im here!

We got to asuncion after a 10 hour layouver in buenos aires which was spent sleeping on the floor and trying to learn everyone´s name. After that we had a 2 hour flight to asuncion. At the start and end of the flight the capitain said "beautiful ladies prepare for landing/takeoff" it was pretty unexpected. The climate here right now is pretty mild, about 90 degrees with a bit of humidity but it´s going to get a lot hotter in the summer. I´m staying with a family in a small town outside of guarambare (a subburb of asuncion, sorta) the town is called nueva esperanza. There are only a few roads in the town and they are paved with cobbles. I live in a house with 5 people - two host parents who are in their late 40s, a 19year old daughter, and a 17 and 16 year old sons. They are all really nice but it´s been a bit frustrating trying to communicate with my limited vocabulary. However, we have started learning guarani right away so we can be really good speakers when we get to the campo (county) for our assignments. The food is heavy on starches and meat, but it´s still pretty tasty. The one phrase that we know really well is mbaechaba. Mbaechapa means How are You? but you don´t pronounce the M. We have language training for about 4 hours a day and then other kinds of training for a few hours in a local school. The earth is very red here and there are lots of trees that I´m not familiar with yet.

The other people in the environmental education group are really nice and friendly and all about the same age as me. I think that about half of them have the same level of language competency as me, so I don´t feel so bad about looking through a dictionary for words now. There arn´t really any mosquitos here except for at dusk, but supposidly in the campo there are TONS of mosquitos. All in all I´m doing really well except for feeling kinda frustrated about the language bnarrier, but hopefully that will pass with time. I havn´t been about to post any pictures yet but hopefully I´ll be aboe to do that pretty soon. This place actually really reminds me of my permaculture workshop in ariona last summer - the red earth, the humidity, and the summer monsoons.

I miss everyone a lot and send my best wishes back to the states. I´ll be able to write pretty easily so I´ll be on that as soon as I have a chance =] adios!