Hola Todos!!!
This blog, unlike other blogs, is brought to you by the future Mrs. Tamar Gutsztein Lazard and yours truly. Let us first say that we are extremely excited and happy that we will be getting married in the middle of June and hope we can share this special occasion with all of you. We have chosen June 8th to commence our civil ceremony and June 11th for the religious and festive activities. Thankfully, our parents have been extremely supportive and we see this moment as a time to bring two families, from different sides of the world, closer together. For all of you who have been reading my blogs for the past couple of months, meeting Tamar has been the ultimate joy of my Peace Corps experience. With much luck, and possibly a little help from G-d, I met Tamar the first weekend, when I attended Rosh Hashana services at the Asuncion Chabad Synagogue. Tamar takes all the credit in her initiating our relationship. She says that as she saw her prince charming (short, bald, and Jewish) walk into services, she immediately told her aunt to tell her brother to invite me to their house for dinner. Being the naive Jew that I was, I happily went to their house to eat some delicious home cooked meal, remember I had just been eating crap for the last three months, and I thought I was in the ultimate Paradise. As my parents taught me, whenever you are invited to a guests' house try your hardest to treat the host with the utmost respect, so I tried to dazzle her grandmother and her parents with my best manners, not even realizing I was avoiding her all night. Tamar recalls that she had never been so insulted in her life and could not believe why I would not want to talk to her. Luckily, her parents invited me to their house to spend the night in a clean bed with air conditioning. After stripping down to my underwear and getting into my bed, I felt the cold air and nice smelling sheets to be a piece of heaven, I felt as though I could fall asleep in the first second. As I shut my eyes, I heard a knock at my door and Tami entered asking if I was actually going to sleep now or if I wanted to talk? I was thrilled, yet intimidated, thinking she was older than me, probably had no interest, and I was in my underwear. We spent the night talking about almost everything possible, learning that we studied the same thing in university, we loved to travel, and that we both had a desire to find a Jewish partner. I finally mounted the courage to ask her out for the following weekend, and the rest became history. We have now spent 16 feliz months together, and plan on spending the rest of our lives together.
For those of you who are curios, Tami wanted me to tell you a little about her, especially if you plan on coming down to our wedding. Tami was born and raised in Asunción. Her father's family arrived after World War II (survivors of the Holocust) and her mother's family is Sephardic, in which they lived in Rhodes, Jerusalem, and Argentina before arriving to Paraguay. Her parent's names are Judith and Mauricio and she has two brothers Ariel (26) and Natan (20). When she was 18 she did a study abroad to receive an American high school degree in Baltimore, Maryland. Last August she received her degree in International Business and currently works for a Paraguayan Business enterprise, which specializes in natural sweeteners, advertising, and hotel and restaurant management.
It has been over a month since I last wrote to you all. Over this period of time, I had a long, very necessary vacation with my family. It was great being able to spend time with my parents, brother, and his girlfriend Andrea. We visited both Bariloche and Buenos Aires, Argentina. Bariloche is a mix between Lake Tahoe, Boulder, and Geneva, Switzerland. We rented a beautiful house at a country club that sat along the Nahitl Lake. The sites were amazing and we were very fortunate with the weather. Going into town was like being on Pearl Street in Boulder. There were many white Rastafarians, and they were selling all different kinds of junk. The city was very clean, and they were conscious to the environment. We did many day excursions to hiking sites, lake tours, and visited the renowned Llao Llao Hotel that sat onto of the Patagonia mountain range. On Christmas, I dazzled the family with my barbecuing skills, and we cooked a feast. After Bariloche, we spent a few days in Paraguay, in which my father and my brother spent a night with me in the campo. Almost all the guys in my community came out to meet them. I am not sure if they came out to meet my family or rather because we told them that there would be a free barbeque and my brother had brought a bottle of whiskey from the States. Needless to say, we had a fun time sitting in a circle, drinking and eating a lot, and listening to Polka Paraguaya (the traditional music from the campo.) On New Years Eve, we had a big buffet at Tami's house, and then Ben, Andrea, Tami and I went to the big party in Asuncion. Like most New Years it was a lot of hype but we danced until 7 in the morning. January 1st was the day we became engaged. After Asuncion, we head back to Buenos Aires to shop the days away. What I learned from this trip is with women you have to know what you are getting yourself into, and be prepared to spend money when your wife says we going to the leather capital of the world. For every man that is taking his wife to Buenos Aires before or after my wedding, DON¨T FIGHT WITH HER. It is a given, you are going to a city that has more purses per capita than people and leather accessories are sold by the dozen… so prepare yourselves. I love Buenos Aires, we did typical tourist stuff, like visit a tango show, see Barrio Boca, the Recoleta, Puerto Madera, and the San Telmo. One can spend a week in that city and always have something to do.
When vacation was finally over, it was time to get back to the campo and see if my computer school had survived while I was gone. Thank goodness things were still functioning, but one thing my group forgot to do, which is pretty important, they never charged any of the students to study there. We usually have fixed cost of 1,000,000 Gs per month to run our operation, and student fees usually cover this cost, so as you can imagine, this month we will possibly take our first lost. I am frantically try to recover the money that was not paid, but it was amazing how they could completely forget for one month not to charge anyone for the classes. This experience made me realize there are still a lot of things that we can better and over the next couple of months this is what I plan on doing. For this project to be sustainable, I have now left the responsibility to be 100% on the group's part. I assist and give my advice, but I have left the group to run everything now. For the past two weeks, we have created 10 new jobs within the group, and we are trying to fix all the problems that occurred while I was away. I believe my vacation was a big growing period for the group, and it showed the people who are dedicated to the growth of this project.
Other than the project, all the other characters in my life are doing well. On January 1st our water tank motor burnt out, so the community has been left without water and we will not have enough money to pay for water until the beginning of February. Supposedly this was the biggest problem while I was gone, but when I arrived it did not seem to be a big issue. On the other hand for me, it has been driving me crazy, but no one wants to put up extra money for a new motor. As they say in the campo, Tranquilo Blas, relax Brad, sit on your ass and pray for the Virgin of Caacupe to make the water work again.
I know this entry is very long, but both Tami and I wanted to share our joy with you all. We look forward to spending our lives together and for everyone that has sent us emails; we really appreciate your support.
Love, Tami & Brad