My Adventures and Travels

I just checked the calendar. I've already been here 8 weeks....how is that possible? In some ways I feel like I just got here and everything is new and foreign. In other ways it seems I've been here much longer! I've never been on a vacation this long, so I guess I'm starting to feel like I really live here... I wonder if people at home still think I'm on a 2-year vacation. No, I really do work here. Even if my daily stresses are not the same as yours, teaching 22 10-year olds is still a LOT of work! In the past 8 weeks, I have found my new comfort zone. I've started to learn my way around the neighborhood. In the past 8 weeks I have made great friends; friends I imagine visiting if they take another international job, or who I hope will visit me back in Colorado. Friends who will become my travel buddies. I have started thinking of Asuncion as "home." I have gotten to know 22 10- and 11-year olds, and their parents. I have gotten lost. I have been...

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...