Cows Like Doves...or Deer?

The cows in Paraguay sleep on the roads at night. Since the road going by my town is asphalt, the cars, buses, and sugar cane 18-wheelers clip along at a good pace. A long screech and a long honk is almost a guarantee that someone is skidding around a cow. And what I love best is that the cows are always as unsuspecting and surprised by the whole event as they were the night before! Ignorance (and innocence) is bliss....

Again I've failed miserably in keeping up with everyone States-side. My experience with the cyber cafe manager has been reduced to a semi-stalker situation which I rather wish to avoid (when the place is actually open, that is) and I don't travel much to other towns. I have discovered, however, that anyone can email my cell phone for free! As you know, I have two numbers, and they both have an equivalent email address, as follows:

595983199181@tigo.com.py

595972709755@personal.net.py

Send a message!

I'm actually in Asuncion right now for my 3-month work interview. My boss seems to think I've been doing a lot (which is good, I think!) but wants me to slow down and focus more carefully on a few more specific things. I expect that to happen as LIFE in general slows down with the short days and uninviting temperatures of winter set in.

Speaking of uninviting weather, by the way, I love it! Call my crazy, but the unending heat of summer remains seared in my brain, and I never cease to appreciate being cold. How refreshing!

I'm starting a new women's group. There's a side of Cerrito (my town) that's a good 30 minute walk from my house (where my committee holds meetings) and where neither of the other volunteers ever really worked, as far as I can tell. The more I visit with them, the more I see that women there are really interested in learning new recipes and projects they can do at home. However, the short days and long walks kind of cut them out of the loop. So, I'm collaborating with them to meet once a week on THEIR side of the village. This Friday will be our first meeting, and we'll be making soy burgers, starting at the beginning, with the bean! My current group proves difficult in many respects because most of the things I want to teach them they've already done with one of the other girls. This new group is exciting in that respect because pretty much everything I have to offer is new material. Yea!

Otherwise, my work of late has been more at home. I finally bought a dining table, two chairs, a bedside table, and a small "tea table" to go between my porch chairs, and I painting them ALL, as well as two walls of the inside of my house. I've also hoed, weeded, turned, and formed two garden spaces; one beside my house where flowers will be planted, and the other within my host mom's vast garden, where vegetables will be planted. I already have spinach and tomato seedlings growing up in a box, getting ready to be transplanted. And the carrot and onion will just go straight into the ground! I'm hoping to get some cuttings of my host mom's oregano and basil, too. Isn't it odd that winter is the growing season in the sub-tropics?

With fall comes soccer. Each "suburb" of the town of Tebicuary-mi (ti-bee-kuar-yh-mi), of which Cerrito is one, has its own soccer team. Each team plays once a week against another team. Every win earns a team three points, and whoever gets the most points by the end of the season is declared the champion. This is a pretty big deal; everyone has been busily trying to get cleats and uniforms donated from who knows where (we got ours from the national team whose name we bear, Cerro Porteno). Sunday before last there was the inauguration, in which each team parades with its flag and a selected queen, and the town officials award soccer balls to the best queens and best looking teams. This past Sunday was our first game. I rode the sugar cane truck along with most everyone else in Cerrito out to the other field. Our junior team won by just one point, and our "primary team," in a horrible twist of fate, lost 3 to 1!! It was terrible, particularly because 3 of my brothers are on the team and a 4 is a "watcher" (do we have those in the US??). I have to admit, though, it was pretty funny to see how they deal with injuries...a kick in the shins and man down, waterboy on the run, water poured on the point of injury, fellow teammates stretching and massaging the limb, and stretcher out onto the field. I wanted to yell, "In my country, if you get on the strechter, you aren't gonna be walking again that day!" Man, we Americans are tough...yeah right.

You may or may not have known this, but US and Paraguayan customs had a bit of a falling out recently, and for a while there there was no mail sent or received on either side. (If you haven't gotten something from me, or if I haven't gotten something from you, this is why.) Just yesterday it was finally resolved, right in time for me to send a remarkably over-packaged package (thanks, post office man) to my dear friends Annalese, Roberta, and Philip....

And to the rest of you I send my best thoughts and warmest regards, until next time!