kuña porã

it started last night. there is a new cool intern here from Madagascar named Melody and she will be working at the self-sufficient girls school, managing the hotel there. she made the best Ratatouille i've ever had in my life. don't worry, i got the recipe. we ate it with rice and a rosemary chicken. to top off the delicious french flavors, we had a flan, same flan i made a few weeks ago. "YYUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMM" - Caleb about 10 minutes later, people where headed to bed and i stayed around talking to those night owls. ALL OF THE SUDDEN my upper lip started to sting. ouch. i figured it was my skin, i've having some problems with eczema on my face and they have been giving me a burning sensation, but this was a little different. i went upstairs to brush my teeth and looked in the mirror. LO AND BEHOLD my lip was growing in front of my eyes. a sight to see. so so so strange. i figured i would sleep it off. but the sleep didn't do a thing. i woke up, my lip ...

before anything, take a look at me and this man. this happens to be Presdidente Ramirez, my papi's mission president. WOW right? i feel so lucky to have been able to meet him. first time i ran into him, he greeted me with a big hug - which is not a common paraguayan greeting. he told me that is how we will greet each other in heaven. we are attending the same ward, Barrio Moroni, Asunción. Presidente Ramirez just celebrated his 83rd birthday last sunday and recovering from a heart attack but he stands strong! ps. i hate pictures with flash. does anyone like pictures with flash? and then after church we decided to make the world famous PILGRIMAGE TO CA'ACUPÉ. and on our way we saw this united family: a CA'ACUPE tidbit: people make pilgrimages to Ca'acupe to see their lady of miracles, la Virgen de Ca'acupe. they go to this enormous basilica in the center of town. the town is known for it's chipa and some other artisan works. children were running around selling l...

if i could, i think i would try to morph myself into a 16 year old and attend school here. this is the Self-Suficient San Francisco Agricultural School . i should have paid more attention to the stats, but basically all the students come from really difficult backgrounds. the chances of them completing school in their home town is more of a "good thought" than reality. they don't have to pay for tuition here because they run a small hotel and learn hospitality, grow organic gardens, make milk and goat products and sell the produce to cover tuition. cool idea. B E A U T I F U L C A M P U S me, trying to milk a cow. i'm terrible at it. and this fruit is called a POMELO. it's a sweet grapefruit. i hate grapefruits, but i don't mind these. they would peel the skin off, cut a hole on the top, squeeze it and drink it. a natural juice box. i'm going to try it with oranges when i get home. and this is my Guarani teacher Wilfrido. he taught me many things that i h...

well, not much. we cooked up a hamburger storm as our last meal. it was the BEST hamburger i've ever had. i don't know why it tasted so good. maybe because i knew it was going to be the last thing i was going to eat so it tasted especially delicious. after licking the sauces off my arms i played a ferocious game of cards (our favorite game called screw our neighbor. i'm increadibly good at it.) after having a good time, i realized that i was content with my life and was happy to live my last few moments with these good, beautiful people:, Ashley (canada), Charlotte (london/canada), Caleb (usa), Wess (usa), Tom (or Tone?-i can't tell because of his accent and to embarrassed to ask) (netherlands), Izas (españa) and Osmar (paraguay). then Ashley, Charlotte and i watched secret of nimh together and shared a tub containing the last few bites of dulce de leche ice cream. woke up the next morning. and now i have a little imaginary purple button with yellow stars that says: i s...

i love watching planet earth. each episode features a habitat on earth in high definition and shows some close ups of wildlife. sometime i feel like i can make a little planet earth video here. woke up and there was a giant red, fat centipede crawling slowly by my bed (and my bed is less than a foot away from the floor), and i'm pretty sure that thing can jump... i think. and then that night i was in the kitchen and then a rat, bigger than a pregnant guinea pig was leaping across the floor. i really do like nature, but outside. Leaving Comments: also, i have learned that not everyone who follows the blog knows how to comment on it. allow me to teach you. there should be a little link on the bottom that looks like: #comments. (ex. 1 comment). if you click on that, that link should take you to a page with a text box where you can leave your comments. and if that doesn't make sense, this link may help: LEAVING COMMENTS besos.

this is a obituary for Laura. Laura Rothlisberger was an intern for Fundacion Paraguaya for three weeks. Miss Rothlisberger left us on May 19, 2011 around five o' clock at the Asuncion Airport. Laura and Mika started a project together, interviewing women about their businesses. She was generous, happy, and so much fun. The women loved speaking to her and telling them their life stories. She took it all in. She is survived by her intern companions, Mika, Caleb, Ashley, Laura, Mike, and Wess. She is greatly missed. Services will be held at 10:00 or 11:00 am in some Eastern airport. but i can't do this project alone. NO WAY JOSE. so Caleb is joining me. yesterday was our first day on the project together. and it was quite fun. caleb: Chapter: CALEB i met Caleb at BYU. we did an on campus internship for Fundacion Paraguaya together, and we thought it would be great to continue our work here together. yay. all the women love him. his blond hair, fair skin and not to mention his li...

VIVA PARAGUAY this last week was full of festivities. paraguay celebrated it's 200 years from independence from spain. this is how we celebrated: laura and i wanted to do a temple visit in the morning. turns out the bus routes were different because all the parading going around. so we walked. when we got out, it was pouring rain and walked back to our house. took about an hour. but i loved every minute of it. we trailed down the parading roads and saw all the people lining up for the event. soaked in the rain. wind breakers don't keep water out very well. all the army men were practicing their army drum rolls once we got back, Isaz who is from Spain made Spanish tortilla. Spanish tortilla is more like a super omelette. we decided it was fitting for the occasion, knowing that Paraguay won its independence from España. then we went to the "international" parade. we saw representatives for countries like Uruguay, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Brazil and China. i did howeve...

woke up at 6:30 to catch the 7:30 joy ride on the bus. laura and i were headed to a Fundación Paraguaya office to interview more women about their micro businesses. one of my favorite things in Paraguay are the bus rides. what wakes me up in the morning is knowing i'm going to catch a bus. these were the women we spoke to. the committee's name is "Mujeres Emprendedoras" and i interviewed four women. their businesses consisted of selling lightbulb and other electrical equipment, bijouterie (that's what they call jewelry here), and 2 lingerie businesses. then we took a bus (un colectivo) and got off at an intersection. we were told to stay there and wait for one of the girls from the office. she was going to meet up with us because there was a HUGE fair at a park, and we volunteered to stand and look pretty at the Fundación booth. we got there and waited and waited and waited and waited. after being here for a few weeks, we are now familiar with "paraguayan ...

because multiple people have guessed i'm 17 years old. how can they think that when i'm quite a few inches taller then most of them? i don't know.

but hey, i'm learning. people here speak jopara. its like spanglish, but instead of a mixture of english and español, its the combination of español y guarani (not the prettiest language). they use a lot of little squigglies above their letters, that means you are supposed to make nasal sounds. i cant help but sound like i'm sick when i "speak" guarani. here are some of the words i know: vacapipopo: ball po: 5 or hand kuña: woman porã: beautiful (that would be a nasally a) póra: monster pirapire: money pira: fish mba'éichapa reime: how are you? yep. i'm basically fluent. if you memorize that, you're practically paraguayan. and here are some pictures for picture time: i think Paraguay has treated me with the best ice cream i have ever ever ever had. sometimes i forget i am working in a developing country. this was a really nice ice cream parlor, with gormet ice creams. i'm eating almond ice cream topped with a french chocolate ice cream. i'm sitting...

it would be nice to say i was here for a two month vacation, enjoying my second winter of this year, sleeping in every morning, going to every museum, drinking too much mate or terre, going to exhibits and petting zoos... drinking terrere offered by one of the women but i'm here for business. a serious business. i'm interning for Fundacion Pa raguaya in the microfinance sector. it's a really cool program. i first heard about it at Brigham Young University when i was applying to an on campus internship in Students for Social Entrepreneurship (SSE). i was interested in microfinancing because it sounded like a successful way to alleviate poverty and my papi has connections to paraguay. last semester i was the team lead for Fundación Paraguaya in SSE, which lead me to come here for two months. if you don't know what micro-finance is, here is a good site to check out: http://www.kiva.org/about/microfinance . (kiva, a well known micro-finance organization) i work in an off...

there was the biggest rainstorm of my existence. thunders. lightnings. everywheres. it doesn't rain like this in utah. i don't think utah rain can be classified as rain, maybe not even a part of the water cycle. more like a part of the food chain? i'm going to look into it. but IT WAS RAINING SO HARD that it set the alarms off. laura, fany and i were punching in the code to make the alarm stop. and after the rain my hair looks awesome. i don't think it's affected by the humidity. i would say the electricity got to it.