Ellen in Paraguay

I realized this week that I am basically living my dream life. I live in a near perfect climate (warm and sunny most days, though I also enjoy the rain, and I discovered that the heat can never last forever). This week was most glorious in terms of weather. I have a well-defined sandal tan on my feet. In terms of other physical needs, I have absolutely everything I need including delicious food everyday, but I definitely live simply and don’t have an excessive amount of material possessions to be concerned with. I don’t need a car because my church and work and shopping and friends are all within about 10 minutes or less of walking distance from my house. So I get exercise from walking and I’ve also obtained my own ”personal trainer” one night a week who teaches me soccer workouts. It works out well since people have advised me against jogging alone in the neighbourhood. Plus there are sports at the church at least 3 nights a week.

I already have many friends from church; there are lots of people that I look forward to getting to know better, but I also have a few kids that I am already fairly close to. Last weekend I got to sleep over at a friend’s house. I really like visiting people here and seeing what their houses and families are like. So far, I’ve only been to two households where there was no extended family living together; Karen told me they don’t really have nursing homes here and mostly everyone takes care of their aging parents. Siblings often continue to live together even after one gets married, and if families don’t live together they might live a block or two away from each other. It is a very interesting situation at Carolina’s house where I was: her brother left his wife and went to Spain but the sister-in-law still lives with her ex-husband’s family, except for Carolina’s mom, who lives in New York. Carolina and I have started a tradition of eating popcorn for dinner before church on Wednesday nights. She is rather new to the church and is getting baptized this month, and she is a very fun girl.

I still haven’t gotten bored with things here. Every time I go to the grocery it is an adventure. Classes finished last Friday, but the students still have exams in the morning and I go and study Spanish or do odd jobs and then talk with the kids when they finish writing their exams. I think I have acquired some excellent phraseology with so much influence from kids, especially from the junior high kids, and of course people always think it’s very funny when I speak really cool. I am also helping Karen with a manual for short-term missionaries, and of course starting to study lessons for teaching next year. So I feel like I have things to do and that I am learning a lot. I also know that my life has purpose, even just to hang out with the kids at school and do things for my roommates feels significant, but mostly because I am needed at the school to teach. But right now for the summer it will not be really busy and so I have more time just to be alone and read a lot and enjoy being alive…very refreshing after 5 years of school. I do have to make certain sacrifices though; I noticed today that my sandal-tanned feet do not feel as soft as they once were (an understatement) and are pretty much in a constant state of uncleanness. I can’t really be normally chatty self, for example when we play sports I don’t really cheer that much, and the one time I did say something that I knew how to say, it came out as trash talk “en tu cara!” (in your face), and then I find it difficult to adequately apologize or else my apology sounds like I accidentally ran them over with my car or something terrible. And if I do something really dumb I can’t explain my way out of it. So I am glad that I can communicate well through my blog, and I enjoy trying to help you understand what life is like here. Of course, I also appreciate hearing about what is going on at home too!!

# posted by Ellen @ 3:18 PM