Apart Hotel Rivera Asuncion

... We finally built the structure to protect the one spring, and it is working really well. Unfortunately, it is leaking out the bottom and and the owner doesn't want to do anything about it, and I can't figure out exactly why. That is the problem, Paraguayans are very indirect and will never tell you they don't want to do something, they just say "another day" or tomorrow, or something like that, so I can never confront ...

... showerheads which heat the water right above your head. Random dogs run around everywhere, and the sidewalks have metal baskets sitting a few feet off the ground to prevent animals from getting into the trash. Bus drivers often keep the front door of the bus open when it's hot. The slow pace of Latin American life gets to you very quickly both here and there.

Some things that I noticed right away about this country:
- There are many ...

... 20 mins of being told what we could have seen we eventually got off and went for egg and chips and beer for lunch where I had to purchase a new t shirt to leave me some dignity. Having not really dried off at all we went on an eco boat tour where we spotted toucans and cayman crocodiles in the wild, fierce close up and everything (photos should be on facebook soon as I am actually home now but don’t be letting on). Three of the separatists were late getting back ...

... stopped at the Brazilian border crossing and accused of being illegal immigrants! Little did we know that you have to beg bus drivers in this continient to stop at border crossings in order to recieve your passport stamp! Insane! This is because locals do not require stamps, only us travelling folk. After a very scary discussion using our very poor Spanish skills we somehow were allowed back into Argentina without ...

... road and has is pretty small with only about 50 houses, or 250 people. It does not have running water and is mostly a Guarani-speaking site. It is pretty much exactly what I wanted, and I am really excited. I will be a follow up volunteer, meaning that a volunteer is there now and I will be taking over for him. That is really about all I know about it now ...

... entry) I don't have the best camera skills, but you get a tour of my apartment. And it had been cleaned the day before, so it's looking pretty good in the video. We actually have a woman clean our apt every other week. I know it seems like we're living large if we can afford a cleaning lady, but I assure you, we are not. In fact, I use most of my money 2 weeks after I get paid and then I have to skrimp the next 2 weeks until ...

... a cheap but good place to eat so we went to investigate. We found that it was in fact cheap and was run by a multilingual guy who was very friendly. The waiters were dressed in tuxes and kept bringing us free samples of Paraguayan food. It was wicked. We had a lovely meal there. The bus ride back to the main bus station drove us through some really smart areas of town. Asuncion definitely has a lot to offer if it was cleaned up just a little bit.

... an empty continent, thick only around the edges, a half-baked pizza, the southern European counterpart to Uncle Sam's predominantly northern European refugees. And so Buenos Aires patterns itself, an island of European civility in a sea of seeds and cattle, the biggest city in one of the world's biggest countries, one of the few that could make some reasonable claim to self-sufficiency. Of course that unlimited visibility is not without some ...

... late morning to Resistencia in Argentina, yet again a 6 hours + journey. Bought my ticket with the bus company "El Pulqui" and at 11.30 headed southwards towards the Paraguayan / Argentinean border. In an hour we where there, and like most of the border crossing so far, everything went OK. Looking back i´m glad I short stopped in Paraguay as so many visitors to South America tend to by ...

It's crunch time...4 months and a few days to go and we are busy, busy, busy. No really juicy news to report...things have settled down after the little drama we had in Caazapa'mi and the community as a whole landed firmly on our side. The elementary school principal is visibly awkward at the school and community functions, but for our part we are treating him as if nothing ever happened and are as friendly as can be. I just turned in a grant application to take a ...