Back Baby, I'm BACK!

I ‘m back in Paraguay and things are going pretty well.

I slept the entire way from Atlanta to Buenos Aires, so after the quick flight between Buenos Aires and Asuncion I went to the Peace Corps office for a few hours, took a siesta on a sofa, and then caught a bus back to San Ignacio. 

While trying to catch a bus between the office and the bus terminal 3 buses passed me by without letting me on because of all of the luggage.  Buggers. Welcome home indeed.

Admittedly for the first 24 hours I kept asking myself “why did I come back.  Why didn’t I just stay in Atlanta, live in Bree’s computer room on the inflatable mattress and make a career out of annoying her cats.  I’m sure she would be cool with that at least for a few months.”

However thankfully the weather was nice for a few days and after chatting with my peace corps wives, Julia and Casey, I fell back into my old rhythm.  My wives evidently began chatting a lot between the two of them in my absence, which I was a little jealous of at first.  But we’re all good now.

Since then I’ve started up my exercise class again.  I had two substitute teachers who took care of the class while I was gone and they did a great job, but the attendance did fall off a bit.  The attendance has also gone down because school has started up again and many of my participants had to go back to teach or to attend classes.

The heat returned after a few days; alas my water has not.  Thankfully a few days before the official end of summer the temperatures dropped and haven’t gone back up since, which has been glorious.  AND it’s been raining. Yes, I’ve heard angels singing and it sounds like rain.  At least once a week.  Maybe I will get to take a proper shower in the near future.  In the meantime I bought a 30L jug to store water, mainly to flush my toilet more than once a day.

If you’ve been wondering what those odd photos with funny faces and white foam are, those are from the San Ignacio Carnaval parade.  Some jerk kept spraying us in the face, which was obviously unpleasant, but overall we had a really fun time.

I also had a Couchsurfer, Koos, from the Netherlands aka Holland who stayed with me for two nights.  I took him to the Paraguayan dance and music presentation they have every Sunday in the centro, which I confess I’ve never gone to before.  I’ve heard the polka and seen the dances, so I didn’t have enough motivation to make the trek into town to see it before.  Admittedly it all sounded the same after a little while since I don’t really have an ear for polka.  A pair of very enthusiastic gentlemen in the back however, made the night very entertaining.

Koos was also wonderful because he change the light in my living room that has been out for months.  I’m too short to reach it, yes, even on a chair.  Thankfully my guest was very very tall and easily switched it out. Woohoo, just in time for the winter time change.

I missed Tuck terribly while I was gone.  He had a good time with his Aunti Carly, got into a few fights, killed a chicken, ran amok but always came back home, enjoyed life as a free range campo dog.  I was home alone for a few days and the house was too quiet without him crying and licking my elbow.  Such a cutie. 

Its good to be back.