Getting There

Because I haven't posted anything in  a long time I'm just going to start from the beginning and take it one step at a time.

Paraguay isn't one of those places where you can just get a direct flight from your near by airport, and because I am with an organization I had to meet up with them before I left. I left my house at 5 am on Wednesday to work my way down to Miami to meet up with the other AFS students going to Paraguay. In Miami we had our leaving orientation. I had never traveled alone before so I was pretty nervous, especially because I had to fly to Atlanta which  is the busiest airport IN THE WORLD! Everything went great though, I got on my flight in Pittsburgh without a problem. I just remember when the flight took off in Pittsburgh I kept thinking, this is it, I'm finally doing what I've always wanted to do. I had about a two hour layover in Atlanta so I ate a brunch thing from Donkin Donuts and tried to connect to wifi, but none of the 5 airports I used to get here gave you internet access, even if they said they did, that was really annoying. As I drank my coffee I talked to a Russian lady going to Russia to visit her family.  She told me that Moscow is boring and that I need to visit St. Petersburg. She also said that they don't label streets and buildings in Russia so it's very hard to get to some place new. This kind of stuff fascinates me, I mean, I love hearing about different places and different cultures, and just by randomly letting someone share a table with you, you can learn so much!

On my flight to Miami I sat next to a man maybe in is 50's or 60's. He had is Kindle out but I still didn't want to sit quietly alone the whole flight so I got a conversation going. I learned so much! I told him how this was my first time flying alone and he told me that the first time he ever flew he had to jump out of the plane. He was a paratrooper in Vietnam, he said that once you jump out of a plane so many times its not scary at all. He said that you land a lot harder than you think and that it isn't as easy as it looks. We talked the whole way down, I don't think he cared that he didn't read because when we got off he made sure I got my luggage and met up with the AFS volunteers. I am so happy to have met him.

I went and sat with a volunteer and about ten other kids. For some reason I felt like I wouldn't be able to relate to any of them, but at the end of the day I was proven wrong. We had to wait there for 10-20 minutes then we went out side to get on a bus to our hotel. Miami was hot, but on top of that there was tons of humidity, I could just feel a gross residue on my skin. In the hotel was fine though.

We all had to wait in a line to sign some paper and then we went in a small ball room thing to have our orientation. There was assigned seating because 1/2 of us were going to Paraguay and other 1/2 to Panama. We had to play a game and we needed a team name, we called our selves "The Minorities" because in real life everyone at my table was a minority, but me, but at our table I was the only full white person so we called ourselves the minorities! Our team lost the game though, but we didn't really care. We all got along really well. I talked to a lot of them, the one is Japaneses and his name sounds like tofu so I, and one of my new friends, call him Tofu.

The next day we left for Brazil, but we didn't leave for the airport until 4 and our flight wasn't until 8:15. In the morning my roommate and I looked at the lizards outside, we are both from Northern states so we thought the lizards were so cool. Most of the day I hung out with the minority people and we played cards. It was pretty fun. We found a worm thing on one persons back pack and it freaked us out! Before we knew it, we had to leave for the airport! Once we got past security all 21 of us were on are own until we made it Paraguay, its kind of a scary thought, some of bug the crap out of each other and others could literally beat the crap out others,(I heard some of them talking about it). But we had to make it work because we would be together with out AFS supervision for at least 15 hours.

The flight to Brazil was about 8 hours I think, and it was over night, but I think I slept a decent amount, I sat next to some of my friends, but I didn't feel like talking much, I, and everyone else, was pretty tired. We landed in Brazil at either 5:30am or 4:30am our time, and it sucked! The floor wasn't comfortable, but I felt bad for the girl from Alaska and the people from California, that must have really sucked.

To pass the 9 hour layover we sat around, played cards, hacky sack, talked, and at one point played ninja. When we played ninja everyone stared at us, I guess its only in the US. Oh and we seemed to be the only Americans in the whole airport so that drew us some attention too. We eventually got too tired and just sat around.

When we finally got on the plane to Paraguay, it made two stops. One in the deadliest part of Paraguay where I was told that the black market is there and if you see them but are not a part of them they kill you right on the spot. This story probably makes no sense, but hey, someone else told it to me, I didn't just make it up. On our way to the capital I talked to Paraguayan guy, he told me that there are no squirrels here, and he explained to me what's going on with the government. Then we all got off in Asuncion and met an AFS lady and lived happily ever after. Not really, we went to a camp, but I'm going to go now so I'll tell you about it latter, hasta pronto!