- buying gas
- buying groceries
- talking to people at church
- traveling around the city by car or on foot
- visiting new places within the country
When we first got here we stuck to our little 2 mile radius of the Embassy, church and groceries but have since branched out and done some travel within the city and without and completed one trip to another South American country when we went to Buenos Aires in February. It's been a good year and we hope to have another two good years to come. Goal is still to be "fluent" in Spanish by the time we leave.
Other than our year milestone this week it was a pretty typical week. On Thursday Kiersten and Mackenzie had a visitor all day. One of the new American families in our Ward just welcomed a new baby on Monday so K&M took care of their 15 month old daughter for the day. Mackenzie had a rough time sharing her toys but had no issues playing in the water station with her after naps. Thankfully when her sister is born at the end of the year she'll slowly need to share her toys but we are still hoping for the best in that department.
 |
| This kept the girls occupied for over 30 minutes. Win! |
Friday night we went on a date night to go bowling with Brenda and Netza. We had a great time and the alley pizza was pretty good. Best part of the evening was stumbling upon a lighting store that happened to have the type of lights that keep burning out in our living room.
Saturday morning Scott helped in a Ward service project. He and a few other men from the ward went to a member's home to basically help them build their house. They poured concrete and did other various projects. He came home very humbled to know we are extremely blessed to have a fine roof over our heads and more than enough clothes and food to sustain us. This is one thing about living overseas that we love, gaining this type of perspective is as simple as walking out our front door.
Sorry for the tangent...
Later on Saturday we attended an Expo with Brenda, Netza and Tyler (another American in our Ward). It was huge! Originally this expo started to showcase cattle but has since grown to include construction vehicles, motorcycles, phone companies, clothes, artisan goods, etc. Mackenzie had a great time seeing all the cows and we had fun being with friends and experiencing the largest expo in Paraguay. There were so many people!
 |
| She requested to have her picture taken with the baby cow. |
For the first time in about 6 months, Kiersten had a relaxing church experience. Young Women's is a huge contrast to the Primary here. It was another chilly day which meant attendance in church overall was low but out of the 4 regular YW in our Ward we had 1 in class. It was a great lesson on the Temple which Kiersten generally could follow and when the time came to share examples or add to the lesson, she could do it in English because the teacher and YW both speak English! She is aware that not every Sunday will be like this but it was a nice way to get started. Next Sunday she'll be teaching the lesson! In Spanish!
Projects:
- Kiersten is wrapping up her Primary Closet clean-out project for the Primary. She got sheet protectors and binders to file all the supplementary lesson pictures for them. She is finishing by indexing their photos so it's easier to make sense of it all then handing it all back to them and will officially be done with Primary here.
- Our Stake has been encouraged do participate in online Indexing and Kiersten and Scott did some Indexing together last weekend. Kiersten enjoyed it so much that anytime she had downtime this week, she completed a few batches. Try it! It's really fun!
Quirks of Paraguay:
- Winter. Yes! It can get cold here! This week it was up in the mid-80s until we had a rainstorm come through Friday morning and cool us off for the weekend. Even though it was in the 80s the humidity was low so it was actually kind of pleasant outside. We're enjoying the cooler weather for sure!
The regular pool water is too cold but this little tub was perfect. - Online shipping. Because it is winter here and summer in North America we have discovered that some shipping prices have increased. We learned several months ago we could ship cheese to ourselves from the Washington State University Creamery and it's super tasty. We are almost out so we ordered more today and well... we've learned we need to stock up when it's cold up there.
6 cans. Not gourmet mind you. This is the most money we'll ever spend on cheese!
The Mackenzie Update:
- Mackenzie is still having a hard time adjusting to being left alone with someone other than Mom or Dad. For our date night we had our regular babysitter from the Ward, Liza, come sit for us and Mackenzie cried when we had to go. She calmed down after she was distracted but she didn't used to do it every time one of us left. We are really hoping it's a phase she grows out of.
- Still working on colors. She is getting better at recognizing them and is very keen to ask, "what's this" when she wants to know the color.
- Kiersten has been trying to give her piano lessons. This week Mackenzie learned some fingering and since M only knows how to count in Spanish she repeated Mommy saying, "Dos, tres, dos, tres" with the correct fingers on the keys. We'll make a prodigy of her yet! And she insists when she sits at the piano that she have music open in front of her.
Doesn't she look like a real student?
That about wraps it up for us this week. Still need to write and tell you all about our wonderful trip to England. Speaking of trips, we have another one booked! We are going to Santiago, Chile in August for Scott to do some skiing, Mackenzie to really experience snow and all of us to visit another spectacular South American city and get another stamp in our passports (we've got a lot already).
No comments:
Post a Comment