Hot and Boring Days

Hello family and friends! It has been a while since I last blogged but there is a reason for that, the reason is I haven't had much to blog about. January and February are pretty boring months; there is no school and its too hot to do anything. We sit on the porch in the shade with a fan on us a lot. After our Chile vacation we haven't been doing too much. We had have some commission meetings and it looks like we are going to get the materials to make brick ovens in March. School is starting a couple of weeks so we will have something to do. We are going to try and paint a World Map on the side of a school building with some of the middle school students. I have also been getting a lot of books sent from our wonderful family at home that I am very excited to use with the students. We had a "One Year in Paraguay" party with the volunteers in our group. We have about 20 people stay overnight. We played wiffle ball and other games, swam, and had a BBQ. People brought hammocks and we got extra mattresses for people. Don't worry Terry Conkwright, Tom was under control.

Right now we are most excited for Paul to come on Saturday the 13th. He leaves tomorrow, Friday, Feb 12th. We are going to go to Buenos Aires and Uruguay. After 2 weeks with Paul, Emma is going to fly down and be with us for a week and all four of us are going to Argentina to see Iguazu Falls. http://www.iguazuargentina.com/english/.
Thank you so much family for sending us packages. We are so blessed to have amazing, caring family. We will have to blog after our vacation and add a lot of pictures! We love and miss you!

More pictures!

After we got soaked in champagne at New Years

All those grapes to make wine! Yum!

Colorful houses

Skinny house

Our cabin in the woods

me with an Easter Island head

We got fried at the beach!

Finally Chile Pictures....Warning There Are A Lot

We went white water rafting, the water was so cold
The rapids

We hiked to this waterfall.

Us in the wilderness

Walking on the beach

The beach with the mountains in view

Valparaiso, our second spot, the city built on a hill.

The amazing fireworks, set off from 5 different places along the bay.

Beautiful view

Out for our 2 year anniversary at a resturant called The Fat Cows

With all the wine

Joe with his compelto. A hot dog, guacamole, mayo, and tomatoes. A traditional Chilean food.

The 4 of us with the city of Santiago in the background.

The Andes from the airplane

Not Chilly in Chile

Chile was amazing! We had such a great time. It started off stressful....we came into Asuncion the day before we were going to leave hoping that our credit card would be in the mail. We were sadly disappointed when we had an empty mailbox. After talking with the Heitritters they wired us money from Walmart, ironically my dad was at Walmart at the same time and sent us some money as well. We were happy to have some money but very careful that we wouldn't lose our American dollars. We happily made it to the airport the next day and our flights we smoothly. We could see the Andes mountains as we got closer to Santiago. We stayed in Santiago, the capital of Chile, for a couple of days. We enjoyed seeing the city, taking the clean metro, wine tasting, and eating delicious food. We went on top of a hill to see the beautiful city. After Santiago we hopped on a bus to Valparaiso.
Valparaiso is a city built on a hill. We walked up and down the hill many times. It was interesting to see the colorful houses, some of them were very skinny, and we also got to see the port. On New Years we were in Valparaiso because we heard it has a huge party, which was true there were people everywhere. We got to see some amazing fireworks, we were up from the bay and there were fireworks right in front of us but also fireworks were being shot off from 5 other places along the bay. We took a video and will have to put it up soon. It was one of our favorite parts of the trip. When it turned 2010 we were sprayed with Champagne and hugged by random Chileans. We then went to a party in the giant plaza when a band and people dancing, it was a memorable way to welcome 2010. The rest of the time at that spot we just walked around and enjoyed the city.
I was so excited for our next stop. After 5 hours on a bus we arrived in La Serena, a city right on the beach. I couldn't want to spend some time in the sand on the Atlantic Ocean. Our hotel consisted of apartments and was right across from the beach. We spent every day at the beach enjoying the sand. We got pretty burnt and Joe is still peeling skin. We didn't care though we were so happy to be there. We went to an Archaelogical muesum that had mummies and one of the giant statues from Easter Island. Also on the trip we went a supermarket called Jumbo, it was like a Super Walmart. We were so happy to see American products (lately we get pretty excited about dumb things like that) we bought Doritos, Lays Potato Chips, Starbursts, Gummy Bears, Mountain Dew, Dr Pepper, microwave popcorn, and chips with salsa. We can't find those things in Paraguay so we stuffed our faces. After La Serena we took a bus about 7 hours back to Santiago and then went about an hour south to a nature perserve with cabins.
Next we relaxed in the valley of the Andes foothills and stayed in a cabin for a couple of nights. We hiked around, went swimming, had a campfire..with marshmellows, and went white water rafting. One day Joe and I went with a group on a hike and we went right by a water fall, it was beautiful. White water rafting was a blast, we rode some huge rapids and got pretty wet in the freezing cold water. I loved it and wouldn't mind doing it again.
Our trip ended with a 22 hour lay over in the Buenos Aires airport. It was so long! Joe and I luckily slept for about 5 hours and played many cards. We ate a lot of Doritos and drank a lot of Pepsi. We are safely back in Paraguay...back to the humidity and heat. When I came back to the Peace Corps office the credit card and debit card were in our mailbox, at least we will have them for vacation with Paul and Emma.
I cannot add pictures. I would love to but our camera broke, we are going to take it to get fixed tomorrow. Luckily our friend let us use his camera and I will try to post pictures as soon as possible. I miss you all so much and hope you are staying warm! We love you!

Its December?

Our neighbor boy's 5th birthday party. He is in front with the blue plaid shirt.

Some crazy grasshoppers

Joe with all his candles, there was so many we didn't need the lights and thought the house might catch on fire.

We can't believe it is December. We see Christmas lights and trees and cannot believe our eyes. It is too hot here to be Christmas time. We have been sweating pretty consistently and it doesn't look like its going to end soon. We celebrated Joe's birthday with some cake our neighbor made and some delicious Paraguayan dish that Joe enjoys....its similar to scalloped potatoes and ham. But with mandioca, a potato like food, and some sausage.

We had camp the past two weeks with the kids but were very disappointed. We invited more than 100 kids and only about 10 came. We were sad and tried not to take it personally. The kids are just on vacation and don't want to do much. We had fun with the kids that came: we colored, read books (Thank you family), and played some games. The kids here really love duck, duck, goose but always pick me so I got pretty tired in the heat. We had another camp this week but we ended it early, it was at a school further away and there was about 5 kids. We felt bad ending it too soon but our tolerance had lowered from the week before. We bought tons of water balloons and some were sent from home, those will have to wait. This coming week we are going to celebrate Christmas in our community and prepare for Chile. We are leaving December 27 and coming back January 11. We are very excited for a little break and cannot wait to be at a beach. We are going with 2 other volunteers and it is going to be a lot of fun. I promise to post pictures.

We love and miss you all. We wish we could be home for the holidays. Though the time sure has flown by, we have almost been here a year.

Thanksgiving Party

Joe and I foam hats at the Thanksgiving party. It was a lot of fun with good food.

Beautiful ruins

A statue at the Jesuit Ruins


Ruins

Amazing stone work

I'm a saint

We could go to the top of this building and look at the full view of the ruins.

We had a great time at Thanksgiving, though we would have loved to be at home eating delicious food with family. We went to party with most of the other Peace Corps volunteers in Paraguay. We got turkey, mashed potatoes, and Joe got pumpkin pie. It was a great time with volunteers. We did something I didn't think I would do on Thanksgiving, we swam a ton and got sunburnt. It is so cold at home you couldn't swim at Thanksgiving. The hotel was great, there was 3 swimming pools, one pool with a high diving board. While at the hotel we went to see Jesuit ruins. It was beautiful to see some of the history of Paraguay. Then we went to visit a friend who lives close to the ruins. We had fun but missed our families.

Now we are going to have some summer day camps with the kids and count down the days until Chile.

Thank you Aunt Barb and her women's group, we got all the school supplies and will be taking some pictures of the kids. Also thank you Aunt Nancy for the supplies and candy. We really appreciate all your packages, love, and support.

We miss you all and are very thankful for you all!

Not Much to Add But Photos

Joe and a giant ant hill. Luckily these are not close to our house.

A flooded field after it rained, the sky is beautiful in the water.

Enjoying yummy Iowa sweet corn and mashed potatoes. Thanks for the seeds Heits.

Joe, the naturally cowboy

Joe and I riding horse.

We are back in Asuncion and you know what that means....more pictures! We have been trying to take a lot of pictures. Its not too easy right now because there is not much going on. Time has gone by fast, it is almost December...we have been here for almost a year. We have learned and grown a lot, this experience has definately helped us grow and mature in our marriage. We are together all the time and we will never be together this much the rest of our life. We both really enjoy the time together.

We are om Asuncion and Friday we are going to leave to go south in Paraguay. There is a volunteer Thanksgiving party, there are a lot of activities planned, a pool, and some good food. We might go see the ancient ruins so maybe we will have more pictures later. The pool will especially be nice, it was about 100 degrees today. It will be crazy to be sweating buckets during Christmas when at home there will be snow.

I don't have much else to add in words but I will add some pictures.