some recent update highlight sort of activity:

-going to mercado cuatro, a giant market, and walking through rows and rows of knockoff brand clothing, an entire section of fruit, fish in variety stages of being filleted, and animals of every variety (like a turtle and a duck sharing the same box, even a little bird which i was told was a "dodo". i think my spanish may have failed me on this one though, since i am pretty sure those went extinct a wee while ago)
-the christmas differences: the paraguayans give gifts after christmas to celebrate when the three kings arrived, the mall is decorated as an "enchanted christmas", mostly purple with magic mushrooms to accent the tree. seriously! eliana was singing "o christmas tree" in german, but changed the words from "o tannenbaum" to "o mangobaum". she got a bit confused and began singing "o tangobaum" at the end... a little more argentina than paraguay though if you ask me.
-speaking of mangobaums, it reminds me of my new favorite fruit- the paraguayan mango. they are all ripening, and the trees are loaded down with them. the locals aren't as keen on them, and there are so many that most will just rot on the road. hearing that, i have been helping myself to road mangos. it's like little presents from heaven, as long as they don't hit you as they fall. then it's a bit more like lightning bolts i suppose. i know what you're thinking, dad, and this is not the same as dumpster diving... if anything it's like eating roadkill, without the kill part.
-i am actually so hot right now if there was a body of water anywhere near, i'd be in it. but i've never been so happy to have swass and swack, hearing that there's supposed to be a bit of a cold spell at home this weekend. i've been cutting hair at a childrens shelter and i think today they were pretty grossed out by the sunburned, sweaty hairdresser, but what's a girl to do?

on that note, i am going to go and maybe i'll even locate some ice cream. yes, a wonderful idea!
hopefully this finds you peacefully getting ready for the holidays. sending some magic mushroom holiday love your way ;)

Another blog entry in the sunshine...

i am enjoying the heat from the comfort of a hammock on the little deck of my little room at the house of leo and gudrun. they are an amazing couple with five amazing kids who make my heart warm just thinking about them. the sky is blue and spotless, there are birds navigating through the green leaves of the trees towering around me. i can look over and see mangoes growing, the branches getting heavy over the rust-coloured rooftops...

i have continued working at alto refugio, where i have a made a place for myself as the happy little hairdresser who just doesn't speak spanish. the other day i thanked one lady for the rain in the bathroom instead of the key, and continually refer to "hair" as "horse", as the spanish words are quite similar. oops. i often end up speaking a mishmash of german, spanish, and english to try and make myself understood. i am often successful, and even surprise myself with the conversations that are able to take place. leo and gudrun's youngest angelgirl, eliana, keeps me humble though, as any time i don't say a sentence completely correct she never fails to cock her head, wrinkle her nose, and say "HUH??". can't win 'em all i suppose.

what i didn't mention about my post in this hammock paradise is the church across the street, that at certain times can be heard playing awful choral recordings at full volume, reminiscent of the background music in old disney movies. even the church bells are recorded. and all with the distinctive piercing crackle of the ancient speakers they're playing through. it's a sound that could make the average bystander want to start banging their head against the nearest slab of concrete.

the sights and sound of paraguay generally fill me with joy. soccer games, birds, vehicles, whistles, dogs, and music all combine into a recipe of relaxed contentment. we used siesta time yesterday to check the boat on the river, you know, test it out. but today i think the hammock is calling me to partake in this wonderful tradition.....

wow! i am sitting here in the shelter of riki's parents' house, grateful that i just barely avoided the pouring rain that is pelting down outside...
i left alto refugio a little early today because i saw the pending dark clouds, thought about my walk home, and did the math. it would be good to beat the storm. especially since storms make me want to find the nearest dark corner and assume the fetal position at the best of times.
i have been cutting head upon head of hair recently, it seems that everyone wants a piece of canadian hairdressing. it's awesome! i get to do what i love, it helps other people, and i get to learn spanish! ... although my entire vocabulary now consists of words like "cut? long, short? layers? pretty, beautiful...", and of course the epic conversations starters 'wow, the sun is hot', and 'do you have children?'
that and i know how to tell the cook her food is good. and i do. every day.
the cook's name is Fransisca, known to the resident canadians as Aunt Jemima, a name earned by her remarkable similarities to the syrup matriarch.
Fransisca is a large woman with coarse grey hair, and less teeth than the average 8-year-old. she'd be a formidable-looking woman if she weren't smiling all the time, and wearing a makeshift chef hat and a white plastic apron. she is beautiful, and friendly, and loves to teach me about cooking. her hot sauce is my favorite, so she takes it out every day, especially for me. i couldn't figure out why i had perpetually bad breath until she showed me how she made it today. hot peppers, an entire clove of garlic, and some milk. if that doesn't leave aftersmell i don't know what will.
yesterday i visited the hippie market and wandered downtown asuncion. we saw everything from palaces to slumhouses made of sheets of plastic, which were incidentally right next to one another. we ate the best chipa in paraguay (riki told me so, and i believed it when i tasted it!), and had fresh passionfruit juice. downtown asuncion is really something, many old beautiful buildings that hold a lot of history.
tonight i'm off to a paraguayan wedding, at a pub? we'll see what this brings!
hope you're staying warm in the white stuff,
much love

Yesterday I awoke to go "lend my services", ha, such a joke, to an organization called "Alto Refugio". It is a drop-in centre for people with HIV/AIDS, and they offer support groups, childcare and meals for those visiting the AIDS clinic at the hospital, dental care, and a host of other services for those affected by HIV or AIDS.

I started out by arriving punctually at 8am (i'd like to take credit but riki's mom is the complete reason i was there on time), and meeting Dave, who told me that all the ladies in charge were gone for the day. He hadn't been aware that I was coming that day, and was the only english-speaker in the house.

It turned out that all the childcare ladies had gone away together and, as a result, I was the one left in charge.
I was skeptical, being that I didn't know the kids, the language, the rules, and i was the only adult. I was getting stressed, but then I got pooped on by a rather sloppy little girl (who later mushed her drool-y hands on my face and giggled), and I came to the conclusion i often do when faced with overwhelming new experiences when travelling: laugh or cry. So I laughed.
Why waste a minute on frustration when you're having a once in a lifetime experience? Besides, poo washes off. (The smell lingers, though, I tell you).

Today I returned to Alto Refugio to do haircuts... and ended up doing haircuts ALL day long! It was awesome. And a great way to practise my spanish. Yes, my spanish that doesn't exist. That's the one.

I tried a few new Paraguayan things today to add to my list: chipa, a bread made from mandioca flour and filled with cheese, sopa Paraguaya, a sort of cornbread, and Guarana Fanta, Paraguay's answer to root beer. I've also tried the essential empanadas, dulce de leche, mandioca, and just had a cup of hot cocido( pretty sure i said that wrong: the other day i said i really liked naps instead of this hot cocido drink. i also used the word for horse instead of the word for hair). Riki and I finished off tonight with the epic Paraguayan experience of watching The Big Bang Theory (an american sitcom. this was a joke.)

now my little brain is ready to wilt, so i will talk to you later!
buenes noches and schlope schon(?)

-becki

So i received my dose of adventure this week by embarking on a trip with a group of college students up the Paraguay river.
The boat we took was a beauty: a lumbering wooden structure with a varying gaps, a tiny kitchen that was located right beside the tiny bathroom ( which, i might add, had a strange toilet seat that actually made you fall in the toilet... every time). It had an electrical system that ran when the motor was running, and had been created and maintained by a spry old geezer that looked like he could be my great-great-great grandfather. To some, it was dodgy, to others, luxury. After some of the boats I've experience, i had no reason to complain about this one.
After finding our way out of the harbour, running into the ship next to us as we did so, we travelled upriver several hours until dark. From there we got off the boat and walked through fields and forest into what seemed like endless nothingness. After about 15 minutes of climbing through fences, dodging cowpies and giant frogs, hearing growling and hoping desperately it was only someone's pet dog, we reached a tiny cluster of a few bamboo huts with a church at the end of it. As we walked toward it, Riki made the pronouncement, "Becki, you are officially in the boonies".
We entered the church and were greeted by an old lady who kissed us on each cheek, according to tradition, but her toothless state combined with welcoming vigor nearly sucked my cheek right off. But how could one refuse such an animated, if not awkward, greeting? Beautiful.
We went to two different communities on different islands, and both groups spoke Guarani or another dialect, neither of which I understood. However, I was travelling with a group of people that spoke mixture of Spanish, Guarani, and German, and I couldn't understand them most of the time either and was therefore getting used to that. It's amazing how small gestures like smiles, kisses, playing music and sports, and sharing the ever-present terere, can reach far beyond language barriers.
Both places had stark cultural differences from my Canadian home (obviously): there was no electricity or sewers to be found, but crops and livestock still existed. The women wore shirts as a new sort of practise and could at any given time be seen passing a boob to the nearest crying kid. The second community of people rode two hours with their families on donkeys to receive the supplies we had brought for them. People were warm, and shared stories, terere, and even handcrafted brooms with us.
This seems humourous now, but i took my scissors along to do haircuts for those who wanted, thinking I could "contribute". But only one person wanted a haircut!... and again, it was me who learned the lesson. Instead of the attitude of "giving", I was actually going to experience a part of something bigger: a society and culture long established, ongoing traditions, different worldviews, and God who is always weaving His tapestry of lives and stories.
I was not giving, I was sharing in all that, and that in itself was a gift to me. Nothing like a trip to the middle of nowhere in south america to re-establish your way of thinking.
Amidst all that learning, I also got to go swimming in the river. It was a little unsettling when they caught four piranhas later that day from that spot, but I managed to keep my digits intact so it was okay.
I also rode a donkey.
As a child, I always begged for a pet donkey, and have a lingering fondness for the creatures. So when the second group we visited all showed up with donkeys, it was only natural that I should ride one. Having a rather primitive bit and saddle operation, I was a little unsure how to get said donkey to actually move, and I commented to my German-speaking friends "Mein Esel ist kaput" (my donkey is broken). They all found this very humourous, and I eventually got my donkey in gear and had the ride I've always dreamed of.
We started today by appearing on television. I was a little nervous when the Captain and Pastor we travelled with took off while I was speaking (with Riki translating). All I thought was " Oh balls, I'd better keep talking..." and tried to think of something very epic and moving to present. But mostly I just stuttered along as usual and hoped that Riki glossed it up with a little dose of eloquence.
Every night we slept on the top deck of the ship under the stars. I can't think of anything more wonderful. The weekend was one of new experience and unforgettable moments, too many to even begin to write about here, and my entire being feels refreshed and alive.
That said, I am ready to fall off my chair in tiredness.
Buenos noches, I'm off to bed, with another big day tomorrow.
Love to all,
becki

right. so last post i mentioned how i was off to see a healer of bodies for my hobbly hip. truth be told, i'm still not entirely sure what kind of healer she is, but i felt better and not worse at the end of it so i suppose it was good. i was a little leery, though, when she stepped outside the room to get the assistance of another lady in holding parts of me down while other parts were being twisted and pulled. one can't help but feel something in these situations, and for me it was sort of a pervading sense of "oh boy, this one's gonna hurt".
still alive,though, and ready to embark on a four-day boat trip up the river. we leave tomorrow morning with a youth group of some sort that is making stops at some of the poorest communities on the river. at these villages they distribute food and... haircuts? oh yes, that is where i come in.
should be interesting, considering that i have heard separate stories of said boat either having to be towed back to shore, or bailed out by hand. i swim as well as the average boulder so my usefulness in any sort of water-based crisis may be limited. but it's all part of the adventure, i suppose!
already paraguay has surprised me: flying in i expected to see a barren wasteland, but instead i found a beautiful patchwork of colours from yellow fields, green forests and brown soil, hemmed by red dirt roads and muddy, winding rivers.
the city is equally as vibrant, with colourful gates and houses standing out against the terra cotta bricks of the roof. people's yards are adorned with such things as cherry, mango, grapefruit, papaya, and banana trees, complemented by hibiscus flowers, cacti, and succulents of every variety.
cars, motorcycles, horse-drawn carriages, people of all shapes, sizes, and hues, fill the streets with a vibrancy that speaks of Life.
all this in only a matter of days, bodes well for the next few weeks....
talk to you after the boat

So my travels have found me sitting in the office of my friend, Riki, in Asuncion, Paraguay.
The flights here were rather uneventful, aside from the usual excitement of having the people boarding the plane ahead of you attempt to cram unnecessarily large objects into the relatively tiny overhead compartments (like giant boxed tea kettles, for ten minutes, for example). Or holding out from using the loo until you feel ready to burst, and after finally gaining courage to ask the folks beside you to let you out (the ones beside me being all -american cowboy couple), being forced to wait outside the bathroom for another ten minutes while another person does goodness knows what in there. When the door finally does open, however, the sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach as to what lies within is only barely overpowered by the pressure in your bladder.
Upon arriving in Paraguay, Riki and I took the tour from the airport to his parents' house, and proceeded to have a laid back evening going for burgers. Riki, being a bachelor, has quite a good relationship with all the burger men around, and the meal didn't disappoint. I learned it is standard to put both ham and a fried egg on the burgers here. Three animals on one bun. Unbelievable.
We arrived at the burger stand in perfect south-american style- on a 50-year-old BMW motorcycle that had once been driven by the Paraguayan police.
Yesterday I got the Tours: of the school where Riki works, his favorite place to eat lunch, his house, and Alto Refugio, a sort of drop-in centre for people living with HIV. It is run by some lovely folks, and after the tour we sat for ages and talked about everything under the sun as we drank tetere(?), or yerba. Hopefully I will be back to volunteer at this place.
I spent time meeting some awesome friends last night, and having my first "asado"(or something, i have no idea how to spell it) aka: Paraguayan barbeque. i could get used to that, it was amaaazing!
Soon I am off to some sort of healer that Riki swears by for some physio/massage/something for me bum which was the sorry recipient of my skateboarding attempts.
So everything here is going, and I'm trying to soak up every SINGLE moment: with six weeks, i can't afford to waste a second!
I have already learned the most important word in Paraguay, "tranquilo". It doesn't have a very good translation in english or german, but it is apparently the essence of Paraguayan life...
and with that in mind, how could I not love it here?