Don't Take Tacos for Granted

who knew corn tortillas were a luxury?

Feb 12, 2025

for those who doubted that gnob is an angel…😂

What’s up, y’all!

It’s the dog days of summer here, let me tell you - MUCHO CALOR! But so far it hasn’t been anything we couldn’t handle. When we first considered moving here, everyone who had heard of Paraguay (which really wasn’t that many people!) said, “Oh, but isn’t it really hot there?” And they were correct. It is hot here.

We finally decided to bust out the pool that our landlords had kindly provided with the house. We weren’t going to, because it looked like a kiddy pool in the box, but it turns out that it holds over 300 gallons of water, and it has been awesome!

Don’t have the giant umbrella up in this pic, but there is one!

What else is new? We went and looked at another house yesterday. We were really excited about this one - it’s in a private neighborhood, and even though it’s just a bunch of summer homes in a field, apparently it’s exclusive. One of the homes belongs to the cousin of the Paraguayan President! 😮😁 It also has access to a creek with a landscaped park, and every homeowner can use it. Here’s the creek:

just as beautiful in the other direction, too

Alas, we were hoodwinked. The house we went to look at had an offer accepted three months earlier. Our agent was furious, but she is determined to find us a home. We got to go see the creek, and we walked through two other homes in the neighborhood that are actually for sale, but none of it was what we wanted. Well, one of them I really wanted, but it was really, really out of our price range, lol. It was a beautiful neighborhood, though.

Oh, well. On to the next one.

We did some exploring around our town, Piribebuy. My local friend Ana told me there was a free municipal pool, so we went to check it out. It seems they built a dam in the river as it passes through town, and now it’s a big pool! It has lovely paved walkways on both sides.

And now, onto the food! Of course, we had some more pizza.

this one had “borde relleno” aka STUFFED CRUST!!!!

We’ve been craving tacos, they’re one of our go-to meals. So imagine our surprise to learn that corn tortillas are not really a thing here. However, our new Kiwi friends told us about a place called “La Mexicana” (because of course). They started out as a restaurant, but now they are selling their products to local stores. And gnob discovered the market up the street from us carries them! We have tacos in our life again! 🌮😋

I’ve also made a couple of dishes from things in my yard. Here is some peanut banana bread (with chocolate chips) and a mango salsa (con pollo), made from bananas and mangoes that I watched growing! Not the typical vegetable garden I’m used to, haha.

Also, here are some things that are different about the grocery stores here:

1. you can get just about anything in lime flavor!

yogurt is very liquid here. It’s a drink, not a food. I’m beginning to prefer it that way.
lime vinegar, tuna with lime, and a big bottle of yogurt!
when you buy vegetables, there’s a lady with a scale in the produce section. You take your vegetables to her, she weighs it and slaps a sticker on it, and then you take it to the checkout counter. We only brought un-weighed produce to the front a couple of times before we figured it out.🤣