counterclockwise

So I’ve got this file on my USB keychain labeled “slow news day”. When nothing particularly post-worthy has happened for a few days (as was the case last time I went online), I pull out an item of general cultural interest.

You shouldn’t tempt fate that way; she might just hand you some excitement.

Before going to the cyber, I bought a birthday cake on behalf of the group for a party we were going to attend. After I left the cyber, I happened to meet a neighbor at the bus stop, chatted for a minute, then attempted to board the Ruta 1 express. The bus driver was an idiot. He floored it while we were still climbing the stairs. My neighbor scraped up his arm, I fell, and the cake went flying. It landed upside down on the floor in about thirty pieces. There was nothing to be done for it - the bakery was closed, the party started in less than an hour, and the last express bus was leaving the stop.

All I could do was go home sulking and try to clean up before the party. So imagine my disgruntlement to get back to my host family and discover that I had left my USB keychain (and all my other keys with it) back at the cyber. There is no other key to my bedroom door, and no way in without busting through a deadbolt. Some people have got all the luck, huh?

I’m very fortunate to live with kind people. Ña T pulled out all the stops to get me back into town before the cyber shut down for the night - businesses here are rarely open past 7 PM. She found me a ride in a cousin’s child’s farm’s truck, sent along a trustworthy neighborhood teenager to babysit, and got the surviving gift to my friends attending the party. I did make it into town in time, I did recover my keys, and I am very grateful.

Got me to thinking, though. If the bus driver hadn’t knocked me and the cake over, I just would have gone straight to the party. I wouldn’t have discovered my missing keys until much too late to do anything about it, and we left for a field trip early the next morning. Some people have got all the luck, huh?

So about that field trip. We went to visit a volunteer, K, at his site. He talked a little about his co-op, their projects, and future plans. Nice. We were all a little disappointed, though, that the trip kept us from participating in a birthday pig slaughter at one family’s house. Pigs are considered really fine eating here. You don´t serve pork chops for just any old Tuesday. But we bore up alright under the disappointment. We concluded the lecture and then split up to our overnight hosts’ homes.

Another trainee and I had just sat down in the foyer, and were looking forward to a long, awkward evening when I heard a funny bird noise. They were guinea hens, and the family’s daughter offered to show them to us. And as we stepped into the backyard, she casually mentioned that they were about to slaughter one of their pigs. We got front row seats from stringing it up in a tree, to slaughtering, to debristling and skinning, to butchering. We didn’t eat any of it, but it was definitely a more interesting way to spend the night than talking about the weather. Then we got up at 4 am and went through the process again, this time with a different family and a cow. The other trainees are jokingly calling us angels of death now.

We spent the afternoon in the Ybycui Parque Nacional, one of very few Paraguayan spots allotted a place in the Lonely Planet South America guidebook. We saw a few waterfalls, and did a little wading. One of us went swimming - even though it’s midwinter the water was tolerable that day. I managed to fall in the creek and soak my jeans up to mid-thigh. Good times, interesting memories, and a crying shame nobody got a picture of my capsizing, which was probably quite a sight. 

The Guaraní word of the day is akã, meaning head. I’d lose my akã if it weren’t bolted on so tightly. But I have made some changes to my key chain to save me from having last week´s problem again. First and foremost, I´ve detached my USB key from my room key. And second, I´ve attached the USB key to a really funky ring I´ve got. Now, every time I plug it in, I also put on the ring. Hopefully, it´ll work better than a piece of string around my finger.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 11th, 2007 at 6:17 pm and is filed under Guaraní, Pictures, General. 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.