Hola!
How have you been? Life here in San Lorenzo, Paraguay, is good; both crazy and beautiful at the same time. Paraguay, to me, is a great oxymoron; everything is different, the rainforest, language, culture...even the toilets...yet so much is the same: everyone eats, drinks, and lives. That sounds obvious, but in a land 5,000 miles away from my hometown, it amazes me to catch myself thinking that my house and all my friends are just behind that Eucalyptus grove. I have not been here long, yet it seems like I have always been here.
At times I can communicate well, other times my brain refuses to compute any language and I simply stare into empty space. Their Spanish is different than that of Mexicans, and fortunately, Paraguay smells much better than Mexico too. In Spanish, I make mistake after mistake, and most are rather humorous, such as mixing up “cuchara” with “cucaracha” (“spoon” with “cochroach”). My family makes attempts at English every now and then, usually an English word in a Spanish sentence. Once my host mother, a pastry chef who cooks on TV, said to me, “Yo voy cocinar cookie ma~nana.” (“I am going to cook cookie tomorrow.”) She smiled at me, and picked up the small family dog, whose name coincidentally was Cookie. Cookie-ka-bobs, Cookie-ala-mode... Not wanting to offend them, I explained that for religious purposes, you see, I had to fast that day. Finally we have sorted that out, and I am proud to announce that Cookie is alive and whole to this day.
In the last two weeks, I have seen 7 countries and actually been to 4. Not much for bragging rights, except to say that they were “muy linda,” and I dare say probably much nicer than Europe because they are unspoiled from the polutions of “civilization.”
Like any country, Paraguay has the good, the bad, and the atrocious. The rivers and jungle are beautiful, as is the warmth and hospitality of the people. Right next to the beauty of the land is the abundance of poverty and the air is often thick with gunpowder and confusion. The people here are grateful for what they have; they haven't the modern technology we in America are used to, nor the conviences we take for granted; they are coming from a tough past of war and dictatorship and they are going day by day towards hope. They are a cheerful, unselfish people. Some seem to have never seen an American before, for we are few. There is a tremendous German influence here, along with Aleman and Austrian. My host cousins enjoy swaping words with the other foreign exchange students from around the world when they accompany me into Asuncion for my AFS classes after school each day (a 2 hour one-way journey by walking and bus, as I have done the last week; by car an hour) and so I am learning not only Spanish, but Guarani, German, and a few phrases of Icelandic. Unfortunately, I, as all the other foreign exchange students, have learned the hard way not to repeat the majority of them. Ah, the joys of being a foreigner. All in all, life is, as they say here, “tranquila.”
I hope life is for you tranquila wherever you are. Yet tranquila or no tranquila, you don't have an excuse for not writing me back! (If if takes me a while to return your letter, don't get angry. It is not as easy to do here as it is in America.)
Chau,
Elizabeth
http://users.livejournal.com/-puravida/899.html
