Miscellaneous Things

1. In addition to avoiding cow poop and burning trash while walking, be cautious when walking underneath mango trees. Those mangoes have no mercy when they fall
2. I’m pretty terrible at volleyball, but hopefully playing a few days a week will help me out (The trainees in nueva esperanza play all the time)
3. Little kids don’t understand the fact that I can’t understand them when they speak 100 mph, and then laugh at me every time I ask them to repeat what they said
4. The mosquito net I sleep under blocks a lot of the fan air, so it feels like I am falling asleep in a sauna
5. Guarani is really difficult to learn. Mostly because half of the sounds are gutteral/nasal, and so us Americans sound like fools when we speak. A little sample: Mba’éichapa (Hello/How are you), nahaniri (no), Moõguapa nde (where are you from) Mba’épe remba’apo nde (where do you do). Yeah. Gibberish.
6. It’s pretty unbelievable the amount of time us trainees can talk about how terrible the dry white bread is here, and how much we miss chipotle. And how our host families don’t seem to understand that we don’t eat an entire cow in one sitting (our lunch portions are ridiculous).
7. Funniest t-shirt to date: my neighbor wearing one that read “Will sell wife for beer”. After I told him what it said, everyone laughed, and I haven’t seen him wear it since.
8. It is not uncommon to see a two-person moto going down the street. With 4 people on it. Including a newborn baby. And no one is wearing a helmet.
9. The other day I realized I hadn’t seen Michi (the cat) in a couple of days, so I asked my host mom about him. Her response? “I don’t know; he was probably killed by a dog. I’m going to get a new cat next week so we have something to kill the rats”. I hope you’re still out there Michi, but if not, RIP.
10. I heard Whitney Houston died the recently… overdose? I found out two days after it happened, so unlike me! I guess it’s time I become accustomed to having no idea what is going on in the celebrity world… Also – bachelor and pretty little liars updates, people! Haha but seriously…