Greetings to each and every one of you on this fine November afternoon. It is the day after Halloween and I am not in the least bit feeling the effects of last night. That is quite a strange thought as I have spent my last 4 Halloweens in Madison, but the holiday is thought of in a much different way in Paraguay. They don’t call it Halloween (Día de las brujas), there are no costumes, no parties, pretty much nothing like a Halloween in the United States. I asked the sisters about why this was and I was told that the [View Full Entry]

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Hola, hola, hola, I hope I am finding you all well at this moment. I am presently sitting in my family room in my extra comfortable shoulder brace that smells like absolute death (part of that was true, I’ll let you decide which part) enjoying a little playoff baseball before my weekly dose of Monday Night Football. I guess you could say that I experienced my first real “summer day” today as the temperature climbed above 100 oF. I won’t lie, I did not see it coming when I woke up this morning and if it was any indication of how [View Full Entry]

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Saludos from Paraguay! It has been another few weeks since my last post, so I figured it was about time to continue my riveting, suspense-filled account of life as a Paraguasian (I have been told that I am, in fact, a Paraguayo now, but I still find it amusing to use butchered terminology). Again, I would like to thank many of you for your emails/messages/comments/thoughts/prayers/…they are much appreciated. I have been doing my best to respond to emails, so hopefully you have heard from me if you wrote, and I apologize if I have not been able to get back to [View Full Entry]

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Greetings from far off Paraguayland (a term Jimmy Voxman coined in a recent email). It has been about two weeks since my last post and I have heard from many of my friends and family members in that time. Your emails/messages/comments have been much appreciated and have been bright spots in my days when I have felt a little lonely or frustrated. Also, the questions/feedback that I have received about this blog are very helpful as I contemplate ways to improve both the presentation and content. New to this week’s post is a summarized bullet point list of the content for [View Full Entry]

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For those of you who do not know, I will be spending the next nine months doing volunteer work in a small city in Paraguay called Villeta. I am volunteering through a catholic affiliated organization called VIDES+USA. I hope to become fluent in the Spanish language while helping deal with health related issues that the people of the city are struggling with. I arrived at the airport in the capital city of Asunción on August 14, 2008 after over 30 hours of traveling. During my travels I had layovers of 7 hours (Newark, NJ) and 8 hours (Sao Paulo, Brazil). While [View Full Entry]

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