If a day was “typical”, it went something like this:
5:15 am – get up
6:30 am – arrive at school for devotions
7:00 am – kids get to school
some time between 7am and, say, 11am – teach with Ellen
1:30 pm – back at school for afternoon set
4:30 pm roughly – finish at school, chill at Ellen’s until evening activity
OR 3:30 pm – head back to Oscar and Karen’s for lunch
evening – something fun, usually
8:30 – dinner
9:30 – bed, out like a light
Of course not every day was the same. We had Monday’s off, so the first Monday we went into the Centro (downtown) to exchange our money and do a teensy weensy bit of sightseeing at the Panteón Nacional de los Heroes. The second Monday we had a picnic at the Zoo and Botanical Garden with the Canadians who came. Also that second week there were two holidays, Fundación de Asunción (Founding of Asunción) and Día de los niños (Children’s Day), so we only taught two days that week.
We also visited Cerro Lambaré, which is this random hill in the middle of the town with a large statue to Chief Lambaré. We did a lot of walking that day…
On Wednesday during the second week, we visited the campo, which is the Paraguayan countryside. One of the teachers, Sara, lives there with her family. And when I say her family, I mean ALL of it. Their church there is made up of her family. As we walked to the church, Sara would say “Jason, say hello to my cousin. Jason, say hello to my grandma. Jason, say hello to my sister.” It’s like a little neighborhood where all her family lives. They’re sugar cane farmers, and for the first time in my life, I ate honest-to-goodness pure sugar, straight from the cane. It was delicious. We also ate severe amounts of the most delicious oranges I’ve ever had in my life. Only we should have called them “greens” because that’s what color they were. I don’t get Paraguay…the lemons are orange and the oranges are green. And sometimes you get a really amazing lemon that is olive green on the outside and bright orange on the inside. Gorgeous!
I just pulled some sopa out of the oven, and I can’t wait to eat some!
-j
[Update: my sopa was just ok...it's better than nothing, and not bad for the first batch, but it's not the same as in Paraguay.]
I'm Jason, and I like to write.