Okyeterei jey! Mba'ére?!

It has been raining almost non-stop for 3 days. This means that basically nothing happens, including school. So I've had the past few days off. I passed the time by reading my Paulo Coelho novel, making didactic materials, drinking maté and staring at the chickens in the yard. Chickens never cease to amuse me, and my family has perhaps thirty or so. There are also the cows, pigs, 6 dogs and 3 scrawny cats. There is always some kind of Animal Farm drama going on.

My running regimen has been pushed back slightly, by a nice case of patellaer tendinitis. So to stay active, I went and checked out a gym in Oviedo yesterday. It was a bit shabby, but that hardly phases me anymore. I worked out for a little over an hour, for a little over $1. After leaving the gym (still sweaty, as I found out they have no shower), I sat down at an empanada restaurant to read my book while I waited for my friend and fellow Volunteer Michelle to get into town. (A shout-out to Michelle's mom is in order here, I know you're reading!)

It had been threatening to rain all day, and it started to sprinkle. Then it started to rain. Then it started to downpour. It was already dark by 6 pm when Michelle called to tell me her bus had just gotten in. Since Oviedo has two bus terminals, I asked if she was at the one at the Cruce, or the one in the center of town. "The center, I think," she told me, which I was grateful for, because I was only a few blocks away and it was raining even harder. I walked quickly to the terminal without getting too wet, but everything was dark and closed. Uh oh. I called Michelle back and confirmed that she was, indeed, at the Cruce terminal. I decided to catch a bus. Oops, no more buses. Well, it looks like I'm going to have to walk the 15 blocks to the Cruce. I got directions from three unshaven men in greasy tshirts drinking maté, and set off. (Asking Latin men for directions is not always a good idea... in my experience, they WILL give you directions... even if they have no idea what they're talking about. Just to confirm I asked a little old lady in a 24-hour pharmacy the same question, and she pointed me in the right direction.)

And, impossibly, it started to rain harder. Despite my bum knee, I decided to suck up the pain and run the 15 blocks. I suppose that it wouldn't have really made a difference, since I was soaked through to the skin in under a minute anyway, but it did get me to the Cruce a little faster; 20 minutes instead of an hour. The knee doth protest too much, but I ignored it.

Rain thundered on the metal roof of the terminal as I hopped the low concrete wall surrounding the terminal and went to lonok for Michelle. I found her in the restaurant area, talking to an unshaven Paraguayan man in a greasy tshirt. (There is no lack of unshaven Paraguayan men in greasy tshirts here in Oviedo.) Señor Suave didn't stick around for long once I got there. He did, however, proceed to send one love-text after another to Michelle's phone from where he sat some 15 awkward feet away. Meanwhile, I wrung approximately 4 cups of water out of my sweatshirt.

After catching up for a while, and watching the last bus to my site come and go, we decided it was time to hail a cab and haul Michelle's bags to her new home. The only problem was, she didn't know exactly where that was. And the taxi driver was not familiar with her only point of reference: the elusive Burger Express. We drove around the dark, wet deserted streets of Oviedo for a good 10 minutes looking for Burger Express before we finally found what we were looking for. Down a dark, muddy dirt street we found Michelle's family's house.

We lugged her bags through a muddy yard inundated in 8 inches of water, and stood outside the locked gate of the dark, sleeping house. No phone number, and no one awake. It rained harder. Michelle walked around the house looking for a front door to knock on. At that moment, a neighbor girl noticed me standing in the downpour struggling to keep Michelle's 100-pound suitcase out of the water, and offered to call the family. A few minutes later, a light turned on, and a smiling little old lady beckoned me in and showed me where to put the bags down. Michelle came back around back, greeted her new host-mama with the traditional kiss on both cheeks, and all was well. I bid them goodnight, and walked back out into the rain.

We had asked the taxi to wait for me, so that he could take me back to my site, some 15 km outside of Oviedo towards Caaguazú. But there was a small problem. The giant mud puddles we'd had to drive through flooded the engine, which now refused to turn over. The driver asked me to get out a push so he could get a running start. Interesting fact: pushing a car with a bad knee is rather painful. Luckily a random dudeman walking down the street jumped in next to me and helped push the car until the engine sputtered to life. Thanking Señor Random Good Samaritan, I ran to jump into the moving vehicle before it could stall again. Now that we were moving, things went well... for about three blocks. The transmission blew. There's really not much you can do with a bum transmission. This taxi was now lamer than I was. Again, I had to get out and push so the driver could steer out of the main road unto a small side street. We were now stranded, in the rain, in the backstreets of Oviedo.

Fortunately the driver was able to call another taxi-driver friend to come get me and take me home. The new taxi driver was probably younger than me, and liked to drive very fast. Despite a hectic, suicidal 20-minute race down the Pan-American Highway – punctuated with terrifying games of "chicken" with oncoming 18-wheelers – I was finally back in Ka'itá. I showed the driver where to drop me off, thanked him, and walked... directly into a 18-inch deep, ad hoc lake that had collected 10 feet off the highway. This new development, despite conjuring a few juicy comments from my lips, really did not change my situation at all, since I was already about as wet as is possible without being actually submerged. I therefore made the executive decision to just go all Jesus on this lake and slog right through it. My shoes made rude squelchy noises the entire way home.

Home, I was finally home. I went to boil some water on the cooking fire, which thankfully was still smoldering, allowing me to stir up a healthy flame in no time. By some type of magical mom-radar (or perhaps the squelchy shoes) my host mom sensed my presence and came out to confirm that I was not dead. She was slightly shocked by my shipwrecked appearance, but was happy that I was home safe, unrobbed, unkidnapped, unmaimed and unlost. My water now boiling, I retired to my room to drink maté and collapse into my bed.

My clothes, hanging dripping on a rope strung across my room, are still wet. And it is still raining. I decided to stay in today.

Michelle owes me a beer.