mgedwards – Page 122

Not quite like America

We just received one more small shipment of items from the United States. We’ve been here over ten months and are still receiving shipments. The reason is that my wife started working full time here and went to the states late last year for a few months of training. Her household and personal items are still arriving via ship. As such, we haven’t quite moved in completely even though we’re approaching the half-way point in our journey here. I still have not finished hanging wall hangings like photos, tapestries, and pictures, leaving the house with a half-finished look and feel. I wish I could hammer in a few nails and hang them up, but it isn’t that easy.

Homes here in Paraguay are made with brick. The walls don’t have soft materials such as insulation, wood frames, or sheetrock. Nope, the walls are just brick with rebar reinforcements. As such, hanging wall hangings requires drilling holes, inserting plastic anchors, and screwing in screws that serve as hangers. I finally found a store that sells what I need and bought a few packages last night. As is frequently the case here, finding things such as plastic anchors with screw sets is a logistical challenge (usually word of mouth and trial and error). There are no Home Depot or Lowe’s stores around the corner. I went to three places looking for these items and finally found some hanger sets in a grocery store. Go figure. Now that I have them, I need to get to work. That will take a few hours of measuring, drilling, hammering, screwing, and hanging. Inconvenience and spending extra time to do things that aren’t that difficult to do in the states is just one reason why I miss the United States.

Let me give you another example to illustrate my point. Our bicycles arrived with the latest shipment. I was trying to prep the tires but could not find a tire pressure guage at home that works (we have two, and they’re broken). I’ve been to four stores here locally, including two tire shops, a bicycle shop, and a home store, and none of them sell a tire pressure guage. I asked one store clerk what Paraguayans do to measure tire pressure, and he responded, "We go to the gas station." OK, well, that’s fine for a car. But what if you want to measure the tire pressure of a bicycle tire? I guess the answer would be, "Go to Argentina!"

Five generations

Tonight I’m posting a photo of five generations of my family. The photo is a collage that includes my son, me, my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. Five generations of boys. My grandmother passed away last year, and my aunt sent me an assortment of her photos, including of my great-grandfather I had never seen. (His name was "Greenup," which is fitting for a man who was a farmer his entire life.) I located and shrunk some of our best photos and strung them together. Do you see any similarities between us? I made the collage for my son, who will not remember his grandfather. He passed away in 2006 when my son was very young, just as my grandfather died when I was very young. This is a collage to hand down to posterity. I’m not a big genealogy geek, but I do enjoy preserving history.

Over the next few weeks — assuming I find opportunities to update this blog — I’ll post some photos of our time in Paraguay. I am way behind on my posting.

Blog Note: We finally settled on a birthday place for my son. We found a place much cheaper than the other options. Cheap wasn’t the only factor — it offers pretty much the same amenities as the expensive places without the high cost. We’ll probably do a small birthday barbeque for him in addition to the birthday party. I’m glad the option we chose is affordable and minimal work.

The birthday party

My, my, my. I posted a blog entry three days in a row. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. 🙂 Maybe I’m finally getting a life. Or perhaps it’s because the Paraguayan election ended last Saturday. Either way, it feels good to back writing away. I missed this blog. I always had it in mind to come back and write but did not have the wherewithall to do it. So here I am at long last.

Our son’s birthday is coming soon, and we’re in full birthday planning mode (I’ll write a family update entry soon). My wife and I talked about what to do for him. Of course, she has been taking the lead on the birthday preparations; bless her heart. We’re finding the options prohibitively expensive. She told me tonight that the option she was looking at will cost over US$600. Another option would cost about US$800. I love my son dearly, but common sense tells me that that is a lot of money. The weakening dollar does not help matters. Two years ago the U.S. dollar was 50 percent stronger against the Paraguayan guarani than it is now, so the options are much more expensive than in the past. Granted, Paraguayan children’s birthday parties tend to be lavish affairs (depending on your income level). Girls’ 15th birthday parties (quinceaños) are especially grandiose. For US$600, one can rent an entire building–there are quite a few "fun places" that host birthday parties. Chuck ‘E’ Cheese and McDonald’s Birthday Room they are not. You get far more here for your money.

Still, I do not relish keeping up with the Duartes. The people that host these lavish birthday parties tend to be more affluent and have a lot of discretionary money to spend. Interestingly, they tend to spend the money without trying to one-up each other. My son attends birthday parties three or four times per month and goes to the same "fun places" with the same 30 or so children over and over…and over. I’m not interested in having a birthday party to please my son’s friends or their parents. I would rather give my son something more memorable that costs a lot less. Last year he had a wonderful birthday party in our apartment complex in Virginia. I am leaning toward having a more intimate party here at home with a barbeque, presents, cake, prizes for the kids, a piñata, and "globos locos" — large, blow up amusements. My son will have a party he won’t forget if for nothing else than it will be different than the overpriced ones he attends almost weekly.