I feel home.

Maybe its the contrast of the lush green trees with the thick red dirt roads or the wind in my hair or maybe the fact that I am forgetting what my life was like before Paraguay and fully engaging in my life here but I feel wonderful and happy and at home. Paraguay is becoming my home. I think I had been scared to say that and think that but mostly scared to feel that. Sure I've traveled and I even "lived" in Lynchburg for 4 years during college but always knew home was a townhouse off of College Parkway. But now I am making my home here many miles away from little Arnold Maryland. Yeah, maybe its only two years and I'll make it back to Maryland eventually. But right now I am living in Paraguay and how could I ever settle here and really enjoy myself if I couldn't make this place a home and really feel that. I think that when you plant a garden, invest in a community, declare a futbol team, have a pet cat or 4 and walk down the street calling everyone by name you can call that place your home.

I've done all those things and in the process have made my home here in Paraguay. This is my space for 2 years. I am working, living and growing in this space and happy to call it my home. My first few months here I felt like I was in outer space, farthest from any feelings of home or even comfort. I was a stranger to these streets and an alien to these people. But by the wisest words I've ever claimed to be true "it just takes time." And the time took and now this streets are familiar and these people are my family...and I have developed all shorts of new comfortable levels.

These are just some thoughts I had one my way back to my house today. I was gone for the past week at a training event and it was on the drive back to my house that I realized how at home I feel and how right my life is right now. I also had an incredible week at my host families house, there is much more to be blogged from that. For now I am safely tucked into my house enjoying the calmness that can only come from a full heart a quiet evening and a tired body.

More to come later but check out this photo from my host mom's 50th birthday party last night, probably one of my favorite nights in Paraguay thus far-

My two host sisters, my host mom and myself