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!