Holidays

Halloween - Halloween isn't a big thing here. You do see some decorations and/or costumes here and there, but there isn't Trick or Treating or anything like that. Sarah and I spent the night before Halloween making costumes out of 2 liter bottles. We just started cutting and taping stuff together with duct tape and by the end of it, we wound up with tree costumes. Mine was a big tree hat which turned out to be really great for games of "throw mangos and oranges into Ben's big tree hat" the next day in training. Others dressed up too; we saw some jellyfish, adam and eve, a superhero who was raised a sugar cane field, a fairy godmother, and a huerta. That night, Sarah and I walked with a group of other volunteers to meet up at Felipe's house for a little get together. We were going with the intention of watching movies, but once we got there, we all just got lost in conversation for a while and wound up not even watching a movie. Andrew carved a watermelon like a Jack-o-lantern, so I guess you could call it a Jack-o-melon.

Thanksgiving - This year we got to have Thanksgiving at the US Ambassador to Paraguay's house. They live in the city in a big house with tennis courts, a pool, and some other stuff I'm sure I didn't see. The 50 of us poared inside the house and made ourselves comfortable. We were allowed to do anything we wanted, so some swam, some played tennis, some played board games, and others used the phones and the internet the whole time. Sarah and I were the latter. We got to Skype with Sarah's entire family, and Jojo and PapaDon too. At dinner, we all sat around some really nice tables and enjoyed some excellent food. There was turkey and some delicious stuffing, mashed potatoes, a squash casserole thing, some other dinner stuff, and ice cream and pie for dessert. There were empanadas, but Sarah and I wouldn't even look at them because we had eaten so many since we've been in Paraguay.

Picture to come soon.