The city of the east

Good morning from maybe the only youth hostel in Asuncion, Black Cat Hostel. I'm using their laptop and they keyboard is all Paraguayan with strange new punctuation marks you've never seen.

So we finally finished up our supervisor duties, somehow cleaned the house in an hour and booked our hostel in the biggest whirlwind of hurry and got the fuck out of Santini. I also became the happy owner of Gs $470.000 for all my hardwork which was too exciting to handle. When we finally got to our hostel we had a victory drink--our first one in 2 months! (AMIGOS Standards of Conduct prohibit pretty much everything I had been doing in Santa Cruz before I left for project.)

After getting embarrassingly tipsy after two beers I took my 400 thousand guaranis and went to look for a beauty salon. I hadn't shaved my legs in two months or really taken care of myself out in the campo. When I came upon the least cheap salon I could find, note, I am wearing jeans and running shoes covered in dirt and am completely sweaty and a disaster from my bus ride, I walked in asked for DEPILACION Y TINTE or waxing and hair color. I'm putting this on maniqui me because for the last 8 weeks I've been googling these two words in Asunción and haven't found anything promising. Thankfully the salon was real, the owner had been trained in Brazil and I walked out of there with a very good RED dye job and completely waxed legs and bikini. The waxing took probably over an hour and I screamed when I was on the table, but it was worth it--and the whole deal cost like $200.000ish guarani, that's only 50 bucks. The ladies at the salon were all really funny too, making fun of my scar of pique on my heel and the fact I am a barbarian who strangely knows Guarani. So if you're trying to get depilacion in Asuncion, go to Calle Chile like 4 blocks up from the hippie market and go to the salon closest to the mall with the supermarket on the bottom.

After that scary adventure, we all played kings cup with actual alcohol. I went to bed where I got attacked by mosquitoes all night which I now deeply regret because everyone went out dancing and found ficantes. Sigh...Ill have to try a little bit harder.

TODAY I am starting a trip to Ciudad del Este, or city of the east, where Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay join in the worlds biggest shithole of duty free shopping and long lines of border traffic. I wont be stopping there, however, and am passing through to get to Puerto Iguazu to relax, look at some agua and hopefully write a Statement of Purpose for a scholarship? South America has got so much heart.