Now, I’ll be honest not everything this past week has been interesting as language school was 3 hours a day this week and I spent the first few days finishing my paper for my Spring Mod, Daniel & Jeremiah. But luckily I had an interesting weekend once that was all finished starting Thursday, when the Stirling’s came!
The Stirling’s are missionaries in Villarrica and they are the family I will be living with while I’m teaching at the school where Greg (the dad) is the principal. I will also be taking over Renee’s classes to give her more of a break as some of her 4 kids are planning on home schooling this upcoming year. I have found out that I will be teaching grades 6’s and 7’s with the possibility of teaching the grade 5’s depending on how I’m feeling and if their two girls are going to homeschool. It was so great to meet the Stirling’s and spend time with them. They are a great family, the girls are so adorable and polite. And…I found out they have a 6 month Great Dane which I am stoked about!
For our meet and greet, we went to a Brazilian restaurant, which was quite the cultural experience. It was basically a buffet with tons of Brazilian and Paraguayan food that you dish yourselves, but once you sit at your table the servers come around with all sorts of meat on a huge stick. Throughout the whole meal they are circling around the tables with meat from the BBQ and they cut it at your table and put it on your plate if you give them the nod. It was so cool!
On Friday I was also able to have a very different cultural experience, which was a San Juan, one of Paraguay’s big celebrations. It’s a Catholic celebration in recognition of St. John’s Day but in Paraguay they celebrate San Juan basically every Friday and Saturday throughout the month of June. On Friday I went with Tom and Kelly, and some other kids to my first San Juan. Unfortunately we tried three and all three had finished the games so there was only music and some food left. But we were able to see the different booths of games you’d find at a kids carnival as well as a lot of fires scattered on the ground. The kids were playing around with this bull thing: it had a bull head with horns, then a cape attached to it with two boys underneath running at people. Apparently earlier on in the night the bull head would have been on fire and they would be chasing people with it, which explained why there were scattered fires on the property.
Since the first night of our San Juan adventure was a miss, we decided to try again on Saturday night. This time we went earlier, so around 6 as the night before we had arrived at 9 and it was all finished. We went to a school, which is where these are held and saw the same sort of booths for games and food. After a couple hours of trying some food and watching people try their luck at the impossible games, there were people who came in wearing the traditional clothes who did some traditional dances. The dances involved a lot of twirling of these poofy colorful dresses and some dances involved balancing wine bottles or pots on their heads. I hadn’t seen Paraguayan dances before so I was estatic. After some live music and about 1 more hour the traditional games with fire began. Unfortunately they did not do the bull chasing game but for this San Juan they took this soccer ball made out of cloth and drenched with gasoline and lit it on fire for the kids to kick around. There was no telling if the ball was going or down so I thought this was quite interesting as in Canada we would never let kids (around 6-11yrs old) chase a ball that’s on fire and kick it as hard as we can. One girl got hit in the face but she was fine. With some encouraging I joined in for a couple seconds, it was great.
To end off the night we witnessed another traditional game with fire. Since Paraguay is 98% Catholic, for this celebration they always close it with the lighting of Judas. They make what looks like a piñata (with cloth and not paper mache), they fill it with little bombs, dress it up, then hang it from a tree. For the finale, they lit this thing on fire so these little bombs go off, once again you don’t know when they will go off and what will explode off the piñata but the only thing that is certain is that there are little explosions. It was super interesting to go to this celebration and see the three essential parts of Paraguayan culture: their food, dance, and fascination with fire.
As far as how I’m doing, I have really been encouraged with the level of Spanish I have been able to retain and understand while in Asuncion. I have found an excellent online course that has been helping me as well and classes which has helped tons. Language learning is not easy but I’m glad that instead of having a tutor one time a week I have been able to be live in Asuncion with a Spanish family and go to a school to devote my first month to learning Spanish. I have a deeper respect for missionaries who devote a whole year to learning Spanish for hours a day as this past week there were times I was ready to roll over and die- and that’s only with 3 hours of class. I have been learning from the missionaries here that learning the language and culture is a life-long task. It might be a unfortunate reality but it does make life more interesting and develop a attitude of humility.
Some prayer requests for the upcoming week are:
1. Missions Conference- starting on Thursday, July 7th both Hannes and I are headed off to the annual SIM Missions Conference where all the missionaries get together to gain vision, be refreshed, and encouraged. I think this will be a great opportunity to hear from missionaries about what it is like being on the field. There are families, singles and couples, some missionaries just returned from furlough, others whose daughter just had a baby in North America, others who have been in the same place for years and others who are figuring out where they should move next. I am so excited for this unique opportunity to learn from such a diverse group of people who are united in their passion for the Gospel. Please pray that this would be a rejuvenating time for these missionaries and myself to learn more about God’s vision for our futures.
2. My Family and Friends- after missions conference I’ll only have one more week with my family and friends in Asuncion. Please pray that we are able to make the most of our time together and that my time here in Asuncion will have been an encouragement for them. Please pray for continued relationships with my family and the girls I have been able to meet here.
Daneille
1 comment:
Hey, it's good to hear from you! It sounds like you are having fun and are able to really experience the culture there.
Poland is 99% Catholic too, though for some reason I can't see them burning an effigy of Judas lol. When they celebrate things here, they pretty much just close shop and hang out at home.
It's good to hear about your language learning as well. Keep it up and you'll be surprised at the results!
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