Walking the Streets of Asuncion

Buen noches! ,
We just wanted to let everyone know about the past couple of exciting days. We have been venturing out on our own the last couple of days walking around the streets of Asuncion. Flavia sent us on an errand yesterday - to go to the pool place about a mile from the house and purchase the Chloro (chemical) needed for the pool in the backyard. She drew us a map on a piece of paper and wrote down exactly what we needed because we were a little nervous about getting there and then not being able to understand what was going on. So.. when she drew the map it looked like it was only a couple of blocks from the house so about halfway there we thought that we were lost or something but we kept on walking anyway. We made it there - we were able to say "necesitamos dos packetas de Chloro" pay for the products and make it home no problem. Ted had been a little worried but we made it and it gave us a little more confidence to go out on our own and try do things.

So.. after that first trip we decided today to walk to Shopping del Sol, which is a mall about 1 mile and 1/2 from the house. There a good number of people who walk around here and there are sidewalks, something that Kansas City didn't really have, so it wasn't a bad walk at all. We weren't really planning on purchasing anything in the mall - just walking around and looking at what was there. There were a lot of stores in the mall - and kind of high end ones at that. We walked in one department store and looked at the prices of things and strangely enough they were all priced in US dollars and were pretty expensive at that. Unfortunately the value of the dollar keeps going down here in Paraguay and the price of items keeps going up. Some friends of ours (Larry & Sharon Carr.. more about them later) told us that when they first came here ~ 18 years ago the dollar was 7000 guaranies but now the dollar is only 3900 or at least that is what we got about a week and a half ago. Things are not really cheap here anymore, as I have heard they used to be.

Anyway.. we did go to the supermarket right next to the mall, actually there was an entrance from the mall into the store. We got some cleaning products and chocolate. One strange thing that we noticed as we were walking around the store was that there were women standing around holding products in their hands and trying to get you to buy them. We were looking at sponges and this lady would not leave us alone with the sponge that she had - we kept saying "no" without ever really knowing what she was saying. We got to the checkout and the checkout girl kept saying something to us but we really didn't know what. So we just said "lo siento, no intiendo" (i'm sorry, i don't understand) and got our stuff and our change and we left. Who knows what she thought of us.

This afternoon we got to do some hanging out with Larry and Sharon Carr, the missionaries that I mentioned earlier, who are here with World Gospel Mission and have been for the past 18 or some years. They were saying how they have seen a lot of Nazarene missionaries come and go, but they've been here throughout it all. I think that there is something to be said for staying with a community long term - building relationships, going through ups and downs, commitment. Anyway - they took us to a great little restaurant that sold these wraps that had a chicken/beef meat, vegetables, and mayo. I can't remember what they are called though. It was a really neat place, plus they had some amazing smoothies called Tooty Fruities. The meat was on these huge skewers, probably about 3 feet long, and then they scraped some off whenever a sandwich was needed. It was really amazingly good! Then we played some Phase 10 and got to meet some of the WGM missionaries. It was nice to speak English with some people, since we have been speaking mostly Spanish this week with Flavia and the kids. Although, speaking Spanish with them has definitely given us a little more confidence and knowledge.

So.. that is the end to our last couple of days and we are about ready to call it a night. Or at least I am planning on doing some reading while Ted is still trying to fix his mangled mess of a computer. The sad part to our two day adventure is that we forgot to bring our camera to all of these places. Ahh! We will try and be a little better about this during the next few days. There are always neat things to take pictures of.
God be with you! Peace!