Srta.+Davidson

Hello all! Hola todos!

I finally decided to make a page here in response to much of the activity from the students in Darlington. I'm sure many of you are interested to hear a foreigner's perspective on Paraguay, and I suppose that after three months of being here, I am somewhat qualified to explain a few things based on my experiences, and on the behalves of my students.

I understand that many of you have questions for my students that they have not yet been answering. There are a few reasons for this, but mainly, there are only four computers currently functioning that the students have access to at certain hours of the day. There are over 200 students in the school, and therefore computer time is a fairly coveted thing used mostly for facebook, email, and up until recently, music videos on youtube. We have been trying to answer some of your questions in our videos, and this will continue; but as we cannot answer all of them in such short time, I may be able to answer some of the more pressing questions myself.

Paraguay is a bit of an enigmatic country, when I began my research to come here, my Google searches came up with almost nothing. Very little is written about such a small and forgotten country. Yet, in many ways, I find this fact very alluring. The first thing you notice when you get to Paraguay is that there are NO tourists! They know you are different, ask if you are from Germany, but are generally interested in conversing with foreigners. This is a stark contrast to the treatment of tourists in other Latin American countries. Paraguay is certainly a diamond in the rough.

I have been doing my best to see as much of the country as I possibly can, and have definitely made good progress. It is easy to travel around here, hop on a bus and away you go for only a few dollars or less. I have taken many photos, and will share some of them here so you can get a better idea of what this country actually looks like. You'd be amazed how similar it is to Darlington! Wipe the palm trees off the landscape and change the cow species, and parts of this country feel like I am back home on the prairies.

I have been learning a great deal about Wisconsin from you all, and will admit that my hometown (Calgary) is very similar. My students here are very excited to watch your videos. When I inform them that new videos have arrived they are very eager to watch. We gather around my computer in the school's church, sitting on the steps of the altar and listen carefully, giggling at all the idiosyncrasies just as I am certain, you do with ours.

I think my students have slightly different curiousities about the United States than you do of Paraguay. The extent to which American culture has permeated here is amazing. There are Mcdonalds, Pizza Huts, Burger Kings and shopping malls with Nike and Adidas outlets. They consume an exhaustive amount of American media - movies and music. Music is almost a national pastime here, as many people have almost encyclopedic knowledge of artists albums and songs - even if they don't understand the words in the song. Believe it or not, some of the most popular music here comes from the 80's and 90's era. Madonna, Michael Jackson, Greenday, REM, Eminem, Katy Perry, and more are all commonly heard on the radio and being played by the students' cell phones as they walk around the campus. in free time.

As a result of the permeation of American culture (which is almost impossible to escape from anywhere in the world), my students already understand much of what things are like in the United States. The types of questions they ask me about Canada relate mostly to what does it look like, what is snow like, how cold does it get, how many brothers and sisters do you have, do you have an estancia, what types of jobs are there, what are schools like and how are they different, etc. Paraguayans are very curious about family and work. They are also shocked to find out that we do not drink mate (or terere for that matter), that dulce de leche doesn't exist, and that we can actually live and work when it is below freezing. We get many laughs when it is 25 degrees outside (77f) and many of them are wearing sweaters while I am comfortably enjoying the cooler weather.

Anyway, I encourage you to continue asking questions, and I will do my best to answer most of them in videos or in the discussion boards. If you have any questions about me, what I am doing here, why I am in such a strange and foreign country, or what my experience has been like so far, I will be happy to answer them on this page. You can also ask me questions in Spanish, and I will try to respond in kind.

Thanks for all of your participation so far, we are looking forward to learning much more and sharing with you some Paraguayan culture!

There's a first time for everything... That expression sums up many of my experiences here in Paraguay!