Four Months In and Loving It!

Welcome back to our weekly blog! For those just tuning in for the first time or for the first time in a while, today marks FOUR MONTHS living in Asuncion! Here are a few of the things we've mastered in those 4 months:

• Water refills. They come on Friday, we leave our empty 20L bottles outside, they ring the bell and we get new ones.
• Grocery shopping. Still figuring out what all the products are but we can successfully navigate the store, select the items we need and check out without really having to use our limited Spanish.
• Driving! It was scary at first but now we are pros.

More will come in time but for four months, this is pretty good.

On to the adventures from this past week!

We were coming off of a great, three-day weekend so by Tuesday it was back to business as usual. Kiersten participated in a "field trip" with three other Embassy ladies who all take Spanish lessons from the same teacher as K. We went to Mercado 4. It's a glorified flea market halfway between downtown Asuncion and our house. There are vendors on top of vendors on top of vendors. They sell everything there; fireworks, clothes, shoes, toys, electronics, food, produce, school supplies, traditional Paraguayan gifts, etc. It was very overwhelming but an excellent cultural experience. 

One of the most exciting things that happened that day was the packages we received. Amazon packages of course but more notably was the one from Washington State University. Why would that be of interest to two BYU alumni? One, both schools cheer for the Cougars and two, the real reason, because they ship CHEESE! Yes, we received our first ever shipment of cheddar cheese.

That's a big can of cheese right there.

We were very curious about canned cheese. It sounds like it would be gross. When someone says to you "canned cheese" inevitably you think of ez cheese from a pressurized can. This is NOT that. You need a can opener to get at the good stuff.

See? Real cheese!

Oh my was it good. One can/wheel is 30oz of cheese. We may or may not have eaten about a quarter of it just the three of us at dinner basically as dinner. Didn't even realize we were deprived. And Mackenzie gobbled it down faster than both of us. Love that girl.

The other cheese we ordered. It is very sharp and ultimately we like the
Natural Cheddar best. More cheese was ordered for Christmas.

The Christmas package mailing deadline is coming soon or has already passed and we really needed to get our packages out pronto. Wednesday morning Kiersten was the first in line on the phone with USPS technical support to fix our online account which has never allowed us to get past the paying page. After sitting on the phone for 25 minutes the account was fixed! So that afternoon after the girls did some swimming (the weather is starting to feel more and more like a real Paraguayan summer) they came to the Embassy to mail the packages. Scott helped box items and watch M while Kiersten worked the computer and printed labels. We hope they arrive in time!

After the post office, Scott needed to finish up a few things. M wanted to play
in the car rather than walk around. Whatever.

 Left overs for dinner and more cheese.

Playing in Daddy's shoe.

She always looks up when she wears the sunglasses like
they're gonna fall off.

Thursday morning we were hit by the very real fact that Thanksgiving is only one week away! And by that time we didn't have any plans for Turkey day. Kiersten was in a tizzy all morning trying to come up with a menu and figure out how to cook a turkey for the first time. She showed up to Yoga in great need of calming down and expressed her anxiety with Molly, who is the teacher, our friend and sponsor. Molly quickly told her not to worry and that we are invited to their Thanksgiving festivities and assured her they had intended to invite us all along but got distracted with all the other details. It was a huge relief and a realization to Kiersten that she was feeling a little homesick. All is good now! We are committed to bringing PIES. Like, four of them. Because Kiersten loves to bake.

Friday afternoon Scott again had to work late so after Kiersten's Spanish lesson she came home and began working on a fun baking project. Earlier in the week we planned to attend a Trivia Night at our neighbor's but it was postponed until January so we invited these same neighbors over to play Kiersten's new Harry Potter board game. They are big Harry Potter fans so she decided it was time to finally host a Harry Potter themed party. She's been thinking about this for a while. The decorations were easy; purple tablecloth with a pumpkin and orange candles and then the floating candles to mimic the Great Hall of Hogwarts. Really easy project she's been working on casually for about 6 weeks. Take used toilet paper rolls, hot glue the tops to look like dripped candle wax, paint them white and then string invisible thread through them to hang from the ceiling. We also got LED tea candles to sit inside them on a duct tape shelf for a better effect and quasi chandelier. It was awesome!

All our Harry Potter books (minus one). Three illustrated books, Tales of Beetle
the Bard, and two foreign language Sorcerer's Stones (Hungarian and Spanish).

The first layout was just for a picture. The candles!

This stayed on the table for the evening spread.

A close up of the new book K got for her birthday last week.

On the menu for the evening was Pumpkin Pasties and Butterbeer straight from the books. Thanks to Scott's sister Jenna for sharing with the family her butterbeer recipe. It was delicious and super sugary sweet. Everyone was a fan. The Pumpkin Pasties were adapted from the most recent Binging with Babish episode which was ironically a Harry Potter special. Ours turned out fantastic and might very well be K's new favorite pumpkin treat.

The Pasties!

Also in spirit of the evening, Kiersten created a very easy HP trivia page for the group to work on while she assembled the butterbeers. Everyone did very well. Then it was game time. We successfully beat all the villains for levels 1-3 and are hoping to get together again soon to take on level 4 when things get interesting. 

The games we played that night.

Floating candles in our Great Hall. What a great effect!

Saturday morning we got some chores completed the biggest of which being creating a drying line for our clothes in the quincho. That's right. Our dryer quit on us. Scott spent about an hour constructing and stringing rope from corner to corner in the quincho so we could dry all of our clothes. We are hoping to get the dryer fixed very, very soon.

So many clothes!

Scott got creative with our clothes line. Carabiner intended
for our hammock.

And a lock. Use what you've got! He is an Eagle Scout after all.

Another view of the clothes.

Then in the afternoon we went to Plaza Hogar which is basically the Home Goods of Paraguay. It has so much stuff crammed into it's small space it's overwhelming. Our main goal was to get a training potty for Mackenzie because our almost one and a half year old is starting to express interest or awareness of the potty. Another milestone that we are not prepared for and have no clue what to do so we thought this was a good first step.

She loves that it is a little seat just her size.

We were sure to be home by 5pm to cheer our BYU Cougars to... defeat. Man, it's been a rough season for our guys. Basketball is starting soon though! And we probably won't watch a single game because we are now 4 hours ahead of Utah and all the games usually start at night. We love BYU Sports but we aren't gonna watch a game starting at 1am. Be reasonable!

Grown ups watched the game while the baby watched
some Daniel Tiger. Technology is great!

Sunday was the moment of truth for our Spanish language abilities. Scott was asked to give the closing prayer and they said he could do it in English. He did not. He prayed in Spanish! It was a short and simple prayer that may or may not have been read off of Google Translate from his phone. 

Kiersten was also put to the test during Primary when she taught the Sharing Time lesson. Something to note about Primary here, they don't do it like in America. Primary is second hour lessons for both Junior and Senior, only those two classes and then third hour is Sharing Time with ALL the kids. Ages range from 5-11 and they are all pretty well sugared up and done with sitting still by then. Needless to say it's hard to keep them engaged and entertained for one more hour but this was her task. They also don't do a Music portion. It's just a big lesson. Long story short, it went as well as could be expected. She spoke in Spanish, had fun object lessons, invited the sister missionaries to tell a story and had an activity that involved all of them along with a task to invite their friends to Primary the following week. Some were more involved than others, some got more out of it than others but that is true of any Primary in any country. Kiersten also felt prompted to tell a story which she attempted to tell on the fly in Spanish. The kids were really nice about it and even helped her with some of the words. It was a great learning experience but left her exhausted by the end. The other members of the Primary Presidency gave her high praise afterwards which was very encouraging.

We had dinner plans with the new American family, The Holmes', at 4 that afternoon so we all rested when we got home. For dinner we had yummy steak, beans and rice with guacamole at their place. They are living in the church owned Hostel right across from the Temple and chapel so it was very convenient at 5pm when we needed to be at choir practice. The choir basically tripled in size from last week and there were seven times as many men from last week. (If you remember, Scott was the only man last week.) Kiersten finally acquired the last three pages of the music so was sight-reading by the end of rehearsal. It was a very busy and mentally taxing day.

Now back to Monday. Nothing exciting to report for today other than Kiersten has begun all her pie prep. The crusts are made and sitting in their pie dishes in the freezer until it's time to bake. One basic Toll House to be made Tuesday night. One Pumpkin Pie with a chocolate pie crust which she's been wanting to try for a while. And one Apple Pie to be made morning of Thanksgiving. The fourth pie is technically a cheesecake to be made Wednesday night before the chocolate crusted Pumpkin Pie. Wish us luck with all these pies! Hopefully the oven will keep up with us. If not, you'll be hearing about it next week in our baking segment.

I added 1/4 cup cocoa powder to my already terrific pie dough recipe.
Fingers crossed!

A new pie dough with a new crimping edge! Looks great!

Speaking of which, on to our Misadventures in Baking this week!

• The Pumpkin Pasties were a hit! If you've never had a Pumpkin Pastie it's essentially a hand held, personal pumpkin pie. All the recipes we saw said to make pie crust then cut them small to put the filling in. We decided to use empanada shells instead because they are basically the same thing as pie dough and it worked beautifully. So flaky! We definitely plan on making these again.

  

  A lightning shaped vent in honor of Harry's famous scar.

  
  

  

  Brushed the tops with egg yolk and sugar. Check out that crimping!
• The main ingredient in any Butterbeer recipe is cream soda. Cream soda does not exist in Paraguay. How did you make it then, you ask? Well, we made our own cream soda. It's a lot easier than it sounds! The recipe we used had you create a syrup first with water, sugar and vanilla extract to be refrigerated for at least 3 hours before you add some cream and then mix with carbonated water. All of these ingredients can be found here so that was a cinch. Next came time to make the Butterbeer which is a lot of brown sugar to make the butterscotch with various extracts (rum extract being one of them which we couldn't find so we used more vanilla extract with alcohol) and a brown sugar whipped topping which was amazing. Mix the butterscotch mixture with cream soda. Pour in more cream soda then top with the whipped cream. So good but so, so sweet.

  

  Yummy, yummy drink. Lost most of the carbonation but it was still great.

Quirks of Paraguay:

• You can't buy turkey here, not a full bird anyway. The Embassy ships them in from Brazil. They take orders and then this week the truck with all the frozen turkeys came in. We ordered two smaller ones because we are only three people, don't eat that much turkey and have a small oven. It was the practical choice.

The Mackenzie Update:

Last week we did a blast of her accomplishments and we forgot a few.

• Actions: she gives high fives and also pounds your fist.

Now the regular updates.

• A seventh tooth has poked through her gums on the bottom! She has been pretty cranky about that but you would be too. She's got a second one down there ready to pop any day. Poor lamb.
• Grilled cheese sandwiches are becoming a lunch staple for her. They are easy and delicious and it combines two of her favorite foods: bread and cheese.

  

  She doesn't know the difference between the real cheese and the fake stuff
  so we give her the fake stuff. Is that wrong?

• She's getting better at distinguishing between mama and dada. For the longest time, Scott was "mama" but now she gets that not every big person is "mama". We look different and she is learning a routine. In the mornings before work, dada gets her up not mama. When Kiersten came in to get her Monday morning she said, "Dada?" because she knew that's who usually gets her. Such a smarty.
• She will now bow her head when we ask her to fold her arms (dobla tus brazos) and is more patient during prayers and can almost say 'Amen'. When we get food out, she knows to fold her arms for the prayer. She is picking up on that stuff quickly!

  

  Tried to take a sneaky shot before the Sacrament of her folding her arms.

Thanks for reading about our adventures this week. We missed FaceTiming with everyone on Sunday and we hope all is well in your respective parts of the world. Happy Thanksgiving this week to one and all! We'll see you back here next Monday!