i'm really bad at guarani

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 next to Izas (her real name is sweet: Izaskun) who is from Spain and takes good care of me.


these girls are students at the all girls self-sufficient agricultural school. they spent the night and taught us some portuguese, latin dancing, and guarani. we had a good time. they were headed to Argentina to have a week long adventure.


and I saw this boy and wanted to keep him.

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