I´m telling my Paraguayan mom that the doctor said no more meat for me!

I just wanted to write something really fast because I didn´t realize it had been so long since I´d written. I never feel like I have time for anything, but that will change after training. My best friend here got sick and had to go to the hospital and I stayed two nights in Asuncion with her. I am so happy that Peace Corps allowed me to do that because I know I would have been scared to go to a hospital in a foreign country alone, and I did a lot of translating for her. She´s doing much better now and was released today. Anyway, that was an experience in itself, but we did get a chance to watch American television and got a break from the bug bites. It was also humorous when she cursed at the nurses in English when they put in her IV because nobody understood a thing. It´s funny now, I promise. It was actually funny then.

Next week I´ll be traveling with three other volunteers to another site to do some work with kids, but I´m not sure what exactly we are doing yet since I´ve been out of the loop, but we´ll be there all week. Field work.

Last weekend we visited another volunteer and my group played games and did crafts with the kids in an after school program that´s funded by the Canadian government. It was really exciting to have a chance to work with kids again and it reminded me of why I´m here. I felt excited all over again.

Tomorrow are our last placement interviews which are a big deal. This is the interview that will determine your placement for the next two years. I´m not entirely certain of anything I want to say, but we find out our placements on April 8th. I´m thinking I might want to mention an orphanage and how I work better with some sort of structure, but also a lot of freedom. That probably sounds like a really hippie thing to say. I really can´t focus and feel like I´m losing my English.

And it´s true, I was thinking entirely in Spanish this morning, but I didn´t feel like I had reached a great level with the language, but that my thoughts had just become more simplified, rather. The spanglish mixed with Guarani in my brain is out of control.

The other day a few of us were on a bus headed to our weekend destination (work) trip and the ride seemed to drag on. I was so hot that I tried to sleep because I felt like I couldn´t breathe and thought a siesta was the best way to cope. I sat by the window and the wind blew so unpleasantly hard that my straw hat got all torn up. I realized then that I could close the window a bit to save me from that problem...I wasn´t thinking right. Anyway, we were going up a sort of incline and going really slow. None of us knew what was going on. My friend turned to me and said, ¨I think this must be a reeeeally steep hill and that´s why we are going so slow.¨ ¨No. I think we need to stop by a gas machine.¨ (That´s that English I´ve lost). We continued to very slowly move along as cars passed us and a lady very incessantly kept ringing the bell to be let off the bus. We finally came to a halt in a pile of sand on the side of the road. Apparently our bus´s brakes had quit working! So we all survived our run away bus, and we had no idea that it was running away. But I think it sounds pretty impressive. Very Paraguayan of us.

Paraguayans here jump on and off the buses like experts, too. I decided to give it a go one day. I was coming home from a very long bus ride and didn´t want to trouble the bus driver with coming to a complete stop, nobody else seemed to need it. So as we were almost stopped, I jumped off the bus, and of course, I fell. I jumped right up to assure everyone that I was fine and saw that a neighbor had witnessed my grace and I yelled, ¨Estoy bien!¨ I´m still determined to get that one down, but it seems that I have a reputation for being clumsy around here already. ha. I call it wreckless. Sounds better to me.

My friend Stephen and I plan on have a health charla (sort of like a chat) with kids and talking about that stuff on the radio, too. After our charla, we plan to teach them some North American dances since it so well coincides with health. Yes, the electric slide is obviously included.

Training is still stressful and I still feel awful at the Guarani language, but things are good here. I miss everyone like crazy, but I put credit on my skype and have been able to talk to a few people from home which helps me out so much. It´s hard to think of missing my nephew grow up, though, that´s definitely been the most difficult and saddest part for me.

I will try to write more very soon and I think of all you like crazy. I really do.