the weekend of fiestas



There were three birthday parties this weekend and can I tell you that Paraguayans know how to party! On Friday it was my Tia's birthday, who lives next door, and she had a tranquilo birthday dinner. However, we didn't actually eat dinner until 11pm. woah. That's too late for me to even handle. It was really awesome though because I was able to help grind up the corn to make a very popular and culturally important dish called Sopa Paraguaya.

On Saturday there was another fiesta to celebrate the 85 (?) birthday of our abuela! My host dad is one of 7 children so all of them plus their large families came and some other relatives too. There were approximately 60 people there which is crazy because the space doesn't seem like it would be able to fit that many people. My family rented a hamburger truck and hired a woman to cook hamburgers all night. It was pretty legit, and it looked that something you would find on the streets of New York or something.  There was a lot of beer and it so strange to get used to sharing all of your drinks with everyone. (side note: I don't think I ever mentioned this yet, but the most popular drink here is terere which is passed to everyone in circle when your sitting on your patio or elsewhere, but every other drink is also passed around. So beer, wine, juice, soda... all shared. Totally strange, but very cultural. Not the most sanitary, but if you're sick you're supposed to refrain...) anyways, lots of beer. There was a lot of dancing and I learned a little bit of polka.. it's really popular here! At close to midnight we started singing happy birthday to abuela and it was just really sweet. There were lots of pictures taken and at one point it was abuela and 4 of us PCTs (there are 4 in my extended family, so we're "primos") and we sang Happy birthday to her in English and she just loved it because she had 3 different languages sang to her, Spanish, Guarani and English! It was a really a late night, I didn't end up going to bed until approximately 3am!!!

 

On Sunday I slept in a little (thank goodness) and then we went to the concha (futbol field) for a little fiesta to support the team, which was perfect because it was also Jennifer's birthday. We had a TON of food and drinks and there was a lot of dancing and a live singer. It was a super hot day (as are most) and we were there for 6.5 hours! I pretty much melted. After we left the field we returned to my house because it's the closest and about half of our group was there, after like 10 minutes the other half of our group just happened to be walking by so they sat down to chat and such. It was actually really nice to have the full group all together for a little while!

 

That's about all I can think of right now. But, on Wednesday we're required to make our way to Asuncion, the capitol, by bus. We have partners, but it should be really interesting...



a picture at the pond, that I forgot about

 

Serious arm workout

helping!

Now that's a lot of corn, and it's only half

Jen, Ruthcenia, and I



dancing

Ivan, my host brother