One year. Check. Half way. Almost.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what to write for this one – but that doesn’t mean I’ve come up with anything good. Rather then do something that’s whole and complete, leading to some sort of actual conclusion like I like to do, I’m just gonna go for a random hodgepodge of events that sitting here tonight pop out at me as memorable. Some with friends, some with work, some all by my lonesome. Let’s see if anything good comes out of it. In no particular order, some memories of the past 12 months that stand out:

• writing my journal under the blooming hibiscus of my training family’s house sipping fresh made pineapple juice.
• “siesta-ing” in bed, completely drenched with sweat with a fan pointed directly on me.
• Learning to build wagons – Oregon trail style – flaming pieces of metal and all.
• Watching incredible sunsets every night for three months.
• Being feed tortillas on my birthday.
• Being taught how to mow my lawn with a machete by and 11 year old.
• Being rained on in bed – in doors.
• Watching a volcano erupt while sharing an ice cold beer.
• Plowing a field with oxen.
• Sitting around the fire at night talking in Guarani trying to stay warm and eating mandi’o chyryry – and really enjoying it all.
• Successfully moving wild bees into a hive box.
• Falling off my roof.
• Writing three months worth of these entries on a little tiny pad on my lap under the shade of mango trees.
• Three of us sitting down, spoons in hand and chowing down on a halved watermelon.
• Riding a horse for the first time – very, very fast.
• Being pulled on skis behind a snowmobile, water-ski style – why this isn’t a sport I don’t know.
• Eating spinach I grew myself.
• Sharing drinks with complete strangers – everyday.
• Getting Juan to plant a half hectare of avena negra.
• Explaining what broccoli is for the three-hundredth time.
• Sitting in the Lido Bar on a freezing cold night in Asuncion, the only American in there, eating delicious fish soup and just taking in the atmosphere of it all.
• Sitting outside Lido Bar on another night, eating delicious fish soup and having a rat run across my foot.
• Teaching kids to throw a football.
• Teaching everyone to throw a frisbee.
• Being at my first “campo dance party” three weeks on the ground here and having Jason (another volunteer) tell me that if a Paraguayan girl asks to dance you have to keep dancing until she says she wants to stop. This was followed by the fifteen minutes it took him and his friends to stop laughing after I walked back over to them an hour later.
• Watching the World Cup – all of it.
• Going door to door (or garden to garden) in my training community on Thanksgiving morning questing for celery for my homemade stuffing.
• Working in the fields on a foggy morning, watching it lift and reveal the rolling hills punctuated with pindo palms beyond as one of the señoras brings out a plate of breakfast that’s then shared between us all and glancing at my straw-hatted silhouette feeling like something of a tropical Robert Redford.
• Being chased by dogs on bike. (I was on the bike – they were chasing).
• Being invited in out of the rain to a turkey dinner – as a stranger.
• Being served duck that died of natural causes – word has it it choked to death.
• Having the bus conductor move a little kid from a seat for me to sit in and then finding myself sharing the two seat space with a women and three children, the one who’d just been moved taking up residence in my lap and staring at me as if I was strange but him being in my lap wasn’t.
• Moving to my new house via ox cart.
• Haggling the price of a hammock in half.
• Thinking for a few days that everything should be built of bamboo. Then realizing that’s ridiculous.
• Carving a mankala board by hand.
• Walking the streets of Ciudad del Este after Paraguay beat Japan advancing to the World Cup quarterfinals for the first time ever. Gunshots abound.
• Walking knee deep through water down a muddy street in a midnight thunderstorm.
• Making an impromptu see-saw in my host family’s front yard and having Julio and Javier laughing on it for hours.
• Watching (many) a pig killing.
• Helping butcher a cow – in a field.
• Awaking to pig parts strung about the house, “curing”.
• Accidentally crashing a wake.
• Learning to thatch a roof.
• Losing count at the number of pique I’ve removed from my feet.
• The excitement of peppers being available in the dispensa.
• Bucket bathing
• Pablo and the rain-cape he made out of a wheat sack.
• Being tricked into eating eggplant – it was delicious.
• Walking barefoot through the mud, carrying my bike on my back.
• Fifteen of us in the back of Dani’s truck on the way to the “disco” in Ypane. Later that night I believe there was an issue with the brakes.
• Sipping terere in the Plaza on a Saturday morning with no where to be and no time to be there by.
• Riding the bus to Jacara’i and exiting and hour and a half later completely covered in red dirt just from the amount of dust in the air – although some may have settled when we stopped to load a motorcycle in the back door.
• Laying in bed after a day of working in the fields wonder when was the last time I felt so debilitated.
• Realizing I have nothing to eat for lunch and that the road is out. Poking around the garden and an hour later eat stuffed squash.
• Being momentarily convinced that intestine might be edible and then excusing myself to spit it out all over behind the house.
• Any of the number of things found within the “Just gotta get used to it” posts here, here, and here which are always worth a re-read.

The year has flow by and there is so much more I could say – and someday will say – about all that’s happened that could never be put into a bullet point, but for now I’m looking forward to the year ahead. Hope you all are too.

Hasta luego

kb