my very own casa de empeños

Not only am I known here in my little as an ice seller, an egg vender, a photgrapher, and a money lender. A garden planter, a soap maker, a jewelry giver, and a banana bread maker (and apperently a nursery rhymer too), but now my house has officially been converted into a pawn . Yesterday a woman come to me with a brand new DVD player and a proposition. Her son needed to catch the noon bus headed to Asuncion, and it was not 11:45am. He needed 50mil for his bus ticket but didn´t have a dime. They did indeed have a nice new shiny DVD player, complete with remote, mp3 player, and 2 microphone input jacks for karaoke. Her offer was to let me hold onto the DVD player as an ´empeño´ (a pawn) if she could borrow the money until Friday. At first, I didn´t understand the question, and I thought that she wanted me to pawn it for her. Then I thought that she was just trying to sell the thing to me. ¨What am I going to do with a DVD player when I don´t even have a t.v?¨I asked her. She explained again and I finally understood. I reluctantly accepted the offer. Her son was going to miss the bus if I hesitated any longer. I gave her to 50mil and took the DVD player (which is now being used as a really short coffee table). At least I have some sort of collateral to guarantee that I get my money back. If not, I got a new DVD player for $10, that is no use to me in my televisionless house, but it works very nicely as a table to hold my trashy magazines and yoga books nonetheless.
Yoga. Thank god for it. I don´t think I would have survived this mornings mandioca truck trip to caazapa if I hadn´t been practicing my breathing and using yoga to calm and sooth my nerves. The truck arrived around 4am and was practically empty when I boarded ( a good sign), but kept stopping all through my community to pick up passengers (all which had at least 3 giant bags of mandioca; about 150 pounds each; to load into the truck). By the time we got out of my community and were on the road, We were all piled up so high on bags of mandioca, that our heads were touching the ceiling, yet somehow people still managed to step on me. I literally had a really pointy piece of mandioca sticking straight up my ass for the 3 hour trip. The 3 hour trip that usually takes 1 hour on a bus, but we were so heavily sardine packed into this truck, it couldn´t go faster than a snails pace. A poor little women next to me was sitting on a sideways bag of mandio and ended up in my lap for the second half of the ride. I tried to nap but If I wasn´t holding on the the side of the truck for dear life, I would fall inbetween the two bags I was sitting on, or bounce and hit my head on the ceiling. I closed my eyes, and took deep breaths. I did not get claustrophobic or angry at the woman next to me grinding her heel into my bare foot. Yeah I totally meditated and achieved om. No that´s not true. It was 4am in the morning and I was to tired to give a crap about anything. When the sun came up around 6, I lifted up the flap of fabric that hangs down as the roof to look outside. Aside from all the dust from the dirt road that hasn´t seen rain in way to long, it was beautiful. The red sun, the pink and orange clouds, the clouds of mist rising off the rivers, all types of exotic birds taking flight, outlines of palm trees, and the smell of the kids farting behind me. That instant made the trip all worth while.
And I am extra tired today from getting only 3 hours of sleep. I was all ready in bed with my book by 8pm, prepared to get a good nights sleep because I had to wake up at 330am today, when I get a text from my stalker (the same cowboy that I thought was so cute a few months ago). ¨I´m comming to your house¨ says he. ¨No.¨Say I. ¨I´m drunk and I´m crazy and I´m comming to your house.¨ Bullshit I think, and ignore him like I have been for the last 3 months, even when I get 30 missed call a night. 30 minutes later, ready to retire I hear a noise outside, but think its my dog. Its behind my house. Maybe its a toad? Then it starts knocking on my walls. ¨Toads don´t knock.¨I think to myself. Then it starts talking. ¨Frog´s definately don´t talk.¨ I think again. I ignore it and don´t move, until I realize my door is unlocked. He hears me get up. I don´t know what to do so I start yelling ¨Leave my house! Go away ! Your crazy!¨ My neighbors on both sides of me are outside bathing, talking, dining, but no one acknowledges my screams. Weird. He won´t leave. I grab my blow horn. ¨only to be used in case of emergencies.¨ Stressed to the people of my community by my boss that ¨if you ever hear this noise, there is an emergency and you need to come immediately.¨ I put the horn against the wall where the psycho is whispering and press on it hard. ¨a la puta!¨screams he. Still no neighbors come running. I wait in silence. My phone starts ringing. and ringing. Finally I answer to make sure he left. He did. I hang up. Calls keep comming. Drunken angry voicemail. Yelling. Finally I start answering my phone and letting him yell and drunken unintelligable guarani Jibberish. Paraguayans never have more than a couple mils worth of minutes on their phones, and his was bound to run out soon. He kept calling, yelling. ¨I´m telling the neighbors.¨I say because I can´t think of anything cooler to do than to threaten to tattle. He starts talking shit about my neighbors. Finally the phone cuts off and the calls stop. Victory! He has run out of minutes! Now I have to pee. What if hes waiting outside? I pee in a bucket, as instructed by a fellow volunteer who will remain anonomous. Get in bed. Toss and turn until midnight. Wake up every hour until my alarm goes off at 320. Get dressed. Get back in bed and doze until I hear the trusty old mandioca truck puttering up the road. And now I am here. tired. hot. out of money in my bank account. nothing at the post office. and have 4 hours left here until I have to get back on the truck home, and all I really need to do is buy cat food.

lets talk about poop baby

I'm in Asuncion for superbowl weekend and Friday was spent in Villarica for Carnival. I am supposed to leave today to go back to site, but am easily influenced and will be heading back tomorrow. Last night a bunch of volunteers watched to super bowl and hooter's. Yes very Paraguayan. I almost felt like I was back in America. Football, Buffalo wings, Hooter's, oh yeah and there were hula hoops present as well.

Chipa is still in heat, and she finally got so sick of getting raped repeatedly on a daily basis, that she came to me for help. Lauren (a fellow volunteer and basically my new roomate; shes in the picture with me in a moo-moo. Thats right we bought moo-moo's and you are jealous) and I decided to put a pair of my underwear on my dog to protect her. We were smart as to cut a hole for the tail, but neglected to remember that dogs are not potty trained and cannot pull down their underwear when they have to poop. The next morning chipa still had on her pretty pink undies, but she brought me a steaming poopy surprise as well. I had poop stained underwear in my front yard for about 4 days until i finally swept it to the side of the house, where it will probably remain for eternity, or until a little kid finds it and tells everyone that the americana pooped her pants and left her dirty underwear outside.
Carnival in Villarica was a blast. Carnival is pretty much the Mardi Gras of South America. It's biggest in Rio de Janiero, Brasil, but Paraguay knows how to party too. It's basically a big parade with lots of feathers and pasties, lots of foam being sprayed, and lots of beer being dranken. We were to cheap to pay for the bleacher seats so we bought the 10 mil tickets and stood a long the street to watch. We couldn't see soo well through all the people, but Carin and I were lucky enough to find a ledge on the side of a building that we climbed and sat on. It was fun. I got foam sprayed in my eyes numerous times and it hurt. I slapped a paraguayan for that but that only provoked him more. Don't slap Paraguayans if you don't want foam sprayed in your eyes.