Newest Piece of Furniture

We went downtown a few weeks ago and came back with this! A little Paraguayan stool to be our souvenir. Surprisingly, its pretty comfortable!

Club Mbegua

In an effort to get out of our suburbia bubble, I spoke with a few teachers who are married to Paraguayans to get a few ideas. One of those ideas was to take the ferry across the Paraguay River/Asuncion Bay to a place called Club Mbegua (pronounced Bay-wah- is Guarani for a type of bird). Apparently Paraguay is the birdwatching capital of the world, with more species in the country than anywhere else. The teacher that I spoke to said that it would be a good time to cross the bay because all the migratory birds are currently migrating and we might be able to see some cool birds. Well, we did see some birds, so she was right. But more than that, we saw a glimpse into Paraguay's past.

Remember the resort that Baby and her family go to in Dirty Dancing? Kellerman's? Fifty years ago, Club Mbegua was the Paraguayan version of Kellerman's. Now it is a decrepit, falling down, country club-esque area that could be absolutely beautiful. Walking around was almost eery. Visions of horror films at the abandoned country club definitely went through our minds. I imagine that when the country was under the control of the dictator, this place would have been an ideal place to go for a family picnic, to host sporting events, weddings, special events, everything. But it appears that no one has really used the place since the dictator fell out of power.
We did get to take an amazing/scary/how-is-this-boat-actually-moving-this-might-be-the-first-engine-made-in-Paraguay boat ride across the river. This picture doesn't quite do the boat justice. The engine was right in front of Jesse, and we paid the driver $4 to take us across.

Back to the club, there were a few people laying around by the kiddie pool, and it appears as though the local crewing team uses the club to store their boats and use the river to practice, but the rest was deserted.
The big pool. Jesse and Kagan are practicing their front crawl.
The nice thing about the area was that we got a pretty decent view of Asuncion from the other side of the bay.
Who knows what we'll see next time we leave our bubble!

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.

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!

Our New Wheels

After returning from the vacation, Jesse and I decided to get a mode of transportation, other than our feet, to use in the sweltering heat. So we bought a 150cc Leopard Moto. We've already used it a few times to experience and visit different parts of Asuncion. The challenge for Jesse now is to teach me how to drive it!