Pumpkin Pie and So Much More...

November 27^th came and went for me without much importance. Granted I was filled with jealousy as my mom and two brothers were able to spend it in Vermont, taking part in the Thanksmas celebration. Luckily I still was able to take part in some Thanksgiving festivities, I only had to wait until December 1^st. Our “Halloween” trip was so much fun that among the American AFS students, we decided we were going to have to work together and create our own Thanksgiving feast, with Ciudad del Este playing host. The 6 Asuncioners got in around 1 PM on Monday the 1^st, but the arrival wasn’t without a few small hitches. We knew that the bus they took from Asuncion was capable of letting them off right outside of Linny’s (Missouri) house, which was serving as base camp for the visit. The only thing they had to do was ask the bus driver to let them out at “Colegio San Jose” (Linny’s school). Simple enough, right? As the hour of their arrival neared, Linny and I set out to meet them…however as time passed and the bus didn’t passed by, we began to get a little nervous. Finally we got a phone call from Hannah, informing us they had gotten off the bus and were fairly certain they were mere blocks from “San Jose”. At this point, Linny and I were fairly sure where they were, but the fact that they thought they knew where they were going in a city they’d never been in was slightly concerning. This, in addition to the fact that Linny’s entire street was named “San Jose”, along with the high school and a few dozen businesses, left us unsure which “San Jose” they were heading to. Miraculously, ten minutes later we spotted a very American looking group of kids and set off to Linny’s house where Nate (Arizona) realized he had accidently left his phone on the bus. In a country as filled with corruption as Paraguay, the chances of someone finding it and actually giving it back were one in a million. The problem was that Nate didn’t have any records of his host family’s phone number and couldn’t let them know about the missing cell phone. Luck seemed to be on our side, as astonishingly a worker from the bus company answered Nate’s phone and informed us he would hold it until the next day.

That afternoon was spent at the grocery store, gathering ingredients for our approaching feast. Knowing that trying to make dessert the day of might prove too difficult, I had slaved at the stove the day before to crank out 3 fresh pumpkin pies. I was admittedly quite proud of them considering I had had to use actual pumpkin and make a crust from scratch (Libby’s canned pumpkin and pre-made crusts just don’t exist in Paraguay). The rest of the dinner included 4 chickens (turkey is quite expensive here), mashed potatoes, salad, rolls, cooked sweet potatoes and carrots, and sopa paraguaya (Linny’s mom’s addition). With Linny’s family, we were 16 people. The dinner itself was quite touching and tears were definitely shed. First of all, I think I can easily say that the food reminded us all of home and made us miss our families. On the other hand, Linny’s family is so incredibly inviting and wonderful we were all incredibly happy to be spending Thanksgiving with them. We spent time saying a blessing and having each person present mention something they were thankful for, as tradition mandates. The night was one of the most memorable we’ve had here in Paraguay and will not be easily forgotten.

With stomachs overly full and circles under our eyes after staying up all night catching up, we boarded buses to show off “el centro” (Ciudad del Este’s downtown streets filled with illegal goods…i.e. copied movies and video games costing a dollar a pop). We spent the morning strolling the streets, eyes peeled as to not get mugged. After a quick lunch we broke into two groups, one heading to check out the Itaipu hydro-electric dam and another, myself included, to Linny’s house for a quick nap. The agenda for the evening was to take them to see “The Parana Country Club”. The “PCC” was home to 6 of our 10 Ciudad del Este AFSers and was a world apart from Paraguay. The gated community was filled with mansions, clothing stores, and groceries, taking away the necessity to ever actually leave. The high measures of security made it safe to walk the streets at whatever hour, something not all of us were able to do in our hosting neighborhoods. It was the closest thing to the U.S. there was in CDE and they all picked up on it pretty quickly as we passed through two different manned security gates. We didn’t spend long there as homesickness was already starting to set in for a few.

The plan Wednesday was to take a small group to see the Falls of Iguazu, the amazing waterfalls the Brazilian border is host to. Unfortunately, our group consisted of Linny’s 15 year-old host sister and Brazilian law prohibits people under 18 from entering into Brazil without their parents. Normally the border is not as tightly patrolled and for this we hadn’t thought it would be a problem, but apparently we had used our luck up earlier. We crossed back across the “Friendship Bridge” on foot to cross back into Paraguay and spent another morning walking in and out of various shops. Wednesday evening coincided with Teresa (an Austrian volunteer)’s birthday, so we prepared an “asado” (typical Paraguayan barbeque) for her at Linny’s house. That night around midnight the Asuncioners taxied to the bus terminal for the 5 hour bus ride home. It was great to see them all, but it was also sad having to say goodbye to the 6-monthers who I most likely won’t see again. However, Paraguayan Thanksgiving = 1 Grand Success!