Resistencia - Salta

Hello again,

So, blogs will either be coming very quickly now because I'm doing lots of exciting things that I want to tell you all about or they'll be rare because I'm so busy doing exciting things. Also, a question - as I am doing so many aforementioned exciting things, would you like to hear about all of them (long and will take multiple sittings, a cup of tea and a comfy chair to read each blog) or just hear about my most amusing stories in detail? For now I will try and offer a balance between the two.

Left Asuncion with my friend Raquel with whom I was staying for three weeks and went to Resistencia on a Sunday, which was a mistake because nothing happens on Sunday. Raquel had to go home on Sunday evening and there was nothing to do all day. Boo. On Monday I went for a wander and discovered that, just as the Lonely Planet and all the useless tourist information proclaims, Resistencia is the CITY OF SCULPTURES. Inside, outside, stone, wood, metal, pretty, ugly, weird, artistic, big, small, anything you want, as long as it's sculpted, you got it. So I saw a lot of sculptures. The best were in a little art gallery (see above photo of wire sculpture with tiny multicoloured town). I left for Salta on Monday evening and arrived early Tuesday morning.

I heart Salta. It is pretty and busy and has lots of tacky Catholic churches in it and a museum with (get this) THREE MUMMIFIED INCA CHILDREN that they keep chryogenically frozen like Super Inca Girl (and Boy) until they find the cure for being buried under six feet of Andean volcanic ash, at which point they will inject them with curing fluid and BRING THEM BACK TO LIFE. Wow. As you can see, I still haven't got to grips with the Spanish, and only got the gist of the helpful plaques that tell you all about what's going on in the museum. Mostly I stared a lot at the children, who were kinda gross in a really cool kinda way. Also I climbed a big hill, because we all know I love exercise and seek it out wherever I go. There were 1070 steps. Not as many as in Huangshan, but still quite a lot. At the top, JESUS looks down upon Salta and sees that it is good and allows it to continue existing. I fear for the day that JESUS decides that Salta is not, and does onto it like he did upon... Sodom and Gomorrah... and turn it into Salt-ahaha... So I saw the whole of Salta in all its glory, got beaten up the hill (as in, raced, not physically abused) by three old people. Shame.

Then I made friends, hoorah! International ones too. Andreas (NZ), Thomas (Austria), Olly (UK) and Martaaajaajan (weird Dutch - actually, 'weird' goes without saying as it is a synonym of 'Dutch'). We went for dinner and drank really good pinot noir.

Then. Today. I went for a really long walk round the Cabra Corral Dam. I wasn't expecting it to be so long. It was very cold to begin with and I wore all the clothes I own (exaggeration) and tucked my lower layers into my knickers (not exaggeration) and was still cold. The countryside on the way to the Dam was stunning and the reservoir itself was also beautiful. But the rock formations around the edge were the most incredible thing. So many different things in the space of 15km. See above photos (not photoshopped, all colours true to life). So on my walk, I saw: multicoloured rocks, intimidating cows that stared at me and dared me to be threatening (I walked as far away from them as possible, trying to exude apologeticness), my first llama! an eagle/unspecified bird of prey on a fence post and one that circled me for quite a long time waiting for me to die so it could pluck my eyes out to feed to its young, lots of cacti, a big awesome stick for which to make me walk better and like a real man, some dogs that barked WE WILL GIVE YOU RABIES at me (now that I'm getting better at Spanish, I could understand them), some horses, and a nice elderly couple who gave me a lift for the last 10km that I couldn't manage. Well. I could have done, but I was sunburnt by then and wanted a coke, so I flagged them down and told them I was dying of dehydration and they took pity on me. Then I napped in the sun, drank tea at a cafe, achieved zen with the lake, chatted to the locals (awesome Spanish being used) and then came home.

I got a bit snap happy, but some of the photos above are quite good and there are many more that look very similar to them, but at the time I thought they were all unique and different and would interest everyone who saw them. Bet you can't wait for me to come home and make you sit through every anecdote for every photo, hmmmm?

And that is all. Now Olly and I will go and get a glass of red wine. Much needed.

Lots of people have been asking to see more photos (what? bored with my textual ramblings?!) but it is annoying to get them on here so I have uploaded lots onto facebook. For those of you who do not have facebook, your granddaughters/daughters have it and will be happy to show you my photos.

Look forward to telling you all about my trip to the Calcaquì Valley, San Lorenzo and to the Salta Symphony Orchestra concert. Has anyone received post cards yet?

Last days in Asuncion

Just a short note before I get on a bus again. The plan this weekend is to go to Argentina via Resistencia and then move into Salta. So today I've made sticky sugary mush biscuits for 2nd grade (none for 5th, talk about favouritism), read all my goodbye cards (we love you Miss Sheppard you are very nice and a good teacher etc.) and am about to go out to lunch with some ladies from work. Despite my rant some weeks ago, I have had a lot of experience, even teaching my own classes, which I would never have got the chance to do in the UK, so that's fun. Here is a picture of 2nd grade and their teachers (Spanish, English and Auntie Vicky at the front) and some of the orphans I've been working with. I'll update again soon x

Igauçu Falls, Brazil

Hello, it's me again!

This weekend has been very exciting and very last minute. I had intended to try and go to the Chaco, which is the desert area in the north of Paraguay, but it just wasn't working out, so on Friday, my friend Diego, who is the second grade Spanish teacher, and with whom I have conversations consisting of one-word exchanges: 'Viernes?' 'Si, bien!' 'Ah, bien' 'Es caliente hoy' 'Si' 'Classe?' 'Si, tardes' 'Ah, muy bien' etc. reserved me a ticket to Ciudad del Este which is the Paraguayan border crossing into Brazil to get to the Iguaçu Falls. The Falls have two sides - the Brazilian and Argentinian, and apparently the Argentinian side is even more stunning than the Brazilian side, but I ran out of steam and money and didn't get there so I will forever insist that the Brazilian side is far superior.

I arrived in Ciudad at about 6am and easily crossed the border into Brazil, getting two very exciting stamps in my passport in the process and chatting to a very nice bus driver and his tereré mate who told me where to get the bus to the Falls. It was just me on the bus so it was like having a private border transfer. How exciting. It was still 6am though and the National Park where the Falls are doesn't open until 9am so I said to myself (and this is how I know travelling has made me slightly mad) 'I shall sit in a café until 7am, because that is a reasonable time for people to be getting into the swing of things.' 7am is not a reasonable time for anyone to be doing anything, but I seem to be starting fewer and fewer days before 6am. So I found a café and had a weird pastry cake thing and then jumped on a bus to the Falls.

When I got to the ticket place, which was also a UNESCO World Heritage site, but had no scary alarms, and had lots more people and maps and a post box and an incredible gift shop (Courtney) filled with the beautiest pretties I'd ever seen, I discovered that visiting the Falls the same day as me were around fifteen squealing, hot-pant wearing, party-going, peace-of-nature-ruining, long-legged, sun-glassed, sweepy-haired contenders for Brazil's Next Top Model who were clearly on a Go-See to a National Park that they could spoil for all the other tourists. I ran away from them as soon as I possibly could.

Now I know I've never been to any waterfalls before so I don't have anything to compare it to, but the Falls were amazing. I spent most of the time going round thinking wow, wow, wow! and taking photographs that all look very similar. The Park is really nicely done and the views are stunning and the sound is incredible and I got really, really wet because when a nice tourist helper lady asked me if I wanted a mac, my brain responded with YOU ARE NOT GETTING MY MONEY SKANKY LOCAL RIPPER OFFER which is often a sensible way to react, but alas, not this time. I was wearing jeans as well, but luckily it was a hot day so I dried. My camera got wet, hence the mistiness of the pics, but you get the gist of what's going on. Next time I go to a waterfall, the first thing I'm going to do is get ripped off by a mac selling tout.

I then came back to Foz de Iguaçu (the border town in Brazil) and having started very early now want to die a death, but my bus isn't until midnight so I have found the nearest shopping mall with food court, boosted my blood sugar levels and still have an hour to waste until I can go to the cinema to watch a film called 'Veronika Decides to Die' (Verônika Decide Morrer) which is based on a novel by Paulo Coelho, which is how I'm justifying doing it. Even if it has Sarah Michelle Geller in it, it is by a Brazilian author and is therefore cultured.

This last week I've also been helping out after school at the Anglican orphanage which is just round the corner from Raquel's flat. There are five children there - three girls and two boys - aged between 2 and 5 years old. Mostly I am a human climbing frame and rollercoaster, swing pusher and holder-after-bath-time and sometimes hair-comber, but the childrens' favourite game seems to say 'No!' to everything I ask from them. They don't like me for half an hour or so, and then realise I'm the only adult that can pick them up and spin them round and round so then they don't think I'm so bad after all. They're very sweet, a little naughty, and very well looked after, so it's all very rewarding.

I'm planning on moving on to Argentina next weekend via Resistencia and then Salta so I look forward to telling you all about that. I'm really enjoying your comments, btw, so please keep me updated on what's going on etc. Also, sorry if the format of this is all out, I still don't really get this blog site thing x

Jesuit Ruins

I am sure you will all be glad to hear that I made it back alive from my first solo adventure out of Asunción to Encarnación and the Jesuit Ruins. I left at midnight on Friday and arrived on Saturday morning, and got another bus straight out to the Trinidad ruins where I was completely alone other than a waitress, the guard and the ticket office lady. The ruins were beautiful enough to make up for my fatigue and the bank holiday Monday weather. As I was busy taking artistic photographs and wandering around feeling entrepid, cultural and travelly in the middle of this peaceful countryside, silent apart from bird song, I unwittingly stepped where UNESCO did not wish me to step and WAHWAHWAHWAHWHA, set off a very loud alarm that frightened me out of my skin and got me in trouble with the guard, whoops, who spoke Spanish I did not understand, but I think he let me off because I'd been so keen arriving at 7:15am, 45 minutes before the site actually opened.

Off I then went, brave voyager, to the Jesús ruins, which involved firstly using my go-to phrase: ¿Donde es el bus para los ruinas, por favour?, and then climbing into a tin can bus as the only tourist and foreigner and rumbling into the middle of nowhere, through the drizzling rain, down dirt tracks and crazy-paved roads past incredible tropical-farmland scenery and cows and chickens to the little village of Jesús where the bus driver, who had clearly dealt with foreigners before and emphatically pointed at the clock on his phone and told me he'd be back for me personally at 11am. Got it.

The ruins at Jesús were amazing - far better preserved than at Trinidad, and with a bench at the back overlooking a view that took my breath away. It's easy to see why the Jesuits chose that spot. The only thing that ruined my gloriously Romantic moment was the need to pee, which I seriously considered doing a little way from the ruins (not on them, that would be disrespectful to both the Jesuits and UNESCO, and would probably have set off another of their alarms), but just as I stood up to risk it, thinking I was on my own as I had been in Trinidad, a Paraguayan family stepped onto the verandah overlooking the view and said very loudly 'Aah, how beautiful', or something to that effect. I sat down quickly and smiled and nodded in agreement.

I came back to Encarnación on the bus and had one of those awkward conversations with a young Paraguayan where the first question is 'Casada?' which means, 'Are you married?' What a conversation starter. Unfortunately, I wasn't wearing my fake wedding ring, so I had to endure about ten minutes of him insisting on maintaining the conversation after I had made it very clear that I DID NOT UNDERSTAND HIM. Which I didn't. The accents are odd in the country cos mostly they speak a language called Guarani.

Encarnación as a town had little charms other than a little church, a book fayre in the square and a market where lots of people engaged me in conversation with what I can only assume was: 'Cheap crap, Señorita? Cheap crap for you?' but I haven't yet figured out how to say 'No, no cheap crap for me thanks, I'm looking for post cards.' Which don't exist in Paraguay. I came back to Asunción on Sunday morning and spent about five hours staring at countryside and countryside and more countryside. There is a lot of countryside in Paraguay. On my bus journey I saw: one drove of horses running towards another horse which was very beautiful and Disney-esque, two cowboys, three boys who were allowed on the bus to offer us agua and bread, four American tourists who got on along the way, lots of cows and lots of chickens.

And then I came home and went to church and went out for a burger with young church people and met some German girls doing a gap year with the mennonite church. What are mennonites, I hear you ask? They are a bunch of German Christians who emigrated to Paraguay and live in the middle of the northern desert, the Chaco, and are self sufficient as only Germans can be and have their own generators and water systems and neat and orderly rows of houses in the back end of beyond. I might go and visit next weekend.

And now I am back at school and have found a child in the last year of sixth form who loves Jane Austen and we are going to be best friends forever. She has read her books and watched her films and wants to do a presentation about the role of women in her novels and how there is a Jane Austen figure in all her novels BUT she is doing some form of Chemical Engineering at university and she doesn't want to, she wants to do some form of literature and arts but her parents won't let her and I told her it was HER life, not theirs. But they're paying for her education so looks like she's doing Chemical Engineering!

Granddad, please stop worrying, I couldn't be safer or more secure.

Big kiss.

Asuncion (with less rage)

Hola a todos,

I thought I'd just write quickly to say that the last few days have been much better than on Monday when I last wrote! I have decided to steer clear of all horrible children and have been helping with reading and supervising tests and practising conversation skills with year 2, 3 and 6 and I even got to observe a year 10 class and it was nice to do a higher level, though I'm getting used to colouring and reading and writing stories in primary. Maybe I should be a primary teacher?

I had a very exciting bus ride on the Spanish front yesterday. Whilst benefitting from the warmth of total strangers pressed up against me, and repeatedly sticking my bottom into some poor lady's face, I chatted to the year 3 Spanish teacher, Diego, who speaks more English than I speak Spanish, but not a lot more. We managed to have a very productive conversation about church (they love church), education, family, schools in England and travelling. Quite impressive, hey?

He also helped me get my bus ticket to a town called Encarnacion that I am visiting this weekend to see the nearby Jesuit ruins. I tried to get the tickets on Wednesday, but after my pigeon Spanish conversation with the nice ticket lady, we discovered that I hadn't brought my passport with me and I needed my passport for a long distance bus journey. Bother. But I got to go again on Thursday, which at least gave me something to do - sounds a bit pathetic, but hey, when you're travelling on your own, you've got to fill your time somehow and it's interesting to get out and see things. I got off the bus at the wrong place though, and had to walk quite far home (everything's on a grid system so it's quite difficult to get lost if you know the right direction to go) so I got a chocolate sundae (sho-ker-li-shin-dee) from Burger King to give me strength to continue and it only cost 45p! Life in Paraguay is quite cheap!

The weather has gone a bit crazy, though apparently this is normal. It's been 35º and today it was 11º in the morning and it feels freezing in comparison. Mummy - I've been wearing my lovely blue polyester trousers every day and they're doing very well! They don't keep me very warm though.

So I'm off on my adventure to the ruins on Saturday morning and should have some nice photos and stories to show you on Monday/Tuesday.

Hope everyone is keeping well x

Asuncion, Paraguay

Well... I have been here for about six days now and right now is probably not the best time to be writing as I've just walked out of a very stressful class with lots of very argumentative year 5 boys! I shall try not to vent too much.

My journey over was very nice, and I'm settling in nicely to my routine in Asuncion. I help out in the secondary school ocassionally with some English speaking exams and I observed a class this morning but mostly I'm in the primary school doing SEN stuff and assisting teachers in the classroom and listening to children read and helping them with their English. I'm working 1-1 with a boy called Tiago who is very sweet and potentially on the spectrum, but SEN doesn't really exist in Paraguay and although they are registered on some form of register, it doesn't entitle them to any help in the form of extra time or assistants or computers, which is sad.

St Andrew's is an interesting school. It caters for the highest echelon of Paraguayan society so the students are children of comparative millionaires. However, even though the school is lovely, it's similar to an ordinary state primary school and doesn't have nearly the same facilities as we'd expect from an average secondary (though there is a pool). So you'd think the children would be miles different from the boys at Archbishop Tenison's, but it turns out that at the extreme ends of the scale, children are all the same, just for different reasons. The primary school is lovely, but apparently there is a lot of apathy, arrogance and rudeness in the secondary.

Anyway. I'm staying with a girl called Raquel, who is lovely and has a beautiful little apartment near the school and all local amenities. Paraguay, although there is a lot of poverty (that I haven't seen yet) is not currently striking me as developing world-y, despite being the second poorest country in South America. They have colgate and l'oreal and other 'normal' things, though they only have full fat milk in the canteen, which is gross for tea. I did touristy things on Saturday in the centre of town with Babs and then went to her house in a different district called Mariana Roque Alonso, which is a less well-off part of town. We watched the football (Paraguay v. Bolivia, Paraguay won, hooray) and guns and fireworks were set off when Paraguay scored. Then we went to her church in the morning (there's a lot of church here because St Andrews is a missionary school) and came home for lunch with the family of a man called Alberto who is the head of maintenance at the school. They are lovely, lovely people and we had a few very poor conversations in Spanish.

I'm learning a bit of Spanish and understand a lot of what I hear, but it's very easy not to speak it in school as we have lessons in English to encourage the children to become near-fluent in English. I'm getting better though and will hopefully be able to at least get by when I leave to go to Argentina. I'm reading 'Le Petit Prince' in Spanish. Cute.

I've been to Raquel's church too and sampled some local delicacies including empanadas (like Cornish pasties, but I think deep fried) and MEAT. Meat is a big thing in Paraguay. They eat a lot of it and it's really good. I'm not even sure what meat it is, but I'm assuming it's beef. They give you whole chunks of it - I even saw one chunk with a foot on the end - animal, not human.

I hope I'm able to post some photos, but I'd just like to end by saying a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my granddad and to Meera if you're reading. I hope you had a lovely day.

Hasta lluego!