What's going on in Paraguay?

- Quite a lot!

Indeed, time flies by and while people in Germany enjoy the sun, here in Paraguay they try to hide all body parts from the unbearable cold... which means that it can be as low as 8 degrees in the evenings and mornings, but people already put on ski gloves and blow on their hands at 15 degrees ;) However, even mildly warm temperatures feel incredibly cold here because the air is so humid, and the house/office(!) is just as warm (or cold) as the garden. Unless, of course, you decide to use the air conditioning for heating, which is about as efficient as turning on a hairdryer and leaving it in the corner, except that it stings the eyes a bit more :D

But people endure the winter, knowing that they are poorly prepared for it. But they won't change anything about it, because according to their own claims, the winter only lasts for a week... now it has been at least 4 weeks and no improvement in sight :D And who can make fun of bad preparations when they packed only one warm pair of jeans, no jacket, and Chucks as shoes.. ;) However, it's bearable at the moment because there are occasional warm waves and suddenly it's 25-28 degrees again overnight, and you appreciate it even more. Besides, since this mysterious San Juan (watch out for a little cliffhanger), the days are getting longer again and summer will be back soon :) - That's enough about the weather :D Here's a little joke about it:

('It's freezing cold, but it's Saturday and we're having Asado anyway' :))

But what else is going on in Asunción? Time actually goes by quickly with our daily life here (if you can call it Paraguayan daily life), but it's filled with work, sports (a new Crossfit competition is coming up!), and wonderful weekends.

Of course, work is always kept interesting by new Paraguayan highlights, such as this fire department training with practice fire extinguishing. It quickly became clear that people mainly attended because they wanted to post a new Instagram story with themselves and a fire extinguisher in action, and that you should never light a birthday candle here. Let's just say: the firefighter didn't think it was so great when it turned out that 2 out of 6 fire extinguishers didn't work (not to mention, this happened at the hospital..) BECAUSE: they hadn't been refilled since last year's training! Sometimes you just get surprised again :D

Fire department training..

One of the recent weekends, for example, we spent at a festival at the harbor and were surprised by a performance of one of the popular bands in the country, amazing!!! It was a wonderful evening with the whole Po family, lovely stands with small artworks, delicious food, captivating music, cerveza bien fría (of course), and wonderful new and old encounters!!

Eliass, one of the first Po users ever and now a rock star!!

La Po Famlia and Eliass fans

Another weekend was brightened by a visit from Vera, who unfortunately experienced a temperature drop, but we were able to take advantage of it for sightseeing in Asunción: coffee shops, medialunas, empanadas, all-you-can-eat beef fillet, and a few more medialunas. Also very, very good :) Thank you very much for the visit, it was a really nice weekend!!

These are the medialunas, by the way. They also come filled with dulce de leche :)

And then it was Aris's birthday (weekend with a subsequent holiday..:))!!!! First of all: for organizational reasons, it didn't work out this year to go camping in Bavarian Canada. In addition, Aris was afraid to have his birthday in winter for the first time, because the week before was really uncomfortable... But as always, everything turned out to be excellent! The weather became beautiful and warm on Friday and we were able to celebrate the birthday about 5 times in classic style! Yayy!

Everything was kicked off with a very nice early birthday cake in the office on Friday, with the entire Po & Operacion Sonrisa team and a birthday serenade in Guaraní! A Happy Birthday that you won't forget so quickly, because it feels like the entire language consists only of vowels :D

To add to the birthday joy, KitaPena (--> music tip from Asunción) played live in a nearby bar on Friday. With a few new friends and great music, we were able to celebrate in style.

Birthday in Paraguay!

We spent the sunny Saturday with the Crossfit community and a new course: gymnastics! That was really great and we learned a lot about Paraguayans again. We already knew that no one is taught to run/jog properly here, but it turned out that physical education in general seems to be lacking.. In any case, we left as celebrated somersault heroes, because we were the only ones who could perform this exercise forward and backward without any accidents.

The Crossfit team

The outing was rounded off with quality time at our favorite snack street vendor and our hearts, with cervecita and Mbeju (more on that soon), before we started the evening with a pub crawl through Asunción!

That was great! We started with a friend from the old office and her brother, but the next day we found ourselves with several new Facebook friends :D We crawled through a great bar, live concerts, and finally a wonderful Latino disco - excellent!

With the pub crawl gang

With gifts from the street vendor :)

With true wisdom
(- In winter, as well as in summer, beer is always the best drink)

And great music!

This birthday was rounded off with an Asado with Fercho's whole family and finally with a dinner with Oskar's family, numerous gifts, and wonderful quality time together!

With the family! :)

So it was a wonderful birthday, fortunately Monday was a holiday! ;) Thank you very much to everyone who thought of me!! :)

:D :D :D Thank you! :)

So we're still doing well in Paraguay! Enjoy the summer and please have a pretzel with Obazda in the beer garden for us!! Soon there will be more news about San Juan and a new home, so stay tuned!

PS: By the way, the one holiday wasn't enough for Hansi to recover, he was sick in bed the whole week :D