Yes, Junior, the Toilets Flush Differently Here

I left DC and home at 6 in the morning on Tuesday, the 25th. My shuttle van picked me up like a fresh, scared soldier on his way to boot camp and took me to BWI airport, where I boarded my first of what seemed like many interminable flights. My first destination was LaGuardia in NYC, where I had to pick up my luggage (containing all 140 lbs of my life in a couple bags) and then move it somehow to JFK airport on the other side of Queens. For the rest of the eight hours in between my NYC flights, I had the grand opportunity of lugging everything I own around with me. I learned quite well the metaphor of “carrying baggage,” and I prayed to God I wouldn’t bring too much spiritual or emotional baggage with me to Paraguay, any future job, or (Lord willing and with many needed mercies) my future marriage.

My flight then from JFK to Brazil required ten more precious hours, but I arrived safe and sound in Sao Paolo on the morning of the 26th. My sleep during the night was difficult at best, but I did manage to squeeze in a few winks of shuteye. When I arrived in Brazil the morning after the long night, my hemisphere and whole world had changed.

My final flight was to Asuncion, Paraguay, and it was a short, pleasant affair with great Brazilian food and friendly hostesses. As the plane came in for its landing, I looked out the window in great anticipation to see my new home for a year. The land was unlike any I had ever seen before from the air. There were no large plots of cultivated land like in the Midwest, but small, irregularly shaped plots and homesteads. There were no neat lines of pavement marking highways like on the East Coast, but instead rusty roads of red dirt. When we finally landed at ASU airport, we quickly passed a small building which I assumed was a building for storage or perhaps airport maintenance crews. When our airplane slowed down and turned around, though, I realized the building was the terminal. Cows grazed in pastures just a hundred yards from the runway.

I picked up my baggage and was met (and I thank God for this) by Oscar, Karen, and Ellen. I was whisked away to start again in Paraguay, surrounded by all new intriguing and beautiful people and places and things. I said a quick prayer, “Lord, please give me the grace to serve you here. I need you so very much.”



***I had been worried I wouldn’t have enough things to write or think about here, but my fears have now passed. There’s such a richness of culture and life here that I could go on for a very long time. The direction that water goes down the toilet isn’t the only thing that’s different.