Narrow paths, dirt outside and shiny tile inside, are tapered further by the crowd. Clothes line the paths – sweaters, sweatshirts, jackets, pants, leggings, socks, underwear, and hats – bright white and vibrant colors and crisp new shoes. Each stall with a different mix of things neatly organized in folded stacks. Salesmen and women invite you to ask about the prices. Suddenly the clothes fade away and its heaps of red tomatoes, oranges, and onions. Herbs green and brown are laid out and tied in bundles with palm leaves.

The sales women yell to each other across their mountains and hills of produce, sipping terere and jeering at the young men straining to push their wooden wheelbarrow-carts up the inclined walkway and between shoppers. The carts are stacked high with bursting plastic, burlap bags.

Kittens, scrawny and ownerless, gallop around the crates and between feet—gray, striped, orange, and black. Their fizzy ears and whiskers make them cuter than rats.

I look to the right and see hunks of meat and stacks of fish—the smell of flesh clashes with the earthy aroma of the vegetables next to me. I hurry on. I walked in a meat section once. The sent of death was thick, and I promised myself I wouldn’t go back there.

A basket made of chicken wire holds live chicks, chipping and jostling each other, and rabbits with their noses twitching.

I dart between to stalls to pass from the outside part of the market to the warehouse part of the market. I go up the stairs to find a bench. I sit on a bench in the middle of the room and look around at the racks of shoes around me…shoes in every direction: snazzy sneakers and sexy heals, clunky work boots and shiny men’s dress shoes.

I go back down into the fray and ask the smoothie-empanada lady where I can find a guitar. I cross the street—dashing through a just-big-enough-gap between the buses, cars, and motorcycles that roar and hum on the muddy street. I find myself in a new mix: Stands stacked high with shiny new cellphones. People ask if I’m looking to sell my phone. I hurry on. There are stereos and TVs. And there is kitchenware. Finally, I find the guitar store.

The last and final mission—find a bus home. I catch the bus on the corner-ish, hailing it like you do a taxi in the United States. I climb on. Luckily there is a seat. I sit with my new purchases piled on top of me.

I didn’t realize how big the market was. It stretches for blocks—crossing streets and alleys. The stores and stalls weave in and out of buildings. You get stuck going in circles. They tell me you can get just about anything there, and the prices can be cheaper than the mall, but to find a product you must navigate a labyrinth. (At least I have two years to master the whole thing.)

I made it! I finished my first solo mission to Asunción’s Mercado 4. I’m proud of myself, but there isn’t time to relax on the bus. Clanking and coughing my bus sputters down the cobbled streets of the city—there is too much to see and the air is spoiled by diesel smog. School children get on the bus, their uniform sweat pants and polos in some shade of gray or blue. Candy, cookie, and fruit venders hop on and off the bus holding their wares for all to see—their sales pitches are more like songs in rhythm and tonality than spoken word.

The little streets with the stacked and crunched houses wiz-by, and I just glimpse them through the dust-encrusted bus window. I am not inclined to call Asunción pretty; it isn’t. But it’s a city where you feel like things are happening and progress is pushing forward—to what end and to where is unclear, but Asunción in a word would be “movement.”

The bus groans, heaving up the hill. The driver slams the bus into another gear. Someone pulls the cord, there’s a buzz, and then the bus lurches to a stop. Everyone is thrown back—even the people sitting hold on tight. In Paraguay, you can catch the bus anywhere along its route and get off anywhere along the way. You just buzz to stop and put out your hand (like you would hail a taxi) to get the bus to stop.

The bus starts again and the person who got on pushes through the metal turnstiles at the front of the bus and takes a seat. At the back of the bus are maybe five plastic burlap bags with produce. If you can lift it onto the bus you can take it on. The wind whips through the open windows; a welcome coolness to offset the penetrating sun. I should have sat on the shady side.

We jolt to another stop. Some school children get on. They duck under the turnstile because they didn’t pay. A woman next to the seat where I’m sitting presses against my shoulder and the bus roars up the road again. The bus swerves back onto the street from the curve where it had been driving for the past kilometer. The bus puffs black smoke as we pass someone on a dirt bike.

We stop and someone selling apples and someone selling donuts gets on. They make their rounds and get off at the next stop. They carry their goods in baskets and plastic bags.

I wonder how many people on the bus are going to my community. I watch the palm trees wiz by, surrounded by tall grass. There are cows tied up along the edges of the road. The bus driver drinks terere. His windshield is decorated with stickers of Jesus’ face and fringe. When the bus isn’t full, I love the ride.

It’s chilly, as in I’m not comfortable outside in my shorts. It’s before 7 am and I’m sitting in the dim kitchen drinking my daily morning coffee and eating my daily morning bread. It’s Saturday. My family started playing the polka at 6 am. Being a light sleeper, I gave up trying to snooze and brushed my teeth at 6:20 am.

The chicken that I thought was one of my best friends tries to steal my bread. The kitchen has a window without glass or a shutter and a door that stays open to the outside during the day. The cold air wafts toward me. I set my mug on my leg to warm up.

This morning, the coffee is already sweetened. That’s not always the case, but today it is. The coffee is syrupy, painfully sweet. It’s like liquid coffee-flavored hard candies.

A Paraguayan coffee recipe:

• 2/3 – Hot water
• Just enough to thoroughly color the water – Instant coffee or finely ground coffee
• 1/3 – Milk
• Many, many spoons – Sugar

Mix coffee and water. Add milk at the end of the cooking process. Add sugar before drinking.

Soaking my white bread in the coffee-flavored-sugar, milk-flavored-water I wonder why my family makes their coffee this way. In my past life, I didn’t drink coffee, but this is Paraguay.

In the shadows, I consume my coffee—reminding myself not to gulp it every time I lift my mug.  The new sun makes the trees outside shiny green.

“Oh, I get it,” I think. “I know why they use so much sugar in their coffee…it must be the cheapest ingredient, apart form water, in the mix. That’s it, they add sugar to make it taste like something.”

Somehow that realization is settling. I sip my coffee and dunk the last of my bread. I too would rather have sugar-flavored-coffee than coffee-flavored-water everyday.