Ten Things I didn't know before I came to Paraguay

1.I didn’t know roosters crowed more than once a day. Seriously….the cartoons make it look like all they do is wake up the farm. Apparently the cookadoodle dooo all day and all night. And, To cure a chicken’s cold you poke a feather in the flap of skin behind its neck.

2.I didn’t know that abagados (A Paraguayan’s good luck charm), could be the tip of a deceased child’s pinky finger shoved under the skin in your wrist. Nasty!

3. Pigs like to attend bible studies too.

4.You can only earn 20 cents an hour for back breaking labor.

5.I like mandioca. It’s like a really big potato and tastes great with barbecue sauce.

6.I really like to be clean. I thought I wouldn’t mind a little dirt on my feet but it makes me feel really scummy. I have to at least wash my feet if not my whole body before I go to bed.

7.Cows really do go home for dinner. They wander around aimlessly all day but when six o’clock comes they charge right on by the house to get fed. Pete said “If your life revolved around food I bet you’d find your way home too.”

8.Your son might just survive if he sucks on a wash cloth that was dipped in bleach and used to clean up raw pig juice. Don’t ever ask me about this. I don’t want to talk about it or think about it ever again.

9.I didn’t know I could consume so many carb-on-carb, fried-on-fried meals. I’m definitely headed for gestational diabetes and a 12 pound baby (Don’t tell Tork).

10. There are different levels of shacks. There's really bad shacks with spaces between the boards which let in drafts in the winter and bugs in the summer. Good shacks have extra boards to keep out the bugs and the cold...and some are even painted. Really nice shacks have cement floors and maybe a lightbulb. All shacks have an outdoor toliet and none of them have showers.