Paraguayan Bicentennial

It is very cool that we are here for the Paraguayan Bicentennial.  There are two official dates - today is the day that Paraguay declared independence and tomorrow is the day it is officially celebrated.  It also happens to be Mother's Day (which is on a fixed date here - not always a Sunday).

We hope to go to a parade of nations later this afternoon - assuming that the rain stops.  It has been sunny and hot all week, but a storm rolled through this morning and brought in a cold front.  That should actually make going to a parade more enjoyable, as long as the rain stays away (it looks like the sun's trying to come out).

Yesterday the girls and I went to a folk dance celebration at the American School.  We had fun seeing the kids dance - I think we know someone in every grade (it was just elementary).  Here's a video of the group that several of Abigail's friends are in:

 

And a couple of photos of some kids in their outfits: 

Many of the buildings are decorated with banners and it is quite lovely to drive around and see them.  If you look at this building behind the trees you'll get an idea of what we see:

 Happy 200th Independence Day Paraguay!!!

Divas de la Guitarra

Wow, it's been a long time since I've done an entry here.  We've had lots of things going on, but this week was so inspiring I just had to write a post.

This month is the Bicentennial celebration for Paraguay.  While that in itself is pretty cool, this week the US Embassy cosponsored a festival of guitar performances that featured four female soloists.  One of them is Sharon Isbin, who soloed with us at the WVSO quite a number of years ago.  I was very impressed then and bought some of her CD's - one of which has had a lot of play time at our house (Journey to the Amazon in case you want to check it out).  So, when John and I heard she was performing we were very excited.  We almost missed out because we didn't get tickets early enough, but fortunately John regularly plays tennis with someone who was able to get us tickets.

As we were asking about tickets, I realized that the festival was actually two nights of concerts, with soloists from China, Croatia and a native Paraguaya in addition to Sharon Isbin.  We were able to go to both nights of concerts, which were fantastic.  The organizer of the festival was a young local lawyer who works in the government here, but is also a guitarist.  She brought her own Paraguayan flair to the event which you can get a glimpse of in this photo:

The staging and lighting were incredible!  Part of the drapery is representative of the local Paraguayan lace, Nanduti.  The first night of concerts featured Xuefei Yang and Ana Vidovic.  One of the things that I was surprised about was the fact that people were taking flash photographs and recording the concert all over the place!  Fortunately, a little while into the concert the hostess came out and asked the audience to stop the flash photography.  The second night, all photography and recording was prohibited, with a warning of being escorted out!  (Although there was still some of both going on).

A big bonus of this life is that I occasionally get to do something really cool.  At our recent monthly luncheon I was talking to the Ambassador about this concert and mentioned that I had actually performed with Sharon Isbin.  She (the Ambassador) had just met the soloists and was trying to put together a luncheon.  So, I got an invitation!  It was a lovely event at her house and I really enjoyed listening to Sharon talk about some of her musical experiences.

  

During the luncheon someone asked if Sharon had heard the Paraguayan harp, which she hadn't.  I have gotten to know a local harpist who has put out several recordings of his own, and knew that he was playing at lunch time at La Mission (the hotel we stayed at when we first arrived).  The Ambassador called the hotel and the owner (whom she knows) said that Kike Pedersen was still there and would wait if Sharon wanted to go over.  I went over to La Mision with them and enjoyed some more music and impromptu jamming (as well as a little dessert!):

 

Sharon Isbin and the owner of La Mission 

  

Daiana Ferreira Da Costa (the Artistic Director for the Festival), Sharon Isbin, Kike Pedersen and the Chefs from La Mission

It was a day in Paraguay that I will remember!

Happenings at "Mi Esperanza"

We have been attending a local church called Mi Esperanza which was started by people that went to the same language school as we did in Costa Rica.  So, while church is in Spanish, there are a few Americans who regularly attend (in addition to the missionaries who are there as pastors, some of the teachers from the Christian Academy where the girls took art and PE class attend). 

As we get to know people and our Spanish improves we are becoming a part of the church.  Arianna was the first to really have an official role - as Sunday School teacher for the preschool children.  Then I was asked to join the rotation of Sunday School teachers for the elementary kids (K - 6), and I taught my first class (in Spanish!) a couple of weeks ago.  The kids were very well behaved, and although I couldn't always understand them, I think they understood me!

Last Sunday our regular worship leaders were away at a teen camp (remember it's summer here!), so we were asked to provide some music for the service.  It turned out that we led three songs at the beginning of the service, with Arianna singing (in Spanish of course), and then we played two hymns with everyone on instruments.  It was a blessing to me to be able to play with my whole family!  I think the only other time that has happened was on a group Suzuki concert that we did in WV, when John was playing the cello:).  This is the first time he has had his guitar out in public since Abigail was a newborn!

Next up on the schedule for events at church is a VBS (Vacation Bible School - called Colonia here).  We will be including some English instruction in the camp and it will be a kick-off event for some English classes that will be starting in the near future.  The camp is in the afternoons, so it will be just be us three girls participating, but John will be part of the ESL classes.  He taught ESL in Costa Rica and really enjoyed it.

Water Pressure!

When we first moved to our house, we noticed that the water pressure was annoyingly low during the day time hours.  We adjusted our showering schedules to live with it, and just went about our lives that way. 

While we were in the US, there was another embassy family that stayed in our house for a little bit.  Well, apparently while they were here, our annoying water pressure problem got much worse and there were much longer periods where there was NO water (at least upstairs - I think there was always some downstairs).  One of our good friends was helping with the house, and she put in the work order and really fought to get a solution to the problem, so that we'd have water when we got back to Paraguay (people are really helpful in the embassy community).

When we got home, the water pressure was much like what we had experienced earlier.  So, when the "solution" arrived - a 5 foot bright blue tank that they were going to put right in our front yard and dig across our nice paved stone driveway to connect it to the pipes - we were less than thrilled.  However, as the days progressed, the water situation again worsened.  We knew something had to be done, so we had a few discussions with the embassy engineer and the company that they had contracted to do the work.  We also went over to another embassy house that had a buried tank in their front yard to see what that might look like.

In the end, they were able to bury the tank ALL the way (at first they said it would be 2/3 of the way) and they agreed to do landscaping around it and paint the top green.  They also found out that there was another water source that they could access, so that they didn't have to dig a trench across the driveway (which you know would not ever look as good again!!).

I wish I had taken a photo of the tank when it was sitting in our front yard, but here are some photos of the work as it stands now:

 This is the tank that holds the extra water.

 This is the pump that gives us the pressure.

 I'm not sure what this thing is for!!

 Lovely bright blue!

 They dug the hole by hand and then bricked it in.  Mind you, it was 99 degrees for most of last week, with a heat index of about 113. 

They are filling around the tank with sand.  They need to finish that and put a fence around it so that no little children are tempted to jump on it.  And then the landscaper will come back, and we're actually going to have landscaping!!!  I'm very excited about this because there is NO landscaping at the house and it looks really boring the way it currently is.  So, in the end, it may be better than what we started with.  But the best part is that we have water pressure!  I'm going to go take a shower:).

Settled in again and Happy New Year!

Well, it's been a really long time since I've posted here.  We were in the US for most of the month of December and were happy to reconnect with many friends and family (though we were sorry we couldn't catch up with everyone!!!)  John did some training for work in DC for his first two weeks in the US, which gave us girls the time to go to WV and enjoy being there for the Holiday Pops concert.

We had a wonderful time being with family in PA and MA and even got to experience the beginning of the "long winter" that the northeast is experiencing!  I think the girls would have enjoyed a little bit more, but John and I have certainly not been sorry to miss the winter.  We had enough of it the year before in DC!

We arrived back in Paraguay on December 31st in the late afternoon.  It was rainy and not hot - the not hot part was certainly appreciated when we got back!  We had been invited to go ring in the New Year and watch the fireworks over Asuncion, but we just weren't sure about it when we saw all the rain and felt how tired we were.  Well, we decided to go for "just a bit" (it's 2 hours ahead here, so midnight felt like 10.  BUT, John and I had hardly slept on the overnight flight.)  All 4 of us had such a great time that we couldn't help but stay for the big moment, and we were glad we did!

I'm not sure if you can get the idea from these videos, but fireworks were going off all evening all over the city.  As midnight approached, we went up to the roof of our friends apartment building.  The panoramic view was really quite spectacular, and it was a New Year's Eve that we will long remember!

McDonald's

It always amuses me how important things like McDonald's are to some North Americans when they live in other countries.  We don't go to McDonald's in the US unless we're traveling, so we don't often think about going when we're staying put like we are here.  However, last night we were out past dinner time and didn't really have a plan for dinner (we went to a multi-church celebration that we ended up leaving before they served the food because it was getting late).  So, we discussed options for dinner and when McDonald's was mentioned, the girls jumped on it.

We told them to be careful about what to expect (the last time we were served hamburgers at an event they came with ham on them - and you never know what to expect in McDonald's in another country).  We pulled in around 8 pm on Sunday evening and the place was packed.  There was a separate room for ordering and eating at the McCafe.  The line wasn't too long, but boy was it noisy!!  The girls picked out what looked to be the only empty table in the dining room and it was right next to the line.  Fortunately, John scouted around and found a nice outside eating area.  The temperature was perfect for eating outside and it was much more peaceful - despite the fact that it was close to a fairly busy road.

The food was pretty standard McDonald's and we were all much happier after getting something in our stomachs two hours after our normal dinner time.  And the bill was about $10 (2 meal combos, 2 small burgers and 2 more drinks).   All in all I'd say it was a better experience than our meal at Friday's.  I won't mind if we don't go back there again for the rest of time here.  One last fun fact about "American" and fast food - Burger King and McDonald's deliver here! 

Life without a car

As you may recall me saying earlier, I was very excited when our car arrived with our household goods on Sept. 8th.  It was great to feel like we could get places without walking or taking a taxi.  Unfortunately, not too long after our car arrived, we started to notice that the transmission was slipping.  Without going into the whole long story, it turned out that the problem was actually a computer that runs the transmission and not the transmission itself.

One of the reasons that we decided to bring a Toyota here instead of a Honda was that there was a big Toyota dealer.  Well, the Toyotas that they sell here are different, and we had to order the part from the US.  There are about 3 other long stories I could tell here, but I started thinking about something else during all of this, as I was feeling sorry for myself about not having a car to drive. (We might damage the transmission if we drive it with the computer that doesn't work, so we're trying not to use it).  As we were pulling up to church in a taxi, I realized that there's no parking lot at church.  Because the only people at church who have a car are the American missionaries and us.  I started wondering how many people in the world go through all of life without the luxury of a car (or of being able to afford a taxi).  So, it helped me to be thankful for the many times in life that I can just hop in my car and go where I want to.

Our part arrived from the US yesterday and the gentleman from the shop just came to pick up our car (how's that for service?).  So, I'm hoping that very soon our car will be functioning again and we can get back to where we were in the process of adjusting to life in Paraguay.  One good thing that came out of all of this was that I did finally use the bus a few times.  I used it all the time in Costa Rica, but hadn't gotten around to it here.  It's not bad during the day - but they get pretty crowded at rush hour.  And I can't imagine what they're like when it's 100-120 out (no air conditioning!).