Unfortunately, unlike the rest of my blogs, I have no new adventures to share. Within the past 2 and a half weeks I have not traveled to a different city to see host relatives or giant dams, went to a birthday party or holiday celebration, not even do I have new photos to share with you (that is more likely because my camera broke a few months ago and none of my fellow group members have taken photos of me that I could kindly rob). It is true that the majority of our group did go to a church camp for a day and a half, I watched the Cardinals and Roger Federer lose in the same night and the Swiss Family Portmann has been over for just about a week now, but I would rather use this blog to let you in on a quick glance of what a typical week looks like for me; my classes, responsibilities, free time, family time, what I do, who I talk to etc.
From the way I see it, my week starts on Monday because this is when the weekend stops and I kick myself back into gear. I usually wake up between 7 and 8 am to have a light breakfast with whoever stumbles into the kitchen at the same time I do. This usually consists of a few pieces of bread with some sort of jelly, a piece of fruit and a hot drink called cocido which is semi-similar to coffee. I spend most of my morning planning for my classes and by 11:30 I sit outside under the porch drinking terere with my host mom and sisters while letting the food cook. When 12:00 rolls around we find ourselves a little ‘apurados’ or hurried to set the table and finish preparing lunch for the rest of the family. Lunch is the important meal here where the entire family shows up and eats big, as apposed to dinner in my home. Proceeding lunch my host father leaves for his work again and I help wash and put away the dishes which is immediately followed by the siesta. Siesta is a relaxing time of the day where the people… well I’m really not sure what the people do because I’m always napping. I wake up sometime around 3 to either work on the internet or continue preparing for my classes.
I teach class everyday of the week and most of my classes are at night. Below I've posted my schedule.
Now in comparison to a full time teaching job at a local highschool or middleschool, this may look like a piece of my host mother’s torta but considering that I haven’t had any substantial teaching training and there is no set curriculum, I find most of my time during the weekdays (and a little bit on the weekends) being used to come up with teaching material and lesson plans.
Weekends are another world which usually end up sticking in my head as vague memories of one big hang-out-and-drink-terere session. Saturdays, if I don’t go somewhere, are pretty chill in the mornings. I usually use this time to read, hang out or complete leftover tasks from the week. Also, Saturdays are cleaning days for the Molinas so I generally find myself sweeping or mopping some part of the house. We eat and have an even more relaxed siesta until about 5 when young adults from every corner of the neighborhood start congregating at our house awaiting the Saturday night young adults service which consists of about an hour or so of worship and a lesson followed by soccer and terere on the churches two mini-soccer fields. Sundays seem so much like the previous night that sometimes I feel like all I did was doze off a little during our Saturday night service and woke up to find that the party was still going. We have a 9:00 church service which is followed up by lunch, siesta and another ‘terere/soccer’ meeting at night with the young adults.
I hope you enjoyed this recap of my life here in Paraguay and we'll see you again in two weeks!
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