Disastre

To my great surprise I ended up staying another night in the hostel in Asuncion. Sometimes I feel like I have a form of post-dramatic stress disorder after big jobs, graduations or AMIGOS because I never really feel like celebrating and can´t relax. I stayed in the hostel and talked to some older dudes, a French guy who told me Europe is over and another dude who was a computational linguist working on Guarani bilingual education activism in Paraguay. The night before we left it was Asuncion´s 400th birthday or something and hotdog and churro vendors lined the streets while fireworks lit up the sky.

In the morning I left with Mattie, Adam, Cara and Andrea for Ciudad del Este. Once we got there we changed buses and headed for Puerto Iguazu. On the way we passed through Brazil, and even from the bus I could feel my heart yearn for that country. We got to Puerto Iguazu by night and checked into a hostel, went out to dinner and had a drink. Argentina is so overwhelming in comparison to Paraguay; there´s so many more varieties of flavor in food, people actually speak Spanish and not Guarani and public services are actually helpful.

Some sort of bad karma finally hit me though, after having the perfect year so far. In the morning I saw that my wallet had been stolen in my sleep as well as the ipod that Caio had given to me. Only me and Andrea got robbed! Why me, always! Nothing makes you feel stupider than getting robbed. After a pointless visit to the police station and some frantic calls to my parents at 3am their time, we headed out to the waterfalls. I don´t have a camera anymore because I was using the AMIGOS camera to take pictures, but believe me when I say it was absolutely incredible. The park was so beautiful and the waterfalls so intense. We spent the whole day wandering around and sat down for a picnic and took swigs of wine from a bottle we snuck in. It was one of the most perfect moments of my life and I wasn´t even thinking about wallets or ipods. I also got to speak some Portuguese with some people from Rio who gave me their phone number and invited me to stay in their house whenever.

Back at the hostel, I finally met my couchsurfing friend, Gaby. He told me I have the MOST Paraguayan accent when I speak in Spanish which is both a little embarrassing and cool that I can actually adjust my speach to local dialects. He told me I could stay here as long as I feel like no charge, now I just have to decide where to go next...