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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We woke early, packed and checked out. It took a little longer than we expected to get to the bus station but arrived with around 5 minutes until the bus was due to go. Given the nature of transport we were confident that we'd catch it without problems. Uhm - think again. In fact the transport is so prompt the bus had left 15 minutes before hand. Some frantic Spanish later (thanks Faye) they radioed the bus and put us in a taxi which screamed through the city and caught up with our steed on the outskirts. Now, ok I know [View Full Entry]

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A well deserved lie in was had by all before we descended for breakfast. We are now up to three types of cake. Whilst the girls apply their products I head out for an early morning re-con. I feel quite pleased with myself as I manage, in Spanish, to post some cards and obtain maps for the city. I also check out the price of a new memory card which is a lot less than RS. It is already warm as I return to the hotel and we then go together for a mini-tour of the city (picking up a new [View Full Entry]

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The next morning we say goodbye to Evelina and Foz and take a taxi to the Paraguay border (R$40). The driver sees us through border control and helps us exchange our money from Realis to Paraguayan Guaranis. Suddenly we are confronted with 100,000 notes and calculations become very confused. Ciudad del Este is a haven for cheap electrical goods but we have no time to stop as we must get a coach to the capital Asuncion. Despite a barrage of ticket sellers when we arrive at the station we head to the recommended company (RYSA) and buy our tickets for the [View Full Entry]

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Our first task in Asuncion is to book the ticket to Posadas in Argentina but when we enquire we find that this service has been cancelled. Instead we book tickets to Encarnacion on the border with PYCASU (G55,000). We check into the hotel the 3 star Palmas del Sol which is lovely and clean and has a swimming pool (slightly smaller than the pictures suggested). Relaxing by the pool we decide our next move which is to sit by the pool for a little longer. Eventually we drag ourselves out into the city but it is Sunday and there are few [View Full Entry]

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We arrived at Cricco´s house after the 21 hour journey from Buenos Aires to be greeted by his family with a full bbq set up ready to eat which was much appreciated from last weeks McDonalds binge! He put us up in the quincho (pool house) very OCesque. As soon as we´d finished eating jonny went for a shower first and pulled the hot water tap off the wall! That night we went to a place called El bar, had a few drinks there and then headed off to an Irish bar called Kilkenny and a few of zach´s friends came [View Full Entry]

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Stopping over in Bolivia Our last blog finished with us leaving sunny (but cold Copacabana in Bolivia) and heading for the capital for our flight to Asuncion. There is nothing to report here other than a great night celebrating the 4th of July with a bunch of Americans at the Adventure Brew Hostel. Everything was going swimmingly well until Phil caught wind of a Beer Bath outside. Many beers already consumed, Phil had disappeared only for me to find him bathing outside, the first person in the bar to get into the bath. An interesting journey After a very early start [View Full Entry]

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