If only there were woods left.

In three days, after two years here, I’ll be leaving Calle San Blas.

I think that deserved its own paragraph. I’m not ready right now – mainly for time’s sake – to go through the full accounting of what that all means, but knowing that time often has a way of making days past seem a little sunnier or a little different than they actually were, I promise to balance the ledger of my memories pretty soon and share the results – or who knows, any insight – that may have come out of it all with you, as always right here. But for now, these pages – the past two years of my writings – probably serve as the most accurate description of where my head was and hopefully meet my goal of successfully walking that line between entertaining and informative, creative but realistic, giving you a window on a place in the world you probably would have never looked out onto otherwise. As I’ve said before, I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it as much as I have writing it.

The good news is, there’s more to look forward to. No, you don’t get to read about me going home and breaking down in the first supermarket I enter because I just can’t handle the variety of salsas on hand. Although that does sound mildly entertaining. Instead you get to keep reading about Paraguay and the world as viewed from these parts – only from a slightly different angle.

I’ll soon be leaving the six hundred inhabitants of this road and becoming one of the 2 million of the capital city, Asuncion. A move from living in the smallest town of my life, to what I’m going to guess is one of the largest. It should make for some interesting writing at the least.

San Blas was my first real experience with what I guess we’d call “small town life”. Sure I’ve been to small towns and spent time in the them visiting friends and family or going on vacation (“this is the last bus to Winnepasaukee Bob”), but never functioning in one – day in and day out – for an extended period of time. From a dumbed down, big picture standpoint, that may have been the most difficult part of this whole experience. That adjustment to your mentality that comes with scaling down your reality – or better put, your daily realm of existence – is not subtle and certainly not smooth. Americans are private people and I’m no exception. Good fences make good neighbors is practically a national motto. Having experienced “small town life” firsthand I’ve got a better understanding of just how true that motto is.

There’s nothing quite like everyone around you – and I mean everyone – even the people you don’t even know, knowing what you’re doing, just did or getting ready to go do. And yeah, I know the way it sounds, but this isn’t some sort of self-important-foreigner-living-amongst-the-locals thing. It’s true – and applies to everyone living on this strip of road. Or for that matter any strip of road. Here they call it chisme. At home it’s called gossip. And if our motto is the whole good neighbors good fences thing, then theirs is something close to: “Good neighbors make good gossip. And bad ones make even better gossip. Hell, anyone and anything makes good gossip.”

I’ve been lead to believe that this love of gossip is a Paraguayan thing, but lately I’m beginning to think maybe it’s just a small town thing. Maybe in little snow-covered towns in the northeast everyone knows who talked to who yesterday and who walked over there on Thursday and who’s sleeping with who on any which day, and who didn’t return whatever they borrowed from so and so on time seventeen years ago and on and on.

Knowing everyone has its advantages too and it’s certainly not all nosey neighbors, but when there’s literally nothing to do but sit and watch people go by, that’s exactly what you wind up doing. And there’s only one road to go by on, so if you’re going, there’s no hiding it. May as well wave.

As much as I’m looking forward to a little anonymity, the truth is I’ll probably keep waving.

Well see.

kb