Clever!

I went down town this weekend to the artisanal market in the hopes of finishing up the last of my Christmas shopping. I looked around at the leather goods, wooden bowls, embroidered clothes and jewelry but nothing caught my eye. In the end I returned home with only two new photographs to speak of. These pictures show what I think is quite clever, the kind of second hand use of things that I love to see people do. As you can see the men in this area have come up with a cheap way to play checkers. All it took was a bit of paint to put the board on the concrete slabs that were already there along with enough bottle caps in two colors to make up the two playing pieces. A few steps further on I actually saw two men playing, only they had collected yellow and red twist off lids for their playing pieces. Clever!

Virgin of Caacupe

Today is a national holiday. The holy day of the Virgin of Caacupe which also happens to be the feast of the Immaculate Conception. I have been gathering a vague idea of what this holiday means to Paraguayans over the past week. My Spanish tutor shared a bit of the history and told me that she will taking a bus to a town close to Caacupe where she and her family will make a one to two hour pilgrimage on foot to Caacupe. This is something that it seems a large part of the population chooses to do on this day. Why? What is the story? From what I have been able to piece together there was a Guarani Indian being chased when he hid behind a tree. Praying to the Virgin Mary he promised that if they would pass him by unnoticed he would carve an image of her. Which, of course, is exactly what happened. The man then carved a statue of the virgin (or two depending on the story) one of which is in the cathedral of Caacupe. Paraguayans see this as a true miracle story and believe fervently in the Virgin of Caacupe. As for me, I’d be interested in going to Caacupe (perhaps on the 8th of December next year) and experiencing some of the national belief myself. In the meantime I will try to sort out more of the story (although I have little hope in actually covering the one true story as is so rare in much of Catholic history).

See here for an account of Caacupe.

How much?

After four and a half months in Paraguay I still find myself struggling with the money. It is not that I don’t understand how much people are telling me, although I have to admit at times I’m not sure I understand, and at others I think I must be wrong because it is just to cheap. No, my problem comes when I actually try to pull out the money to pay. I’ve got the bills down fine. There’s the green 100 mil bill (worth approximately $20) with a picture of the dam on the back. A purplish 50 mil, the blue 20 mil, the brown 10 mil and the red 5 mil. The different colors help to keep it all straight, and the numbers are pretty easy to see. I might not know who the people are on the front side yet (except for the name which is written on it) and I might have trouble keeping small change as no one ever wants to give you change except at the grocery store. No my problem comes from trying to use the coins. There are coins worth 1 mil, 500, 100 and 50 Guarani. That should be four different coins. Not to hard, you think. Not so true when there is two different versions of almost all of the coins. One gold and one silver 500. The same for the 100 and 50. Add in the different thicknesses and you start to see how sorting out coins by touch can be hard. Oh, and did I mention that the silver 50 is almost exactly the same size as the silver 1 mil? Is it any wonder that I get confused? Usually I just end up paying with bills and not worrying about the change, which as you can imagine makes it pile up. The alternative is the pile of coins it takes to pay for something when I decide to actually dig it all out. I wonder if I’ll get it all figured out by the end of two years?