This is the post I started when I was in Itaugua:
(By the by: on our way to trying to get to Itaugua, I stepped out of a moving bus, backwards, while carrying two pieces of luggage, in the middle of the street. Bus drivers seriously stop for nothing. I heard my ankle crack and I landed on my butt on the road, amid oncoming traffic which graciously waited until I could get up and hobble back across the street. I am pretty sure my ankle was only twisted because I walked on it until it got better, but it's still a little bruised and very easily pained, two weeks later.)
Today I am in Itaugua. Itaugua is outside of Asuncion, and Po and I got here by bus. I just woke up, and it’s lovely here. I feel like I’m on vacation from the city! There’s grass everywhere and a huge soccer field in front of my house and three houses full of real orphans and house parents and messy dinners and terere. There is only one road, and all our houses are along one side, while the administration building, soccer field, volleyball court, and multi-purpose house are on the other. Further down the road there is a school house for the orphans as well as children from the community, but they’re on winter break right now.
My camera is broken. I have been praying fervently that it will start working again. When I turn it on, it makes a terrific grinding noise and the lens readjusts three times, and then the display screen turns black and says, “lens error: restart camera.” But when you restart it, the lens does the same thing. Over, and over, and over. So…the lens won’t shut. Last time it did this was right before my camera warranty was up, so they fixed it for free. But that was three-ish years ago. So I am not holding onto much for it. It is a crying shame (yes, a crying one) because I really really want to take pictures of this place! (another side note: I broke it trying to take a picture of an armed bank guard. Secretly. Out of a bus window. He would never have seen me, I know it. Go figure.)
Another awesome thing is that you can actually see the stars from here! Let me tell you something. I am not a city person. It’s amazing that I am having as good of a time in Asuncion as I am, because I (dare I say it?) hate cities. I greatly and fervently dislike them. There are a great many reasons why, but I will not dwell on them because I have to go back there. (: But! I can tell you what I love about not cities! I love the smell of fresh-cut grass and I love dirt paths and big fields. I love tall trees covering up parts of the sky, and I love farms. I love kids being able to play outside barefoot in the yard together, and I love the night sounds of forests and jungles. The crickets chirp and little animals rustle and the birds coo as their babies fall asleep. The wind is always moving something, and the night air holds everything gently. And it’s so dark at night! I could see myriads of stars I’d never met before, and my eyes kept trying to make something familiar out of them, but if I was being honest, I would tell you it was a completely different sky. It was like meeting a brand new friend that I’d been waiting to meet and heard very good things about. Only I didn’t have very much time to talk to my new friend, the night sky of the southern hemisphere, because there were lots of children who desperately needed to be tickled and hugged.
I think my favorite thing here is how much everyone likes each other. It’s like a huge happy family, of eight parents and thirty seven children, and they all live together and play together and go to school together and are happy! I think there’s a community here at Hogar Ganar (the name of the orphanage) that I had not thus far anywhere. I love it. I want to stay here forever. (:
The children are beautiful and young and tricky, and there is a very slow Hope that kind of falls off of them onto everyone else. They love to joke. Po and I spent dinner with the third house of children on Thursday night. The first night, Wednesday night, we had dinner with the first house, and they had already eaten when we arrived, because all the kids were hungry early. The second day, Thursday, we had lunch with the second house, but none of the kids were hungry when we arrived, and we were taking a break from a job we had to get back to, so we ate alone there too. So for this third house, on Thursday night, we arrived at about 7:30 pm, after we had spent an hour or so supervising volleyball, motorcycles zipping around, babies climbing all over the place, translating TobyMac songs for one of the girls, and eating cake from a random man who showed up in a van and wanted to give us all cake! When we walked in the door, there were kids sitting in front of the TV watching some kind of cartoon in Spanish. They brought our dinner out immediately, but I asked if we couldn’t wait and eat with them. They said that all the children had to take showers before they could all sit down and eat, and it would be an hour wait. I didn’t care. (: So we watched cartoons with them until everyone was sparkly clean, at which point two rushed out the back door to go get more chairs and the rest rushed to the table. We had The Best Hamburgers Of All Time. I am serious. First of all, the sandwich bread was huge. Second, let me tell you the contents, from the bottom up. On the very bottom was the bottom half of the sandwich bread, then a slice of ham lunchmeat, then the burger, then a fried egg, then tomatoes and lettuce, and then mayonnaise and ketchup. I couldn’t even keep the juice from falling out of the bottom of it. It was SO GOOD.
After dinner, the boys got out a bunch of mini playing cards from the states that someone had given them. They had this little broken thing that looked like a calculator, but they’d removed the screen and could slip things into where the screen was so that it looked like their makeshift “phone” had pictures on its screen… So of course, all of the pictures from the “old maid” game were used to play like the boys were taking pictures of Po and I, and the old maids or doctors were our pictures. Then there were the go-fish cards, with sharks and seahorses and underwater monsters. We seriously played “tell the Americans they look like sea creatures” for almost an hour. (: Then one of the older girls tried to convince me that her tonal gibberish was Chinese, in which she was fluent. Lots of laughter surrounded that one.
We finally had to go home because we were both so tired, but we came back the next morning before we left to take a picture with the family.
I didn’t stay there very long, but I fell in love a little. Only a little. It was like a vacation for my little heart, which was very tired and not resting well. I didn’t do much and there was no reason for me to be there except to see the ministry and to love on the children. I did it, and it was wonderful. And I saw some stars in the midst of the whole thing.
Today I am in Itaugua. Itaugua is outside of Asuncion, and Po and I got here by bus. I just woke up, and it’s lovely here. I feel like I’m on vacation from the city! There’s grass everywhere and a huge soccer field in front of my house and three houses full of real orphans and house parents and messy dinners and terere. There is only one road, and all our houses are along one side, while the administration building, soccer field, volleyball court, and multi-purpose house are on the other. Further down the road there is a school house for the orphans as well as children from the community, but they’re on winter break right now.
My camera is broken. I have been praying fervently that it will start working again. When I turn it on, it makes a terrific grinding noise and the lens readjusts three times, and then the display screen turns black and says, “lens error: restart camera.” But when you restart it, the lens does the same thing. Over, and over, and over. So…the lens won’t shut. Last time it did this was right before my camera warranty was up, so they fixed it for free. But that was three-ish years ago. So I am not holding onto much for it. It is a crying shame (yes, a crying one) because I really really want to take pictures of this place! (another side note: I broke it trying to take a picture of an armed bank guard. Secretly. Out of a bus window. He would never have seen me, I know it. Go figure.)
Another awesome thing is that you can actually see the stars from here! Let me tell you something. I am not a city person. It’s amazing that I am having as good of a time in Asuncion as I am, because I (dare I say it?) hate cities. I greatly and fervently dislike them. There are a great many reasons why, but I will not dwell on them because I have to go back there. (: But! I can tell you what I love about not cities! I love the smell of fresh-cut grass and I love dirt paths and big fields. I love tall trees covering up parts of the sky, and I love farms. I love kids being able to play outside barefoot in the yard together, and I love the night sounds of forests and jungles. The crickets chirp and little animals rustle and the birds coo as their babies fall asleep. The wind is always moving something, and the night air holds everything gently. And it’s so dark at night! I could see myriads of stars I’d never met before, and my eyes kept trying to make something familiar out of them, but if I was being honest, I would tell you it was a completely different sky. It was like meeting a brand new friend that I’d been waiting to meet and heard very good things about. Only I didn’t have very much time to talk to my new friend, the night sky of the southern hemisphere, because there were lots of children who desperately needed to be tickled and hugged.
I think my favorite thing here is how much everyone likes each other. It’s like a huge happy family, of eight parents and thirty seven children, and they all live together and play together and go to school together and are happy! I think there’s a community here at Hogar Ganar (the name of the orphanage) that I had not thus far anywhere. I love it. I want to stay here forever. (:
The children are beautiful and young and tricky, and there is a very slow Hope that kind of falls off of them onto everyone else. They love to joke. Po and I spent dinner with the third house of children on Thursday night. The first night, Wednesday night, we had dinner with the first house, and they had already eaten when we arrived, because all the kids were hungry early. The second day, Thursday, we had lunch with the second house, but none of the kids were hungry when we arrived, and we were taking a break from a job we had to get back to, so we ate alone there too. So for this third house, on Thursday night, we arrived at about 7:30 pm, after we had spent an hour or so supervising volleyball, motorcycles zipping around, babies climbing all over the place, translating TobyMac songs for one of the girls, and eating cake from a random man who showed up in a van and wanted to give us all cake! When we walked in the door, there were kids sitting in front of the TV watching some kind of cartoon in Spanish. They brought our dinner out immediately, but I asked if we couldn’t wait and eat with them. They said that all the children had to take showers before they could all sit down and eat, and it would be an hour wait. I didn’t care. (: So we watched cartoons with them until everyone was sparkly clean, at which point two rushed out the back door to go get more chairs and the rest rushed to the table. We had The Best Hamburgers Of All Time. I am serious. First of all, the sandwich bread was huge. Second, let me tell you the contents, from the bottom up. On the very bottom was the bottom half of the sandwich bread, then a slice of ham lunchmeat, then the burger, then a fried egg, then tomatoes and lettuce, and then mayonnaise and ketchup. I couldn’t even keep the juice from falling out of the bottom of it. It was SO GOOD.
After dinner, the boys got out a bunch of mini playing cards from the states that someone had given them. They had this little broken thing that looked like a calculator, but they’d removed the screen and could slip things into where the screen was so that it looked like their makeshift “phone” had pictures on its screen… So of course, all of the pictures from the “old maid” game were used to play like the boys were taking pictures of Po and I, and the old maids or doctors were our pictures. Then there were the go-fish cards, with sharks and seahorses and underwater monsters. We seriously played “tell the Americans they look like sea creatures” for almost an hour. (: Then one of the older girls tried to convince me that her tonal gibberish was Chinese, in which she was fluent. Lots of laughter surrounded that one.
We finally had to go home because we were both so tired, but we came back the next morning before we left to take a picture with the family.
I didn’t stay there very long, but I fell in love a little. Only a little. It was like a vacation for my little heart, which was very tired and not resting well. I didn’t do much and there was no reason for me to be there except to see the ministry and to love on the children. I did it, and it was wonderful. And I saw some stars in the midst of the whole thing.
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