I Made It To Paraguay!!!

¡Hola mis amigos!


I made it!  I'm like... an actual missionary now.


I'm realizing how much I could talk about from this last week and it's getting kinda hard to decide what to write...


So I'll start with my travels I suppose... I was in my room at the CCM with my roommates and most of them hadn't packed yet on the Wednesday before we traveled.  So we stayed up and got an hour of sleep before my roommates left.  I was able to get another hour before my comps left.  And then I decided to stay up until I left 90min later.  I ate a bunch of Ramen that my comp had received from a package in the mail, but he had to leave it so I ate it.  That was a vibe.  Chillin at 4 in the morning, no comp, just eating American Ramen.


After the 2 hours of sleep, I took a 4hr flight to Panama city, which is ridiculously nice, and then a 6hr flight to asunción.  I arrived at the mission office at about 2:30 in the morning.  Yeah, it was a long day.  We went to bed and didn't wake up until they came and got us at 10:45 (that totally wasn't supposed to happen.  They were told to wake us up at 8.  Another daily miracle).  From there, I met my comp (His name is Elder Park.  He's from Idaho and has spoke only English his whole life, but he looks and sounds Latino which is awesome practice for me), then we went to the mission home and ate burgers.  They weren't bad actually.  Like they were actually good burgers.


Then, I found out my area.  My comp told me to get my bags ready so we could leave soon.  I packed up and we brought my bags outside... but we didn't stop walking.  We kept walking my bags until we went right out the gate, hopped in essentially an Uber, and drove 10 min away to my area, right in the heart of asunción.  I didn't even get to say goodbye to the mission office lol.


I know Paraguay is a third world country, but in the city it certainly doesn't seem like it.  They even have Ramen!! All my extra work just to eat Ramen at the MTC was kinda for nothing.  I know I shouldn't be surprised because Ramen is actually popular in a lot of countries, I was just expecting to travel to a wasteland where I'd never see normal food for 2 years.  No, they have just about everything here.  The only thing a little hard to get is dairy products and random other things, like pretzels or tortillas.  They are available but pretty scarce or pricey.


Continuing on the beloved topic of food... We eat everyday with members.  Here, the big meal of the day is lunch, which is awesome because we get to take a break from the heat and eat with members.  Usually when they feed us,  I have no idea what I'm eating.  The first meal I had here was pirate booty soup and creamy rice with spaghetti sauce and a chunk of meat on top. The pirate booty soup was almost like a potato soup, but instead of potatoes, it has little chunks of some corn dough with similar texture to potatoes and some white cheddar flavor thingy.  I don't know about you but that sounds like pirate booty soup to me.  


The foods been pretty great though.  There's basically no such thing as Mexican food here though which is sad.  But they have these weird almost burrito things that are sooooo good.  It's literally just beef, chicken, and a garlic sauce in something really close to a tortilla and I can't get enough of it.  Unfortunately it's really expensive,  almost 3 American dollars.  I don't have that kinda money.  To be fair, I just bought my groceries for at least a week for about 20 bucks, or 150,000 guarani (yeah the exchange rate is a little ridiculous).


Sorry this email was mostly about food, but that's been the most interesting thing here to me for some reason.  I don't think life can get much better than this.  There's really not much of a culture shock.  Like everything is different, but it's only slightly different so nothing is too weird (except the food sometimes).


The language barrier is real though.  It's okay though, I can usually understand.  The only problem is I don't usually understand everything until the other person responds.  It gives me enough additional context so I can figure it out, but it's really hard for me to join the conversation when I'm a sentence behind.  It's especially hard to answer simple questions, because half the time they aren't related to the subject at all.


But all things considered,  I'm doing great.  I feel like I'm living like a king.  I'm kinda pretty rich here, plus I get to serve others all day long which is awesome.  Well, talk to yall later.  Hope yall can have a week as good as I did.  


Chao Chao, (that's the standard goodbye here, no me gusta)


Élder Blacker


Pics of Asunción, one after it rained a lot,  my comp, and the group of us that traveled together with all our new comps



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

¡Qué Pucha!

Image
Hey everyone!  Hope you are well! First I want to explain the title.  Qué is kinda like how, like if I were to say, "How cool!"  Pucha is roughly translated to "the pits."  That's where we were this week... the pits. At least for my comp anyway.  I'm doing totally fine, but Elder Park got real sick this week.   We think he has dengue.  It's been going around here a lot.  It's symptoms are bad headaches, body aches, and overall just feeling really weak and tired.  So Élder Park has been sick like this since Thursday, and we haven't been able to do much since.  The good news... I've slept a lot.  And even better I've studied a lot.  We've been having a surprisingly good time while Elder Park is sick.  We've tried to keep our missionary purpose in mind and honestly I've had some of the best days on my mission recently. Everyday since Elder Park got real sick, I'll get tired of studying in spanish after a few hours and I'...
Read more

Op!

Image
Op! I love that greeting.  Paraguayans are very specific about the way they greet people.  Op is used to acknowledge the presence of someone you know, but you don't necessarily want to talk to them.  It's almost like honking your car horn in passing. Anywayyy.... I hope you're all doing well.  My week went by really quickly.  We honestly didn't see much success.  There are days where I don't see success and usually I know that I could have done better.  This week was different.  I gave it my all and still nothing happened.  My area is the exact same as last week.  But that's okay.  I feel really happy about it.  I was really focusing on my love for God and for the people this week, and I saw the results.  I was simply really happy and ready to serve, success or not. Also crazy story.  Being inspired by an old comp, we decided that every morning we wanted to wake up and immediately do 50 push-ups to get us going. ...
Read more

Todos Somos Monos

Image
Hey everyone!  Another week already! Ok... actually I feel like a lot happened this week, so buckle up.  We'll see how long this email is. First of all, imagine this... a Mexican missionary goes to the States for his mission.  He goes to a Mexican restaurant in his first area, wanting a little comfort food to remind of home.  He sees on the menu "Quesadilla".  As he is preparing his freshly learned English to order his food, he remembers that, in English, we pronounce certain letters differently.  He studies the menu carefully, until he confidantly stands in front of the expecting American employee, and orders a "Qu-e-saw-dil-a", carefully saying it the most American way he knows how.  Imagine the reaction of the american employee!  This mexican missionary couldn't even pronounce a spanish word right!  Imagine the mexican missionary and how foolish he feels! I think y'all know where I'm going with this... that happens to me A LOT.  But i...
Read more