Normally you plan your vacation with
your States-side girlfriend who you haven't seen in 6 months to go something like this:
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| luxurious romance... (Not actually Paraguay) |
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| romantic dinners... (Not Paraguay, no ocean) |
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| Nice hotels.... ( Yes Paraguay, our actual hotel!) |
I planned a
wonderful vacation, including exploring the capital city, celebrating
Christmas with fellow volunteers at a nice beach, experiencing my
house in my rural site, visiting Iguasu Falls, one of the New Seven
Natural World Wonders and celebrating new years in one of the nicest
hotels in the capital. It all began with a personal pick up from the
airport in a nice car, driving to a quaint historical hotel for the
night and then heading to a volunteer's site to celebrate Christmas... on the beach.
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| Kinda like these guys. |
Cool right?
Actually its a giant river but still
pretty cool.
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| Us on the beach. |
There were about 20 volunteers and we passed the time
eating delicious homemade food (including homemade chicken wings
which, by the way, turned out to be delicious) chilling at the beach,
imbibing quality paraguayan beer (Brahma FTW) and enjoying our homey
rented room with airconditioning. Talk about a volunteer being
classy.
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| Mac and cheese, potato salad, stuffing, chicken, and other yummies. |
Highlights included the a fore mentioned chicken wings, my
beautiful girlfriend breaking out some baller dance skills I didnt
know she had, no photo available and her picking up some new dance
moves, photo available below.
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| Is this the part I shake my booty? (not an actual quote) |
After
that it was off to my site where Christina was to experience my own
life in the scorching, torturous heat of the Paraguayan summer.
Christina on Paraguayan heat....
As if Christina had been blessed,
somehow, during the hottest time in Paraguay, for the 2 weeks
Christina was in Paraguay, all we had was cool, windy, cloudy
weather. It was like God was like, oh %^^* guys, Christina's coming
stop scorching the planet till she leaves. The day she arrived was hot as hell and had she been
in site it would be the type of horrid, paralyzing weather you might imagine in a concrete prison in the Ecuadorian jungle, the heat so suffocating you cant do much
more than lounge around with your shirt off thinking how insane you
were to voluntarily leave air conditioning behind.
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| What was I thinking?? |
2 minutes later...
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| Damn It. |
As such I told her
to be prepared for it. Instead we lounged in t shirts and even some
thicker things when the wind picked up.
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| I was even wearing a jacket. |
She got a pretty good glimpse of my
life, trying Paraguayan food,
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| Chipa, Empanada and Sopa, pretty much all the same ingredients, oil, cheese, corn flour . |
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walking around the community, meeting families and living in my house. She met the frog family that lives in my bathroom (not so pleased at that meeting)
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| Toilet's a pretty sweet gig bob, you sure you don't want in? |
and greeted the
variety of ants, beetles, spiders and other crawly things who I share
my home with (also not so pleased). Yet all and all she was the
trooper I hoped she would be and after a short 3 days we made our way
to Argentina.
