T: Time is totally flying. There's always stages to an adventure: excitement on arrival, all the newness; "drive" to find house, get set up; living, visiting, classes; "vacations"; "accepting" new life mode. But now, I'm looking at the calendar, and I'm like, woah, how can we get it all in before we leave?!? I went through a process of acclimating to spending so much unstructured time with the girls (and the girls did so as well; especially so much time with each other). Plus, especially at the beginning, they were so dependent on me to translate, explain everything, and just uncomfortable going out on own, that we were all attached at the hip. We worked it out, and seem to be enjoying each other and discovered ways to find our personal space and communicate clearly and lovingly. (It sure sounds good, right, and it really does work most of the time.) So upcoming events: 7/4th cookout this weekend at US Embassy in Asuncion (hopefully, see maya's entry), Foz de Iguazu (one of 7 wonders of world; waterfalls), one more time out to campo, visit Pacheco (campo where my PC friend Norma/husband's family lives), and then I guess sell/give away the stuff we collected, pack and head out. I have so embraced the no working mode; sleep in everyday (8 am rising is an early day), siestas. I will have to readjust to work mode, getting up early. Hopefully I will bring back some of my tranquilo mindset...
M: Lately things have been stirred up a bit. The campesinos (country folk) decided they wanted some land, so they went on private land and started living. Then the cops came; the campesinos fired their guns, and the cops fired back. About 15 people were killed. Next, people were mad at the President for not doing anything about it, as well as for other things. It's election year (2013), and he didn't want to do anything wrong, so he didn't do anything at all. So, they asked him to step down, but he said no. The next day, congress voted to impeach President Lugo. The vote was 52 to 4 (I think); so he was obviously impeached. The Vice President was sworn in. It's still a little rowdy in Asuncion, but where we live, it's just fine. Hopefully the American Embassy won't cancel the July 4th party in Asuncion for this weekend. I hope to dominate in the 3-legged race.
J: My mom has been trying to get us in Spanish classes, but our original, formal teacher never worked out. So we went to an event with a Peace Corps Volunteer and her community development youth group and met Vivi, who agreed to hang out with Maya and I twice a week and speak Spanish. She's in her first year of college to be a teacher. We do stuff like hiking, exploring, playing in parks. She also plays the guitar and sings. She's really good (she showed us once). We also found an art teacher, the son of one of my mom's friends. Raul has a degree in art. We go to his house 2 days a week and he teaches us art techniques on anything that we want to learn. He especially likes comic/graphical characters. It's all in Spanish, of course, but we have found it easy to communicate.
No comments:
Post a Comment