This may end up being one of those “too much information” blogs….but I promise to make you laugh a little.
We have a wedding to attend tomorrow night. In the short time I’ve been here, I’ve gotten to experience it all….a quince, a funeral and a wedding. I have a couple of skirts and dresses I’ve bought here but nothing I wanted to wear to a wedding.
Yesterday we had a little extra time in between our planned events. So I wanted to go dress shopping. We found a little shopping area. To me, these places seem like indoor flea markets. They’re a lot of fun. You can find just about any random thing you could want there.
The first lady we stopped at and asked about dresses said, “Oh yes, I have party dresses.” She pulls out a plastic shopping bag. I thought, this can’t be good if she can fit all the dresses in that tiny bag. She starts pulling out the “party dresses” and holding them up for me to see. I knew there was no way those were going to fit on my body. That doesn’t seem to matter much here. They’re always determined that no matter what size it is it will fit me perfectly. They were all tiny, skimpy, and very bright colors that I would never wear. We asked if she had anything with more fabric. She went to look and didn’t come back. We waited for about 5 or 10 minutes, then kept walking.
Next, we found this little dress shop tucked away in the shopping center. It was very small and there were 4 or 5 young women sitting around while the mom sewed dresses. We asked about one of the dresses on the wall and one of the girls immediately pulled it down and tells me to try it on.
The fitting room was just a small curtain in the corner of the room. There was only enough room in there for me to stand. As I changed my clothes and kept losing my balance, I tried to brace myself against the wall as much as possible. I just knew at any moment I’d lose my balance and fall through the curtain. I could hardly even turn around.
I opened the curtain and asked Christie to zip the dress. The zipper was broken and would only go so far. At least that’s what they were saying. For what seemed like about 10 minutes, two of the girls were trying to zip the dress. They were determined it fit and they could get it to zip.
Christie told them I wanted something that flowed away from the body more, not so tight on the hiney. One of the girls went out to the hallway and came back in with the absolute perfect dress. As soon as I opened the curtain to show them, they were all pulling at the straps and the top of the dress, making it look just right. I’ve always wanted to be able to walk into a store and have them be so attentive and just start dressing me and even making sure everything’s exactly where it’s supposed to be, you get the point. There is no such thing as personal space here in Paraguay. If you need help getting dressed, they have no problem helping you out. I’m not always great at dressing myself, so this was an incredible experience for me. I bought a dress that was made right there in a tiny store for only $13.
Next, we went into the lingerie store because I knew I’d need a new bra for my dress. Bras, panties, those sorts of things are not things most people from the US want to buy here. They’re very different than what we have at home. I don’t know that I can even explain it. They’re mostly all the same size and extremely tiny. I just assumed that since no one else can find one here to fit them I couldn’t either. The very first one I tried on was perfect. I’ve never even had a bra at home that fit me right. This one is amazing. Like it was made for me. Who knew? I’m the only North American who prefers a Paraguayan bra. It does wonders for me, something Victoria could never do for me. I may buy as many as I can afford to take home with me.
You’ll have to wait until another time to see my dress. You won’t see the bra but you’ll see the effect of the bra.
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