My Adventures and Travels

This is the cabin we stayed in. Well, it turns out I took a LOT of pictures of the place, and they didn't all fit in my last post! Here are some photos from our second day. After a leisurely morning drinking coffee and eating breakfast, we walked into the town of Belen. In these little towns, you have to learn how to entertain yourself! We stopped by a tiny craft fair, walked forever looking for the river, talked to a really old lady who spoke mostly Guarani, got some ice cream, walked through the cemetery, and walked through a lot of mud! All in all it was a good day.  The next morning we walked a few kilometers up to Belen. Belen's claim to fame is that the Tropic of Capricorn runs through it! Cemetary This is the guy that crawled out of the lake!

Our first long weekend of the year is Spring Break, in September. As with all long weekends in recent memory, epic rain was predicted, foiling our original plans. A group of 8 of us (5 teachers, 2 spouses, and 1 teaching from another school) was originally planning to visit a lake and beach in Paraguay called Laguna Blanca. However, Laguna Blanca is at the end of a 40 km. dirt road. If it rained, we'd be stranded out there-possibly for days. If we made it. Our backup plan was to visit an Ecolodge outside the town of Concepcion, which is up to the north. It took about 5 hours to get there. One interesting thing was this weekend coincided with a big event, the Trans-Chaco Rally, a 3-day car race, said to be one of the most difficult routes in the world. We did see some of the vehicles while we were driving. Paraguayan Traffic Jam As always, as soon as we got out of Asuncion the scenery changed drastically, and it was beautiful. I love driving through the "chaco"-it ...

So to sum up the months of June, July, and August, I said goodbye to my students, about half of my friends/colleagues, went back to Colorado for three weeks, then returned to Paraguay with about 20 new teachers on my staff. Then only a few days later school started with my new group of kids. It was a whirlwind. All that whirlwind kind of made me think about what it means to live and teach abroad. I mean, obviously, you have the amazing benefits of being able to travel, explore, and see the world like most people only dream of. And the downside of missing "home" like crazy. I kind of expected both. But one of my friends here in Paraguay, Bree, summed it up more perfectly than I could: "It's like I live two lives. I have my life in the US and my life here, and there is absolutely nothing in common between them." It's so true, and it's pretty bizarre. I think it might be easier in a lot of ways to be part of a teaching couple or family abroad than a sin...