Ellen in Paraguay

Two weeks ago I had a strange feeling. It wasn’t homesickness or frustration with teaching or loneliness or sadness, feelings I experience on a weekly basis. I actually got bored. I had already spent a lot of time walking around exploring the neighborhood, reading, I had all my lessons planned, my house was clean. So I went to Maria Teresa’s work where she reupholsters cars, and had a great time playing a word game with her employees. If I were at home or somewhere in North America, I might have gone to a coffee shop or the mall or a movie theatre or library or a nice park, but none of those things are within my grasp here (parks, yes; nice parks, no). I have to rely solely on the handful of people I know from the church and school to animate my life. Before even going to the supermarket was exciting, but I think now it is starting to wear off just a little. Not a moment too soon, my relationships are starting to afford me with a lot of entertainment. The people are becoming more and more interesting to me, not just because they’re Paraguayan but because they are my friends and I care about them. I like to think I am becoming part of the group; my evidence for this is that I had a disagreement with they guy with whom I was leading games for camp and had to ask for forgiveness from each other, my roommate and I shared some things that annoyed us about each other, and there was a RUMOR going around about me! Arguments, brutal honesty and hearsay are not things that come about with a visitor, they are marks of being an insider! In case anyone is worried about me, you can also know that my relationships are strong enough that these things have quickly passed over, and in fact I am glad for them because I feel more confident and comfortable than ever now that I know I am able to resolve conflicts here. Unfortunately, it doesn’t make for a terribly interesting blog because I can’t exactly write about any of the things. There is a terrible temptation for gossip because people like to tell me about things that happened in the past. They also tell me lots about of personal stuff. Maybe Paraguayans are just really open like that, or maybe they like having my trustworthy ear to listen because I am not fully capable of communicating their secrets to anyone else! I’ll tell you the GOOD things: Today I made fried eggplant and Emi thinks I am becoming an excellent cook. People are always telling me how much they will miss me when I leave and asking if I might stay longer or come back to visit (I am definitely on the downhill from here, less than 6 ½ months until I finish teaching on November 5!) I went to three people’s birthday parties this past weekend, but two of them were twins! (My birthday is a month from today. Normally I wouldn’t mention it, but people here make a pretty big deal out of birthdays and it has rubbed off a little.) I think I forgot to write that I went bowling 2 weeks ago. The bowling part was as lame as it is at home, but the company and the pizza from a Pizza Hut (!) place in the mall afterwards was excellent. I am embarrassed because I got the second lowest score. So I feel bad about feeling bored that one day…how can I ever get bored being with 80 kids every day in such an exotic place as Paraguay?! Besides, my aunt Loll says that only boring people get bored. By the way, there is no way you can say that in Spanish, they don’t really have a concept of the difference between bored and boring.