La vida de los ultimos meses.

Hello everyone!! I apologize for not having written much over the last several months. It’s interesting how I’ve adapted to this very foreign environment little by little. Things that would have surprised me when I first arrived are now very normal. For example, the utter chaos in the open air market near the hospital, having a public bus start moving before you have both feet firmly planted inside, people begging and hawking fruit at street corners. It’s not that it’s completely normal to me, but it has ceased to surprise me each time I leave the hospital. Perhaps that’s the reason I haven’t thought of writing much lately…things seem to have settled down and I’ve been able to catch on to the hospital routine. But really there are a lot of things that I have to thank God for. One of the best things that happened in the last few months was the arrival a roommate, an Argentinean from the Adventist University in Argentina, named Walter. It turned out that our family backgrounds were very similar and he also understood my American idiosyncrasies better then most, having spent 5 years as a kid in Berrien Springs while his father attended the seminary. It was great to have someone with whom I could pass the time and perhaps pull the occasional practical joke on. He also turned in to my personal Spanish instructor...I would ask him anything that I didn’t exactly understand and he do his best to explain it. I realize more and more each day how much of our knowledge of our own language is based on hearing the same sentence structure or word usage over and over again. When we have to sit down and think about why we say it that way, we are hard pressed to think of the reason why.

Our good friends Cynthia and Julio

Looking out over the city of Asuncion

My little buddy the bird...

...that decided that my hair would be a nice nest!

Christmas here was a Christmas of many firsts for me. It was the first Christmas that I have spent away from my family, it was the first Christmas that had Christmas dinner the night before, and it was the first Christmas in which the main activity of the day was swimming in the pool! Here in Paraguay they have the tradition of celebrating Christmas much in the same way that we celebrate New Years. They have a big meal the night before and friends and family get together. Everybody eats and talks and stays up until midnight to celebrate. In some families, they wait until midnight to start eating. At midnight the stillness is broken by hundreds of firecrackers, cherry bombs, and all kinds of explosives (including gun shots) as the city erupts in celebration. For me it was like an odd combination of the Fourth of July and New Years Eve. Even though it was a very different experience and the song “I’ll be home for Christmas” took on a very real meaning for me, it was an interesting experience and we felt the hospitality of many families that invited us over for Christmas as well as new years.

My little Christmas tree!!

In the New Year I had a change in job description. They moved me to the general consulting/emergency area. The job change was also a great blessing for me. I felt a lot more useful in what I was doing and was able to learn new things as well. One of the things that really excited me was learning how to put an IV. Although they won’t let me do it on patients, several kind-hearted nurses and doctors offered themselves as guinea pigs so that I could practice! And then whenever one of the nurses needed an intravenous medication, they would let me do it. That for me was an amazing blessing.

More recently, Shastin and I took our last excursion here in South America outside of Paraguay. Shastin’s mom came for a few weeks so, after she had spent about a week in Asuncion, we set out to travel. First we went east to a city called Ciudad del Este (City of the East) that is found right on the triple border between Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. Even though we didn’t have a visa for Brazil, we discovered that the rules can always be bent a little bit in South America and managed to go through Brazil and see that side of Iguazu falls. We also spent a day on the Argentinean side of the falls. The amount of water that pours over those cliffs is utterly amazing and I took way too many pictures. Next we headed south to the Adventist University in Entre Rios. Walter had just left a week or so before we headed out on our trip and was getting married near the University. So we stopped by to attend the wedding and to see friends at the University (friends from a cultural exchange program and friends that had moved from Paraguay). The wedding was beautiful and I was very happy for Walter…especially after having to listen to his pining! From there we went to Buenos Aires and did a hurried minitour of the city before saying goodbye to Mrs. Purvis and catching a flight down to Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world apart from whatever settlements there are in Antarctica. Oh how we enjoyed the cold weather after the interminable 100 degree weather in Paraguay!! It even snowed for us! We spent a day in the national park, climbed up to a glacier and went to see the sea lions and penguins that live close. The next leg of our journey took us up to two mountain towns; El Calafate and El Chalten. We spent one day in El Calafate to see the main attraction there, the glacier Perito Moreno, before fleeing the extremely high prices. For me El Chalten was the highlight of the trip. We were able to hike every day and see some of the most amazing views in the world. Two famous peaks, Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre, are within a few hours hiking distance from the town and we took advantage of the time to hike every day. From there we returned to Buenos Aires via airplane and spent a few days before returning by bus to Paraguay. If you would like to see some pictures from this trip, click here to see an album.


So now it’s really weird to think that I will be taking one last trip in a few months, the trip home. I can’t describe how exciting that is but at the same time I’m going to miss the people that I’ve gotten to know here and maybe even a little bit of the culture. Thank you all for your prayers and I hope to thank you in person soon!!