remember thinking 6 months in - "well it is nice here, I have made some new friends..but I'm outta here after my year is up!" In that moment I had no doubts that I would be heading back in after a year of being in PY. 
And then along the way, not sure what really happened, my heart changed, my confidence grew, my Spanish got better and it just seemed like a great opportunity to stay longer. But of course there were MANY times when I was ready to just pack up, buy and plane ticket and move on...MANY tears were shed...lots of frustrating and discouraging days as well. So, how DID I stay here for 3 years?? Really the answer comes down to God and lots of love and support from friends and family. I wouldn't be here without all of that!


I remember going to Portland in 2008 to visit my family. My brother Neal and I went to Powell's bookstore ( a HUGE and well-known bookstore there) to look around. We ended up sitting down on a bench in the middle of the store and I told him my "crazy" dream of wanting to move down to South America (at the time it was Chile). In all honesty, if in that moment he had told me I was completely crazy, I might not be here because in my mind it WAS a crazy idea! Instead, as all great brothers do, he sat there and listened and then encouraged the heck out of me to make it happen. I will forever be grateful to Neal and his encouragement because it truly has been the experience of a lifetime, really a life-changing experience for me!


After my crazy divorce, I prayed before coming down here that I would be able to give my heart to the Paraguayan people (trust issues, but can you blame me?? LOL) and now it is truly breaking my heart to go. As hard as it has been, as much as I have cried or struggled or.... I have  also felt so much love, and received so much respect and encouragement from everyone down here! My natural tendency is to be be very insecure, critical and negative - it's hard to stay that way when I have so many positive, encouraging friends cheering me on!


Last Sunday, I spent the afternoon with my best friends down here - Anita, Vale, Eli and Nathi. I told them that there is NO way I would have stayed as long as I have without their love and support. They truly have been amazing friends....they always looked out for me, took care of me, were a shoulder for me to cry on...good times, bad times...they have been then best!  

For the month of June, my friend Sarah from Fort Lauderdale came down to visit me. She is studying Spanish at the University of Florida (we are still friends though despite the fact that she is a Gator and I am a Bulldawg!! LOL) and has been dying to come down here ever since I arrived. This year she made it happen! We of course had to make our way to Ciudad del Este so that we could see the amazing waterfalls in Brazil - she of course LOVED them!

This is a freakin' AMAZING food in Brazil. The tortilla looking part is made from tapioca flour and then they fill it with sweet or savory things. Inside mine is chocolate, coconut, strawberries and condensed milk and OMG it is a little slice of heaven! The flour is powdery and crumbly so it gets put on a flat grill to cook/stick together and bit and then the other ingredients are put on top so that the chocolate melts and everything is warm and gooey!!

Sarah and I eating our yummy desserts! 

Sarah and I hanging with friends from church! So grateful that she got to come visit - she had a great time and definitely did not want to leave either! So grateful that everyone here showed her so much love as well!

So...one week....my room is a complete disaster zone trying to get everything coordinated. I wish I could just wave a magic wand and have it be done already! HA
I am probably not going to sleep/rest again until I get on the plane on Tuesday...it looks like it is just going to be a non-stop marathon between now and Monday night when I have to be at the airport! It still seems unreal that I will be back in the US in a week - haven't been there since xmas 2010! Dang!


I have been reading articles about Reverse Culture Shock. Apparently, when you move to a new country you have to deal with culture shock (obviously). But then after being gone for awhile, you have to deal with  the "shock" of coming back to your home country. The articles also say that the more immersed you have been in the culture, the harder it will be...oh that's not good. In my 3 yrs here I have basically become Paraguayan! Everyone here loves it too. My friends often joke how I am more Paraguayan than some actual Paraguayans!! HAHAHA HILARIOUS! But it true - I am from the US, but I will forever be Paraguayan as well! =)  So FYI: family/friends please be praying for a smooth transition back and if I do get a bit depressed - it is nothing personal!! ;)


One blog that I have recently discovered is called Marc and Angel check it out here. One recent article is titled "5 character traits that make you happy". In the blog is a quote about courage from Mark Twain that says "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear."  It was extremely scary coming down here, but in the end well worth it all! Today, I encourage you to face a fear because on the other side, you might realize how stepping out on faith, how being courageous helped you to grow and see life differently.


The other quote I liked from the article is  about gratitude  from D. Bonhoeffer  "Gratitude changes the pangs of memory into a tranquil joy." I am truly grateful that God took something bad and turned it into an opportunity to have the adventure of a lifetime!  I am grateful for all the wonderful experiences that I have had down here, all the wonderful memories, all the wonderful friends! Life does move on, good things can come from bad situations - we just always need to remember to be grateful for everything we have and have gone through because they have helped us to be the people who we are today!

Easter Week in Tacuati

So for whatever reason, I didn't end up doing very much last year during Easter week (really can't remember why to be honest!). So, this year when Eli and her family said that we needed to head back up to Tacuati for the week, I was in!  Now while the trip overall was a lot of fun, it definitely did NOT start off that way. We caught a bus a 4:30am Wednesday morning and it was PACKED full and still managed to stop and pick up more people - can we say claustrophobia! Honestly, I can't really complain since I ONLY had to stand for like 3 hours; I sat on top of some bags after that. ;-) 

But Eli and her brother had to stand for like 4-5 hours and poor Walter most of the trip (eh, he is 16, he can handle it! HA)  By 9ish, Eli and her brother and I all had seats. So I turned my iPod on and tried to go to sleep. Around 10:30am I woke up suddenly when I realized that the bus had come to a stop - yea, just to make the trip MORE fun, the bus had broken down.  So, we then had to spend the next 2 hours in a city town pueblo two-house place called "Toro Piru 2" (apparently TP #1 is down the road)

So here we are along the side of the highway...

We spent the 2 hours drinking terere and taking silly pictures like this one "Sad Sarah and Walter"

Those are the 2 houses in the back there - at least it wasn't in the COMPLETE middle of nowhere, people were able to get ice and water. However, the owner of one of the houses told Eli that their water gets brought in every morning and so we were lucky they still had water to offer us - surprisingly I don't think they charged anyone for the water - just good old PY hospitality. =)

At least there was a semi-shady place to sit down and rest for those who had been standing for awhile!

So, two hours later another bus came and we were on our way. However our 6-7 hour journey ended up taking us over 11hours. We got to Tacuati starving and exhausted!  Fortunately, Eli's step-mom had lunch waiting for us. =)

A fun PY Easter week tradition is that on Wednesdays, everyone makes chipa to eat for the rest of the week. It is huge in the country-side and so I had been looking forward to being part of the chipa making process. Unfortunately, since we got into town so late I missed it - yea I was pretty bummed. So, instead Walter and I  headed to the river to cool off and relax after lunch!

There was a ton of yummy fruit to eat this week - citrus season is just beginning and I am SUPER excited about that - man do I LOVE me some grapefruits. I loved finding reasons to head up north on the turnpike in FL to find a fruit stand in order to buy a huge bag of yummy grapefruits during the winter citrus season!  Now the way we eat grapefruit in my family is you cut it in half and then cut all the little triangles out to eat. 

(I even have a sweet grapefruit knife that makes this so much easier!).  But here, they cut the peel off the oranges and grapefruits and then basically just suck the juice out. Some people will then eat the fruit, some will just toss it after all the juice is gone.  I had seen the peeled oranges being sold on the street corners for awhile, but wasn't really sure what it was all about. Then awhile back, I went to a friend's house and they gave me an orange and a knife and I know I looked at them funny since I had no idea what to do - they of course thought that was hilarious! They were quick to show me the way though.

The trick to this though is to try to thinly cut the peel off. If you try to cut off too much white, then the fruit is exposed and it makes it very difficult to squeeze and suck the juice out the top of the fruit....just an FYI!

Eli's grandparents have a HUGE grapefruit tree with these monstrous red grapefruits. I was super excited about trying them.  Unfortunately, they weren't ripe enough yet so I didn't really like them; Eli and Walter did  though.

This is an interesting "fruit" called Ingá. You pull back the soft shell, like you would a peanut. Then you suck on the white, wet, soft fruity stuff around a green seed; then you spit the seed out when you are done. Really not much to this fruit -  I think it is just something to chew/suck on vs. obviously being something to eat/fill you up.

This fruit is called Kaki (like kaw-kee). It looks like a tomato, but inside the texture is more like a soft mango and then it just has a sweet fruity flavor. I wanted to try this again (I only got one bite), but most of the fruits weren't ripe yet.

So let's keep the food trend going here - up next is a drink called Cocido. On the plate here is herbs, then sugar and then red hot charcoal. Yes, you read that right, they put hot charcoal on there to burn the sugar.

Then everything goes into the pot with water to heat up. Then the liquid is strained and you drink up, with or without milk! Most people enjoy eating chipa with cocido - actually chipa is usually always eaten with cocido, vs. coffee or some other drink. I don't really like cocido since a) again, not really a tea drinker and b) I don't like the taste of burnt food.  If I do burn something, I either toss it, scrape off the burnt part and eat it because I am really hungry, or give it to my mom!! (hey, she likes burnt marshmallows, I personally don't get it but hey, to each his/he own!! HAHA - just giving you a hard time mom!)

Here is the cocido cooking over "the stove" Many people do have electric stoves, but I think most people here still tend to cook over a fire like this since it cooks things pretty quickly.

 

I can't remember if I have talked about mandioca before (aka yucca), but Eli's step-mom went out to her dad's farm and picked up this big one for us to eat! It is kind of a pain to peel, but yes I can peel mandioca, which always tends to surprise everyone here!

 

So for Easter week:  

Wednesday = make chipa day. 

Thursday = have a big feast day, like Jesus and the last supper. 

Friday then for true catholics = only eating chipa and sopa paraguaya ALL DAY. It's not only no meat, it's like nothing else at all. (FYI: Eli and Walter and her sister's family and I finally did have pasta with meat that night for dinner. ;-)  )

So here is Eli's step-mom cooking sopa paraguaya (cheesy corn bread)  over the fire. 

Since she doesn't have an oven, she puts charcoals on top of the bread as well so that it cooks evenly.

 

The bread on the left is chipa, the more yellow bread on the right is the sopa paraguaya.

                                     

Eli, Walter and Eli's nephews Kevin and Kaiki enjoying some chip and sopa on Friday.

Me enjoying both. I do like sopa when it is homemade, fresh out of the oven and doesn't have a lot of onions in it- people like to add that and I just think it ruins it personally.

(of course I could be biased since I hate eating onions...just a texture thing!)

***For those of you who know Spanish, I am sure you are saying to yourself, "But Sarah, doesn't sopa mean soup in Spanish?"  Why yes, yes it does EXCEPT here in PY! (hence my complete frustration with the Spanish language from day one down here. A lot of the Spanish I learned is from Spain/Mexico - not always helpful here in PY). So if you say "sopa" here, 9 times out of 10, they will think you are referring to the bread. IF you want to talk about soup, you have to use the word "caldo," so chicken soup would be "caldo de gallina" ***

Our last food item is a dessert called ""Budin" - it is similar to flan, but not as smooth in texture. Apparently you can take bread or animal cracker-like cookies and put them in a blender with I think a heavy cream (not sure on the exact milk product to be honest). I think there is an egg or 2 as well...?? Then you put it in your bundt pan, carmalize some sugar and voila...I obviously don't remember all the details, but hopefully you get the idea. I am actually not a huge flan fan, but if done right, this is actually pretty good. I told Eli we need to make this here in Asunción because I would like an actual recipe, so I can make it in the states.

 (FYI the photo was taken by the 10 year old goddaughter of Eli's dad, hence why the pic is a little off)

So remember the last caterpillar that "tried to kill me" (click here if you need a reminder)...yea there was one here in Tacuati that tried to do the same thing! This one in the photo was hanging out on the tree and after the photo was taken was promtply killed (not by me, and FYI, when it is hit with a shovel, yellow juice squirts out like you are squishing an orange - ewwww). 

Sometime later however, I got up to go inside and apparently put my foot within INCHES of another one - YIKES, that was a close call! All in all "we" (and by "we"" I mean someone else, not me) killed 3 or 4 of these this week! Eli's dad even picked one up before killing it just to prove to us that you could touch it, if you did it the right way. Yea, I will just leave them alone and enjoy them from afar thank you!

Here are some pics of the house - this is the front of the house

Some photos of the backyard

The ladder is for the chickens so they will go up into the tree to roost at night. The building on the right is where the stove is.

Kitchen area

Kitchen on the left, straight back is the bathroom/shower

So not being a Catholic and never really growing up around Catholics, it was interesting being in Tacuati for the Easter Week. In the front of the house, Eli's step-mom and dad placed this photo of Jesus, Joseph and Mary on a table. The plate holds a candle and I guess the plants are just decoration. Now, what was interesting (aka also frustrating) was that Wednesday and Thursday night 4 -5 men went from house to house singing multiple songs in front of these "shrines" (not really sure what to call it); they only went to houses though that had these in front. The frustrating part was that Wednesday they came by our house at 2:30AM and Thursday night at 3:30AM and they sang REALLY loudly.So while on one level I can appreciate the tradition, it was also so not fun being woken up in the middle of the night (just being honest here).  I made some comment about it to Eli and her sister, who then of course had to tell the parents. I was afraid that Eli's dad and step-mom would take it the wrong way. But they thought it was hilarious and it became quite the joke the rest of the week - to the point that apparently I will be joining the serenade next year!!

Friday night was when they did the procession - representing Jesus' walk to the cross. Eli's nephews were both a part of the procession, so we walked along with everyone else to show our support.

Waiting for everything to get started

The Catholic Church in Tacuati.

In the procession, the priest and kids come first, then comes a statue of Jesus

Next is  a coffin  

And finally the Virgin Mary

We walked for like half an hour or so. We would stop at the houses that had the shrines. At each stop a few scriptures were read about Jesus' journey to the cross. A song was sang, or a prayer said and then we would move on to the next house. All in all, there were probably about 100 people or so walking behind the kids/statues. The weather was cool, the stars were out, so it was a nice, peaceful walk actually and a nice way to remember Jesus' sacrifice for us.

With most everyone only haven eaten chip and sopa the day before, it was time to grill out on Saturday. We had a huge lunch complete with grilled chicken and beef, mandioca, sopa, and rice - delicious!

Easter Sunday was a time for the kids to run around and get presents and chocolate from all of their relatives. Also, if they sat in front of the shrine and said a prayer, they would receive candies from the owner of the house. Here is a photo with me and Kevin and Kaiki holding their Easter gifts.

I thought I would finish up with some photos of the roads/ the town.

                                      

Despite the lack of sleep, we had a blast the whole week. We went and swam in the river almost everyday. We got to visit with Eli's relatives.....Her dad has like 7 sisters and brothers and her mom has a bunch too, so the town is FULL of aunts/uncles and cousins.We laughed a ton and ate good food.They loved that I would joke around with them,be sarcastic with them. We just laughed so much at each other!


I think my favorite part of the trip though was getting an official Tacuati/ Guarani nickname. 


A little background first -many know this story, but for those who don't - my parents purposely gave my brother and sister and I names that couldn't be shortened/nicknamed (Sarah, Neal and Anne). So while people my whole life have tried to give me a nickname, it has never really happened UNTIL I got to PY.  Here, I am Sarita, Sari and Saru (only Vale gets to call me Saru though and she is Valu LOL).
I actually really like it though since I have never had a nickname  (that is said sincerely by the way, not in a bitter or sarcastic way. I haven't really ever cared about having or not having a nickname.) 


But EVERYONE here has a nickname and in Tacuati apparently everyone has one in Guarani. But what's funny is that the Guarani nicknames aren't just shorter versions of names, they are like "bird head" "fish skin" "boots" "tortilla ears" - HILARIOUS!!  Can you imagine if we did that in English? I made the comment to Eli's dad about how I wanted a Guarani nickname and within a few minutes I was promptly given "Pira ro'o".


What does it mean you ask? Good question....So Eli's cousin, Hector, and I have the same birthday and his nickname is pira, so that's how started....
"pira" = fish
 "ro'o" = white, as in the white meat of a fish


I LOVE it and think it is HILARIOUS!! I LOVE to swim and all things water-related so of course the fish part fits and well, I am pretty white, soo it is AWESOME!! 


Eli's dad LOVES it as well and made it introduce myself to everyone with my new name
I had to say "che che dejo pira ro'o" which means my nick name is pira ro'o in guarani. AWESOME!


What a fun trip!

Birthday Festivities

So this year, my birthday fell on a Sunday - always fun having your birthday announced at church! =)  Fortunately,  it being on a Sunday meant I could do a bunch of different things.  After church, I got to have lunch with the teens. They Josu, Dani and Analia actually cooked lunch for all of us. When I asked how I could help, Josu (in the green shirt) said I didn't have to do anything today - awww soooo sweet! 

So here is us just hanging around, waiting for the crew to get back from the grocery store.

Dani and Josu starting to get down to work!

Awwww. LOVE these guys!

Our lunch = chicken stroganoff (basically a creamy chicken and rice meal), bread and 

fresh squeezed orange juice = YUMMY

As my family knows, I LOVE orange juice. I would rather drink a glass of orange juice with a meal or dessert (mmm chocolate cake and OJ mmm) than a glass of milk. I remember my mom feeding us breakfast for dinner and I hated it when she wanted me to drink milk with my pancakes - 

hello, OJ is the only way to go here people!!

So I LOVE that Paraguayans LOVE to have fresh-squeezed juices with their meals...could be OJ, could be grapefruit..whatever they got going on. NOT really a fan of the OJ/carrot combo that everyone likes here though. The taste is ok, but the carrot pieces....just make for a weird juice texture personally.  ALSO, most Paraguayans think it is very weird that we drink glasses of milk with our meals (water too actually).They have seen it in the movies and many people have asked me if that is actually true. Obviously they have milk here, but it is usually heated up and then sugar and coffee are added to it (the reason I also now willing to drink coffee) For meals, they usually just drink juice and soda - see, I am sooooo Paraguayan!! LOL

So, after lunch I of course had the required birthday nap - what birthday is complete without a nap?? 

Then I got to Skype with the parents, which is always fun. The even sang me happy birthday - thanks guys! =)

After that it was off to my friend Eli's house for an evening BBQ with the singles. Her building has a giant roof where you can easily grill out. The weather was perfect, so we all headed upstairs! The pics are a little weird here just due to the smoke from the grill.

Photos of the gang!

A cool cake trick that they do here and why we DON'T do this is beyond me....They first cut a circle in the middle of the cake and then cut slices from that center piece so at the end of the night you are left with the middle of the cake, which usually the birthday person gets to take home if people don't want seconds.

This is the best photo - the photo shows it best, not the diagram. It really is SOOO much easier cutting a cake like this - definitely bringing that back to the states!!  

The cake here is different though and to be honest I am not a huge fan. It is usually always layered with dulce de leche, which I do like, but often the layers of cake to me seem "wet." Not yummy and moist, wet....I don't even know how to describe it or how it gets like that,. Cakes here to me are pretty much 50/50.  But regardless a birthday must be celebrated with cake and so a small piece can always get eaten!

Love my girls!!

It was a bittersweet birthday though since everyone was like "this is your last birthday in Paraguay" - yea, still not handling that thought very well yet. But despite that twinge of sadness, it was a good day spent with all of my many friends, couldn't have asked for a better day here in PY!!