Thanksgiving

Our first big holiday in Paraguay was awesome.  Getting together with our teammates is always a blessing, but it was especially great to eat turkey, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, sweet potato (or acorn squash) pie, and apple pie with whipped cream for dessert.

 

  
After the fantastic meal, we had a talent show, and heard from the kids two stories, a song, and a harmonic piece. 

I'm not sure what these two are up to, but it looks a little suspicious.

Gross and real life in PY

We ate it anyway.  What's a few bugs, when it's popcorn?

More Travels

Yesterday we got up at 3am and packed up the truck in order to leave at 4:30.  Our experience has been that if we travel on Sundays, we have less of a chance of being stopped by the police.  Since all of our paperwork isn't completely in order, getting stopped can be a little stressful.  We pray before each trip that God will shut the eyes of the police as we travel.  So far, we have not ever been stopped at  a checkpoint.  The dirt portion of the trip took an especially long time because the tie-downs in the trailer kept working loose from all the bouncing around, so they had to be re-tied numerous times.  I was riding my motorcycle, so I would typically ride for about 5 minutes or so and then stop and wait 10 or 15 minutes for Holly to catch up.  Several times I turned around to backtrack because Holly was taking so long.  She definitely had to drive much slower with the trailer.  We also stopped to help pull a guy out of the mud who had gotten stuck.  Right after we stopped, a guy with an F150 came by and offered to pull him out.  I decided to let him try, since us helping him involved detaching the trailer.  The F150 promptly got stuck in the mud as well, so I ended up having to pull both of them out.  That whole fiasco took an hour, but it was nice to stop and help, and then see their surprise when we told them we didn't want any money.

Real life in PY #4

Here a document, there a document, everywhere a document...

The process of acquiring residency visas has not been quick or simple.  We have traveled to downtown Asuncion numerous times to attain copies of important documents, followed by other trips to other buildings to have the copies legalized or translated.  All this is done with the goal of having all required pieces of paper for five people when we arrive here.

 Immigrations.

After a five hour wait, we left with documents stating that Darin and I have turned in our application for temporary residential visas.  The kids' packets were missing a document which means, we will be going back to immigrations on another day.

Real life in PY #3

W.A.I.T.

You know you are going to be waiting a while when the numbers look like this.

The number they are on...

The number you have....

 
Yep, I waited 30 minutes to get my meat from the butcher, but I nailed the order and didn't even get a second glance because of my accent.

Real life #2

Real life in PY means creepy crawlies like you've never seen before.

Real life

Our bathroom looks like this...

Because our backyard looks like this...

Real life in PY means dirt and mud.