Waiting

We've been in our house 2 1/2 weeks and we're still waiting....Waiting for the Cable/Internet to get hooked up. Waiting for the air shipment to get to our house (it arrived in the country on July 5th from what we've been told). Waiting for the pool people to arrive and start working on fixing the tiles (since we believe it will be hot before we know it).

It's a lesson in patience! And we are hopeful - the Cable/Internet is supposed to be hooked up on Thursday. And our air shipment should get to our house before the end of the week.

Now, our boat shipment, that's another story. It is out in the water approaching Buenos Aires. Earlier in the month there was a strike of the dock workers, so I'm hoping that by the time ours gets there the strike will be over and the backlog cleared up.

At the end of last week we had a little scare about our stuff that WASN'T supposed to leave VA. John received a series of e-mails that led him to believe it was on it's way here. We had been advised to not send anything here that we would be very sad to lose, so there were many things that we decided to send to long term storage for safe keeping, never dreaming that they could be accidentally shipped to post! Well, it seems that our storage items were perhaps being prepared for shipment, but that they were indeed still at the warehouse in VA. A big relief if that's the case.

It's COLD!

Brrr! Today and yesterday were definitely the winter weather that our friend here warned us about. It got up to about 51 degrees today (Fahrenheit that is!), which maybe doesn't sound too cold, but our warm coats haven't arrived yet, and the houses are not built for this weather. Neither is the mall! We went there yesterday on an errand, and walked into a very cold building. One night last week it got down to 3 degrees Celsius, which is hopefully as cold as it will get.

Having said all that, we are very thankful that we have heaters in all the rooms (except the bathrooms). We are thinking of the many people in this country do not have any significant heat in their houses or hot water.

What if they won?

We where very happy to be here for Paraguay's final showing at the World Cup. We thought about going over to our friends' church to see it (they were playing it on a big screen), but decided if Paraguay won it might be pretty hard to get back to our hotel. So, we went over to the Mall where there was a book fair and watched the first half there - they had several TV's set up so the employees could all watch. We watched the second half in the hotel lobby, where the employees again were all watching. I thought that Paraguay had a great game, and it would have been great to see the country after a win. Here's a little clip of what how much celebrating there was even after a loss!



That was after the Paraguayan/Spain game. Earlier in the day we heard lots of car horns and fireworks after Germany beat Argentina. I'm not sure if that was because there are so many Germans here cheering them on, or if the Paraguayans were happy to see Argentina defeated....During all of the games of the World Cup the streets were pretty much deserted (which is certainly not the case the rest of the time). It was great to be in Latin America during a World Cup year.

Why we're here

I realized after sending a massive e-mail out today that some of you may not have any idea why we are in Paraguay and others may still be wondering even if you had heard the news. Last September John started a new job with US-AID which is a US government relief and development organization that works in the "third" world (I don't think they actually use that term any more, but I'm not sure what the correct one is).

The process involved in getting to this first "post" was a long one. John actually applied for the job in November of 2008, not too long after we arrived back in the US from Costa Rica. After a long interview process he was offered a position last summer and we moved to the DC area for him to go through training, including some more Spanish training. We found out last October that we would be coming to Paraguay but did not actually arrive until July 1st. In the meantime we enjoyed a year in the DC area while I continued to go back to WV with the girls once a month to play in the Symphony there.

Since this is his first post, we will be here for two years. Sometime during the second year he will bid on his next post, which will most likely be a longer post (as I understand it, usually four years). My role will evolve as we get settled here - at the moment I seem to have daily appointments just getting everything set up. Today it was the maintenance guy from the embassy who came to show me things like how to manually open the garage door when the power goes out and how to exchange the gas tank for the oven/stove when it runs out! Then the plumber came to fix a leaky faucet, adjust the temperature in a shower and fix a leaky shower. The house was really in good shape when we got here, but some of the things just needed to be tested out by the tenants (us!).

New Home!

We got into our new house last Friday! There have been an amazing amount of little things that need to be taken care of, so we are still getting settled. Here's an example: Today I came back in from an errand and found that one of the door handles to the house wouldn't open. I went outside and then the girls couldn't get the keys to the porch door to work! Fortunately the embassy sent someone over this afternoon to fix it. While he was out getting a part fixed, the door handle in our bedroom fell off! I think that they were in a hurry to get the house ready for us last week.

We are still working on getting the internet set up, so it will be a while before I can post some other details of our move, but I hope to soon!

New Blog

Many of you who knew us when we lived in Costa Rica asked if I'd be doing another blog to record our experiences on this new adventure in our lives, and here it is! I hope I'll be able to keep it up to date during our two years here. Please feel free to make comments - it encourages me when I know people are reading:). I also imported our old blog here so that you can read our overseas history if you'd like to.

We arrived in Paraguay on Thursday, July 1st after a long, but happily uneventful trip. So far, our impressions of Paraguay have been incredibly favorable. It helps that we have experienced some of the most beautiful weather that the country has - low 80's, sunny and low humidity. Today is the first cloudy day (but still pleasant!).

It also helps that we have friends here - the Sappia family whom we met in Costa Rica - who graciously invited us over to dinner our first night here even though they had just gotten back (with their 4 kids) from vacation a couple of hours earlier. Other people from the US community have been welcoming and helpful as well.

Our house is not ready for us yet, so we have been staying in a lovely hotel. For me, this is a helpful transition because I don't have to cook! But we have seen our house and at least the grown ups are VERY happy with it. So we look forward to moving in - hopefully in a couple of days. Until then, we are having a sort of mini-vacation while trying to learn our way around, getting some tasks taken care of (Abigail needs new glasses), and getting our Spanish back in shape.

Post log #3 Culture Day - El Turno

Every semester the Spanish Language Institute holds a Culture Day for the adult students in place of going to classes. While we enjoyed them all – it was nice to have a break from classes and learn more about the culture – I think the last one we had was our favorite. Our teachers worked hard planning the day so that we could experience what is known as a “Turno”. These are carnival like festivals that are held in towns throughout Costa Rica. You can read more about the history at this link http://www.interculturacostarica.com/news/articles/mascarada.php.

For the first part of the day we played various carnival type games including Bingo, Ring Toss and Dart Throws. Then we had a guest speaker who makes the masks used in a Turno. The most fun was that after his talk on how they are made, a group of Ticos arrived dressed in the masks and playing instruments. They paraded through the school and down to Sojourn Academy where our kids went to school. It was an awesome experience and I'm going to try to post a video on YouTube so you can see for yourselves what it was like. (Anyone who has experience with that can send your advice - so far I've struck out on how to do it!

More photos at our shutterfly website: http://lafamiliamacy.shutterfly.com/