I wanted to make a quick note about singing.  It is the best thing ever.  In my family in MI we sing a hymn before we eat dinner.  I remember years ago when we started doing this how we (the kids) would complain and complain and whine and beg not to have to sing a hymn before we ate dinner.  I suppose we were just really hungry, or just whiney kids.  Well, I am so glad my parents stuck to that idea of singing before dinner because now I have bunches of hymns stored up in my head which come to my heart when I need them.  One of the first hymn we would sing together was How Firm a Foundation.  I think this could possibly be the theme song for my exchange year.  God has been so faithful!! (and will continue to be)

How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,
Is laid for your faith in His excellent Word!
What more can He say than to you He hath said,
You, who unto Jesus for refuge have fled?

In every condition, in sickness, in health;
In poverty’s vale, or abounding in wealth;
At home and abroad, on the land, on the sea,
As thy days may demand, shall thy strength ever be.

Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed,
For I am thy God and will still give thee aid;
I’ll strengthen and help thee, and cause thee to stand
Upheld by My righteous, omnipotent hand.

When through the deep waters I call thee to go,
The rivers of woe shall not thee overflow;
For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless,
And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.

When through fiery trials thy pathways shall lie,
My grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply;
The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design
Thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine.

Even down to old age all My people shall prove
My sovereign, eternal, unchangeable love;
And when hoary hairs shall their temples adorn,
Like lambs they shall still in My bosom be borne.

The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose,
I will not, I will not desert to its foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.

Other simple song I love are
Let the peace of Christ rule in your heart
I´ve got peace like a river (joy like a fountain and love like an ocean)
and many many more

Hola!

I was thinking about writing my blog in Spanish, but I thought that would kind of defeat the purpose of having a blog because none (or at least few) of you would understand it.  So I decided against it. Today I had a pat yourself on the back moment.  A guy came into the class today and did a presentation on reforestation and then we had to write a one page summary of what he said.  And I did it all by myself!!!!!!!  YEAH!  Not trying to be boastful...just extremely happy.  It made my day !

Nothing too extreme has happened these past couple of weeks.  Just school and school.  I like school though, I like my classmates and it´s not boring.  I can actually do the work too!  The only class I truely don´t don´t don´t like is algoritmica, it´s terrible.  I don´t even think I would understand it if it were in English.  Luckily we only have that a couple times a week.  

Yesterday was Ellies bday.  I love you Ellie.  All I have to say about that is when I get home I really want to have some friends over, sit on the couch, watch a movie, and eat shredded cheese.  

May is filling up pretty quickly.  May 7-9 I am going to the Chaco with group which is organized by AFS.  I am so looking forward to it.  I hardly know anything about the Chaco except it is really dry, Menonites live there, and there is a brand of dairy products which has their headquarters there.  It should be pretty interesting.  I am also looking forward to spending time with the AFSers.  I love our little familia de intercambistas!  Then the next weekend I am going to Asuncion with my classmates to go the concert of Wisin y Yandel, yeah reggaeton music!  I am SOOO excited!  And the ticket wasn´t even that expensive and it looks like we are going to have good seats.  At the end of May I want to visit my missionary friends again.  It´ll be nice to get to see them again and see the progress on their house.  

It´s cooled down alot.  I don´t always have to sleep with the air conditioning.  The weather now is like late spring in MI.  

Only 9 more weeks.  And I am going to enjoy every second of it!  

Love you all!!!!

Erin

I had the most incredible unique Easter break EVER.  I will tell you what happened...

Tuesday. After school I came home, ate lunch, packed my backpack, and went to Asuncion in a bus with Sady.  Sady and I didn´t go together because there wasn´t enough space in the car for all of us to go together.  But the bus we took was really nice and less cramped than the car, so it was fine.  The bus ride was about 5 hours.  This was the first time that Sady or I had traveled to San Lorenzo in a bus by ourselves, so we didn´t know where to get off.  Luckily there were some kids from our school on the bus too and they helped us out.  From where we got off, it was only about a 10 minute drive in the car to get to my grandma´s house.

Once we got there we ate some food, hung out with cousins a bit, and went to bed.  My "uncles´" houses are right next door.  There are actually 3 houses in a row, but they are all the yard are connected.

Wednesday. The rest of my family got there early the next morning.  Once I woke up and got ready for the day I was put to work making chipa.  Chipa is sort of like bread.  We made TONS of it.  Seriously.  Picture your average sized laundry basket, now fill that with chipa dough, that´s how much we made.  It was fun molding it into little edible sculptures.  Chipa is baked in special oven call a "ta ta kua"  I am not sure how you spell it.  It´s like half a sphere made out of clay and bricks.  First they made a big fire in it and then when the coals got super hot they places the cookie sheet of chipa right on top.  The chipa baked super fast, like 7 minutes.  We made SO much chipa.  The rest of the day was spent hanging out with cousins, drinking terere, cocido, and eating chipa.  That night we watched a movie and went to bed.

Thursday.  More cooking and baking.  We made lots and lots of sopa paraguaya.  It is a traditional food of Paraguay made with cheese, corn flour, butter, salt, milk, eggs, and mandioca flour.  They mixed the batter all together in a hug laundry basket type thing with there hands.  You bake sopa in a brownie pan (I don´t know the real name for that type of pan).  I think we must have made about 20 or more pans sopa, and it all got eaten within the week.  We also made lots and lots of chicken.  These things were also baked in the tatakua.

When I say we made chicken and dont mean we threw some frozen chicken legs in the oven.  My cousins brought some chicken when they came.  We kill the chicken and everything.  It was pretty disgusting.  I just walked outside and there were a bunch of dead chicken hanging in the tree from their feet.  Then my uncle came and cut off there heads.  Then I helped my aunts pluck them.  Yes, I plucked a chicken!  I never thougth I´d ever have to do that.  It´s actually pretty fun.  You just put the dead chicken in a pot of boiling water, and stir it around a little.  Then grab the chicken by the leg and, pluck!  It totally grossed me out at first, but once you get into in, I guess it´s not that bad.  It was for sure a new experience.

Good Friday.  Apparently you aren´t supposed to do anything on Good Friday, that is why we did so much cooking and stuff before hand.  We just sort of hung out and watched tv, ate ice cream, drank terere.  Then that evening we prayed.  Well actually they call in reciting.  There little system is really interesting.  The whole family got together in a group and went around to different "stations"  At ever station someone read something  and then said the Lord´s Prayer.  There were 15 stations, but it really didn´t take that long to get through it.  After all that we all sat around and celebrated with popcicles!  Then we all ate dinner together.  Usually my family doesn´t pray before they eat, but I guess because it was Good Friday, someone suggested that we should bless the food.  That was turned down with the excuse that we had already recited enough for one day.

We made a little movie theater outside.  We put the tv in he front yard and everyone just pulled a chair up.  Then we went to bed.

Saturday.  Saturday we took a 30 minute (or so) bus ride to the mall in Asuncion.  We walked into the mall the at the same time that the Cerro soccer team walked in.  It was so funny, it was a big group of guys all wearing matching clothes.  I wonder if they always go everywhere together and wear matching clothing.  We got a picture with them!!  Even though I a really a Olympista, it was still exciting to see someone "famous" Our plan was to go to the movie theater, but they were all playing too late, or we had alread missed them.  That turned out to be just fine though because I got to explore the mall.  We went into a bookstore where I found a Paraguayan cookbook.  I am so excited to have that because I really like eating and making Paraguayan food.  I also bought a "yo <3 PY" shirt. There is this one section of the mall called something like "American Shopping".  It was kind of weird to go there are see "American" brands like Abercrombie and Holister.  I hadn´t even noticed that I never see that stuff here.  Being in a mall was a little like being home, even though I don´t go to the mall that often, neither do I adore shopping.  It was a fun time to hang out with cousins and see more of Asuncion.  I am so glad I got the chance to go.

Sunday.  We ate a lamb, or maybe two.  The system for my family is something like grill an animal, put it in the middle of the table and everyone just sort of cuts off a chunck and starts eating.  It was super yummy.  Of course we also ate sopa paraguaya.  yum yum.  My little sister Milena said that she had never head the Easter story before so I read it with her.  After that we talked a bit and it was really sweet.  I feel bad for her because there is really no one to teach her about God and his truth.  I had always taken the "bed time Bible stories" and "dinner devos"  for granted, but now I appreciate them SO much.  It is really incredible to think how dedicated my parents are to raising their kids in God´s truth.  I can never thank them enough for what they have given me by teaching me about God and his ways.  Later on we watch part of The Passion of the Christ.  It was super sad but also super happy at the same time.  While watching it I was glad that the TV was really fuzzy because it made the goriness of it a little less intense.  So yes, that was my Easter 2010.  And I must say, I have never watched so many movies in 1 week.

"Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; HE HAS RISEN!"-Luke 24:5-6

H A P P Y      E A S T E R!!

Love,
Erin

Hey everyone :)

Tomorrow is my sister´s birthday!!!!!!!!!! She´ll be 19.  I am so blessed to have her in my life.  We have shared so many good (and bad) times together.  It´s so wonderful to have such a great sister and I love her so much.  I have host sisters here, sure, but it is totally not the same as a real one.  There is something about a real sister that just can´t be replaced.  No matter what they do you can never stop loving them.  God knew what he was doing when he put her in my life (or I guess since she is older he put me in her life)  I love having an older sister like Erika to share my life with, someone to pierce my ears, someone to share clothes with, and so much more.  I look up to my older sister and have learned alot from her.  I hope that I can be a good older sister to my little sisters like she has been to me.  I can´t imagine what my life would be like without her.  Happy Birthday Erika!!!

So next week is semana santa (holy week) and we are going to my grandma´s house in San Lorenzo.  I am so  excited to be going back because my all my host family will be there.  I have been missing my cousins and it will be good to see them all again and catch up with them.  We all get along really well.  This time we go there it won´t be quite so hot, so that will be nice.  I think that we are going to be able to go to the movies too.  I am excited to see how they celebrate Easter and learn more about their culture.

I have a really good relationship with my family.  I am so blessed to have such a good one.  I honestly could hardly imagine a better family situation.  Not even joking. My friends are also really great as well.  It is going to be so hard to leave this country and it´s people.  About 3 more months left.  I think that´s long enough, well, I guess it will have to be.  haha

So yeah, nothing extremely crazy going on at the moment, everything it very tranquilo... nothing to complain about :)

love you all  :*
Erin

School started!!! Actually this is the 4th week, wow it has gone by so quickly. My class subjects are different this year because I entered a different section of my grade. One section (the one I was in last year) has more classes which have to do with social sciences. And the other one has more to do with computers. This year I am taking...

Math

English

Physics

Chemistry

Life Science

Economy

Ethics

History

PE

Psychology

Gabinete (sort of like computers class)

Algorithim

Administration

Guaraní

Literature

yes, there are quite of few of them

I understand some much more this year, therefore, I enjoy it much more. I like my classes alot, my classmates are all great and so are the teachers. I love my English teacher, she is so fun! I am treated more like a normal person this year. Last year I would show my work the teacher, like everyone else, but they would just look at me, see that I´m an exchange student, and sign my work with hardly even looking at it. This year, they will actually correct it and tell me if I did something wrong or am missing something. My literature teacher is Argentinian and her accent is really interesting. I like listening to her talk, which is good, because she talks alot.

The only class I can absolutely not follow is Guaraní, it´s quite difficult and everyone has already been taking Guaraní for years. I wish I could understand it, because my family speaks it alot. When we are with my aunts and uncles, I can hardly understand anything because they speak so much of it. It is interesting to listen to though. It a pretty funny language with interesting sounds, it´s very nasilly.

Last Monday I went to Iguaçu Falls with my host sister Sady. Just her and I went because everyone was busy. It was good sister time, we have so much fun hanging out. I am so glad that we get along so well. It was just me, Sady, and our terere. The falls are AMAZING!!! I never wanted to leave. They are just so huge. They are so powerful that you can almost feel the booming of the crashing water in your body. It was quite the experience. There were lots of tourists there so I fit right it. Sady and I sort of hung out and took a zillion pictures. I know there is more to do there, but we didn´t have all day, or much money. I hope I get to go again before I go.

The falls used to be in Paraguay so the name of the falls is actually Guaraní. The original spelling is Yguasu. Y=water and guasu=big. Pretty interesting huh.

The two top national soccer teams in Paraguay are Cerro and Olimpia. Two Sundays ago there was a game between these two and it was crazy! I don´t know if I have seen people get so excited about sports. I am an Olimpian, they won. I am so glad they did. I never realized that sports could be so important to someone. There is no such thing as being neutral, it seems like everyone is VERY enthusiastic about their team. When there was a goal made, the neighbors set of fire crackers! The whole city shuts down when there is a big game, because everyone wants to watch the game. It´s pretty cool.

I have been in this family for 2 months and everything is going really well, no problems what so ever.

Everyone has skills, I do, but I never thought that certain ones would ever be needed or wanted or appreciated, here are a few of them.

1. french braiding

2. caligraphy

3. pancake making

4. English

5. cursive

6. cutting apples

7. oatmeal making

You never know how your skills, no matter how small, could be useful, or interesting to someone.

I am getting pretty excited for Easter because I am going to get to see my family again. I miss my cousins! We have so much fun together. I am looking forward to seeing how my family celebrates Easter. I know that we are going to San Lorenzo, which is close to Asuncion. I want to explore Asuncion a bit more, it seems like an interesting city.

I got my return date from AFS, it´s June 30 (get home July1) but I want to stay longer to go visit my missionary friends again. But I sort of want to leave with everyone else, so that we can all be together at the airport. But I am for sure going to go with them to the airport when they leave even if I do end up staying longer. I am so sad that I have to leave Paraguay. I will miss the people I have met her so much. And I feel like I still have so much to learn. I have under 31/2 months left, so I am just going to enjoy these last few months as much as a can and make the most of it all. Its kind of a weird feeling. I want to stay here, but I want to go home. Basically what I want is to be able to be in more than one place at the same time.

Love you all,

Erin

I didn´t end up doing anything for Carnaval because my family didn´t and the night my friends were going, I went to a bday party. But basically it is a big parade with dancing and music. I watched some of it on TV. Apparantley it is pretty dangerous to go. I bet bunches of people got there cellphones stolen. There is this thing here call espuma which is basically there version silly string but it is more like shaving cream. Anyways, one girl got that all sprayed in her face and while she was getting it off, they ran away with her cell. Getting your cellphone stolen doesn´t seem like that rare of a thing.

My host sister was assulted at 4pm while walking on the street of a neighborhood for only 2 blocks. She was with her boyfriend. When the person of the moto stopped and told her to give him her cell, she was in too much shock to respond, so she didn´t, she just stood there. Then her boyfriend got shot twice!! (there is much more to that story) She gave me some tips for what to do when being assulted...

1. throw what is in your hand on the ground and put your hands up

2. look at the ground, sometimes they will shoot you because you know what they look like and can tell the police. It is better if you just look away

3. don´t yell help, yell fire. If people hear you yelling help they will think you are being assulted and will not run out to help you because they don´t want to be in trouble either. If you yell fire, they are more likely to come out.

Number three is pretty sad. I have heard other stories about people being assulted on busses where everyone can see it, but no one does anything.

Tomarrow is valentines day so I am going to make heart shaped pancakes for breakfast :)

So I guess I am not going to school the first day because they don´t do anything the first week. The first week is just buying school supplies, getting your schedule, and stuff like that. Then the real school starts next week.

Last night around 3am Sady, Milena (sisters), Leti (cousin), and I went outside in the front yard and began to sing at the top of our lungs, birthday songs (there are more than one here) for our cousin Liz. Sady played the guitar. She heard us and came outside, we just kept on singing it was so funny!!! The guards just gave us wierd looks but didn´t do anything. Apparentally that is some sort of old paraguayan tradition, to sing outside really loud for someone bday. Then Sady called her neighbor friends and two of them came over and we just drank fanta, sang, and talked until almost 5 in the morning!! My cousin Leti is crazy. I am going to miss her when she leaves Sunday. Hopefully I´ll be able to visit her sometime. I am going to see her for Easter break though. That is only a month and a half away! Time flies when you´re having fun.

It is really weird because when I think about going back I get really sad because I love my friends and family here so much. And there are so many fun things that you can do here that you can´t in the US, like what I just described above. But I also want to be home and see my friends and real family again.

Love you all,

Erin

Happy February!

I am now in my SEVENTH month of Paraguayan life. Every month just gets better and better. School is going to start February 15. But it is not like that is a huge change because the school day is not long and there is never homework. I am so excited to get back to school because I miss my friends and I think it would be good to have more of a schedule. I am going to be changing sections so the school day will be longer than it was last year, but still not long. I still don´t know what subjects I am going to half or anything, so I guess I´ll have to fill you in on that later. I already know all of the girls in my class and they are so excited because there are only 7 girls and 14 boys. So they are happy to have another girl classmate.

Yesterday I went and played tennis with my host family. I was pretty bad, but that´s okay, because I had fun. I love that my new family does stuff like that, goes to the park together. My old family never did stuff like that. Two of the cousins are still living with us and I will miss them so much when they leave, which will be in a couple weeks.

There is this thing here called carnival, and after asking a million people what it is and why it exists I think I have figured out the meaning of it, it is basically like mardi gras. They say it is a time to be crazy before Easter. I think it has lost that meaning though, and now it is just a fun holiday. I don´t really know what to expect, so I will have to explain more about this after it happens which is next weekend.

I don´t think my Spanish has gotten much better this past month because I have not been talking as much, because I have not been in school. I think when I go back to school it will start improving again. So people say that after a year abroad, you are fluent in that language, but I don´t see mysel becoming fluent with in the next 5 months. I think that maybe this is because our definitions of fluent are different. I would say that I will be proficient with in 5 months (I basically already am), but I think I will always prefer speaking English, or at least it will always be easier. I think there is a big gap between proficient and fluent. Spanish grammar is super difficult, my host sister told me that she doesn´t even understand it all and she has been speaking Spanish her whole life. I am hoping to find a Spanish grammar book and study on my own a bit. This family is much better at correcting me. If I say something wrong or use a word incorrectly, they will tell me.

Since I am much much much much better at Spanish, I am thinking that I will be able to be a normal student at school, and now that Sady is in my class, maybe she will be able to help me out. I can´t imagine how I ever managed living here in the first place before I learned Spanish, like what was I thinking to just leave my life and live in a place where I knew no one and no one spoke my language. When I think about where I was 6 months ago, I am amazed at how fast things changed.

Back in the States when I needed to talk to an adult about something, most of the time my mom would call them and talk to them. Looking back on that, it seems so weird because it is like "I knew their language, why couldn´t I talk to them?" Take the whole host family changing, if I wanted to do something like that and my mom was living down the street, I would have had her call my host family, the new family, the AFS voluteer and she would have done all the work. I think that is an example of how I am begining to take more responsibility for my own life.

I am not saying all this to brag, but to reflect on the experience of being an exchange student and how it can change you. When I was filling out the application, I was not expecting things to turn out the way the are, at all. They tell you not to have expectations, but I did, I think it is almost impossible not to. This makes me even more excited and ready to keep on living my life, because I don´t know what is going to happen. Who knows where I will be a year or ever 6 months from here. It´s just so thrilling to me.

Five more months left, I remember when I had only been here for 5 weeks and tought it was so much time. AFS says I am coming back June 28-July 1, but I kind of want to stay longer.

Well not too much excitment to report, but hopefully there will be soon. I am still alive and happy and leaning on the Lord.

Love you all,

Erin