Getting walked down the river!

---

Aloha!

Have got a couple of weeks to write about woopsie!

Last weekend, well the weekend before that, oh i dunno, we went to visit Villa Hayes, where two other volunteers, Hugh and Emily, live and work. It´s a small village (or so we were told) about an hour or so away from the city, and it´s on the edge of the Chaco, which is an enormous area of land taking up almost half of Paraguay. However, although I don´t know too much about it, apparently it´s extremely sparse and dangerous, meaning next to nobody lives there. You can, however, take a safari or something similar into the Chaco, cos there´s a chance of seeing leopards or cheetahs or something, but to be honest it seems a bit boring and mega dangerous when it´s not really worth it!!

So yeah, after a mega long bus journey where i spent the entire hour and a half hugging a woman I´d never met before (yet the bus driver was STILL letting on more people) we eventually arrived, exhausted, when emily decided to take us on an extremely long walk through the entire of Villa Hayes! To be honest it wasn´t actually long at all but we were just knackered, I suppose it was good though cos we got a feel of Villa Hayes. It´s a lot bigger than I´d imagined from how they´d described it, much bigger than Newmachar!! Everything´s really spaced out and only two roads (maybe one or maybe more, cant remember!) are properly tarred, most are just dirt.

Little known to us, we had just entered Beer County. We have already worked out that Paraguay is the beer countRy but this was just taking it too far!! Everywhere you look there´s Brahma logos (the main brand of beer over here, and Pilsen), whether it´s plastered all over the front of shops, on every single chair in the town or just a random speeding past on his motorbike/scooter/whatever with a huge litre bottle of guess what, Brahma. Taking of scooters etc, they also seem to be obsessed with them!! Apparently there´s absolutely nothing for people to do there so they spend all their time screeching up and down the two main roads purely for the hell of it!! The people are really friendly though and all say ´hola´ or (confusingly) ´adios´ to you as you walk past, however in typical spanish ´adios´ means goodbye but apparently in south america (or maybe even just villa hayes lol) it means sort of ´hi, how are you?´ or something along those lines - why not just pick another word?!?!

Anyways, we went to visit Hugh´s house where us three girls were staying that night, we talked through a lot of our plans for travelling (SOOO excited :D :D :D) and saw my first cockroach kirsten!!! Also tasted the local delicacy, 20 pence ice cream, which was delish as always :D. We visited Melodia, the cultural centre where Hugh and Emily teach English, which was interesting to see where they work and see how it differs to ours. The centre and classrooms were a lot smaller than I´d imagined but it looked like a nice friendly place to work! That night Hugh decided to lead us to, what he´d heard as, the best restaurant in town (although maybe the only... :P) which was typically the complete other end of the town. Anyways, when we eventually got there, bearing in mind it was 9.30pm on a saturday night, it was closed!!! Okay I could have dealt with that....if only the FUNERAL PARLOUR next door wasn´t still buzzing with action at that time!!! Not exactly the kind of thing you want to see on your way out for the night :S

After a lot more walking and passing a lot of ´beer and burger´ cafes we found a pizzeria which looked reasonably sane, although they did look shocked to see so many people (yes the whole 5 of us) and had to go off and photocopy some more menus. Found out that there is such a thing as tuna paste pizza, and yes its yummy! teehee. Emily and Hugh took us to their favorite bar in Villa Hayes, which was actually quite good since it was playing cheesy english music, you know what I´m like with my cheese hehe! And the prices just made my night, we got a round of gin&tonic, vodka&coke and a bottle of water all for one pound twenty!!! how ace :D newmachar hotel take note! The bottle of water was for Helen since she was teetotal for one night only, she´s had a number of health problems since she got here (even though most of them have been paraguayans doing the typical paraguayan thing of completely overreacting!! Including being taken to hospital for a simple cold...) and so she had a sack of fluid in her ear or something, which she was told if it burst (by listening to loud music etc) could cause her to go deaf, and obviously she was on antibiotics. It´s a shame that the Paraguayans overreact so much cos it´s costing her another 20 or 30 quid everytime someone thinks they´re being caring and rushing her to hospital!!

So yeah that was a good night, helped by my impressive pool *ahem* against some random locals...well in my defensive i was doing unusally ace until i potted the black haha!! Anyways, we hadn´t really noticed it was raining that hard until it was time to trot home....omg - the road had actually turned into a river!! not a few wee puddles joined together, but a proper, current-and-everything river!!! apparently Villa Hayes don´t ´do´ drains, and since it had rained reeeeeeeeally heavily for the entire night there was nowhere for the water to go! Oh me had to be one of the bestest walks home ever haha, felt like such a kid splashing up and down the river twas great! Danielle managed to lose one of her shoes when it got whisked away by the current, haha. It´s great to be able to say that instead of being walked down the road, we were literally walked down the river! Best bit of the night by far in my opinion :D

The next day there was supposed to be some sort of procession or something on, but it was rained off. We went to meet Emily´s family (who, typically, were asleep lol) and see her house. It´s hard to describe but she´s definitely living with the poorest family, the house is tiny and even dirtier looking than the other houses we´re used to, (which aren´t exactly the cleanest things in the world) but I suppose it´s nice and homely if a little claustrophobic for me. We were taken next door to meet some of the rest of the family, aunts or cousins or something, who thankfully were awake and were lovely! They even offered us coke, which is a big deal here cos it´s like a weekly treat or something!!

Then we caught the bus and it was back to good ole Asuncion for us. Different weekend to say the least, it´s almost two weeks later and I swear I´ve still got Villa Hayes dirt embedded in my feet it´s disgusting!!!!!

This past weekend was quite normal; friday night we (Danielle, Helen and I) spent at Britannia, somehow stumbling onto a random German festival, Ocktoberfest or something like that. We still could get our usual jugs of cheap Sangria so that kept us happy anyways!! And Saturday, we went to the dodgy market to buy a new phone for Helen - she´d had hers stolen. It´s been quite a scary week actually, last weekend Ellie and Emily, two teachers from the Anglo, were mugged by four men with guns. This was even though they were in a group of four, two of which were male - so much for the age-old theory ´safety in numbers´. Emily had been carrying both her and Ellie´s things in her bag so she was targeted, must be awful for her, especially losing everything like photos, bank cards, phone, etc. Then on Friday, Helen was pickpocketed by two young children who can´t have been over 10, who had offered her sweets to buy like numerous people do every day, children and adults alike, when they hassle you until they eventually get the idea that you´re not going to part with any cash. Although this time, they´d been pushing against her and shoving their sweets in her face, she didn´t realise till afterwards that they´d managed to nab her phone out of her pocket at the same time. And then, after all this, the same thing happened to Danielle the very next day!! It was children again, although in a different place and this time they managed to get a tenner along with her phone. So off to the dodgy market again for another 18 pound phone. Luckily they can keep the same number though, and for free, so that´s saved a lot of hassle. Quite worried now though cos these things have a habit of coming in swoops, scared that it´s me next, eek.

That night we started off at guess where?! Yeah...britannia 😊 this time we actually bought t-shirts cos we´re such regulars now haha!! Then we went to a club called Coyote, which apparently is one of the best clubs in the city. Although it was 3 pound for us girls to get in (can´t believe I´m moaning about that I´d have loved those prices in liquid lol!!) and a fiver for hugh (yes this country´s amazingly sexist) it was a great place, especially the gold sparkly toilet seats teehee!!! The music is hard to describe, it started off typically Latin American then turned into typical hard core dance, eventually getting repetitive by the end of the night though! It´s the kind of music that I have to dance like a twat to otherwise i feel like even more of a twat if you know what i mean!!! So stupid dancing all night was fandabbydozzy 😊 I´d been missing my dancing since we´ve been tending to go to bars more recently.

At the moment I´m feeling completely knackered after only 3 hours sleep last night; yesterday was our first Paraguayan football match, and an international one at that, against Uruguay. It was part of the qualifiers for the World Cup 2010, and considering Uruguay are supposed to be the third best team in South America, the score was unexpected to say the least - one nil to us!!! Loved the atmosphere, even though we didn´t know any of the words to the chants (I swear they were singing about Haribos) we could gess! Typically, we´d bought the cheapest seats so we were shoved in where there were no actual seats, and not even any walkways, so u literally had to clamber over the top of everyone to get anywhere!! We were beginning to lose hope when we got waved over by some randoms a while away that apparently took a fancy to us, got a seat and some inflatable stick things out of it so who´s complaining! Oh yeah, forgot to say, we´d been joined by Ralph, an ex-gapper from a few years ago (I think) and had decided to return to Paraguay for a wee visit. Anyways, the match was good, despite the fact we were severly distracted by Bruce Bogtrotter sitting next to us, and i fairly got into it lol! After the match we went for a few post-match drinks (hence my eyes closing at the moment) to, predictably, Britannia, then the club that´s two doors down from me, then a random karaoke bar that i won´t say too much more about; just tooooo weird!!!

Okay I´m gonna stop with my news there, this already´s been way too long for my liking! Before I forget, a few people have been asking me about the whole texting me thing (from the internet, it´s free, and unlimited 😊 ). Ok, first go to the Tigo website (the network) which is www.tigo.com.py (it´s in spanish by the way) and click once to continue. Then you should see a small pink & white window at the bottom. From the drop down menu pick ´0982´ then in the box next to it my number´s 725255. In the next box there´s a code thing that you have to write in the box below, just a usual security thing u get. And in the big box goes ur message obviously 😊 you can ignore the two boxes at the bottom cos it works without them. Then click ´send´ which is ´enviar´ in spanish! And that´s it, all for nothing :D. Incase anyone wants to send me anything my address here is:

1009 Mariscal Estigarribias
c/ Estados Unidos
Asuncion
Paraguay
(no there´s no postcodes here)

I´m trying to send things home at the moment but with this freaking postal strike it could be a while till u get them sorry!

The other day marked the halfway point through my placement, seems so weird to say that! Time´s passing so quick, i do love it here & my work but am soooooo excited about travelling now, talk about itchy feet!!!

All my love, miss you all HEAPS,

Lisa xXxXx

---

Photos

All the kids at Casa Cuna!
My class are the third row....i think!!

The gold sparkly toilet seats.....
..ok maybe i do get amused too easily :P