Asuncion

After a long week of working on Excel sheets, today we day tripped it to Asuncion and saw some of the sights. Unfortunately, I didn't get to take all that many pictures because of how rainy it was, but I got some good pictures and got to see some of the cool stuff in the city. The picture above is of the Presidential Palace.

The thing that I thought was amazingly cool was that the natives are all up and down the street working on their crafts and trying to sell them. Very persistently, I might add. The lady in the picture, in case you can't tell, is weaving a bag like the one next to her with her hands and her feet! It's like that all up and down the streets. They have native products and there's also a very big demand for pirated goods like movies and games. They have a big problem with these vendors not only selling pirated goods but also selling pornography on the streets along with the movies. A lot of the movies they sell are not even on shelves in the US yet.

The natives also tend to protest a lot downtown. This is a picture of a protest camp on Plaza Uraguaya. It's right in front of the government buildings and apparently they usually protest for land. They camp out here until they get the land they want, sell the land to a third party, and come right back and ask for more land. It's a never ending cycle.

Soccer is huge here. This picture is of the official stadium for Paraguayan futbol, or soccer. Soccer is to South America as football is to the United States. It's absolutely huge. There's a giant soccer ball in front of the stadium, but I didn't get my camera out in time to get a picture of it. Street vendors were selling a lot of the jerseys and stuff and were making a lot of money off of them because of what a big thing soccer is.

Finishing off the day trip was a trip to the mall and McDonald's. This is a Paraguayan Oreo Milka Paradisio McFlurry. The ice cream is dulce de leche soft serve with hot fudge and white chocolate chunks with chocolate chips mixed into them. It is absolutely delicious. Pizza Hut here, however, is not good. I had it at the mall today and they put pretty much no sauce on your pizza. I ordered a combo with a personal pizza  and breadsticks. The personal pizza was about six inches across and absolutely tiny and they gave me four huge breadsticks. Good thing I like breadsticks.

Tonight, I started working with some of the ladies in the church on a sign song. It's an interesting thing, working with sign language and music in Spanish because of everything being backwards, but I think it's going pretty well. We're trying to get all of this ready for the Ladies Conference next month. Sis.Crosley, the missionary's wife from Argentina, will be speaking. I'm pretty excited about all of that.

Tomorrow, I have the day off and will be doing my own laundry again after sleeping in until who knows when. I'm getting into the routine here but it's getting pretty exhausting sometimes!