Only in *insert Latin American country here*

Thursday 06.09.07

My life in Latin America contains structure, form and function right now, and i never thought I'd relish the boredom quite so much. Asunción is a great place to study, it is quiet enough to be able to complete my homework, and has just enough nightlife on the weekends to keep me interested. Every weekday, i wake at 7, eat toast and coffee, and I'm at school by 8am. I study until midday, eat lunch with the family, and my afternoons and evenings are spent on the internet or completing my homework. If I've been good, i treat myself to some TV. Sound familiar?

I was picked up on Friday night by my friend Pedro, and we headed off to a bar to hang out with a group of friends which included a model that turned down a role in Playboy and a lesbian variety-show host. Pedro is half Brasilian and half Paraguayan but has spent most of his life living with his mum in and racing motorbikes in Miami. He now lives in Asunción with his father and runs the family business, a very successful restaurant in the centre of town named Bolsi.

Typically for this continent we drunk beer by the litre bottle and danced with girls to Latin music once the cover band had finished. It had gotten quite late by the time we left, and we stopped in to get a Lomito (steak burger) each on the way home. In front of our eyes an 80's model Mercedes driving past lost one of its wheels and ground to a halt nearby amidst a shower of sparks. It was one of those moments, where you shake your head and exclaim "Only in Paraguay!" to the stranger laughing with you. I watched with a little apprehension as the drunken driver elevated the car (which was missing the handbrake) on a flimsy jack and attached a wheel bolt or two he had stolen from the newer Mercedes parked near to it, whilst oil leaked over the road from beneath the vehicle. With several disastrous situations playing themselves out in my mind, i left to catch a taxi home.

Even though i knew people were dwelling in the ground floor of the huge abandoned tower around the corner of my house, I didn't want to miss out on climbing the vacant monolith. I got my chance when some kids burst out of the gate in front of me, I asked their father if i could climb up to the top. They had set up their home on the rubble-strewn concrete, with a few appliances and furniture, and clothes hanging up from lines everywhere.

The tower is familiar among countless Latin American buildings - having reached a stage of completion where the concrete and brickwork was done, but work had halted for good for whatever reason leaving a colourless, empty skeleton towering over everything else. The building was not safe to climb by any means, thanks to an open lift shaft and no barriers at all where the windows would be. To make matters more nerve-wracking, as I ascended a narrow concrete spiral staircase on the outside of the building, I disturbed dozens of pigeons who flew frantically around me in surprise. From the tiled rooftop courtyard, central Asunción spread out beneath me, but unfortunately with a smoky pall over the city - the result of several fires burning around the country, i was unable to see very far.