can you tell me how to get, how to get to seasame street?

Directions in Paraguay are a funny thing and in fact, most directions are rather relative. Of course pre-Paraguay, I quite enjoyed and used rather often both Map Quest and Google Maps, two wonderful websites that will tell you approximately how long it will take you to get from point A to point B, how many miles you will be on every street, and the fastest way to get there. They give you precise information and always gave me a sense of comfort because I felt like I knew exactly where I was. You’d be hard pressed to find that kind of information anywhere in Paraguay. If you are in Asuncion, you usually have to ask anywhere from 3 to 5 people directions to the same place to ensure you are actually getting correct directions. I will admit sometimes it’s my own stupidity in not understanding the directions I’ve been given, but the majority of times I get about three to 4 different answers when I ask 5 people the same thing. (And for those of you who have spent a lot of time with me getting lost and know that side of me, yes I have gotten over the whole lets-stop-and-ask-for-directions thing. I kind of had to.) Apparently the different answers stem from a couple of different things, the first being that people don’t know the city that well and sometimes they think they know where something is and so they tell you where they think it is. Other times, people just want to feel nice and don’t like telling you that they have no clue where that restaurant is, or where the post office is located, so they just make something up in the direction they think it could be located. I have backtracked so many times in that city it’s not even funny. The strange thing is, Asuncion is neither large, nor complicated. I could probably walk from one end of the city to the other in less than 4 hours and every single street runs either north-south or east-west. So when I get one person telling me to walk two blocks to my destination, another person telling me 5 more blocks and then turn left for 2 more blocks, and a third person telling me I need to walk about 6 blocks and then turn left and I’m there, I start wondering if my final destination is imaginary. By the way, I should also mention that 85% of the time, the estimation on number of blocks I have to walk is off by about 2 or 3 blocks so even if you do get 2 people to tell you the same thing, you still can’t be completely sure those directions are 100% accurate.
And then there are directions in the campo which are about as vague as they come. Maybe this is partly because everybody knows everybody and their families have usually lived in the area for a few generations so they never really have to give directions. I told a girl that I would come over to her house the next day to help her with her homework and I asked where she lived. She said, “you know where Fulana’s house is?”
“Yes.”
“Well I live right by there.”
Um… ok… “So your house is next to her house?”
“No, that’s not my house, but I live right near there.”
Well that was helpful. “So your house is in front of her house?”
“No, I don’t live there, but my house is like right there.” Ok, well that just cleared up my confusion. I still don’t even understand if it’s on the left or right side of the street.
I’ve also been told things like, “Oh you know where so and so lives? Well just pass their house a little bit and you’re there.” Well tell me, how long is “a little bit?” For someone who likes facts, exact directions, and an estimated time of arrival, responses like this are not something I like to hear. The other day I went to go visit the Heath Center in the nearby pueblo to ask for fluoride pills for my school. I had been told by several people that the it was “just down that road a little” by the plaza. When I left that morning I asked my host mom directions just be sure I knew where I was going. She told me, “Oh ya, just go down that street, you’ll see a big sign and it’s on your right.” I got off the bus confident and feeling good about myself that I knew exactly where I was going. I walked all the way down the street until I hit a dead end and no Health Center. While the walk wasn’t all that long, it was uphill and a cobble stone like quality that really hurts if you’re walking in rubber flip-flops. Now feeling a little foolish, partly for not knowing where I was, and partly for thinking it could really be that easy to get somewhere, I turned around and headed downhill while the people sitting out in their front yard watched the white girl retrace her steps. Half way down the street, I asked a lady if she knew where the Health Center was. She pointed down the street she had just been walking down, “Yes, just walk that way and it’s right there.” A few minutes later, I came up to a semi-official building that looked like it had a waiting room in the front. There was no big sign indicating my stop, but there was a nice little sign on the lawn that had a whole bunch of information about the Department of Cordillera and it said somewhere on there, “hospital.” Ladies and Gentlemen, I have arrived. The Health Center was on the right side of the street, but I’m still mystified why no one ever told me you have to turn left on to a side street to get there. Maybe when my host mom told be “big sign” she meant there is a big sign on the street where you want to turn left to get to the health center which is on the right side of the street approximately 5 buildings down and it has a small sign on the front lawn and is located across from a park. Yes, now that I think about it, she must have meant that.