Blogging in Spanish

I´m blogging from Asuncion, Paraguay tonight. We are spending the night here at the Hotel Portal del Sol instead of going on out to Caazapa. The in-laws don´t know we are in country or that we are even coming.

It´s been a long trip so far and not has gone smoothly. Our first flight was delayed due to bad weather in Chicago causing us to miss our connection in Chicago. Fortunately there was another flight departing about the time we got to Chicago so we were switched to that one. The flight out of Miami wasn´t delayed significantly but we had to wait in line to get our boarding passes reviewed. We were late getting out of Sao Paulo, Brazil, but it didn´t matter because we didn´t have anyone waiting for us.

The biggest problem so far has been that our luggage is still in Chicago. We went shopping this evening at the Shopping del Sol and that was a trippy experience that makes me appreciate shopping at home. First, if you find something you like, they take it away to the counter and do up a ticket while you continue shopping. They give you a copy of the ticket and when you´re ready to check out, you present your ticket(s) to the cashier. She then rings it all up and you pay. She then stamps all your tickets and gives them back to you. You then give your tickets to another person and that person collects all the items (already grouped together by ticket) and compares your ticket(s) with the ticket(s) of all the items already ticketed and bagged. She removes the ticket(s) that are on the bag, puts your stamped ticket on the bag and then she stamps the tickets she removed from the bag. After all the ticket exchanging and stamping is over, you are free to leave with your hard-earned purchases.

I will never complain about shopping in the US again.