My Strange Uncle and Futbol

So now I´ve been in Paraguay about a month. The rashes have cleared and I´m happy about that. Never did figure out what it was. The host family life has been pretty good. I have two brothers and a sister. The younger brother, Jose, was in the hospital 3 days last week with lung and kidney problems. He´s doing better now, but will be in treatment for 2 months.  The grandma and grandpa live across the field from our house, and the rest of the aunts and unlces are not much further. I think my family must be related to half the town.One of the uncles, Olvaldo, lives with the grandparents and is 23.When I go over to the grandparents house he tries to get me to translate bad 80s music into spanish and then he has me try on a few pairs of his Puma shoes and look in his full-size mirror ( even small mirrors are rare in country in Paraguay). He tells me how cool they look on me and how one of the pairs cost $100 US which is really expensive here. A few days ago he crashed his motorcycle. "How?", you ask. He hit a horse and totalled the front. he´s okay though. I don´t know how and I couldn´t really understand when he explained it to me. He also says that we look like brothers and that we both look like David Beckham, and he was serious.

a stove we built

I´ve been playing soccer with the old men on saturdays. They have a league going on amongst 4 teams with uniforms. My dad got me on to the team, but I don´t get to play until the second half because I´m not good enough. The old men are acutally really good and very serious. In the game before ours a guy got upset with a call and started pushing the ref. The other thing about playing with them is that I never really know where I´m supposed to be playing because there system is a little different, and most of their spanish I can´t understand. After the game we went to a benefit dinner for a guy who was sick in the hospital and had bills to pay. There was one piece of chicken, one piece of mandioca, and probably two bottles of beer for every guy there, and these are the 1 liter size bottles which is the only size they sell in the country. The men don´t really drink water during the soccer games etiher before or after to rehydrate, instead they drink a little beer or pop before, during, and after the game. Life is good.

Aguacate- gigantic avocado

my room

ox and cart

ox and cart