The Escobar's take on Seattle: This love/hate relationship I have with Paraguay

After returning from a wonderful and relaxing vacation in Uruguay, a beautiful developed country, I’ve been noticing a few things about Paraguay that I really love and a few things that I really hate.

Paraguay is not a terrible place. Paraguay has been the catalyst to so much change in my life. It has been the place where I have grown so much as a person; I’ve found myself and the love of my life here in Paraguay. My time as a Peace Corps Volunteer has been amazing and flown by, in a short while my time will be done here in Paraguay and will cry when I leave.

I guess it’s time to fill you all in with the love/hate relationship I have with this querido country, Paraguay.

I Love that the yard of my house is currently filled with mandarins, pomelos, oranges and guava fruit.

I Hate how things just don’t work or break easily.

I Love the way of living, tranquilo.

I Hate how so very few people have goals and aspirations. (Save the $ for school instead of buying a new cell phone or moto.)

I Love how every time I am reading or on the computer the people automatically think I am studying.

I Hate having to practically force people to want to work and do something good for their community. (It’s not like they are busy doing other constructive activities, at least here in San Salvador.)

I Love fat. I have a new found love of meat fat. It’s so good. Why did I used to cut it off and throw it away?

I Hate being so far away from home. I feel like this whole time I’ve stayed strong and really tried not thinking about home. But now that the end is getting close and I have other things on my mind, like getting married, I am starting to get anxious. At least I have lots of fun work to keep me busy.

I Love chipa guazu. Muy Rico.

In other news…We, the centro cultural, have receive the grant money for the project in the train station. Today I went with my contact and we bought 45 chairs for the train station to have, permanently. It was an amazing feeling. Today I accomplished my biggest goal, chairs for San Salvador!!! Hooray!!!

It is still CRAZY hot. I have taken to showering about four times a day. I really want a kiddy pool.

Went to another volunteer’s site one day and got a bunch of new movies and TV shows. But its actually kind of dangerous, because now I don’t want to leave my house.

I learned how to make ñanduti, traditional lace work.

Time keeps rolling on. I’m still trekking. But if it doesn’t cool down soon I may melt.