Note to America

I'd just like to announce that everyone in America missed out last night on a fantastic cultural display of Paraguayan dancing. And since I failed, yet again, to bring my camera, you all will just have to believe me when I say that cultural dancing here involves the men knife dueling (maybe it was just the lighting but I could have sworn I saw sparks) and doing elaborate swirly patterns with Paraguayan replicas of Jewish tallits in between hoisting bundles of women dancers up in the air, and the women balancing clay pots on their heads while doing bendy things with their bodies, taking off the pots only to dance with what looks like needlepoint of fruit and other tasty things that corresponds to the specific color of their dresses... my eyes were basically having an elliptic seizure trying to size up everything that was going on. And as if the dueling and pot balancing acts aren't enough, there are little props in the background. For example, one performance had like an entire farm yard, complete with an old couple that was fake-mashng invisible herbs in a mortal and pestle. Another performance had these two guys under this cow skin and were running around, obviously pretending to be a cow and all of the other men chased after it with their leather whips. So much was going on all at one time, for like two hours straight (because after folk/cultural dancing, there was rhythmic dancing, which involved lots of girls flying in the air and big muscular men making man-pyramids to do backflips off of) that my brain was just a mush of colorful wardrobe and flying people and fake cows and it was hypnotizing. I was sitting there the entire time like, Whoooaaaaaaaa...

From what I could gather with my admittedly still limited Spanish was that we were at a competition between different areas of study of the university in Pilar. Of course it took forever to start but that is Paraguay for you and it was definitely worth it. There were probably over a thousand people and there were about 10 performances, the first five were cultural and the second five were rhythmic and each group had about 30 people. It made me wonder how long they've been practicing. Because 30 people at the same place and same time is like impossible in Paraguay.

Since my camera missed deal I'm drawing a picture of what Paraguayan cultural outfits look like and I'm going to take a picture of my picture and post it on here for my mother.


Also on a less exciting note, it is like 198874982739823428379482739 degrees out and I woke up this morning because the power went out and it was like an oven in my room. I went in search of air conditioning (there are a few places in town with generators) and on my way I saw a dead cat. In the middle of the road. With its eyes popped out of its head. And it's stomach super bloated. Ewwww.

Other than the dead cat, and the dog who I think is rotting or molding to death that lives a few blocks down, everything is jolly and I shall post again soon.