San Juan and Luisón

From festival fires to muddy trails

climbed hard to get this view. totally worth it.

What’s up, y’all!

Time flies when you’re having fun, and this past month has been super fun! Though a bit cold at times. On the plus side, while it got down to 38°F a couple of nights, it jumped right back up to 70°F afterwards. They tell me there will probably be one or two more times before September that it’ll get that cold again, but then winter is over.

Hard to believe we’ve almost been here for a whole year’s cycle of weather, but as I said, time flies when you’re having fun.

don’t tell anyone, but gnob’s really a hopeless romantic

Speaking of fun, last month was our 11th anniversary, and gnob snuck off to the florist to surprise me. Some of you may recall that this was the year we were supposed to have an actual celebration, since we ran off to Vegas and got hitched without so much as a party, but logistics seemed a little difficult. Maybe we’ll plan something for our 15th instead. Life will (hopefully) be more settled by then.

June is also the month that they celebrate San Juan in Paraguay. It’s a festival dedicated to Saint John the Baptist, but it also crosses over the winter solstice, so there’s a blend of old rituals welcoming the winter mixed with the religous ones. Either way, you know what matters to me - the food! 😁

There are festivities all throughout the month, though the official day of the holiday is 24 June. We went to one of the larger ones at the futbol stadium, but I also got invited to a smaller party with some friends.

At this party, I learned how to make chipa asador. You’ve heard me talk about chipa before, this is the same bread, but you wrap the dough around the end of a stick and roast it over the brasero.

pretending I know what I’m doing

Chipa asador is not the only goodie for the festival. Typically, empanadas are made with a flour shell and stuffed with meat, but during San Juan, they make the shell out of mandioca. I don’t have any pictures of it because I usually gobble it up too fast. 🤣 It is delicious.

In the picture above, you see the chipa asador on the left and the mbeju being made on the right. Both are being cooked over the brasero, a small barbecue pit made for burning charcoal, or, as it’s known here, carbón. This week, a neighbor made me my very own brasero. You can see it below, beside a picture of me enjoying my tereré while using my mesita (small table) that a different neighbor made for me.

my mesita and my brasero

I love how enterprising everyone is here! I got the mesita and the brasero the same way I get everything. I mention to someone that I want something, and the answer is always, oh, I know someone who can get you that. You don’t search google for answers here, you ask your neighbor.

This past weekend, I ran my first trail race in Paraguay. Luisón was scheduled as a 14k (8.7 miles) distance, and I’ve been training for it for the past two months.

So imagine my surprise last week when they released the course details and it was not 14k, but 17.3k (10.75 miles)! The longest run I’d done in preparation was only 12k, so that was a whole extra 5k on top of it!

But I’m always telling people, “Do hard stuff! It makes you stronger.” Couldn’t very well walk away from something hard without being a hypocrite, now could I?

Didn’t think I was going to make it at first, we got in the truck to leave and it wouldn’t start. But of course, gnob being the genius mechanic he is, he got it going and we made it to the race with minutes to spare.

i mean, what a view of the sunrise from the starting line

This was the most extreme trail race I’ve done (if you exclude the ones that had obstacles on purpose!). There were four different places where I had to grab a knotted rope and pull myself up the side of the hill. But what views there were from the top!

There were multiple water crossings, one of them had some floating logs I jumped across. Barely got my toes wet, so I was feeling smug, because other people had fallen in. Naturally, there came a creek crossing where there was no way across except to get in, so I got in, and finished the last 3 kilometers with soaking wet feet.

But the key word in that sentence is finished.

What a great race it was, and I’m looking forward to doing more of them in the future. This was one of my favorite races I’ve ever done. Maybe I’ll do the 21k next time.😉

i’m still hurting two days later, but at this moment, the exhilaration far outweighed the pain.

Thanks for reading this week’s update! Feel free to use the button below to leave a comment or ask a question. We love to hear from you!

Have a great week!

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Parting Thoughts

Stumbled across this great quote from Joseph Campbell on the idea of amor fati, “the love of your fate”.

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this one’s for gnob ❤️❤️❤️ here’s to the next 11 years and beyond