Happy Birthday Harry Potter!

Hello again! Time for another weekly update on our new normal here in Paraguay.

The beginning of the week was a little slow. Scott went to work and Kiersten and Mackenzie stayed at home and tried to figure out what to do with all their time. Scott's predecessor was around for this week only to teach him his new position before heading home. Needless to say it was an information overload week for him and he was kept very busy learning everything his job entails. By the end of the week the girls found a good routine of walking to the Embassy in the morning and doing chores in the afternoon.

On Monday the girls met Scott at the Embassy so the adults could get their badges to gain access to the Embassy. Now we can go in and out and where ever we like on the grounds. Pretty cool. K&M have been to the Embassy almost everyday to take advantage of the fun playground complete with a baby swing.

Swinging!

This is a GIANT mango tree at the Embassy.
That sign says "Beware of falling mangos. Park at your own risk."

On Tuesday there is a mall here that turns their first floor of underground parking into a farmer's market called Agro Shopping. It's kind of a big deal here. We've been told that you can usually find better produce there than at the grocery stores. Better meaning more variety, cheaper prices and fresher. Our sponsor took K&M and it was very impressive. Most vendors had the same items. They came away with a large bunch of bananas, fresh bread and local honey made in the northern region of Paraguay. It tastes delicious! At work, Scott drove a car around the city for the first time. 'Not bad' was his report.

Mackenzie got a free balloon from Agro Shopping.

Trying out our local honey with natural peanut butter. Yum!

By Wednesday we were running out of food so Kiersten was able to get a ride from one of the Embassy moms to Casa Rica (the Wegman's type grocery store). Since it was her second time here, she decided to try to go out on her own and find products by herself. She was pretty successful but getting baking supplies was a little tricky. Now we have flour, sugar, baking soda and baking powder. They don't generally carry brown sugar or chocolate chips so they are coming in our new shipment from Amazon. We are really getting our money's worth out of our Prime membership these days!

Thursday the Embassy had planned a bowling activity at the bowling alley in one of the nearby malls. Generally pretty good at bowling Kiersten did not perform well. Scored a 55. Probably her worst game ever. No matter! It was fun to meet more of the Embassy moms with their kids. Mackenzie also had a decent time. She was beginning to catch a cold by this point in the week and wasn't too cheerful about anything. (She's doing much better now.)

Runny nose and holey pjs.
(She put herself in the car seat.)

She really wanted to play with the big kids.

Friday is the day we get fresh water bottles for our dispenser. Paraguay's tap water is not potable although it's fine to bath in and brush teeth but for drinking we have a water cooler. Kiersten was in charge of getting the two regular replacements plus two more since Scott was at work. After some pointing and halted Spanish (and a little bit of Hungarian for good measure) we had four 20L water bottles. Next week should go a little more smoothly.

The Embassy is open half the day on Friday and it was also Scott's first day without his predecessor. He survived the day and made it home by 12:30. Since we don't have a car we kind of sat around most of the afternoon. At 3, Kiersten went to Casa Rica again with our neighbors while Scott stayed home with Mackenzie. Not wanting to continue to ask for rides to the grocery store for the next week, Kiersten overloaded her cart with food in hopes it would be enough for all meals the following week.

The weekend was a fun affair. In the morning on Saturday we all took a walk around our neighborhood. Scott only really walks to work and back so he was curious to explore. Our neighbors told us there is a small grocery store a few blocks from our house so we set out in search of that. We found it! And it has everything we could need. The prices were a little more expensive than Casa Rica but still cheaper than American standards. It's nice to know there is a place so close to get things by ourselves now. We continued around the big square we were making home and discovered an outdoor food venue that was reminiscent of Truck-a-roo in DC where lots of food trucks park and live bands play. The food vendors looked more permanent than trucks but it still looked really fun. Maybe we can get a babysitter one night and check it out.

Behind this awesome mural is the quasi Truck-a-roo. 

Mackenzie took a very long afternoon nap and S&K stumbled on a US Women's Soccer game on ESPN. It was the inaugural Tournament of Nations taking place in California and Washington. US Women's soccer doesn't get a lot of screen time or tournaments. The European leagues have more opportunities to play on non World Cup and Olympics years. This year the European Women's leagues are playing in the Euro Cup. So the Tournament of Nations was created by the USA and are hosting Japan, Brazil and Australia. We watched them play Australia on Saturday (lost 0-1) and then on Sunday against Brazil (amazing win in the last few minutes, 4-3). Since women's soccer is almost non-exsistant in Paraguay Kiersten was needing a soccer pick-me-up and it didn't disappoint.

After the game was over on Saturday our sponsor picked us up for the back to school party hosted by the Marine's here in Paraguay. It was crowded with more Embassy families and lots of kids. This is a very family friendly post. S&K were all able to meet and chat with lots of people and Mackenzie took turns leading one of the parents around the grass and the pool areas in her desperate efforts to walk.

Sitting in the bounce house.

So big!

Sunday we stuck it out for all three hours of church. It was a hard to feel involved with any lesson since we didn't understand but everyone was so friendly. Lots of attention given to Mackenzie. The ward is also now aware of Kiersten's ability to play the piano so we expect them to have her doing something musical soon. In fact she was invited to help the Relief Society sisters with their choir practice that afternoon. It's nice to be getting involved.

Walking the stage during Sunday School.

The chapel is right next to the beautiful Asuncion Temple.

We had been invited to a baby's birthday party that afternoon but Mackenzie took another long nap and prevented our attendance. Oh well. It enabled us to catch up on sleep and FaceTime with Grandparents back home. All is well on the home front.

It's been a fun and exhausting week. There are a few little quirks about Paraguay we wanted to highlight that we've noticed this week. We hope this is a recurring feature of our weekly blog updates.
- Saran wrap. Oh man do they love it. They wrap almost everything at the grocery store in it. And Kiersten has ALWAYS hated saran wrap. It only sticks to itself and never gets unstuck. This wouldn't be a problem if we had a few kitchen essentials like Ziploc bags and tupperware but we don't. So we've had to get a little creative with storing our food after opening the packages. Ziplocs are also making their way to us in our Amazon shipment.
- Traffic. It doesn't always make sense here. Some intersections have lights and some don't. Some people obey STOP signs but most do not (which is a little scary as a pedestrian). Most of the intersections don't allow left turns which is very frustrating. There are lots of one way streets which are clearly marked on the street signs but we have seen a few people driving the wrong way down a one way. The roads that have two lanes of traffic headed in the same direction sometimes turns into three lanes without any visible indication or down to one. It's totally arbitrary to the current driving situation. And people have no problems completely blocking intersections. Honking is not an uncommon sound. If they don't like what you're doing or want you to do something else (like turn right at a red light when you want to go straight) they will emit a chorus of scathing honks. I guess it's nice we don't have our car yet.
- Street sellers. At the few major intersections you will see people selling a number of different items; toys, bread, bananas, produce, phone chargers, window washing, etc. It's totally normal.
-Weather. The weather is winter as we mentioned last week. This means the humidity is low, generally in the 30%-50% range but the temperature is still high in the 80's. Mornings here are very pleasant and then it gets hotter during the afternoon. Shade is cool... for now. We aren't sure when the humidity will pick up so we are trying to enjoy the nice weather while it lasts.

And last but not least, an update on all things Mackenzie!
- She has taken some great progress towards walking. She got really good at walking by holding onto our fingers with both hands before we moved. She is shaky with one hand and stumbles with no hands. The few times she has taken steps has been the short distance between mom and dad and she falls into our arms with her arms above her head. It's pretty adorable.
- Mackenzie caught her first foreign cold this week. She had a slight fever and cough and then a runny nose for days. She is doing much better now. Both parents seemed to have avoided the illness this time around.

A little dazed from her cold.

- She is really becoming a stair master. Crawling up and down them all day long. Now she can sort of carry something up the stairs by placing it on the step above her while she goes up. This morning she tried to bring something down and it was a little nerve wracking. She kept looking behind her to see where to drop it and almost got her leg stuck under the banister! We made it safely down in the end.

Lovin' these stairs.

- Her appetite is back. Since we arrived and with her cold she hasn't wanted to eat much and we were afraid it was because of the new Paraguayan foods. Luckily she got over that this weekend and now our little eater is back!

Eating a pear food pouch, peas and Goldfish.

- Her vocabulary is picking up. Kiersten is convinced she is saying somethings in Spanish. We know she understands some Spanish words like agua and hola. She can now definitely say 'buh-bye' and wave to you when we go. She knows 'mama' and we are working really hard on 'dada'. Sometimes she gets it and other times its 'gabgab' or 'pahpah' or 'mahme'.
- She laughs more freely. Whether we are playing with her or not she will sometimes giggle at something. She occasionally puts her hands to her mouth when she laughs which is ultra cute.

Yes! Got a picture of it!

- Mackenzie officially has 5 teeth. Three on top, two on bottom. She can bite and rip food now but we are still working on the chew-don't-swallow-and-choke-on-your-food aspect of eating. We hope she gets it soon.

If we have forgotten anything, we apologize. It's been a busy week learning our new area and trying to understand Spanish. Hopefully we'll have official lessons soon. And Happy Birthday to Harry Potter! In honor of him we had a somewhat traditional chicken pot pie for dinner. All the ingredients were there but I realized too late that I didn't have a pie pan so I improvised and made a chicken pot pie calzone. It ended up tasting very delicious. Hooray for cooking adventures in foreign lands!

Might not look pretty but it was surprisingly tasty!

Thanks for reading. We'll be back next week!

Hola desde Paraguay! (Hello from Paraguay!)

We’ve now successfully been in the country for four days and they have been jam packed! We feel we are adjusting well to our new surrounding but really only time can tell.On Friday Scott went into the Embassy for his first day. He woke up after only a few hours of sleep to catch the shuttle to the Embassy but due to a miscommunication, the shuttle never came. Someone eventually figured out the error and came to pick him up. The Embassy works a half day on Friday so he was home by lunchtime. During Scott’s time in the office, Kiersten and Mackenzie slept in until a blissful 8:45 then ate some breakfast in our new large kitchen and did a FaceTime call with Kiersten's parents. The joys of modern technology! After their conversation, the girls played and Mackenzie was thrilled to have her own personal set of stairs. She tackled them a few times before 10:30 when she begged for a nap. While the baby napped, Kiersten found a broom and set to work sweeping. The whole house has tile flooring except for two large area rugs in the living and dinning room and the floor needed a little love.

Mastering the new stairs.

Scott got home while Mackenzie was still asleep. Once she woke up we called our sponsor family and they picked us up to run some errands. We went out to get passport photos and local sim cards for our phones. Paraguay seems to be enamored with 1980’s culture in that they are in love with shopping malls. They are the place to be whereas in America shopping malls are kind of dying. While hunting for a place to take the passport photos we actually went into three different malls all within the same city block. Not the same mall mind you, three separate ones. This is how much they love malls.

 

One way they entertain the kids at the malls. It was pretty cool.

As we previously mentioned, Paraguay is currently in their winter months. The temperature during the day still gets between 70-80 but the humidity is low and there is a lovely breeze. On Friday it was a gorgeous day and while we had on light sweaters we saw many locals with sweatshirts or actual jackets on. This makes us a little nervous about their summers but we’ll have a few months to acclimate before that happens. Another thing that is taking some getting used to is the fact that it gets dark here around 5:30 like it does in winter. Seeing as we just came from summer and it’s light until 9, it makes the day feel later than it really is.After we finished setting up our phones with local sims and numbers, our sponsor family introduced us to Paraguayan ice cream. It was delicious! One flavor that caught our attention was called Americano Creme…it's just vanilla! Haha!

 

"I want ice cream too... I'm tired!"

Even though it was only about 5 o’clock, we were all super tired. Paraguay is in the same time zone we just left but traveling and being in a new culture can be very tiring. M was also very tired. Our sponsor family drove us home and after a bath in our jacuzzi tub, we put the baby to bed by 6, an hour earlier than normal. We were able to have a FaceTime chat with Scott’s parents before we also succumbed to sleep around 9pm. It was an extremely productive first full day in our new home.Saturday morning came with an early wake up call from the baby. Since she went to bed early she woke up early at 5am. Normally we would have ignored her hoping she’d fall back asleep but she started crying and Kiersten didn’t want Scott to wake up early again so she got up and fed Mackenzie. The day didn’t really begin until about 9 when everyone was up, fed and dressed. 

 

Enjoying one of our last cheese sticks before they're gone.
No cheddar cheese in Paraguay.

We unpacked at least 2 suitcases while Mackenzie took an hour nap and then at 1pm our sponsor family picked us up for our first trip to the local grocery store. They took us to the nice one that is a little further away. It’s called Casa Rica (Rich House) and it is a "gourmet market" comparable to Whole Foods. It felt a little like a Wegmans to me but on both accounts, the prices were more affordable! We were able to find almost everything on our grocery list for the coming week and picked up a few impulse items like a box of Paraguayan delicacies called Alfajorcitos. They were described to us as “cloud cookies” and look a little like macaroons. It has two soft shortbread like cookies sandwiching a thin layer of dulce de leche that has then been rolled in coconut. Indeed they taste like clouds. We were also told that Paraguayans love sugar and admit they don’t have a healthy diet. So much for our plans to reduce our sugar intake! Well, when in Asuncion…. Mackenzie was again very tired after our grocery run and upon returning home slept for two and a half hours.  

The 'cloud cookies' on our beautiful kitchen counter.

Our sponsor family was hosting a small Embassy family gathering for us at their home so we could meet some of the other Embassy families with small children. It was so fun! Paraguay is big into grilling/barbecuing called asado. Almost every house, we are told, has an asode grill. Ours does and it’s massive. We ate some traditional Paraguayan beef and chicken dishes cooked by our hosts on their grill and chatted with our new friends. Everyone is SO friendly! It really was incredible the amount of similarities we had with each other, not just because we are all Americans living in Paraguay but in other ways too. We found a couple who are runners (our neighbors actually) and another couple who likes games and everyone was super easy to talk with. While we were the new ones meeting everyone it felt like we were all old friends. The Embassy is small here and has a close-knit group of people where everyone knows each other and frequently get together.

Another busy day for the Jacksons ended much the same as Friday. We bathed the baby, put her to bed and then we finished unpacking our luggage. All our bags are empty and it’s starting to feel more and more like home. 

Sunday was more relaxing. We’d arranged with our sponsor family to drive us to our local church meeting house on the grounds of the Temple at 8:30. The Temple is beautiful and we are so blessed to be living 10 minutes away from it. We’ll need to take advantage of it before November because they are closing it for cleaning and repairs and don’t know when it will open again. When we arrived at church it was all Spanish. Everyone was very friendly and someone actually connected us with an older American couple who also works at the Embassy and we sat with them and spoke English before Sacrament. Oh man was the Spanish fast! We could decipher a few words here and there due to context but for the most part we just sat and listened. I can honestly say that yes, I did feel the Spirit while in that meeting. The gospel is true in all parts of the world even when your ears can’t understand, your heart can.

We’d previously decided to stay only for the first hour of church and it’s a good thing because Mackenzie was almost beside herself tired (noticing a theme here?) and once we got back and had a snack, down she went for a nap. Ironically, we too fell asleep for a spell. Once everyone was awake we FaceTimed with both sets of Mackenzie's grandparents. It was great. Then around 4pm our sponsor family came to take us to one of the nice malls and have dinner. It was a really nice mall with some stores we recognized (Nike, New Balance, United Colors of Bennington) and some we didn't. We ate at an outdoor pizza place which was delicious. It was really fun to get to know our sponsor family better too. We have a lot of things in common with them for example, the wife and I are both the youngest, only girl of three with a five and seven year gaps between us and our brothers! What are the odds?! They are really, really nice.

 

The family at the mall before dinner.

Monday began Scott's first full week at work and Mackenzie and Kiersten also got to come. The girls joined Scott around 9am for a security briefing and to get badges. Mackenzie handled the meeting very well but around 10:30 she decided she was done and needed a nap NOW! When the girls got home, Mackenzie napped and Kiersten did laundry and about an hour of "language study". It was mentally exhausting but that's what we've got to do to learn a new language. A little while after the baby woke up, Kiersten decided it was time to get out and explore their neighborhood. We'd been previously warned that the sidewalks were terrible and now we've experienced it first hand and they are terrible, even non-existent in some places. But they made it back safely and started on dinner.

 

Our neighborhood vat of sauce. But those cobblestones though.

A view of our street from in front of our house.

 

We made it back! and it was a hot one.

Cooking in the new kitchen was an adventure, really just with the oven. Had no clue how to get things working and it wasn't until Scott got home that things really got going. The pasta on the stove top turned out great but the garlic bread in the oven... well we ate it but it wasn't good. After a lovely family dinner we got Mackenzie to bed and finished up some chores.

 

A successful Pasta Primavera. The garlic bread wasn't so lucky.

And there you have it! A very in depth goings on of our first four full days in Paraguay. We are excited and still a little nervous about everything but with time we will gain confidence and friends. It's certainly going to be an adventure to remember!

We flew away

Our journey to Paraguay began at 3am.  We all slept in the same room so when the alarm went off we all woke up, including the baby. We quickly got ready and then with the gracious help from Scott's parents, we loaded all our checked bags into their car while we took our carry-ons and ourselves to the shuttle. Upon arriving at the airport, we were able to procure two luggage trolleys and then load up all our bags. We found a check in kiosk to begin the process. Next came the fight through the crowd to get to the counter to weigh the bags and get those towards the plane. Who would have thought 4:20am was going to be crowded at an airport? After weighing the bags we learned we had 3 overweight bags, but we were able to rearrange some stuff so only one bag was overweight.

Well there it all is!

Once our checked bags were gone we then had to say good-bye to our last set of family members. Tears were shed by all. Down we went to security and that was relatively pain free and quick. We made it to our human transporter just in time to get to the D Terminal and luckily our gate was right in front of us as we got off because they were already boarding. We quickly jumped ahead of the line (one of the few benefits of traveling with a one year old!), checked the stroller and got on the plane. This was Mackenzie's first time in her own seat so we got her car seat loaded on and let her play for a little before strapping her in. She started to fall asleep about 10 minutes into the flight but only slept for about 30 minutes. We also tried to sleep.

Our little flyer is all set to go!

After a quick two hours and forty minutes in the air we landed in Houston. We made our way to the United Club Lounge to use our one time use club passes. Totally worth it! They had a family room with a little table and large play cube which Mackenzie loved. The best part was that we were the only people in the family room! We definitely took advantage of the free food as well.

The Houston United Club Lounge play cube!

The next flight was about four hours to Panama. Again Mackenzie fell asleep pretty quickly but only slept about 45 minutes.

Flying into Panama with two tired travelers.

She thinks standing is how to travel in this seat.

Parenting win! We brought a scarf to cover her while 
sleeping but this only worked for a little while.

The view into Panama. Ships waiting to get through the canal.

Our layover in Panama was about an hour, just enough time to change clothes, get some real food and let Mackenzie "walk" around. She was getting pretty crabby but then again so were we. We boarded our last flight and waited on the tarmac because of the luggage loading. We finally took off about half an hour later than the scheduled departure time. This was our longest flight, approximately 6 hours. It was another struggle with the baby kind of sleeping and us taking turns snoozing while the other watched her. The last two hours seemed to drag on. She would get fussy so we'd put her in her seat then she'd fall asleep but soon after would jerk her legs and start to cry. She would do that 5-6 times before we decided to get her out and hold her thinking it would be better. She would either sleep restlessly for a few more minutes in our arms or just wake up and decide to play. It was exhausting! She finally fell asleep about 30 minutes before we landed when we put her in the baby carrier and was out all through landing and deboarding.

So happy to not be traveling anymore!

When we arrived in Paraguay we were met by an entourage of embassy folks. I was so grateful to see people waiting for us that I almost cried from exhaustion and fatigue but I was able to hold it together. We got through customs quickly then waited for our bags for about 40 minutes. Eventually everything arrived safely and they whisked us away to our new home. Paraguay is very lax on child car seats so Mackenzie just sat in the car without her seat (she did wake up once we were going through customs). It was surprisingly chilly when we landed (about 7 C/45 F) which was definitely colder than we anticipated. After a brief tour of our house we said goodnight to our new friends and promptly put the little one to bed who slept hard all night. We followed suit after some quick showers.

Our new home is a little more than twice the size of our last place. It also has way more closet space which is great. I'm glad our sponsors recommended we pack bed sheets, towels, bath mat, Tupperware, kitchen knives, and hamper bag in our luggage because we've already put them to use. They had sheets for our bed when we arrived but they weren't too comfortable, same with the towels. It's the little home comforts you don't think about until you're not at home. It'll be about 3 weeks until our air shipment arrives and we can't wait to have some of those things again, like Mackenzie's changing pad and better pillows. All in all though, things are looking good!

Making quick work of learning her new environment.

We're moving!

Hi-ho! It's been six months since we've touched this blog so it's about time for an update. Let's do a quick recap since I'm super good at that!

January 2017: Happy New Year! We celebrated Christmas with Kiersten's family so New Year was spent with Scott's family. We did an escape room which was super fun and the babies did great.

Happy New Year!

 Mackenzie began to roll over more seriously and she tried peanut butter for the first time. Not allergic. Win! She was also sitting up by herself want starting to rock on hands and knees. Her first tooth popped through on the bottom by the end of the month.

Tooth!

February: It was a mild winter. No snow to speak of and warmer temps made our half marathon training awesome. Sometimes Mackenzie ran with mom in the stroller but 5 miles was about her limit so by this point of the training Mackenzie usually went to be with Aunt Carey and cousin Grace. Everyone was happy.

Mommy's view of Mackenzie during her runs. All bundled up!

Playing with Grace while Mommy runs.

Mackenzie is very curious and interacting a lot with people. She smiles easily and mimics a lot. Kiersten and Mackenzie also went to Michigan for Auntie Cindy's baby shower. It was really special to visit a dear childhood friend during this stage of life. Mackenzie tried out swings for the first time and loved them!

March: Rock and Roll Half Marathon! Scott and Kiersten ran the 13.1 miles in under 2 hours which gained them both PRs (personal records). Ironically the day of the race was about the coldest day all winter.

This was the biggest race for both of us and the first time where we spent the entire race passing people. It was awesome! We finally got snow about a week later. Mackenzie was a indifferent to the new phenomenon.

You can tell from our faces that we love snow!

Her big milestone that month was learning to crawl! She started slow but very quickly was racing everywhere, head down in determination to move.

April: Spring rang in loud and clear and for a few days the weather was quite hot. Mother Nature figured things out quickly and we had some very pleasant days. Mackenzie tried ice cream for the first time and liked it (what's not to like?). She also had her first swimming lesson in preparation for our pool in Paraguay.

May: Utah trip! One last week trip out to Utah before the big move this summer to visit family and friends. During this trip Kiersten was able to see both her MTC companions (who are both pregnant with their third child) and another MTC "companion" who is pregnant with her first. Families are forever!

Our little Mackenzie tried out stairs for the first time. She also learned how to clap and started doing a bear crawl to avoid scuffing up her knees. Smart girl. Scott and Kiersten celebrated six wonderful years of marriage by going to the drive-in movie in Stephen City sans baby.

Annual family photo with our newest addition.

June: Mackenzie's birthday! Can you believe a whole year has gone by since Mackenzie was born?! Nether can we. We had a small party at a local pavilion with local family and close friends. She tried chocolate cake for the first time and (surprise, surprise) liked it.

Birthday glamor shots.

Also in this month Kiersten biked to Purcellville for the first time which has been a goal for her for about a year. It's approximately 29 miles from our home. Scott and Mackenzie met her there with the car and lunch.

Scott's younger siblings came out from Utah and we had a grand Jackson weekend complete with BBQ, Nats baseball game (a first for Mackenzie and Grace, the latter of which enjoyed it immensely), and a lovely family Sunday dinner.

Our skeptical baseball fan.

July: This is our final month in Virginia and the United States for the next two years. We've been working feverishly to complete all the last minute things that come with an overseas move, some fun and some not as fun. The fun things include visiting family and friends, eating our favorite foods and hitting our favorite restaurants and ice cream places.

We love Peterson's Ice Cream Depot in Clifton, VA!
This was Mackenzie's first visit compared with our first visit.

Playing a duet with Grace.

We are gonna miss these guys!

We also celebrated our last holiday in America, the Fourth of July, with the Jacksons. Kiersten biked to Purcellville one more time and Mackenzie is super close to walking.

One thing we've neglected to mention during this six month recap is what Scott has been doing. He has been working and training and learning about his new job. He has been incredibly busy. But it is all paying off because last week our apartment got all packed up and we moved into a hotel. We had our last Sunday in the Reston Ward for two years and on Thursday we fly out ridiculously early to begin our journey. We'll fly from Dulles to Houston then to Panama then on to Asuncion, Paraguay which will be our new home for the next two years. We are excited and a little nervous about this new adventure, our biggest apprehension is of course our lack of Spanish skills which everyone has assured us we'll pick up quickly. If anyone has a desire to visit South America in their life time, do it during the next two years where you'll have a free place to stay in Paraguay! Wish us luck!