“Dude, this whole thing is a spectator sport,” I said to Sam as I shouted over traffic. “Yeah, and no one realises it but us!” That was pretty much the dialog this morning as we waited for our new South African friend Johanas to pick us up on the side of the crazy free way Mariscal Lopez in San Lorenzo. We saw people almost die in epic car crash flames about every 2 seconds. The amount of near death experiences on the streets in south America is remarkable. Just about every turn you make there is some huge unyielding bus that is going 10 mph over the speed limit headed right toward you. or someone stops in the middle of the hi way to pull a u turn in the middle of 50 mph traffic. in the midst of all this there are people riding rickety carts pulled by donkeys and there are people running into the street; some to cross and other to do magic tricks in the road for a tip or even worse to sell you bicycle tires or chipa. The street is so fascinating it almost made our 1 hour long wait worth it. There are so many interesting things going on in Asuncion that you cant really be bored as long as your in public. While people are cutting each other off and tail gating and breaking every possible US traffic law I thought to myself man i haven't seen one person get up set this whole time. People in the us freak out and cuss at each other if someone cuts them off in the free way but here the people are so chill and relaxed that it doesn't phase them. The people are by far the best part of South America, that is besides the food. In stores in the US some times I feel as though I am being harassed by the employees as they repeatedly ask me how I am doing and what they can do for me. Maybe its in my head but a lot of times it seems ingenue and annoying. Here in Paraguay people mind their business and don't approach you. They wait for you to approach them. Just about everyone puts on real smile when you talk to them. People here are really creative with he way that they make money. You can buy just about anything you want from some random street vendor before you even get to the super market. A source of pride for many Paraguayans is their official bilingualism. Everyone here speaks at least two languages. Yep Guarani (a native language totally unrelated to Spanish) and of course Castillano AKA Spanish. While eating dinner with Sam's family in Asuncion we changed between English, Spanish, German and Guarani. That's right, just about everyone spoke three languages besides Sam and I. I felt pretty outlinguisted in comparison to them (except I just made up for it by making up my own word just now ) though, my ego has been a little crushed by the linguistically gifted inhabitants of this country I also am inspired by them and have just found more fuel for the fire of my passion for language. Basically this place makes Americans look like pansies that complain about everything like having to learn a second language or about traffic. Its pretty awesome being here amongst such interesting people while practicing my Spanish. BTW who knew that there were so many Germans in the middle of South America? I sure didn't.
This morning was an adventure to say the least. After getting picked up by Johanas we went to the main headquarters of Jesus responde al mundo de hoy which is an organization that reaches out to youth in Paraguay through soup kitchens schools and through local churches. We got a chance to meet everyone and lean about what we will be doing. We will probably rent a dorm at a local bible college in a town just out side of Asuncion called mbey (I think is how its spelled) where we will be staying for about a month to help with a giant event called coicom and then with some soup kitchens and out reach ministry where we show cool movies to kids, hang out with them and talk to them about God and their relationship to him. We applied to work with a program called servome before we left. We were going to work with them at the mental hospital in Asuncion but it turns out they had no positions available till after January. Which was totally fine because through all your prayers God has opened up so many possibilities for places for us to serve at. One of which is a children's aids hospital where we plan to stay for a few weeks and hang out with kids that have been diagnosed with aids and serve them. Apparently Aids is a pretty big deal down here and some people don't even believe that it is real. And we have a few other contacts. and places to serve as well. So any way after this week we hope to get cracking on some of our service work. Pray for us to have strength, energy, a good attitude and understanding as we gear up to volunteer.
Interesting stories: We totally missed the bus we needed to catch like 4 times. Sam walked into the door frame and banged his head on the top three times in a row. I broke a bed. Sam broke a cup of his grandmas. People stare at us all the time. The food is epicly awesome. We both have accidentally said very creepy things to people in Spanish unknowingly, and we helped a cool German lady make pickles.
Sam has awesome stuff to say also but he is being responsible and going to bed early so you will have to wait a day or two. Ok, Im done Love you guys adios ciao ciao ciao ciao ciao ciao ciao ciao ciao ciao ciao ciao????????
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