Hotel Portal Del Sol Asuncion

... The fourth part of our year is the training cycle. For the Agriculture Sector this is the end of September - mid-December. This is when the new group of trainees get in and spend their 3 months learning the language and culture of Paraguay as well as any technical skills they need to know. I'm really looking forward to the arrival of our training group. It will be a very interesting experience helping with their training, getting to know them, and helping ...

... Anyway I was happy to have my travel guide with me, as touristic informations are impossible to get, even stuff as simple as knowing which bus to take is a calvary. I found the name of an hotel in the center, jumped into a taxi and after a quick dinner I went to sleep for as long as I could.

The next day Daniela came by plane, so I discovers the pleasures of the Asunción chaos, the old buses brightly painted and shaking us like crazy (but they cost almost nothing), and ...

... zo erg dat je er gewoon overheen kijkt? Zou het? De omgeving van ons hotel is niet anders. De kamer is groot en licht, we hebben een tv en een douche met eigen boiler en het ontbijt is verrukelijk. Yoghurt met fruit, verse jus d´orange, appelkruimeltaart, geroosterd bruin (!) brood, kaas, ham, spek, leverkaas en roerbakeieren. Dit alles moet natuurlijk wel beschermd worden door bewakers met flinke revolvers aan hun riem. Buiten hetzelfde verhaal, om de paar honderd meter straat wel ...

... by my repeated question "this is a return ticket yes?". It was only later that we found, in fact, it wasn't a return ticket, but we managed to sort that out before we left Salta and was at least one problem avoided. ACT 2 - A BUS RIDE AND A BORDER CROSSING We arrived on Thursday afternoon with the rest of the group who insisted on seeing us off and having been dreading trying to negociate the hetic bus stations here we found the right bus with no problem and ...

... but the line was 160 meters long and 500 meters high. It was really good fun! Charlie got stuck half way on the last line and had to be rescued by one of the guides, which she had to buy a beer for afterwards. we had one other free day in Salta, Charlie went into town shopping with the girls and Jim stayed by the pool and chilled out. The next morning we were up packing the tent down in the dark and had another 3 long drive days with a free camp and a ...

... husband, and the youngest brother, 25, lives with us as well. At least from the best as I can tell even though he sleeps in another house. There are 3 other trainees all in the same area in neighboring houses. All of our families are related, so there are people and kids playing and going back and forth, and I´m still unclear how everyone is related and who lives where, though I have only been there one night. Since it is a rural area, we have lots of ...

... part of me will always occupy and none of me will ever forget. I said as much in my parting words to Caazapa'mi, "Aikotajepi corazo divido, parte oimeta Paraguaype, ha otra parte Estado Unidope. Che pohayhu pendeve ha ndacheresarairi penderehe." As a final blessing, and bittersweet goodbye, the day we left Caazapa'mi it started to rain. P.S. Our camera broke right before the San Rafael trip. Therefore the photos from this entry are borrowed from others.

So today I drove into town from Areguas (the small, beautiful town on the outsides of Asuncion where I'm staying with my super gracious CS hosts) into Asuncion with Sandra, Joaquim's wife (my CS hosts). We went to their shop for a bit, as I waited for Adri, the CS ambassador for Asuncion, which had nicely agreed to take me around on a tour ...

... sagen, dass ich natürlich schon auf die Idee gekommen bin, fleissig an den Hähnen zu drehen. Das eigentliche Geheimnis hat sich mir erst heute bei einem kurzen Gespräch mit meiner spanischen Mitbewohnerin offenbart: Sie: Odio el trabajo. (Ich hasse die Arbeit. Das hab sogar ich verstanden.) Ich (ganz happy, etwas antworten zu können): Odio l'agua fria. Sie: Porque? Tu no tienes agua caliente? Da dämmerte es mir. Ich bin sofort hochgerannt und ...

... speak twice as fast as brazilian and are usually asking me for "fifteenthousand fivehundred guarni please". Luckily Dave is better with spanish than I am. The streets were totally deserted when we arrived in the city centre. The police on the street corners outnumber normal folk 10:1. They´re great for directions though. I just can´t decide if i feel safe that they´re there, or unsafe because they need to be there. The hotels here are weird too. The first one we got from ...