Day 3: A very full first day!

The Name of the Hotel

Sunday in Paraguay  This was our first full day in Paraguay.  The hotel is nice but definitely has it's quirks. For instance in both of the student rooms, the bathrooms flood every time someone takes a shower, but we're all enjoying the experience.  The rainforest in the middle of the hotel makes up for any inconveniences. None of us really had an alarm and wanted to sleep instead of waking up, so it took us a while to get going. Breakfast was good, they had an assortment of breads, jams, fruit and juices in addition to the delicious eggs and sausage.  When Juliana and Marcelo picked us up from the hotel, it was 10:00am so 8:00 am in New Mexico and we were off to the expo.  The drives are interesting because we squeeze into two trucks which are small trucks. Its been the drivers (Marcelo, Julianna, or Christopher, Kenny, Dr.White, and us 7 girls (Abby, Brenda, Deanna, Frankie, Hannah, Holly and Lyndi. Needless to say we dont really have personal space, haha. This time we met up with Hilda and her daughter Sophia. Sophia was very sweet and was trying to teach all of us small words in spanish. For example we learned Braclet (pulsera), ring (anillo), and earing (arito). They showed us a little more of the expo, we went to some small stands, and took us to exchange our American money for Guaranies.  For every dollar US exchanged we got 4.350,00 (the period and comma are where they should be too which has been hard to understand). Their bills are very similar in texture to ours though it gets confusing seeing 2.000 and 20.000 because their bills are 10.000 so sometimes you think you have to give them more.

Guarani's

The delicious colored popcorn  

Barrel Racing Horses

Right after we exchanged money, we went to buy sweet, colored popcorn which was our first purchase with guarani. After walking through the goat barn, and horse barn, we saw many men saddling barrel horse, so we walked out to the arena to watch them run. The barrel racing was followed AQHA rules, but was still a little different from what we are used to seeing.  For instance, there are more men that run than women and they dont hold onto their saddle horn as much using two hands throughout the run. It was an awesome opportunity to see that they run barrels, and that it is very similar to back in the states with just a few differences.

All the competitors had a blast, and were cheering for each other through the whole show. It has been quite an experience getting to see the differences and similatiries between Paraguay and the United States. After barrel racing it was off to the Asociacion Paraguaya de Cuarto de Milla (APCM) office for lunch and practice with the presentations. Cuarto de Milla means quarter horse in spanish.

For lunch we had ham and cheese toasted sandwiches which were delicious.  They were almost the same consistency as a panini. At this time we broke into groups and worked on our presentations. Each of us presented in front of Dr. White and went over key parts to remember and emphasize. We are so grateful to be in Paraguay and want to do a good job presenting our topics, so we worked really hard.

After several hours of work, we were pretty worn out, hungry, and feeling a little silly. We packed it up to head to dinner. This was a funny time because all of us were feeling tired and silly. Dr. White said to Hannah let's get going and she replied "Ok Jefe", then, jokingly, Dr. White said to her "Did you just call me fat?" and as the group laughed, Hannah explained that she said jefe not heifer and jefe means boss. It was a good laugh for us all and we all learned a spanish word in the process. After this we went to a pizza parlor which is where we learned of street food that is setting off in a parking lot where they sell a delicious slab of meat in between two pieces of bread. Marcelo and Dierce both told us about this, even though they hadn't planned it and were driving in different cars. This place opens later and stays open until 6am because after people are done partying or clubbing, they will go there to eat before going to bed.  At the pizza place, Marcelo started talking to the waiter in English instead of Spanish which all of us got a kick out of. Holly had a guy take his hat off and say "hello" in english which was funny because he came over afterwards and started talking to her as he was leaving the restaurant.  He didn't know any English so Marcelo and Dierce were translating which made it even funnier. After some good laughs he gave her his lawyer business card and left.

The lawyer is in the Yellow Hat

Marcelo is very funny and brings a lot of laughs to the table. He said "Two days ago I had no children, now I have 7 and they all speak English." It's a nice feeling to know that we are liked and welcomed in this way. To eat, we had 4 different pizzas with different ingredients on all.  We had some cheese (Marcelo's favorite), pepperoni, pesto, 4 cheese, salad pizza, blue cheese, and a few others.

Then it was time for dessert, our favorite part. We got some tiramisu, flan, and chocolate pizza. They were all delicious though Marcelo didn't have any because he says, "Dierce says she don't like fat guy so she counts the pizza slices I have. " We all Thought it was a bit funny because Dierce was laughing with us. It was late at night, so we headed back to the hotel room to sleep so we could be prepared for the next day of presentations. Austa Luega. NMSU Aggies in Paraguay