Tea and cell phones
I’m here in Paraguay, what a cool country! Last evening, once the brutal sun had set, we pulled 6 chairs out of house onto the sidewalk. We sipped the national tea and chatted as the grandchildren rode their bikes, with training wheels, up and down the dirt street. Three cars were just parked randomly in the street; it’s a dead-end so there’s not much traffic, but still, it seemed odd.
Our conversation was punctuated by the shrill “cheep-cheep” of the Paraguayan national bird, the cell phone. They must be cheap, because everyone sends and receives text messages all the time, young and old alike.
So we sat in this weird confluence of tradition and modernity, sipping out of the communal tea horn, glancing at our cell phones, following the conversation here on the sidewalk as well as other conversations on other sidewalks.
Tomorrow the church will vote for their new superintendent after 20 years of good leadership under Superintendent Monzón. Again, a confluence must occur, a confluence of the old and the new, of tea and cell phones.
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