bee-york

I love blogspot because at the top of the page when I sign in it lets me choose my language. I just spent five minutes looking for English in the list of idiomas and couldn~t believe thy had everything but English. Then I remembered I was looking for Ingles. Or something like that.

However, my spanish is improving a great deal and you could even say my Guarani is improving as well. I mean, to go from zero to three words is an improvement, right? Guarani is nothing like Spanish but they tell me it is very rare for anyone to speak pure Guarani. Last night a señor gave me many examples of how guarani is mixed with castellano.

In Pedro Juan Caballero we continue to be under the care of the mothers, fathers, and children of Pilar. We sleep on mattresses on the floor together, they correct my spanish and patiently help me communicate myself in what must be the most painful sounding spanish ever.

Yesterday J and I discovered some amazing things. After our first night where J froze to death and I slept happily on in my sleeping bag we determined that our first order of business was to buy her some blankets in town. We found a shop that just happened to be a combination of a toy store and a bedding shop. We inspected every shelf (while being followed by an eager shop keeper) and found to our great delight fleecy pillows that have a boy and girl and strange cat embroidered on it and say in bright orange letters "Me haces muy feliz." (You make me very happy.) I want to buy a pillow for each of you and I could probably afford to but I~m sorry I~m not trucking them all over the world. Even though you all do make me very happy.

Tambien, our job is to listen to beautiful music all day long. You do realize this don~t you? And yesterday we happened upon a group of young girls who call themselves Sonidos del alma (sounds of the soul) all playing guitar and singing rancheras. We are all sitting down and learning rancheras when I get back, let me tell you. Rancheras are the best thing to hit this planet. And we filmed it! We~ve got beautiful rancheras on film to treasure forever!

Pedro Juan is not quite as optically charming as Pilar. It is on the border of Brazil, you cross a street here and enter Punta Pura. Yes, yesterday I just popped over to Brazil because I could. Pedro Juan is every bit a poor border town, streeted by red dirt and most buildings look like they are decaying (though decaying buildilngs here become very colorful and intriguing). I wasn~t quite expecting that, maybe because even though I have the intelligence to understand I~m making a documentary, I~m not IN the movies, I still can~t get my head out of the clouds. Punta Pura (and I sure hope I~ve finally got that right) is more what I was expecting. Paved streets lined with booths and city-like buildings.

However, we~ve still been finding very welcoming people. Sometimes too welcoming, I wish people would ask for our email or if we have msn messenger after knowing us for five minutes, it illicites a certain reticance on my part to ever talk to anyone new. There~s a restaurant we~ve been frequenting for drinks and an occasional empinada (i just had a battered and fried hard boiled egg yesterday?!? I~m trying the food, I really want to do this). The family that runs it has taken an interest in us and is concerned about our wellbeing. We must be cold over at that school they tell us. Well, un poco. The Pilar families we are staying with offer us coffee and tea, I drink the tea and wish I could soak my feet in some hot coffee.

More later, hopefully. Apparently the internet frequently cuts out in the entire city. I want to confess, I treasure these moments with the internet so so much. I feel bad like I should be entirely swept away in bliss to be having this wild adventure but I am terribly human and am accustomed to having a lot of alone time and I hope it is not terrible and very american of me to love the internet so much right now. You should love it to and write me sweet morsels of life and home and I will try to impart some jewels of Paraguay. And you should read these magical stories my friend Christopher writes. I hope that~s ok I just told the whole world they should read your stories, Christopher. That~s all, I must go back to Paraguay and drink some yummy chocolate milk that has creepy clowns on the box.