Details of our new life.

Ok, we keep hearing, "details, details" so we'll try.  It feels hard to explain what we are experiencing, partially because it just feels normal now, but also, it's just hard to put into words what we're seeing.

Our neighborhood is a bit rural, dirt (red dirt/clay) roads, with a "park" (~field) not used very much in the middle, which has swings, see-saws, slide.  We found a tree in the park that the roots of one tree, grow up around the other tree.  We have explored our neighborhood, and found many different short cuts to town and to the fruteria.  Our neighborhood is just houses, park, volleyball court, cow pasteur.  One house sells a few things out of their house. 

The town, Paraguari, is about a 15-20 minute walk away from our little purple casita.  I am surprised everyone can st ay in business, because there are many of the same stores in town.  Empanada and soda stands everywhere.  At least there are more parks than home.  They have another park in the town central.  The central is very busy; lots of people, stores, markets, internet/phone stores; we even found a place to buy a new webcam for only $16.  Many buses, cars, motos (people not wearing helmets; 2-3 people on every moto, including babies); but it is very dangerous and Blanca said 2-3 people die everyday on motos.

And here there's no law about jaywalking.  You get about a foot away from a moto and you act like it's nothing.  When we get back to America, I imagine there will be lots of honking, because we will be use to getting too close to the cars.

Hard to describe the terrain; it's not like tropical jungles.  It's mostly flat, then out of nowhere outjuts a hill; steep and flat at the top.  It's pretty lush and green (except the red/orange roads).  They have some fruit trees, but also palm/coco trees.  We haven't seen any exotic animals.  Lots of cows, pigs, chickens, dogs, cats, birds.  We saw one iguana.  Not even any weird bugs or spiders.  Some mosquitos, but not too bad.

We are treating this time like summer vacation, staying up late, and sleeping in.  We've gotten use to doing different chores here.  We wash dishes, sweep, mop, cook everyday.  We met a couple of Americans today.  Molly & Carly, 2 Peace Corps Volunteers.  They are very friendly and we think we will be hanging out more with them.  We enjoyed being able to speak English instead of Spanish for a bit.

We met a Paraguayan woman, who invited us to go with her and her daughters to a zip line/rope course in a nearby town.  Cool, huh?!?  Everyone says it's safe; mom even checked it out on the web.

The weather has been variable.  The last 2 days have been extremely hot and humid, been that's been leading up to the big rain we had today, and now it's cooling off again.  So, hot being, got up to 88, and the coolest so far is mid 60's.  They say it will get colder, but still crazy that this is their winter.  So glad mom didn't bring us here in the summer!

Our favorite restaurant in town, the Tropicana.

Hope that helps your mental image.  Jacey and Maya signing out.