heaven makes me tired

We are in trouble.
For not eating enough.
The locals don{t like it.

This "{" happens becuase I can{t find the apostrophe here in Pilar.

Pilar is paradise by the way. When we showed up in Paraguay we discovered we weren{t necessarily needed. At least, we didn{t feel needed. We sat down with N our Sonidos contact and were discussing our shooting schedule and we found out we couldn{t go to the luteria recyclados, the workshop where they make instruments from recycled garbage, because there is another documentary team here filming. And we don{t have a driver because Favio drives the other filmmakers. What? I{ve contemplated not telling you, my dearest ones, because I worry that you will worry and worrying makes the world spin counter clockwise. Sometimes. A veces. But the truth is that while Asuncion was wonderful and started my head spinning and reminded me of Minneapolis, partly because I have a theory that Paraguay is the midwest of South America, Camilo, the other foreigner (from Uruguay), looked out for us the most.

At first I didn{t think too much about it. My thoughts take a long time to process into emotions to translate back into coherant thoughts that then influence how I react and now there is a wrench thrown into the works with Spanish. It is a lot of work focusing on understanding this other language. It wasn{t until I was on a bus half way to Pilar that I looked outside the window and thought, "hey, this bus ride would be a lot cooler if it wasn{t night and I could see the paysage outside the window." Then I realized that J and I were on a bus to a place we know nothing about to be picked up by a man named Walter. What on earth was happening?!? I felt so frustrated I wanted to cry.

But I didn{t, becuase I don{t, much, and I luckily ended up having an aisle passanger sit on the back of my seat. This was luck, for let me explain. There were probably ten people who had to stand in the aisles the full six hours from A to P, so I was lucky in my seat. This isn{t one of the super crazy bus rides you hear about where there are people packed in tight holding live chickens and things like that. My guess is that since you don{t fly from place to place inside Paraguay and since it is more of a luxury to drive a car all over the place, the bus has become a middle class thing to do. We at least were on a sort of charter bus. My seat wouldn{t stay reclined, so until I had my aisle man I couldn{t lean back and relax like the rest of the seated peoples. I was so grateful for his rear end that it didn{t bother me at all to have it so close to my head and I blissfully went to sleep.

When we arrived in Pilar Walter, who we find is a world traveler ("Did you know Walter lived in Japan?" "I think Walter is from Argentina" "Walter lived in the States for a while, you know."), welcomes us and takes us to our hotel. He speaks a little English in a Midwest kind of way. His year in the states was in St. Paul, Minnesota, which made me happy. Our hotel is pretty nice and the internet here is free although we rarely have much time or energy to spare for it. Becuase we love Pilar. It is a small town, I want to tell you it is tranquilo becuase that is why we keep telling people we like it so much. I think there are about 30,000 people here, I think that is what they told me. The streets are quieter and more colorful and I think by the time we leave tomorrow night everyone in town will know who we are because we find the streets so alluring we must walk around with our cameras and take pictures of everything and becuase the people at the Music school here are so friendly and welcoming that it is exhausting to understand all that is going on. And a newspaper reporter interviewed us (aka J, since I am not much use for interviewing). If I remember correctly I filmed us being interviewed. We{re so happy in Pilar I{ve contemplated moving here. However, there is too much Guarani, I don{t understand that at all, and people get worried about how much we eat. In fact, J and I are kind of worried about how much we eat. We{ve been traveling so much and doing so much that a Cliff bar has become a filling meal for us. This afternoon they gave us a long time for our lunch and siesta and told us to eat eat eat eat eat eat eat. So we went downstairs to the restaurant which only serves carne and ordered some rice and some salad and worked really hard to eat something resembling a meal. Really, I just want some Tillamook yogurt. I think this is all so much work for my failing stomach. Eat some for me, will you, please?

We were told that the next morning after we arrived N called to make sure we were safe and sound. I don{t want you to think that N isn{t kind to us, we{re just a bit confused right now.

Anyway, the weather has been muy perfecto because they{re having a warm winter and someday I{ll tell you about the tropical rainstorm and about filming a violin symphony in a plaza and interviewing thirty vionlin players. And the happy harpist who is going to Pedro Juan Caballero with us who is such a character. And going birdwatching in the Pilar countryside.

I have been getting all your emails and have been eating them up like sweet morsels. Thank you so much, I love every tender word of them.