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Various Pictures from Paraguay

• Playing music for Kai Miguel and his wife. Kai Miguel had heard my anunt, uncle, and cousin play before and had asked them if they could come back and show his wife. The couldn't then, but they brought Stevie and I and we enjoyed playing. I generally play the guitar and have only a very minimal understanding of the mandolin (I just know that it is guitar strings upsideown and backwards...) so I just messed around. Our audience seemed to enjoy it anyway.
• Sitting around drinking Tejeré, the national drink of Paraguay. Everyone in Paraguay seems to drink it constantly. It is herbs (yerba) crushed and put into a cup (filling it). One person pours water in it each person in turn drinks all the water out through a filtering straw and hands it back for refilling and for the next person. Everyone uses the same cup and straw and it is bad manners to refuse your turn, and so if there were to be a saliva-spread disease everyone would have it in a very short time. I'm not sick yet, though.
• Playing music in Caazapa.
• Cuatis at Iguazu falls. We visited Iguazu falls, Paraguay's main tourist attraction, a set of waterfalls larger than Niagra. They are between Argentina and Brazil and the cuatis were everywhere, like squirells here. There was a researcher who was trying to study them (he had a really neat device for tracking the radio collar on one of them). He seemed a bit annoyed because all he was getting to do was say over and over was "No las dan comida. Se pueden morder" (Don't give (wrong tense) them food. Things can bite.) in very (north)American sounding Spanish.
• Throwing pottery in Tobatí. When we visited Tobatí we went looking for a pottery place. The guy at one of them was very nice and gave us a tour around. He threw a pot for us very quickly that looked absolutely identical to a line of ten other pots he had made earlier. He asked us if any of us wanted to try. I volunteered and tried it. My tendency to throw too fast was exaggerated by having the potter there and I neglected to fully center it. The pot had a decided wobble as I brought it up. He fixed it easily, I finished it, and then I squished it. It was fun.
• Two pictures from the prom, one from a ways off , and one zoomed in.
• A shot of the Jesuit ruins, looking much nicer than the photographer expected
• A steam engine is one of the last remaining bits of the Paraguayan National Railroad. The road was closed ten to fifteen years ago and was the last railroad in the world to still be running only steam. We visited the engine terminal in Sapukí ("a loud call") to see the engines. Paraguay is a proud country and so they have kept their engeneers and mechanics on to show the place off to visitors, not wanting to admit that the place is really closed. Another interesting thing they had at the terminal was a handcart, like in movies, where people push down in turns and it goes. They let us try it.
• Stevie and the Citrus: My cousin Stevie really likes citrus. In Paraguay there is an absolutely huge amount. Stevie (with a bit of help from me and my uncle) ended up eating all of it.

contact: cio_blackrainbow@msn.com