The Trip Back

The trip between Asuncion and the states is always long and ridiculous. However, it seemed that this year we were doomed with our flights. On our way to Wisconsin, there were storms in Chicago, so after already traveling for over twenty hours, we were put in a holding pattern, almost ran out of gas and had to go to Detroit to refuel. We finally landed in Chicago to find out that our flights to Central Wisconsin and Madison were cancelled, and we had some serious delay issues. I ended up flying standby on a flight and made it to CWA around 6:30pm, 31 ½ hours after leaving our apartment in Asuncion. Jesse didn’t land in Madison until after 9 that night, making his journey over 33 hours.

Our flight returning to Asuncion had even worse luck. I was delayed out of CWA for about 45 minutes, which wasn’t too big of a deal, considering I had plenty of time in Chicago as a layover. Well, our flight out of Chicago was delayed over an hour because there wasn’t a flight crew. They just weren’t there. So we were on our way, but Jess and I weren’t too worried because we still had over 40 minutes in Miami as a layover so it should be okay.

It wasn’t. Once we landed in Miami, there was no ground crew to tow us into our gate. We sat on the runway for over 30 minutes. I was watching my watch tic and toc until our flight to Montevideo, Uruguay took off without us on it, sitting on the tarmac in Miami. Well, five minutes after our flight took off, the ground crew showed up, towed us into our gate, and we were able to exit the aircraft. Since direct flights to Montevideo are only every other day, the next flight we could get would take off the next day, but stop in Buenos Aires, Argentina first, have an hour-ish layover, then go to Montevideo. Okay great, sign us up. It did mean that we got to spend one more day in the USA, so we hit up South Beach. We didn’t have access to our checked luggage, but American Airlines did put us up in a nice hotel for the night, and gave us food vouchers.

South Beach was very pretty, but it was hot, with about 100% humidity. I wished we had our swimsuits available. We walked along the beach, walked along the shops, going into them every once in a while to cool off with the a/c. Since I have now officially spent one night in Miami, and went to South Beach, I think I can now say I’ve finally been to Florida, right?

So after a massive delay of 24 hours, you would think that our travelling woes would be over. It wasn’t. We landed in Buenos Aires, no prob. Had our little layover, got on to our plane for Uruguay. There were problems with the engine and we sat on the runway for almost 2 hours while they fixed it. I was able to take a nap and Jess watched a movie- at least the entertainment system was on while they were tinkering. We landed in Uruguay to begin our 8 hour layover. We hit up the massive duty free shop there, took some naps, ate dinner, then at long last, we finally boarded our flight to Asuncion. This one went off without a hitch. So over 60 hours after we left our parents’ homes in Wisconsin, we finally arrived at our apartment in Asuncion. And the most amazing part of all is, our checked luggage, made it. All four bags.

Summer in Wisco

After completing our first year in Paraguay, we journeyed to Wisconsin for some family and stateside time. We never stopped moving the entire four weeks we were home, but it felt good to be around back. Since most of our readers were with us at one point or another during our stay, I’ll keep the commentary short, but rest assured, it was a good month. There’s nothing better than Wisconsin in the summertime.

Jesse is pretty set in his ways about a few things, and one of those things is seeing baseball live at least once per year. As an avid BrewCrew fan, that means of course, a Brewers’ game! We combined families a bit, with my dad, Justin, Amy and Jake, going with Jesse’s Mom, Gail, Greg and Anna. Tailgating is of course a for sure thing!

We were lucky that, while visiting Tricia in Minneapolis, there were seats available for a Minnesota Twins game during the inauguration year for their new stadium, Target Field. It is a beautiful field, with wonderful views of the Minneapolis skyline. We actually ended up with good seats, right behind home plate.

After Minneapolis, it was Cabin and Hodag time! A few days for the 4^th of July spent with my family, lounging around on inner tubes on the lake, catching up with everyone. Jesse and I got to try out our new tent, and I think it will work wonderfully on our next vacation. I regret not taking more pictures of our time at June’s cabin, but sometimes its dangerous taking a camera out on the water!

At Hodag, there were a few celebrations- one for Elena’s 50^th birthday, and another Hodag Christmas celebration for us- complete with a Christmas tree, carols (courtesy of Tricia and Gail), and cookies.

My last little trip was out to Minneapolis for a second time to catch up with Maggie and see her new apartment. We had a blast, hanging out and enjoying wine on the patio. And I had to include the skyline view from Maggie’s street- just incredible!

The time went by quick, and I’m pretty sure Jess and I traveled over 1500 miles during the month, it felt great to see everyone and feast ourselves on all that Wisconsin has to offer. Namely, really good beer, brats, and cheese.

Paraguay Year 1 in Photos

Well since Jenna posted about what we are looking forward to in Wisconsin over the next month, on our last day before heading back I thought it would be appropriate to post a look back over our year. Most of these pictures have appeared on the blog at some point during the year (so I apologize to those few loyal readers who will have already seen them all), but they represent the best of what we've done in South America so far and are some of my personal favorites from the year. Enjoy and we'll see most of you very soon!

The classic picture of the moai quarry at Ranu Raraku on Easter Island.


Ahu Tongariki the largest collection of moai on Easter Island.

Machu Picchu which appeared clearly to us after 24 hours straight of rain on the Inca Trail.


A condor in Colca Canyon in Peru (which is actually deeper than the Grand Canyon).


An old cattle loading gate in a field in southern Chile.


View from the lighthouse at Cabo Polonio in Uruguay.


Valparaiso, Chile the day after Christmas when a nearby forest fire was raining ash on the town and making the whole place look like an antique photograph.


Part of Iguazu Falls on the Argentine side.


Plaza de San Francisco in Quito, Ecuador.


Paraguay vs. Argentina game where Paraguay qualified for the World Cup!


Me taking a look down over Quito from near the peak of Rucu Pichincha.


The famous colorful houses and buildings of the "La Boca" neighborhood of Buenos Aires.


Me standing on the Ecuator!


Our HOG! (OK so it's only a 150 cc Leopard)


Plaza de Heroes in downtown Asuncion.


A few of my chemistry students on our last day of class.


Last but not least (and I'm still amazed by this some days) the cobblestone street that we live on.

Counting Down

Right now, it is Monday night of the last week of our first year in Paraguay. It has been crazy hectic around here, trying to finish grades, go out to farewell dinners, continuing to train for the half marathon, and of course, catching as many World Cup games as possible. It hasn't quite sunk in yet that in less than a week, we will be back in Wisconsin seeing family and friends. These Wandering Wisconsinites will be heading back to the dairy state for some much needed r&r. Things that we are definitely looking forward to (well besides the obvious- seeing family and friends)
- Brewer's game
- testing out the new camping equipment we have been slowly purchasing over the last few months
- seeing a new nephew be born
- dark, good, tasty, delicious beer
- the cabin
- Hodag Music Festival
- Italian cheese fries, Wisconsin style
- grilled bratwurst
- canoeing
- trip to Minneapolis
- cheddar cheese
Oh Wisconsin- we'll be there soon!

Iguazu Falls

One aspect of living in a country that is more difficult to get to from the U.S. than anywhere else in the hemisphere, is that family and friends coming down to visit is an very large exception to the rule. We were pumped to meet up with Dad in Peru, and thought that that would be it for our first year in the southern hemisphere. Well, we were wrong.

Spending time on Facebook, I came across a message that dear friends Jaren and Bobbi had booked their honeymoon in Buenas Aires with a side trip to Iguazu Falls. Well, well. Iguazu is only a short five hour bus ride away from us. We got in contact and decided to meet up on their day at Iguazu.

Iguazu Falls are located on the border between Argentina and Brazil, right where Paraguay meets up with them. They were created when the continental plates rammed up against one another. One went down, one went up, and where the river was, over 200 beautiful cascades of water erupted. There are two sides to the falls, Brazilian and Argentine, and we only went to the Argentine side. It is well set up, with a railroad that runs on natural gas (therefore no air pollution), bridges and trails leading along the path of the falls and some beautiful viewing points. This might have been one of the coolest things I've ever seen. Since my eloquence can only go so far, here are some of my favorite pics and some videos.
The four of us, on the platform of the Garganta del Diablo (Devil's Throat). Video below of the craziness!

Can you see the toucan above?

The best part of the day was when we took a boat tour on the river below the falls, and went under some of those falls you see in the photo above. Good thing we have good rain gear, we got soaked!
Below are two videos, one is an overview of Garganta del Diablo, and the other one is an overview of another part of the falls. Enjoy!



It was fantastic getting to see Jaren and Bobbi, especially since we were unable to attend their wedding. This also officially starts our countdown for our return to the US!

Tierra Nuestra

A few weeks ago, (I realize I am very behind in posting, bear with me, its been a rough/busy couple of weeks!) our fifth grade class had our big overnight trip to an estancia out in the campo. There is a non-profit foundation called Fundacion Tierra Nuestra that goes around to different schools in Asuncion and the neighboring suburbs and teaches the kids about ecology, the environment, and different ways to care for the earth. This fundacion raises money by having camping trips for schools that have a money. Our kids pay money (almost $100) to spend two days camping in a bunk type setting with different counselors doing all sorts of activities. I fully support the idea and I think its a great way for the fundacion to raise money while getting our students out of the city and realizing that there are different things to do instead of watching TV. In fact, our students were not allowed to bring any electronics with them on the trip, except for a camera.
We traveled by bus for almost 2 hours to get to the estancia. The location was absolutely beautiful, with a view of the Paraguayan hill in the background of the soccer field.
The fundacion had some excellent games and activities for the kids, including making instruments from recycled materials, making chipa (a bread made from mandioca flour), night games with scary stories, and free time to ride horses and play soccer.
It was a great way to spend some time with the students outside of the classroom and a test to my Spanish skills since the whole weekend was in Spanish! I was proud of myself when my American students were asking me to translate for them the scary story, because usually, its the other way around!

Asado

Barbecuing here in Paraguay is an art form since people here love their meat so much. Families get together every Sunday for an asado (Spanish for BBQ), so I have started to do some weekend asados myself to practice this new-found art form.

The first challenge with asados is that the charcoal here is very different than that in the States and is very difficult to light (as anyone who lived in Honduras with us can testify to). It takes some alcohol (dumped on the charcoal as lighter fluid, not the drinking kind), fanning with a special asado hand fan, and patience to get the coals just right. This took me a few tries to perfect, but I think it's going pretty well now. Then you have to get used to the different cuts of meat (and the corresponding vocabulary) here which don't exactly correspond to those found elsewhere. After 8 months or so I figured out the cut that I like best which is called Bife de Chorizo and roughly corresponds to a Sirloin Strip steak in the States. Would you believe that I can buy 4 of these steaks for about $5 here and they are great quality grass fed beef?

Anyway one of the best features of our apartments, and most nice apartments and houses in Paraguay, is the built in asado grill in our patio area.

If you look closely you will see a crank at the top right of the grill opening. This crank adjusts the grill up...

and down.

Pretty sweet right? All this adjustability, 4 nice bife de chorizo steaks, and some nice spicy chorizo sausage made for a nice asado this day and just one of the many to come.

Just Another Paraguayan

Last week I heard some of my students talking about the NBA playoffs during class so naturally I eavesdropped a little on the conversation and overheard them say that they were cheering for Steve Nash because he had a Paraguayan wife. I had never heard this before so I inquired and they were a little hazy on the details so I checked it out and it turns out to be true. Nash visits her family here in Asuncion in the off season, has done some charity work with a hospital here, and even worked out with a local soccer team when he was here a year ago. Unfortunately the soccer team he practiced with was Olimpia, the Yankees of Paraguayan soccer, otherwise Nash could have become my favorite NBA player. It was cool to find out that someone famous has connections with Paraguay though and that Steve even speaks Spanish and drinks his terere like a local as seen below.
If that's not a Paraguayan, I don't know what is!

El Super Clasico

A few weeks ago a group of teachers decided to attend the biggest sporting event in Paraguay (outside of national team soccer games that is). The Super Clasico is a soccer game between the two biggest (and richest) soccer teams in the country. Olimpia is more or less the Yankees of Paraguayan soccer as they have the most championships and the most money. Their eternal rival is Cerro Porteno who have only slightly fewer championships and almost as much money. While none of us are fans of either team, this was a game that had to be seen in person at least once because it involves a packed national stadium of 36,000 fans screaming, chanting, insulting the other fans, throwing whatever they have on the field, and most importantly police in full riot gear.

We arrived in the neighborhood of the stadium an hour and a half early to get tickets and grab some lomitos. The area was already overflowing with supporters of both teams and the stadium appeared packed as we bought our tickets from a "ticket resale agent" outside. We got lots of weird looks from people in the streets after buying the tickets, as you might imagine a large group of gringos would, since we were the only people walking away from the stadium instead of towards it. We also made a special effort to wear neutral colors so we wouldn't be mistaken for supporters of either club (this meant no Olimpia black or white and no Cerro red or blue) and we thus stood out even further among all the passionate fans in their team colors.

Part of the teacher group dressed in our neutral colors.

After our delicious lomitos we headed into the stadium about 30 minutes before kickoff and found it to be nearly packed already. Apparently futbol games are the only events where "Paraguayan time" doesn't apply. The only seats we could find in our section happened to be right next to the police in riot gear separating the supporters groups of each team. We were not directly in between the opposing "hinchatas" since those folks sit in the end zones of the stadium, but we were a bit concerned none the less. For those of you who may be concerned about our safety after reading that, the worst that happened to us was that there were a few unidentified flying objects that fell near us during contentious times in the game.

Check out the line of riot police next to where we were sitting!

It turned out to be the hottest day of the last couple of weeks so these guys must have been frying in their full riot gear.

The game itself ended in a 0-0 tie but it was still worth going to view the spectacle. The stadium was alive with chants and drumming when we arrived 30 minutes before kickoff and the fans were all screaming and engaged while they watched the reserve teams (kind of like minor league baseball teams or a JV basketball team) for each side play a match before the real game started. Right before the teams came running out of the tunnel (or giant inflated bus as it is here) to warm up on the field both hinchatas went crazy with chants and started throwing rolls of adding machine tape that they had smuggled into the stadium onto the field.

The Cerro side of the stadium with quite possibly the largest banner I've ever seen!

Clearly the Olimpia side of the stadium won this contest of "Who can litter the field with more garbage and delay the start of the game longer" which made the Olimpia fans among my students very happy (interestingly this was more important to them the Monday after than the fact that they tied the game). Once this ended and the game began the level of chanting, drumming, singing, hurling very inappropriate insults, and attempting to hit the opposing players with bottles and even more rolls of adding machine paper (the city must have been unable to print receipts for days afterward) was very impressive and sustained throughout all 90 minutes.

Almost game time!

The view from our seats was pretty nice. This is the Olimpia side of the stadium
with the Paraguay River in the background. The land on the other side of the
stadium is actually Argentina.

All the teachers were glad to have witnessed the spectacle that was the Super Clasico, but I believe that we are all content with our one experience and probably won't head back again. Still, for those who say soccer is a boring sport the opportunity to experience a game like this was a great opportunity and a fun way to contradict that criticism.

The Last Few Weeks

Since the last post on semana santa, its been a very busy, yet chill time. I'll let Jess do the post on the superclasico soccer game we went to last weekend, but I thought I'd just post to write a bit about my weekly routine. I've been continuing my twice a week Spanish classes and I really am seeing improvement in my Spanish language. I've also started a Spanish language book club and we're currently reading novels from my 5th grade classroom. So while I may not be able to converse in Spanish at a 5th grade level, I can read books at that level!

This last week I also found out about a marathon, half marathon and 10K that are taking place in Asuncion in August. My friend Danielle and I, who run together twice a week, have decided to train for and run the 1/2 marathon. August 8th, 2010 be thinking of me!

Next week, I start my fourth and final master's class for the school year. It seems as if I just agreed to take this program and now I'm almost done with year one. Its crazy how time flies! In 7 and 1/2 short weeks, we will be in Wisconsin for a summer vacay. The countdown has definitely begun, along with planning for almost every day of our stateside stay. I'm trying not to count the days, but its too hard not to!