No subject. Literally.

Well, I am back in the city for the first time in a while. I would have rather not come in, but I needed a break for my sanity, not to mention a halloween party at my bosses house tonight and a homeade pesticide charla I am giving to the trainees on tuesday. I always expect to come into Asuncion and have a vacation, but I end up getting super stressed, running around the city doing errands for myself and people in my community, spending way to much money, and eating way to much food. It's hot as hell, so I can't complain about the bug-free air-conditioned hotel room. Asuncion is like a different world compared to the campo. It's weird to hear people speaking spanish instead of guarani. Today I saw 2 dogs on leashes and almost tripped and fell flat on my face because I was staring so hard. If I even tried to explain the concept of a leash to a campesino, they would probably think I was out of my mind. Mmm and theres coffee here. Yummy, sweet, delicious, caffienated coffee. Yerba is a nice substitute, but coffee is just sooo delicious.

I have to have a halloween costume by tonight for this party. I have no ideas. I'm not good with this kindof stuff. I asked friends for ideas and i got pepper ann, a bean, a german yogurt selling woman, or a pirate. I already am a pirate so that doesn't require a costume. I thought it would be cool to give myself a mullet and be a person from buenos aires. Then I decided I don't want a mullet.

Last week I had a super cool trainee come and visit me for a few days. Unfortunately it rained the whole time, but we still had a good time. Went to a fiesta, drank lots of wine, taught the paraguayans how to play uno... it was a productive week.

I taught my first english class last week. It went, well..? The teacher was pretty excited about it. I think because she gets a break from teaching for an hour. The kids were..well..confused. I never realized what a weird, confusing, ugly language english was until I started speaking another language. And I realized it even more, once I started trying to teach it. I do, I think its ugly, and if that pisses you off, too bad. I think spanish is much nicer, even though I butcher it when I try to speak it. And guarani is just the coolest language ever.

I'm at a loss for words..

until next time.

My Trip to the Circus

My Trip to the Circus
By Sara

It was a hot, sticky, humid evening on Sunday October 8, 2007. I was invited to go to a circus in my community of Colonia Jerovia. As advised, I showed up at my host mom´s house at 7pm, ready to go with her and her daughter, Cintia. I was super excited. Earlier that day at the horse race, I was informed that the circus would have lions and elephants. There were no animals, but thats besides the point. I´ll start from the beginning.
It´s about an hour walk from the house to where we were going, so on the way my sister and mom started talking about the big fiesta next saturday (tomorrow). I must go, I´m told. I´m getting past my prime and it´s vital that I find a boyfriend and marry. Now! And what better place then a fiesta full of underage boys drinking cerveza and dirty old men groping little girls? ¨It´s a streepehr party Sara. Have you heard of streepehr?¨ My sister asks me. I repeat the word a few times and give my sister a puzzled look. She proceedes to explain to mom and me that the ¨streepehrs´will perform ´el baile del cano.´A dance with a cane? Oh a pole dance?! Streepehr = stripper. ¨Cintia?¨I ask, ¨By streepehr, do you mean the girls who dance and take off their clothes?¨ ¨Exactly!¨ She replies while undulating her hips to demonstrate how the streepehrs dance with the poles. She´s 12 by the way. She went on to explain how they won´t take off all of their clothes, like streepehrs in the cities. Just down to the pretty undies. ¨You have to go!¨She insisted. Her mom urging her on. I told her I´d think about it.
We arrived at the circo around 8. Like usual, all the high school boys were hanging out by their moto´s, sippin 40´s, whistling at the girls (including my new pretend boyfriend. He´s a cowboy. My marlboro man. I have this mental picture of him with his cowboy hate on, chewing a blade of grass, leaning against a fence, arm´s hanging over, one foot perched up on the rung, staring off into the distance, thinking deeply; about me of course. We´ve never actually had a convo, but thats not important. I rode in his ox cart once, and drank his gaseosa spiked with cana. I think that means we are an item.) Anyway, we paid our 5 mil entrada fee. Mom demanded 1 mil from me to buy some chicle. Being the tool that I am, I gave it to her. So as I said before, there were no animals. Paraguayans don´t have the best reputation for treating animals kindly, so it was probably for the better.
Ther evening started with a ponytailed man in a sequin jumpsuit demonstrating his trapeze skills. There was your usual fire eather and tight rope walker. There were also 2 clowns that put on a very raunchy comedy act. It was hilarious and I was proud of myself for understanding the majority of what was said. It was dirty. I thought circuses were for children. I made the mistake of getting up in the middle to go pop a squat behind the circo ´tent.´I got immediately called out by one of the clowns. He said something about being my chair, getting in my pants, and asked what he had to do to be my underwear. I didn´t understand the rest, but my sis said it was dirty and wouldn´t tell me. ¨Eike nde revikuape!¨I yelled (stick it up your ass). I was not about to be degraded by a stupid clown, especially in front of my pretend boyfriend.
There was a magician as well. For the end of his act, he intentionally picked the best looking girl from the audience for a teick. She was able to turn a bandanna into a sheer black thong before you could say ´abracadabra!´ It was truly amazing. The magician then had her put the thong on over her pants and model for the audience. Degrading? Not in Paraguay. At the end of the night, the dirty clowns picked 8 little boys out of the audience. The had the boys drop and do push ups, sommersalts, cartwheels... while the clowns smacked them repeatedly with home made paddles. The audience was rolling on the ground laughing. The poor traumitized children were scared out of their minds.
The show finally ended around 11pm. I was tired as hell and not looking forward to the long walk home. My buzz had worn off from the rum and tang mixture I chugged before leaving my house to prepare myself for the circus and calm my social anxiety. Now, all I wanted to do was climb into my bed and sleep. I made it home around midnigt, and thats exactly what I did. Even though my sheets were still wet from washing them that afternoon because my dog pissed in my bed, I was able to pass out and sleep like a rock.
And thats my trip to the circus in a nutshell.

P.S.

I left out the best part! The other day I got an eraser lodged up my nose. Good think Paraguay has conditioned me well in the art of blowing the perfect snot rocket. I got that sucker out of there in no time flat. How did I manage to get it up there you ask? I´ll leave that up to the imagination

fear the joventud

Well the one year mark came and went last week, just like any other day. I thought about baking a cake to celebrate, as my mother had suggested, but then I decided not to, because I would probably have eaten the whole thing in one sitting, making excuses after each bite like, ´I haven´t eaten cake in so long,´or ´It´s my one yr anniversary in Py so it´s technically a holiday.´Crap like that. I decided to make cinnamon raisin bread instead. I´ve never made bread before. Needless to say, It didn´t rise, and therefore came out of the oven the same way it went in. Just hotter. I couldn´t let the precious raisins go to waste, so I decided to flatten the dough and cook it on the stove like a pancake. I even ended up eating it with syrup like a pancake. And, let me tell you, it was delicious. I didn´t want to be greedy, so I shared with my puppies as well. For dinner I celebrated with mojitos. yum.

So far this week I´ve killed 2 chagas bugs in my house. These bugs carry the chagas disease and if they bite you, you will have it, but you won´t know you have it until you die 30 years later. I´m thinking about getting my house sprayed, so I don´t fear death every time I go to sleep at night. I already have a debilitating fear of snakes and spiders. Every time I walk the path to my letrine with overgrown with grass as tall as me, i wait the infamous 7 minute snake to jump out and bite me and I die. Its name comes from the fact that it bites you, and 7 minutes later you die. I picture them comming in my house at night (because thats happened before) and waiting at the foot of my bed for me to wake up and then eat me. Spider´s too. Giant tarantulas. I know they are out to get me. They hide in my sneakers and wait to bite my feet. Good thing I only wear flip flops. If I decide to e.t. (early terminate), it will be because of my fear of these bichos. I´m glad I got that off my chest. I´ve never told anyone that before. Maybe now since I faced my fear, I won´t be scared anymore... Bullshit. I can feel spiders crawling all over my body right now.

The high school wants me to start teaching english. I don´t want to. I do not see the point. I don´t know how to teach. As soon as I leave they will forget everything I have taught them (kinda of like when I took spanish in high school). Maybe i´m negative, maybe its true, or maybe i´m just terrified of teaching a classroom of high school kids, when I can hardly even speak their language. High schoolers are mean. I cried when a 7 year old called me ugly, I don´t think I have the balls to face the joventud. Fear the colegio. Thats my motto. That´s why I´ve succesfully avoided it for the last 9 months in site. Accept on ¨Dia de los Ninos,¨ yes, the kids have a national holiday. There was a blowup slide at the colegio. I wouldn´t have missed it for the world. Of course I didn´t end up going on it. One poor chubby girl went down, and they made everyone clear away from the slide, while everyone laughed as she tried to slide down, but kindof just stuck to it. I don´t know, maybe they thought it was gonna pop? She laughed. I wanted to cry for her. People can be so mean. I wondered what they would have done if the giant american wanted to attempt the slide aka globo loco. ´Ani ejupi la globo loco, sarita! Nde kyraiterei! Embokaputa!!!´ That´s what they would have said.