June 4, 2009

The Hagermans are Alive!

The blog has been really quiet for the last little while. I hope y'all didn't think the ants came back and ate us! No, we're all fine, just COLD! Let me say that again, C O L D!! This weekend, Lord willing, we will be buying a small plug-in heater (maybe two) to at least try to knock the chill off. We cranked up our gas stove this morning and all sat around it to "survive" the morning cold.

So what's been going on here other than the weather extremes? We spent almost all of last week confined to the house because of the cold and the rain. The rain was really needed but came SO MUCH, SO FAST, and created a few problems. I told you about our ant fun, but there were many other homes that were invaded by the rising water. One community we read about had to evacuate over 200 families due to the unsafe conditions of their homes from the water level. Now, I've seen some really unsafe conditions that occur as "normal" here, so for the government to tell these people that they should evacuate, it must have been pretty bad.

We weathered it well, though (haha, no pun intended), and even ventured out a couple times--had to make grocery runs, you know! It reminded me of traveling on Christmas, when every store is closed and the roads are empty. We had the town to ourselves. Thankfully, the grocery store remained open, although it didn't seem worth their while. One lady told me that all of Paraguay sleeps when the rains come. I considered that one long and hard. ;)

When the weather cleared up a bit, we decided to take a little sightseeing trip while my mom's here. I'll be telling you about the wonderful things we saw over the next few days, including pictures. For now, I'll leave you with a shot from last night, when we huddled around a fire with our neighbors, showing them how to roast marshmallows. Francisco said he'd seen something like that before, and the Guarani word for it was toad spit (because marshmallows look like the foamy white stuff on the water near a toad's home). Go figure.


Gladys reaches for another toadspit, while her hubby Francisco tries to decide if he wants to kiss or eat his marshmallow!



No comments:

Post a Comment

Wanna leave a comment? Be nice, please, and if you can't, at least leave your email address...