Living in a foreign country makes me realise a bit more what it is that makes me feel at home and comfortable. And it isn't the big things, like having somewhere nice to live. It's the small things. Like knowing a good place to go on a day off with the kids. Having someone that invites you to their birthday party. Knowing what shop to go to when you need something. Bumping in to someone you used to know. Going to a family event.
What happened to us is that we packed our bags with our 24 kg of allowed luggage and sat down on that plane, and in that moment we left all these little small connections that made up our lives in Sweden. They're still there, we're just not really connected to them at the moment. And when we stepped out of Asunción Airport, we had none of them there. There were none of these little small things. It all had to start again.
I don't think our experience was in any way different or more difficult than anyone else's. We had some good things and some challenges, but it definitely could have been worse. But it seems to me that the experience of disconnect sort of hangs together with that journey on that air plane with your life in that bag. In that way landing is always difficult.
This weekend I had two experiences related to this, one of connect and one of disconnect. The first one was a "quince", the celebration of a girls 15th birthday. It's a really big deal here, and we were honoured to be invited. We know the family from our previous work assignment, and it that way it was a part of our very short history here. Connect.
The other one happened on our way back to Asunción from the town we work in, about 45 km away. There were people sitting by the road all the way into the city, loads of them. In groups drinking the terere and obviously waiting for something. And I had no idea why they were there, none at all. Disconnect. The best guess was that they were watching the cars and trucks coming back from the Chaco rally that weekend, obviously a tradition and obviously something "people do". But I had no idea.
I would say that so far this has been one of the greatest challenges of living in a different country. But, as we know, God is good, and the connections are growing even at this moment :-)
