The Cemetery, the Temple, and the Hottest Man Ever...

I spent this past weekend in Asuncion which is about an hour and a half or so from the Agricultural School where I'm at right now. I guess it is actually only about 45 minutes if you are lucky enough to go by car, but I travel in style on the local Chaquena bus which stops like every two seconds to pick up or drop off whoever or whatever wants to be picked up or dropped off.

I just had to get away from the country for a few days. Actually mostly just from the frogs. I figured that if I spent Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night in Asuncion and then came back early Monday morning that I could have three days of frog free bathroom using and showering. And let me tell you, it was great. And I came back refreshed and ready to face the frogs again...and with my MATA TODO spray in hand I have had some success in significantly reducing the number of frogs in our bathroom. I may have lost some battles but I am winning the war and I think that with just a few more days of spraying down every surface that the frogs enjoy hanging out on as well as directly spraying a few frogs here and there that I can reclaim the bathroom as a place for humans, and humans only. Anyway, I'm not wanting to kill all of the frogs. I just want to repel them. I just want being outside the house to be more desirable than being inside the house. But I have gotten a little carried away with the spray a few times and I have actually caused the death of a few frogs (in a very passive and loving way of course). But enough about that...onto my weekend escape in Asuncion.

So on Friday Sara Joy (one of the other interns living at the funny farm) and I headed to Asuncion. We dropped our laundry off at the laundromat first thing so that it could get done in time for us to take it back out to the Chaco with us. I'm not washing my clothes by hand anymore...I did enough of that on my mission to last me my whole life! Then we decided to go and find the Temple in Asuncion because we wanted to do a session the next day (Sara Joy is the only other LDS intern) and needed to find out the Temple schedule. We had the street names of where the Temple was so we headed out in the direction of the Temple and to explore the city a bit on our way. But on the way I noticed that we were walking by a cemetery. I've been in a few cemeteries in South America and they are usually pretty weird/cool so we decided to take a detour and check it out.



In big South American cities everybody is buried in mausoleums. They look like cute little houses but they have dead people inside. And you can actually see the caskets. Freaky.



Check this one out. It looks like a couple of the family members (some of the least favorite perhaps) got chucked under the family mausoleum. And the closure is broken out so there are just two caskets sitting there like it is all normal to just be a casket sitting there.

Then there are these high rise burial places...it looks like an apartment building but just has little slots for tons of bodies. I'm guessing that this is where poorer people go.

Oh yeah, in case you were wondering that is a human jawbone just to the right of the cross. And I think I see a femur and tibia too. I guess this person's family didn't pay the rent or something. There were actually quite a few bones scattered here and there in the cemetery. I thought at first that they were just animal bones that a dog dragged in or something...but after seeing this little pile of bones that were clearly human I'm starting to wonder about all the other less identifiable bones I saw that day.

Doesn't this little part of the cemetery just look Latino? The bright colors...the graves stacked on top of each other...all of the crosses...so cool.

Se Vende....haaaaaaaaaa that means For Sale. I guess somebody decided to sale this little casita for the dead. I guess they are done using it. They didn't leave a phone number though so I'm thinking its going to be a tough sale.

Looks like somebody escaped! Yikes.

Okay, done with freaky cemetery pictures. On to this one, and my deep thought for the day...Why in like every country in the world except the U.S. and some other rich countries do people carry stuff on their heads? I guess I have never considered my head as a valid place to carry stuff...if my hands are full, my hands are full and I just make two trips. Although I do have a freakishly flat head and would probably be good at carrying things on my head. I think it is so cool though how they can all balance stuff on their heads, and carry things in their hands and not trip on the crazy uneven sidewalks here. That takes talent.

Anyway, we found the Temple finally and got the schedule for the next day which was Saturday.

And here's me right before we went in to do a session. I love going to the Temple in other countries. I love seeing the faithful members and getting to worship with them. And especially in big, crazy, dirty cities I love being able to go into the clean, beautiful, peaceful Temple...the contrast is just so much greater in some places.

Oops I totally forgot to write that on Friday night Sara Joy and I and I think 7 other interns or Fullbright people went to see the new Batman movie. It amazingly opened on the same day here as in the U.S. I don't think that happens very often. And yeah, I only paid 5 bucks to see it...not bad, not at all bad. I love going to movies in foreign countries. It is just fun to see the locals (at least the wealthy ones) out and about on a Friday night. Also when you are a Mormon in a foreign city there isn't a lot to do at night. And there are always cool little differences from the states like that people can buy beer to take into the movie here and that they have intermission. That was funny. The movie is at this like very interesting and compelling point and all of a sudden the sound stops and INTERMISSION flashes up on the screen. We Americans and Europeans just looked at each other and started laughing. How funny and how like 1940's. I mean it was a long movie but come on.

So anyway, I LOVED the movie, but how could I not since I LOVE Christian Bale and have ever since his days in Empire of the Sun and Little Women. He is one of my favorite, if not my favorite male actor ever. Probably because he is both incredibly good looking but at the same time is an amazing actor too.

So anyway, escaping to Asuncion this weekend was very nice. However, I think that I am just doomed to have problems with animals because I even had a few problems at the intern house in Asuncion...like the mice (yes, definitely mice) living in the closet and making tons of noise all night long. And then the lizard that I saw run from behind my bed up into the air-conditioning unit when I turned on the light. Ahhhhhhhhhh. Can't I live in peace? But I just moved my bed out away from the wall and thought, 'Oh well at least it's not a frog or a snake,' and slept as if I were in a country where animals and humans live separate lives. The end.