Traveling and Arriving in Paraguay!!

(I´m sorry this was posted so late, the wifi at the camp was terrible)

    3 days of flying sounds tiring, but it's easier said than done. The journey started on Wednesday the 24th when my mom and I checked into Denver International Airport to go to Miami, Florida. We flew together and arrived that night and stayed at a hotel. In the morning, we went back to MIA and after a lot of misdirection, checked in my suitcase and went through security. We had to wait 5 hours until my departure, so we spent the time eating and walking around. About an hour before the departure, we met up with the other students from the United States: Lydia from Texas, Ethan from Wisconsin, and Beatrice from North Carolina.

    We finally boarded and I said goodbye to my mom. The flight was 8.5 hours of calm and quiet where we spent our time watching TV. For dinner, we got to pick between chicken or pasta. I chose pasta. Me being the insomniac that I am, didn't sleep but instead rested my body and listened to music while looking out the window. At 3 in the morning, we had granola and vanilla yogurt for breakfast.

    We landed in Sao Paulo, Brazil and made our way through security to the gates. We sat and waited in GRU for 5 hours. During that time, we joined up with Katalina from the Czech Republic. While we were waiting for our gate to be called, Ethan and I bought pan de queso from Starbucks. The warm and cheesy snack was just what I needed.

    Finally, we boarded our plane and in 2 hours we were in Asunción. Right as we went through the gate, we were greeted by 2 AFS Paraguay volunteers who helped us get our visas. After we went through immigration, we emerged from ASU and were met with warm and clear blue skies. After taking a group picture of the 5 of us, we drove down to the campsite where all the students were meeting. We ate lunch, had an orientation, had dinner, and then we went to bed.

    The next day was also filled with orientations, but we also took a bus trip to Asunción. We visited an art and history museum called the Manzana de la Rivera. We ended the tour of the museum with snacks and chatting on the balcony. Afterwards, we all rode a double-decker bus through the city. The traffic here is crazy and the roads were certainly not made for busses. We had to duck many times from tree branches, the roads were too small for the bus, and we would have gotten caught in hanging wires if we had gotten off of the main road. We arrived back to the camp 20 minutes late, so we just had a small orientation, had dinner, and went to bed.

    On the third and last day of camp, after our orientations, we packed our bags and waited for our host families to pick us up. When the families came, they called the students one-by-one to leave. After I greeted my family, we drove to a shopping mall where we ate lunch. I had chicken milanesa with french fries. We went to their house where I met Nati´s friends and I unpacked. We were all very tired so we napped until around 6 pm when I went to the super market with Nati. We bought a lot of food which we could barely hold in the shopping cart (they have small carts) and had dinner when we came back.

    Tomorrow, I´m going to a meeting with the principal of the school that I´ll be going to, and then I start school on Wednesday!

(Images from the flights, I can´t remember which is which):