counterclockwise

In the last few days, we’ve spent lots more time outside of Guarambaré, which should be the story of the next ten weeks or so. We’ve had our first classes in CHP’í. Mom, give my thanks to Ms. Schwarz for the review books. I made the advanced section of Spanish, which means I’ll get into Guaraní lessons that much more quickly.

After classes yesterday, the seven of us in the RED program decided to do a neighborhood tour – see where we all live and meet each others’ host families. Lots of fun. Lots of stories and hospitality. Consensus is that I’ve got the nicest room of any of us. Afterwards, we spent an hour or so in a roadside hangout watching the fútbol game (Paraguay’s champion Olympia team vs. some doomed hillside establishment) and having a beer.

In the evening, there was a quinceñera across the street from my house. For those unfamiliar with the phenomenon, a quince is a girl’s 15^th birthday party in the Spanish-speaking world. It’s like your bat mitzvah, your wedding reception and your senior prom all rolled into one. The girl spends most of her time trying to look like a dead-serious grownup while she poses for photos with everyone in the room. There’s a traditional dance with her father, and other important men in her family.

This particular quince was held outdoors in the family’s yard, under cold that would have sent most norteamericano bridal parties into a conniption fit. But here there were easily 200 people at the party looking mostly unfazed by the frigidity, a gaggle of photographers and their equipment, caterers, and a semi truck for the DJ. However they got that thing over the cramped and rutted little path up our hill, I’ll never know. But all in all, it was a blast.

Today´s Guaraní entry is a very useful one. It concerns the phrase jaha, which means ¨Let´s go¨or ¨We´re going¨. I imagine I´ll be hearing a lot of that one.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 3rd, 2007 at 10:45 am and is filed under Guaraní, Pictures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.