El Día del Niño

One thing that I have learned in Paraguay is that they love an excuse to have a party. They have holidays every month, and each time they have a big festival or party that the whole town attends. September 21st was a 3 in 1 holiday - Internacional Dia de la Paz, Dia de la Primavera, and Dia de la Juventud - International Day of Peace, the 1st day of Spring, and the Day of the Young People. As we were finishing winter and entering spring, the United States was ending summer and starting fall. Why are the seasons opposite?? It is an interesting science topic...
In August, we celebrated a different holiday, el Dia del Nino - the Day of the Child. This day is a longstanding tradition because a long time ago when Paraguay was at war, there were no more men to fight so thousands and thousands of children went into the battlefields to fight for their country. For this reason, el 16 de agosto celebrates the children of Paraguay.
On this day, the school that I work at canceled class and had a party all day long. In the morning, the students drank chocolate milk and ate cookies. For lunch, the mothers prepared lunch, and we all ate together. In the afternoon, we ate cake and drank yogurt. The weather was beautiful, and it was a great day. Towards the end of the school day, the teachers invited me to play a game of volei, volleyball, in the grass at our school. I began to play and went to hit a ball. I ended up falling backwards and put my hands down to catch my fall when --- CRACK! I jumped up to find my arm deformed with a large hump where the bone had been displaced. "Rompi mi brazo! Rompi mi brazo!" I started to yell - "I broke my arm! I broke my arm!"
Within a half hour, I was on my way to the hospital. The closest modern hospital to me is about an hour away, but luckily a man that works in my office has a car and was able to take me there. When we arrived at the hospital, they wheeled me in and took an x-ray of my arm. I was right - it was broken right at the wrist. I stayed at the hospital that night, and the next day the doctor put a plaster cast from my fingers to over my elbow.
I had to wear the cast for a month!! It was extremely uncomfortable, and it was hard to do a lot of things. The woman I lived with had to help me bathe, put up my hair, and cook my food. It was a great conversation starter though; I met a lot of people because everyone was curious as to what happened to me. "Ha'a ha ope che jyva" I would say in Guarani. "I fell and broke my arm."
When I finally got my cast off, I had a hard time moving my arm at first. It was very sore, and I had to get used to straightening my elbow and twisting my wrist. Now it is fine, and I can do pretty much everything again as I did before. As painful and terrible of an experience as it was, I know that 50 years from now, I still will remember the time that I broke my arm in Paraguay.