Thanksgiving... What Im thankful for..

So that Thanksgiving celebration I was super excited about, didnt exactly turn out as planned. And I feel even worse for Carin than I felt for making her sleep in my bug infested house and cuddle with my under my ripped mosquito net. Friday at 730am we walk to the bus stop from my site to catch the 8am bus to take us directly to Encarnacion to the Peace Corps Thanksgiving weekend binge drinking good food eating fiesta. As we are waiting, we cant stop discussing how excited we are for the big thanksgiving fiest that will be served for dinner tonight. I especially cant wait to try the tofurky. Needless to say, by 930am we decide the bus is not going to show up. No reason for it. But the bus doesnt come. OK fine, we will go back to my house make some lunch (grilled cheese and oreo milkshakes) and then we will walk back in this blistering heat to the bus stop again and take the noon bus to Yuty, a city 1.5hrs south of me that will have buses to encarnacion. So the bus comes. Halfway to Yuty we are the only people left on the bus, and the bus drivers decide we are not worth driving all the way to town. So we get kicked off at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. Surrounded by nothing. Just a gas station with a couple of toothless guys, on a long dirt road. We wait. Work on the Star crossword puzzle, and about 2 hours later a bus shows up and takes us to yuty. We arrive around 4 and learn that there is a 430 bus to encarnacion. Thats good. We might get to encarn late tonight, but we text numerous people to make sure they save us leftover thanksgiving dinner. All of a sudden its cloudy. wouldnt it be funny if it started pouring and the bus didnt go? Carin and I joke. Then it starts to pour. The bus arrives and says its not going to go because the roads are not paved and the mud is just treachorous. Around 5, a local bus says its going south towards encarn to san pedro. Sweet lets try it. We get about 3 kilometers out of yuty before we get stuck in the mud and try to drive back to yuty backwards. Apparently thats hard in a bus and we veer off the road and the bus lands in a swamp, almost on its side. Carin and I cant wait any longer. The bus is stuck. We get out and decide to walk back to yuty. Luckily a pick up truck passes and gives us a lift to a sketchy ass motel. We stay there, enjoy a dinner of stringy asado, mandioca, and potato salad with to much mayo. Not exactly the dinner I was looking forward too. The next morning we wake up early to catch the 6am bus to encarn. It has rained during the night, but we are determined to get there. A little after 6 the bus shows up to the terminal, ready to go to encarn, but a little unsure about how we are going to make it there on the muddy ass road. 10 minutes out of town we are once again stuck in the mud, and the bus breaks down. 2.5 hours later, another bus shows up and pushes us from behind to jump start us. The get stuck in the mud to, as well as another bus behind them, 2 semis, and a couple autos. To the rescue arrives a giant caterpillar tractor to tow us all out. We get towed out and stuck again, and towed out again. We drive for a few hours, actually slide in the mud for a few hours, and it starts to rain again. Perfect. FINALLY we hit pavement. It is now probably noon. We arrive in encarn around 2. Starved and dehyndrated. We take a taxi to the hotel because we cant stand to be on a bus a minute longer. We get there. Some people are happy to see us. Most are to hungover to care. We head straight to the lunch buffet, and shove some leftover food in our face (no more thanksgiving dinner though). We find our hotel room and put are bags down. We have not put any liquids in our bodies all day, with fear that we may have to pee on the bus, so of course its a good idea when I come back downstairs and the first thing handed to me is vodka and sprite. It was yummy, but I was feeling beer. I go and get carin and myself a nice cold brahma to wet the pallete. Shortly after we are signed up for beer pong. Amazingly, we win three games in a row and make it to the finals, where we lose. Thank God. I take a shower and chug some water and get ready for dinner and round two. Its too bad the weather was so ugly, because this hotel was like a tropical paradise. Built on a hill, surrounded by forests and exotic plants, trees, flowers, and birds. 4 huge pools, and a pretty siamese cat. Anyway, after my shower I go downstairs and catch the end of the peace corps olympics. Then its dinner time. Drink more time. And in the end, an amazing volunteer talent show. Kudos to Jill the fire dancer who had a well deserved victory. It was awesome. There were a lot of other amazing talents, but all I could focus on was the migraine that was forming in my head. Once I was at the point that I was in so much pain I was crying, I decided it was bed time, but could not find my roomate with the room key. Finally, the key was located, I went up to my room, missing the results of the talent show, threw up dinner because my migraine made me do it, and went to bed. Sunday morning was beautiful and sunny. Had breakfast, hung out, had lunch, and took the bus that peace corp rented back to asuncion. I could not get back to my site on the muddy roads because it had rained all day and into the evening yesterday. So here I am in Asuncion. I was not planning on comming here, but I felt better being stuck here, than in Encarnacion, a city I know nothing about. Now I am going to eat lunch and go back to site. With my luck it will start raining on the way and I will get stuck some where else. It was a long stressful crazy ass weekend but carin and i made the best of our trip and had a great time once we finally arrived. I have great pics that I took to document the viaje. The videos of us on the bus driving backwards into a ditch are extremely amusing. One day when I actually remember to bring my usb cord to the city I will post them. But until then, Ill just keep you in suspense...

On a lighter note

I´m in Caazapa today doing some shopping. Carin is on her way and I am super excited. She´s staying at my house tonight and tomorrow we are going to the peace corps three day long thanksgiving hotel swimming eating drinking fiesta spectacular. It should be fun. Poor Carin doesn´t know what she´s in for once she gets to my site. Lot´s of horny adolescent boys (and married men) yelling obscenities and staring long and hard (but where in Paraguay doesn´t that happen, right?), and my house. Oh my poor excuse for a house. A ´glorified shack´ as my nearest american neighbor calls it. We will be snuggled tight under my mosquito net to avoid the masses of mosquitos, giant beetles, moths, gnats, and other bugs that I cant name, that plague my house every night. At least its not supposed to rain. Then the poor thing would get rained on in her sleep as well. Every day my neighbor tells me he is going to fix my roof, but i´m still waiting.
Grandma came back from buenos aires a few days ago and brought her husband ( who hasnt been to paraguay in 25 years) with her. I have grandma as my neighbor again and I am so happy! I don´t understand a work grandpa says over his heavy agrgentinian accent, but I just nod and smile and read his medicinal herb magazines with him. He´s totally into that stuff which is really interesting to me as well. I´m learning a lot about natural medicine from his books (not so much him because I don´t understand him when he is talking.) I did understand his yesterday when he told me that it it necessary to wash apples with bleach. I thought that was odd.

Alert! Must read! Your life may depend on it!

So last week it rained, A LOT. For a few minutes in the late afternoon, the sun came out and it started to rain again. Inevitably, there was a rainbow. There were two in fact. Huge and brilliant. I went outside in my yard to take pictures of the spectacular sight, when out of nowhere, the neightbors came running over to my house yelling something about the rainbow. ¨What did you say?¨I asked. ¨I didn´t understand. But it sounded like you said the rainbow was going to eat me.¨ They explained to me that, yes, that is what they said. Have I never seen a rainbow before? and was I not aware that rainbows eat people? I laughed and laughed some more. You are all crazy, I told the kids. Until mom from next door came outside as well and verified for them. Rainbows eat people, especially if you are in the water. They like to suck the people up from the water and swallow them like aspirins. I´m not sure if this is only in Paraguay, or if it is all over the world, but please pass this information on to you friends and family. Make it into a chain letter if necessary. They may look cute and innocent, but rainbows are actually deadly forces that will eat you. So please, next time you see one, do not go outside, and whatever you do , do not go in the water! Hide! and thank me and my paraguayan friends for saving your life.

wasting away again in mojitoville

Well, I´m in Caazapa this morning to pick up some groceries. I have been living on powedered milk and crackers with jelly since I returned from Asuncion last week, and so I thought it would be a good idea to get off my lazy terere drinking campo ass, and come do some shopping. I was also happy to see a pile of letters for me at the post office. Five from my mom, plus a package, and 1 from my uncle. Thanks mommy, I can always count on you to make my post office experience a pleasant one.

It´s been cold these past few mornings. Really cold. And lucky for me I´ve had to wake up extra early every day this week, and have been able to bask in the freezingness. Monday to teach english at the escuela (Only to get there and find out there was no class because the students have exams. Thanks for telling me. Thats PY). Tuesday to go to Buena Vista with my contact to get a document authorized for the women´s commitee, and today to come to Caazapa for my shopping and to bring our pedido for a chicken project to the governor´s office. Tomorrow I can sleep in.

I have a date to drink terere with my pretend cowboy boyfriend this afternoon. He probably won´t come because he´s scared of me and only talks to me we he´s drunk, which I guess is ok. At least I know that he can talk.

Off to the grocery store, I have run out of rum and would love a mojito. I have to find a use for all the mint growing in my yard, right? mmm and they are just soo yummy. I find I have more patience for the children always hanging out at my house after 1 mojito, or 2...