My Adventures and Travels

When I first got to Paraguay, I, like many visitors or newcomers, didn't "get" chipa. What's the big deal? It's just bread. Why are these people so obsessed with it? For the unfamiliar, chipa is cheesy bread. Good, fresh chipa is a little bit crisp on the outside, and chewy and gooey on the inside. It is made with corn flour, mandioca starch, eggs, queso Paraguay (and pig fat, or some secret ingredient like that). It can be in many shapes and sizes as pictured. It is sold EVERYWHERE here, in little bakeries but also from ladies with baskets on the street, and guys on motorcycles with loud speakers, announcing that they are selling chipa for all the world to hear! Like I said, I just didn't get it. Then one of the members of the school board brought in bags of chipa from somewhere and...it was really good. But I went on with my life. Then, on a 6-hour bus ride, there was a vender selling "chipa caliente" and my friend bought a bag of 5 of them (th...

I'm starting to get behind...my birthday was over 2 weeks ago. Oh well better late than never! All of us "newbies" have spent a LOT of time together! Especially during our first two weeks here while we were all house-hunting: we all lived in the hotel, we went to work together, took cabs together, and ate our meals and explored the neighborhood and went shopping and went out for drinks after work together. Turns out, we all like each other pretty well too! So once we all started getting our own places, the promises to invite one another over for dinner began. One of the fellow newbies, Mark, asked if any of us had heard of a progressive dinner party before. I hadn't, but it sounded like a fun concept: go from house to house and have a different course, and drinks, at each house. Since we all live within walking distance of each other, we decided to do it. The fact that 4 of us had birthdays on the same weekend helped solidify it. Originally, we were going to go fo...

One of the best things about the trip was definitely the FOOD!! I was a little worried since I did not grow up eating a ton of seafood-for example, this trip was the second time I tried shrimp, and the first time I tried lobster! Well, my worries were unfounded, because our cook, and the crew that fished for us, was FANTASTIC. We ate well, and constantly! (Hey, all that swimming can make a girl hungry!). In between our huge meals, there would be trays of fruit, or in one case, fresh ceviche or crab legs to munch on.