1 week down and I definitely Don't wanna go home!

    So, I made it a week and aside from some mosquito bites and bruised toes, I'm unscathed!
    Apparently the top step leading up to my bedroom has declared war on me.  I trip up or down it at least three times a day...whether I turn the light on or not!
    Living here in Paraguay is a lot of fun so far. I have awesome neighbors all around me and it's a lot of fun to be able to just stop and talk with the people who live around you. Somehow a trip in the common area to get a broom always seems to turn into an hour long conversation about something that everyone one on the floor eventuall drifts outside to join. Makes it hard to get things done, but it's a great way to get to know each other!
Tomorrow is payday for us, so we are excited to be able to buy some much needed things for our apartments, as well as some actual food for actual meals. We are planning to go to a huge market in the area which will be quite the experience. Apparently it's like a huge, crowded flea market type thing where you can get pretty much anything at a really cheap price (though obviously, some of it is good quality and some of it definitely isn't).
    Tuesday is our last day of orientation, and we were supposed to start teaching Wednesday, but school's been postponed until Monday (a HUGE blessing). Because of the cold and the damp, a lot of children are in the hospital with the flu and H1N1.  The government required public schools to delay and suggested that private schools delay to prevent the spread of the virus.
I'm super excited for the extra days to work in my classroom, because I've barely made a dent in the chaos of it all. The last few teachers seem to have kept every teacher's manual and extra workbook for the last decade.  I have "teaching ideas" books and curriculum books dated in the early 90's on my shelves! Today I spent several hours just going through books, tossing out extras and unusable books just so I'd have room for new text books and to actually put materials on shelves (and I still have a cabinet full!). Tomorrow I'm going to try and tackle the many very dusty boxes of random art materials and who knows what else. After that I can actually start setting up my classroom.
    Other than that, I'm really enjoying being at the school.  The Pre-Kinder teacher is across the way and her name is Katie, too! Since there is a third Katie teaching middle school and living in the apartments I'm going by Kathryn here, or Katalina/Katarina to the spanish speakers. The Pre-Kinder aid has been a really great help in figuring out the day to day way of things in the classroom.
  

Life in Paraguay #2: You have to turn keys twice to lock doors.  Once around locks it a little bit and around again locks it all the way.

Prayer Requests:
Pray for the children of Paraguay, their health and their first days of school.
Pray for all the teachers at Asuncion Christian Academy as they prepare for school on Monday.

Settling in and Cleaning up

So, the last two days have been fairly quiet. One of the school administrators and another teacher took my grocery shopping at the mall (malls have grocery stores in them). It was fun, but a little overwhelming since I mostly had to go with pictures to buy food. It was market day so all the farmers brought in produce and set up on the bottom floor of the parking deck. It was a lot of fun looking around at all the produce. There were lots of familiar foods like carrots and potatoes, but also some really different ones. There were some big yellowish squash for sale that were big enough to fit a baby in! There was also a neat green squash that is all pinched on the bottom so it looks like it has a mouth. Produce at the farmer's market costs about what it does at a store, but it's supposedly fresher. You can't keep any of it around long though, because even packaged food will go bad a few days after you open it. But this is due to the fewer chemicals and preservatives in the food. :)

I also went out later with my neighbors and Elizabeth's parents. We went to Pizza Hut in the mall for supper. It was interesting, our pizza had a tomato slice on each piece and you are supposed to eat it with a knife and fork. Then went to the grocery store for cleaning supplies. Here in Paraguay, things get really dusty really fast, and mold can be a real problem (because, for example, my bathroom never really dries all the way I leave footprints on the wood floor on the way to my bedroom every day). Elizabeth's mom basically gave me the ins and outs of cleaning and laundry supplies in Paraguay, which was really helpful, because some laundry detergents bleach in them, and I never would have known!

I happily started today with a wonderful hot shower!! I've spent the rest of the day washing out all the kitchen cabinets and washing all the dishes. That was an interesting adventure. As people in the apartments move to new apartments, have group dinners, and move out they take dishes with them. As a result, most of the apartments have lots of pieces of lots of different sets. For example, I have one small frying pan with black only on the edges, a tea pot, a frying pan with no handle, a tart pan, and a few assorted baking pan type things, but I have no pots. I also have plates from four different sets, and about a billion forks in different colors, but only one regular knife and a couple of spoons. Elizabeth and I are planning to have everyone get together one day this week and try and match up some sets and see if we can distribute cookware a little more usefully. I'm intrigued to see how many different sets of dishes we'll have!

Soooo much glass!

Teapot macaroni!

I'm kind of having fun mopping the floors, because I have a neat mop. You take a certain kind of rag, get it wet, and drape it over a big squeegee looking thing. It actually works really well, and it doesn't drip all over the floor. I'm enjoying cleaning today, but tomorrow I have to clean the shower and try and make the walls a little less...slimy (yuck).

One very dirty rag, and one very clean floor :)

Tomorrow we have new teacher orientation, which I'm really excited about. Hopefully I'll know more about what I'll be teaching and get to spend some time in my classroom. I'm interested to see what materials I'll have, because very few, if any of my students will speak English. I'm excited for everything to get started!

Life in Paraguay #1: Instead of throwing toilet paper in the toilet, you have to throw it in the trashcan beside the toilet.

Prayer Requests:
Pray that orientation will go well tomorrow.
Pray that I will be able to start making some lesson plans for my class!

Day 1- Neighbors, Knitting, and Explosions

Well I made it! Paraguay, from what little I've seen of it, is a beautiful place to live.  My apartment is really nice, and I have awesome next door neighbors. I will be rooming with one other person, but so far just me and a couple next door have moved it. 

Asuncion at night

Today was nice, the fifty something degree weather is a lovely change from the 97 degrees back in Georgia!  The school compound is beautiful with plenty of grass and trees.

The first day I was here was fairly simple.  I slept late (36 hours of no sleep makes even a strange bed comfy!), then I went and met the people in the office and got to see my classroom. It's a nice little classroom with some tables for the students. I didn't stay long because it was being cleaned. I'm excited to see more of it in the next few days.

My first meal in Paraguay, yep, cornflakes

 After that I went back to my room and took a shower.  I say shower because I was standing in the shower. The filament in my shower head is worn out so it won't heat the water. I washed my hair with the freezing water, but I chickened out and just took a bath with the warm sink water and a pitcher.  It was way too cold to take a freezing cold shower!

After that I put my room together, started knitting a washcloth because I didn't think to bring any and I keep spilling the milk, and got to know my neighbors some.  They are really nice and I really enjoyed talking to Elizabeth, the wife.  Later, when I went to make supper was when I had some excitement in my day.  Elizabeth and I had explored my match-lit gas stove earlier, but when I went to cook I forgot to raise up the glass cover, before I put on the teapot of water to make macaroni in (my kitchen is a little limited as far as dishes go). As I'm standing at the sink washing some dishes there was a massive explosion behind me and all the glass broke into about a billion pieces.  Thankfully, it's tempered glass so it broke into thick little pieces instead of shards, and the bigger pieces stayed on the stove.  God did some serious protecting, because none of the glass seemed to hit me, even though I was about two feet away.

Between the explosion and my scream (described as being an "I'm about to die" scream), my neighbor rushed over to make sure I was okay and she helped me laugh it off enough to clean up the glass on the floor.  Needless to say, I finished making the macaroni in the microwave...

And that was just the glass on the stove...

Thank you for all of your prayers, I made it safely and with all of my luggage! I think this is going to be a wonderful place to live and I can't wait to start exploring the city!

Prayer requests: Pray that I'll be able to assimilate quickly to the new way of life in Asuncion.
Pray for my roommate's safe arrival and that we'll become friends quickly!

Aaand it's T-minus 10, 9, 8,7...!!!!

Ten repackings, a lot of cleaning, and one possibly strained wrist later and I'm packed and ready to go.  At this point I'm hoping my sister's bathroom scale weighs up and not down (and they don't weigh my carry-on), because I pretty much want everything left in my suitcase.  My poor dog, she came over sniffed and walked away sadly (she knows what a suitcase means).
I've been sorting, trashing, and cleaning out my  room and my closet this week...not so much fun, but it was nice to finally have the motivation to finish what I've been doing on and off for months. I've been collecting kid's books since I started the education program and I didn't realize how many I had until I carried the boxes of them into the  attic, of course it looks likes a lot more because you can't put too many in a box or it gets too heavy to carry. I figure I can take some of the younger books back with me when I come home to visit.

I'm getting really excited to leave an see my new home, but I've got a long day ahead of me (I take off around 5:30 and land around midnight.). I hope I get to meet my roommate(s) tomorrow, though they may not be there yet. I'll get to see the school up close though because the apartments are on campus.

Please pray for safe travel and for all my luggage to arrive safely. I've never had a lost bag in all my years of flying and I really don't want to start now!  Thank you for all your love, support, and prayers, because of them, and one really incredible God, my next post will be from Paraguay!!!!

All packed up!

Paraguay-CIA World Factbook

5 Days Left!!!!

I leave in five days, which is pretty much an overwhelming thought.  I'm essentially packed (which means I could zip up and leave with what I have, not that I'm actually done packing...).
Thankfully, I found out today that if I don't get the background check before I leave it isn't a huge deal and my dad can just send it to me when I get there. I just need it for the permanent residency paperwork. That pretty much took the last little bit of my stress away. Now I'm just trying to get my room packed up and say goodbye to everybody.
Sometime in the next few days I'm going to Dublin, which will be fun.
Thanks for all your prayers and I can't wait to give a real Paraguay update in just 5 DAYS!!!! :)

Getting Ready to Go!

Only nine days until I fly out for the adventure of a lifetime!!!
I am getting so excited about what will not only be my first teaching job, but my first experience actually living overseas!
I am really excited to see my new home, meet my roommates, and start getting ready to teach.

For those of you who don't know, I will be moving to Paraguay for the next two years to teach kindergarten at Asuncion Christian Academy.

Packing for a new country is kind of hard.  It isn't like I can just pack five outfits to rotate like I've done for trips in the past.  I'm not obsessed with clothes, but I would like to have some actual options for the next two years! What is making packing especially interesting is that Paraguay is in the middle of winter right now, and sometimes it gets pretty cold there! Right now I am just having fun packing and un-packing all of my clothes as I decide what to bring and what to leave behind.

My biggest prayer request right now (aside from safe travel) is for paperwork to come through.  I had to get a background check done through the FBI in order to work in Paraguay. The consulate in Miami has to legalize it (whatever that means) before I can start the paperwork in Paraguay.  I leave in nine days and I still haven't gotten it back so I can send it to the consulate! 

Asuncion Christian Academy