Breakfast is finally warming up at the Casa! Actually had a conversation this morning at the table, with folks from Chaco. And the morning started out great with a surprisingly good performance of the Faith & Life Men's Choir from Canada, with a soloist from Paraguay who used to sing with them when he lived in Canada. Sithabile Ndlovu of Zimbabwe was a most interesting speaker - a young black woman taking part in the south-to-south YAMEN! exchange program in Brazil, where she had learned a good deal of Portuguese (I'd heard her in the ladies' room earlier and wondered about that!) and a bit of Low German. Amazing. Whoever helped paid for that, it was money well spent in shaping a future leader of the global church. How cool to hear a kiwi accent at ... read more

Some cool stuff this morning: a prayer of thanks led by Ojibway and Cheyenne people, including a big delegation from Kansas, facing the four directions, then to the sky and to the ground. Strange to watch 6000 people turn around in their seats, facing south, but even the skeptical Dutchmen took part. Claire Brenneman had just launched into telling the story of the Pax Boys who helped build the Trans-Chaco Highway with MCC in the 1950s when the sound system suddenly made an ominous noise and the lights went out! Poor Brenneman continued without a mike for a few minutes, his translator falteringly following, until finally people in the back started shouting that he could be heard. Then Paul Dueck, bless him, brought his choir up and said, "How about we sing??" And we did! Singing, ... read more

Time to get ourselves to Asuncion. Overcoming our confusion about Guaranis (about 5000 to the U.S. dollar -- WHY did we not practise those big numbers in Spanish??), we managed to buy a ticket to Asuncion on NSA (Nuestro Senora de Asuncion), what appeared to be a big bus company. Apparently, directo does not mean in Paraguay what it does to gringos. Direct, yes, with about a hundred stops at teeny bus shacks in the little villages strung along Paraguay's No. 1 highway. The bus, thankfully, was a comfortable happy medium between the worst and best of the previous days, and the trip's unexpected length of 5 1/2 hours was tempered by our decision to try the baked good that has appeared with tremendous regularity since the moment we hit the Paraguay border: chipas (pronounced CHEE-pass), ... read more

July 12, our final day in Argentina, the sun was warm finally, and we decided to catch up on a bunch of things we'd missed on the first, chilly pass. First, the wonderful Sunday market just outside our door. The quiet square, which was scrubbed and polished early on Thursday morning, had been transformed! Booths filled the square and marched far down the streets in all directions, with antiques and crafts sellers hawking their wares: jewellery, copper objects, wampas for mate', clothing, music, antique china and glass, warm sweaters and scarves, you name it. We strolled around and picked up a gourd-style wampa, listened to the wonderful guitarists (and bought a CD!) and cringed at the elderly dancers in jaunty clothes from the 40s who attempted to put on a show for the tourists. The other ... read more

A day and a half and so much to remember already ... San Telmo: Cobbled streets, baroque colonial mansions with intricate wrought-iron balconies and ornate doorways, mosaic tiled sidewalks, Plaza Dorrego bustling with craft merchants, shops in 200-year-old houses crammed with the most amazing antiques (ancient telephones and cash registers, milk separators, dusty chandeliers, old doors, gaudy handpainted furniture, snuff bottles, costume jewellery, furs, posters of cattle diagramming the carne de Argentina ...). Our neighbourhood saw its glory days a century ago, when a yellow fever epidemic drove the fashionable crowd north and to higher ground. It's a little shabby now, and working class, but new little hotels like ours and the plethora of restaurants offering bilingual menus to turistas (along with the customary touts standing outside each handing you the specials of the day) su ... read more