2009 Ends with a 4th of July Christmas, an Awkward New Years Wish, and My Superlatives List

A holiday season without sleigh bells, red-nosed flying creatures and alarmingly-obese home intruders with a penchant for leaving knickknacks and sharing adulterous kisses with your mother was surprisingly refreshing. Christmas here was less about getting company profits out of the red and into the black, and more about family, (and of course in a country as religious as this one, it was also about Jesus). Some things carry over, like Christmas trees (although Pine trees don’t grow here, so you get creative). Other stuff like stockings, reindeer, furry green creatures with pointy shoes and high voices, and everything else that we associate with December, are all absent from the whole experience here. Instead, families wait until midnight on Christmas Eve and eat dinner together, then firecrackers, sparklers and a whole range of 4th-of-July-like explosions go off in the streets. Actually, between the asado (BBQ), the firecrackers, and the mind-numbing heat, the entire night felt more like Independence Day back in The States than Christmas.

After spending Christmas with some host-family relatives in Asuncion, I headed back to Peace Corps’ training community to spend the rest of the weekend with my first host family. I learned on my way out there that my host-mother’s sister who lived down the street passed away on Christmas night. Her funeral was all set to take place right as I was getting into town. The rest of the afternoon was, as one would expect, extremely emotional for my family in Guarambare, and I found myself learning a lot about a new aspect of the culture that I had previously never been so closely exposed to here.

She passed away on Christmas, and was buried the next day. According to my family, this was done for several reasons: Few people pay for embalming; there are not good facilities for refrigeration while preparations are made; and families generally all live very close to each other, so time is not needed for everyone to travel. She was put into a casket and family and friends came to see her in their house. After a few hours for viewing, we brought her down the street to the local church for a religious service. From there, she was carried to the cemetery. The cemeteries here are all above ground and crowded. To get her to the grave with her family, six of us had to climb like monkeys over headstones to bring this heavy coffin to where it belonged. The custom here is to put the coffin outside the tomb while they unscrew this decorative piece off the top to give to the family. While they did this, all the women of the family ran up to the coffin and screamed, banged on the coffin, and cried. The one positive thing, I guess, is that since families all live near each other here, they all got to say goodbye. It was strange to see a few members of my family there who have always been so happy and laid back all of the time actually show such raw sadness, which is not an emotion I had ever seen from them.

I rejoined my family from here in site on New Years Eve, and together we drove in the family car back to Concepcion. My host father here is really a rural man at heart, and his driving skills don’t really translate well to the hectic city driving necessary to survive in Asuncion. We had more than one roundabout experience that caused Chevy Chase’s voice to sound off in my head with “Hey look kids, there’s Big Ben!” The trip by bus is about seven hours, but we made it back in the family car in just over 12.

New Years Eve seemed like it was going to be a normal celebration until about four minutes before midnight. We were seated outside with some extended family having dinner when a ruckus at the end of table caught my attention. One of my uncles had had a few too many, and decided that the time for talk had ended in his current discussion of which company makes the best motorcycle parts. A host cousin of mine who is about three times my size had to restrain him while things calmed down. The next day, as my host mother and I were discussing the incident, I realized that it was actually the most normal part of the night. If there is one constant in New Years Eve experiences, its that someone has to cross that important threshold between normal alcohol-induced merriment and a decidedly less entertaining level of belligerence or loss of control over their digestive system or forgetting the fact that the laws of gravity do in fact continue to apply you even while you’re inebriated. So all in all, I can report that here, just like in the US, one your friends also becomes a problem because of booze on New Years.

Where things started to stray from normal for me was after midnight. Someone from my family explained that everyone goes into the streets and finds a baby Jesus doll. I assumed that I had had one too many glasses of classy Paraguayan champagne which caused me to incorrectly translate “baby Jesus doll” in my head. I couldn’t have been wrong about walking in the streets, though, and that sounded harmless enough, so I headed out with everyone. As we approached a street corner about five blocks from our house, I started to think I may have been right about the doll. Sure enough, a crowd had formed around an old woman who holding a doll. Each person took a turn having her place the doll atop their heads while they made a wish for the New Year. I got pushed up to the circle and soon found this doll, who could have given Chucky a run for his money as the scariest doll, standing on my head with the lady whispering a prayer under her breath. While I was supposed to be making my wish, all I could think to wish for was for fewer dolls finding their way to my head in 2010.

Speaking of 2010, no year-end post would be complete without a list. And so I join such esteemed company as VH1 with their lists of best rockstar-haircuts of the ’80s, Cosmopolitan Magazine with their lists of top ways to catch your boyfriend talking to another woman at work, and Jeff Foxworthy’s lists to help you figure out if you are a moron redneck.

Moment that made me rethink dairy: Drinking milk taken straight from the cow.

What reminded me most that I’m in Paraguay: Using an outhouse with a door on it and thinking “Wow, this is a nice bathroom.”

Most surprisingly tasty food: Rodent.

Favorite thing to find being recycled by other volunteers who have recently returned from The States or had a friend come visit: Zip-Lock bags (the only way to protect your stuff from all this dirt).

Most entertaining adventure: Getting stranded in the middle of nowhere on a broken-down riverboat.

Moment that made me realize no bug experience could ever get much worse: Killing 64 cockroaches in a single house in a single night.

Favorite thing to do on vacation: Use air-conditioning .

Moment that made me stop and say, “Where am I?”: Playing volleyball on the lawn of the US Embassy.

Most shocking information I have given to a Paraguayan: What veganism is, and that it does, in fact, mean no animal products either, and that yes, butter is an animal product, and that yes, eggs are too, and that yes, whatever else you are about to ask and get increasingly blown away about is too.

Most entertaining question asked by a Paraguayan: Do they have dogs in the US?

Something I would never have done if I were not living here: See a country’s national soccer team qualify for the World Cup, in person.

Favorite new culinary technique: Squeezing lime on everything.

Funniest Guarani word learned: “Chivivi” (diarrhea), which, incidentally, was also the first word I learned.

Most uncomfortable charla moment: Demonstrating how to put a condom onto a vegetable

Favorite American topic that Paraguayans like to talk to me about: US really did land on the moon, right?

Longest running joke in my host-family: Some form of a joke relating to how fast I must have run when the muggers chased after me, as in “Look at that defender chase the ball. He is almost running as fast as Jonathan!”

Moment that almost gave me a heart attack: Having a run-in with a snake.

Strangest thing I have seen being sold on a city bus: Complete set of butcher knives sold as a packaged deal with some socks.

Hottest day: 46 Celsius.

Thing that makes me feel like a lot tougher than I am: Sleeping with a machete next to my bed

Favorite book read in site: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

Most unusual injury sustained when considering I am a Peace Corps volunteer: Injuries to both knee caps after an accident on an inflatable bouncy-castle.

Funniest cultural thing in general: The “Jakare,” which is when a lady leaves her window open in the middle of the night as an open invitation for a guy to come in and have sex. A lot of rural female volunteers have interesting stories about how they learned that one.

All of this after just one year. I’m about halfway through my service, so there seems to be plenty of time for more interesting experiences. Happy 2010 to everyone!

Tagged as: 2009, Christmas, Chucky, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Funeral, Guarambare, Jeff Foxworthy, Jesus, Machete, New Years, Rudolph, Santa Claus, Snakes, The Grinch, VH1