Summer in Paraguay is pretty much described in one word: lazyness. I've been on summer break now for around a month, I've been having sooo much fun! As most of you know, my first week of break was spent in the chaco, I worked hard and had a blast, but these other three weeks have been even more fun. I get to enjoy doing nothing until March...yay!

My AFS friends and I hang out almost every day of the week, and when I'm not with them I'm with my host brother Jorge and his friends. Most people would think that we do productive things during these times, but the truth is we don't...really. Whenever I'm at home (which isn't very often - most of the time I'm out and about doing nothing) I'm sitting by our pool getting rid of my farmers tan, listening to reggaeton and drinking tereré. (Tereré is a very Paraguayan drink that sort of tastes like tea...it's hard to explain.) But whenever I'm out with my friends, we're either at the mall hanging out drinking tereré, or at someone's house drinking tereré. As you can tell, there's lots of tereré being drank no matter what the occasion. It's the social norm to see tons of people drinking it, whether or not they're hanging out by a pool, working, or doing whatever.

Some may ask, 'Why don't we do anything?' and the answer is simple - it's just too darn hot to even lift a finger, and it's not even summer yet! For the past few days it's been around 40-45C, which is 104-115F and I've been promised by many paraguayans that it's only going to get hotter, so I've got that to look forward to.

(And I promise...there are pictures to come!)

Earlier this week my parents and I went to the chaco, a place which can vaguely be considered as the countryside of Paraguay. It's about a three-hour drive to my parents' ranch. However, only an hour of this drive is on paved roads. The other two are on this dirt road, swerving through cows and trying to avoid mud puddles that the truck could get stuck in. The other members of my family don't find this very appealing, but I had a smile on my face the whole way. Getting out of the city and into the country is one of my favorite things, and I got to have that rubbed in my face for almost two hours :)

After the potencially dangerous drive through other people's plots of land, we finnally arrived to the Perez-Ramierez ranch. Before we had left, my mom had told me 'don't expect lots' about their house in the Chaco, but once again, my family surprized me. There I was, expecting some random hut in the middle of nowhere, but the random hut was actually a small cottage, bigger than my friend Emerson's entire house. When we got inside the walls were covered in pelts from the carnivors who had unsucessfully tried to hunt their cattle.

The next day I walked outside expecting to explore a little, but what I found was a saddled horse, waiting for me. I then spent the whole day riding and getting my farmer's tan back. I also helped the gauchos (cowboys, in a sense) do a cattle run, and once again I was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of cows overtaking me, but it was still fun :). Once we got the cows in, we met my dad and then had to give them a shot (and when I say them, I mean about 500 calves.) I wanted to help so my dad set me up at the beginning of the chute, and had me poke the calves with a stick when then needed to go in. It probably wasn't a real job, but I still had tons of fun doing it.

So basically, I got to do what I do best for two days. I didn't want to leave, but (as I found out when we got back into cell phone reception) my friends didn't want me to go. But do I really ever listen? I don't think so. Once Jorge finishes his exams we'll be back. Yay!