Another month begins...Marzo

Last Sunday, a new church opened for our neighborhood and one other to share. It was packed…and hot. Despite the heat and me not feeling well, I’m glad we got to see it. Plus, we met a priest from the Philippines that spoke English! It was nice to speak in my native language, but definitely felt weird, and we’ve only been here a little over two weeks. I’m so used to Caitlin being the only person I can talk to in English (although we try to talk in Spanish as much as possible) that it almost felt wrong.

View of the church from the balcony.

View of the church from the main level.

This week, like the past one, has been filled with cleaning and preparation for the opening of the jardín, the start of the oratorio (a get together for kids in our neighborhood with songs, games and a little bit of catechism on Saturday afternoons) as well as the Centro de Salud. It has been a little slower than last week due to the rain. Because walking is many people's mode of transportation, if it’s a hard rain things like our literacy classes or meetings sometimes get pushed back or rescheduled for a better day. So we painted tables, make/hung up signs and decorations, painted walls and cleaned up water. We’ve become squeegee experts! In Paraguay a lot of floors are made of tile, and to get rid of extra water you squeegee.

View of one of the city streets in Encarnacion.

Our first bus ride!

Walking home in the rain.

My feet after walking.

Kids playing in the puddles after a long rain.

Street view of Encarnacion.

Shop in Encarnacion.

Saturday nights are movie nights, and the past Saturday we watched Karol, a film on the life of John Paul II. It’s a two part film, and we watched the first part about his life up until he became Pope. So interesting!  If you haven’t seen it, I would definitely recommend it. I actually didn’t know much about his life before watching, and without a doubt it has motivated me to learn more. 

La Professora

One of my goals for this experience is to learn about the culture of Paraguay. To help us learn, the sisters had a professor come to our house and spend a few hours with us talking about the history, the mixing of the native and Spanish cultures, and the culture and issues today. It was extremely interesting to hear about the history and present and to get a better idea of what’s behind the people we’re working with. What’s even better, is that I actually understood almost all of it! It was definitely good moment in my constant journey of ups and downs while learning Spanish. 

We baked a cake!

Thursday we had our first Paraguay baking experience! In honor of St. Magdalene’s birthday the sisters asked Caitlin and I to bake a cake. I love baking sweets, so it felt great to be able to make something here that was familiar to us, like a chocolate cake. However, some of the ingredients and methods for baking happen to be little different, which provided for an interesting turnout for our first attempt. Both Caitlin and I have a ton of recipes (I even planned on bringing some with me but unfortunately left them in Albuquerque), but neither of us managed to bring them. Since we have internet, we didn’t think it would be that big of deal. As our luck would have it, the internet was super spotty yesterday, but Caitlin managed to connect for about 2 minutes and find a recipe for chocolate cake. We gathered and adjusted some of the ingredients (self-rising flour instead of baking soda/powder, a chocolate drink mix like Nesquick instead of cocoa, and we made powdered sugar from granulated sugar with the blender) and started. Everything looked great until we added the last ingredient—one cup of boiling water. It was super liquidy, but the recipe said it would be. The oven here doesn’t have any temperatures listed so we guessed on which notch we should put it on. After about 35 or 40 minutes we tested with a knife and thought our cake was done. It looked a little different, but smelled great so we had good expectations. We even made frosting! 

Taste wise I think it turned out pretty good. Texture wise, our word was "interesante." Our first cooking experience will be Monday, hopefully it goes a little bit better than the cake!

Worried about how it will taste.

 

Finished product! Don't be fooled by the exterior.

 

Jardín starts Monday! These kids are what I’ve been most excited about, so I can’t wait to finally meet them and start to get to know them.I'm hoping for the 3-year-old class, mostly because I hope that means they'll know how to say fewer things and are more on my conversation level. :)

This afternoon was the first session of the oratorio, and being with the kids definitely made my day better. As a self-proclaimed world traveler, I'm a little embarrassed to admit how homesick I've been. Days where I don't understand a lot of things, days where I'm surrounded by Spanish without a small break and days when I have so much free time I don't know what to do with myself are hard, but actually being with the kids is just what I need to tell me I'm still in the right place and doing what I should be doing. Even though I still don't understand a lot, interacting with them gives me the hope I need to know that things will get better.