Happy Birthday To Meeeeee!

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So on Thursday last week I went up to Asuncion, it was my first time going alone so I was a little nervous but it was all fine. I went to stay with Elaine as usual, but now she has a new housemate, a girl called Rachel who's just arrived to teach English in the school for a year. She's really lovely, we got on really well she's so funny, which coincidently is the phrase she uses most often! "It was so funny" is the thing I heard her say most (you have to imagine it said in a thick Cumbrian accent... I feel sorry for the kids she's going to teach! hehe) So yeah just met her and did some washing and stuff on friday untill my friend Maryke arrived. I met her at the training weekend we went on before leaving England and she's spending this year in Chile and just happened to be travelling round South America in her school holidays and decided to come to Paraguay around the time of my birthday! So yeah we went and met them and then somehow managed to find this bar called 'Pub Britannia' which is the only english style pub in all of Paraguay! So we went in there sat and had some food and drinks and then these 3 Paraguayan guys come over and ask if they can join us, we say yes and so we all sit and chat for a while, which was all well and good. Then one of them buys Maryke and I a tequila each, I'm not a big drinker, least of all shots so I basically just refused it and so Maryke endedup drinking two! Bless her, I still owe her for that one. Anyway it was all well and good untill these guys get it into their heads that they want to go and do karaoke and wanted to take us too. They'd been drinking beer all evening, and one of them had had tequila too, so of course we were saying we don't really want to get in cars with you when you've been drinking, to which they replied "But this is Paraguay, it doesn't matter here". It's true that the Paraguayan have no road rules, well okay they have them, but they're not enforced at all. I've seen people on motorbikes driving past police officers with cans of beer in the hands and the police not bat and eyelid. They couldn't seem to understand what our problem was even when we were saying that it might be normal here but that doesn't mean it's not dangerous. The more we protested the more they insisted and I don't know about the others but the more they insisted the less I wanted to go. So in the end we just kind of said goodbye and got a taxi back to the house.

Well that paragraph was altogether far to long! So that was friday. On saturday we all went on a wander around Asuncion. We went to the big open air market, to the port, to see the Presidential palace and the old center of town. Which was interesting, Asuncion really is not built for tourists, none of those things were particularly spectacular. Then later in the evening we made fajitas for dinner and invited a girl called Perla who lives opposite Elaine. So that was lots of fun. We also made jelly with fruit in it, and had to put it in the freezer to make it set.

On sunday morning I went to church with Elaine who goes to the English service whilst the others went to the Spanish one, just because I wanted to see her church and stuff. It was surprisingly traditional, I don't know why but I just wasn't expecting that. Then later in the evening we went to the Spanish youth service, that was really good, very modern and had songs I know the English versions of (wheras in the English service in the morning all the songs were out of old Mission Praise books). After the service we were chatting to some of the people and they invited us back to theirs to watch a dvd. So we went back to theirs and ate and chatted for ages. Eventually we put the film on (Licence to Wed, a fairly average film I thought, although everyone else seemed to love it). About half way through someone paused the film and I was really confused as no one was getting up to go to the toilet or leave or anything, but then everyone in the room started singing Happy Birthday! It was midnight and I hadn't realised. So that was so amazingly sweet as, with the exception of Maryke and Rachel, I'd only just met everyone that evening!

Whilst Rachel and Elaine were at school on Monday Maryke and I went to the supermarket to buy ingredients and then we came back and made a birthday cake. Now this cake ended up being the most interesting looking cake ever, the very definition of 'don't judge a book by it's cover'. It tasted fine, but it did kind of look like pizza. We tried to make Victoria sponge, forgetting that you need to make two halves, so we decided to put the jam and buttercream on top of each other on the top. So we did that, but well, we had used cheap margerine instead of real butter in the buttercream and so it was a little runnier than buttercream usually is. So for future reference, buttercream doesn't work with margerine. Then we blew up baloons and things. On the way back from the supermarket I stopped in at the church's office to check my post. I only had one birthday card, from Auntie Charlotte, but I had a mountain of christmas cards and parcels that, due to the rubbishness of the Paraguayan postal service, had only just arrived! Including Holly's christmas parcel that she posted on the 1st October which I had assumed was destined never to arrive! So I now rename the holiday Birthdaymas! As I opened just as many christmas cards and presents as I did birthday ones! hehe In the evening I went out for a meal at a Mexican restraunt (yes in Paraguay) with Rachel, Maryke, Elaine, Penny and Claire who had come up to Asuncion to come out for it. We had invited quite few more people but for various different reasons they couldn't come. It was a fantastic evening, the food was amazing, and we all had Pina Coladas which were gorgeous too. I had a lovely time. After the meal the waiters came over with a guitar, played a little ditty then forced me to down a birthday shot. I was expecting it to be hideous, like tequila or something. So there are some truly magnificent photos (on facebook already) of me pulling very strange faces. After I'd downed it though I realised it actually hadn't tasted that bad, and was actually some kind of sweet fizzy fruity alcohol and was actually rather nice. So the spectacular faces were all for nothing.

I didn't do an awful lot on tuesday, just went in to town and got my bus ticket home. I left at 11:15 pm and the bus managed to get about 5 minutes outside Asuncion before breaking down. So we sat there for about half an hour while the driver tried to fix it, he did so we turned around and started heading back in to Asuncion. We got just in to the outskirts when it broke down again, so we then just sat there on the outskirts for nearly 2 hours waiting for a new bus to arrive and take us to Concepcion. So I ended up arriving at 7:30am (when normally I would have arrived somewhere between 4 and 5am). I was exhausted when I arrived as I have trouble sleeping on buses, especially this one as there was a snoring fat lady in front of me and a guy next to me who was very nice but had really bad breath. The guy next to me was complimenting my Spanish, he said he could tell from my accent that I wasn't from Paraguay but he didn't realise I was from England. Which is a bit odd considering I'm blue eyed and pale skined, which is not exactly common in these parts, but oh well. I'll take any compliments I get.

I have to admit, I'm not exactly thrilled to back in Concepcion. After spending a bit more time in Asuncion than the normal one or two days, I realised I was a lot happier there than here. I just felt so much more like myself, more normal there. Those few days were the first time I've socialised since arriving in Paraguay. Also it was amazing having the support system of Elaine who's like my surrogate mum here and Rachel who I got on so well with. Claire's nice and all but I don't get on with her in the same way that I do with those two. I would really love to just move to Asuncion, but I know I won't as I'd feel too guilty leaving all the people here, as I do love them dearly and I would hate for them to think they had anything to do with my wanting to leave. I think I'm just a city girl at heart (which is funny seeing as I come from Andover and go to uni in Egham, the two most un-city-like places in England) I felt so much more at home there, and in one evening at the youth service felt closer to those guys than I do to the youth here I've known 5 months. I am so torn, I don't know what to do.

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