Contact with Home

Congratulations to all the exchange students who've made it through a quarter of the year! If you're in the US, you've already experienced homework, homecoming, and Halloween, and most of you probably cannot wait for Thanksgiving break!

How's it going?

Seriously, how are you doing? Take a minute and think about it.

...

I hope you're having a blast and learning a ton. I hope you're making great friends, getting involved in clubs or sports, and getting along with your host family. A lot of you definitely are! Keep doing what you're doing!

But not all of you are having the times of your lives.

A lot of you in the US are really, really cold right now. Winter came early this year for a lot of the country. You're probably also bored. You're probably not a "new kid" at school anymore, and things might not be so exciting. Maybe you've met everyone in your classes, you're you've already tasted most of the food you're served, or you're sick of your host family yelling sports that you don't care about. Maybe you're already thinking about Christmas, New Years, Hanukkah, and wishing you were going to spend them with your family at home.

This probably isn't what you pictured. Even if you're having a great time, it's probably not exactly what you thought it'd be. Hopefully, you're happy with that! It can be really, really frustrating when you're not happy though. Sometimes there doesn't need to be a big problem to be unhappy- your host family is fine, school is fine, your English is fine, the food is fine, fine, fine, fine. But you're sick of sharing a bathroom with your host brother, eating corn at dinner, stupid questions about your home country, or any other little thing. Or things. And if you don't feel like you can complain to anybody here, you're probably doing it to someone at home, or from your home country.

Sometimes that's fine. It's OK to talk to your family, and other exchange students are awesome because they understand what you're going through. If you're doing this every week, every day, or more than once a day, I want you to stop and think.

If you're sharing something with someone at/from home before someone from the US, why?

How many hours per day are you connected to home? Not just how long do you spend on Skype or whatever app you're using, but how many hours are you able to receive messages from home?

Very few people have tons of super close friends at this point in the year. It's hard to build a lot of trust with someone in just 2 or 3 months. It's normal to not feel so close to your new friends yet, but if you're not careful, you're never going to get there. New friendships take time, but more than that, they take effort. If you're choosing to spend your time talking with people from home instead of people in your host country, you're wasting time building up new friendships.

I'm not naïve enough to think that never ever going on the computer or using your phone makes sense for most people. That's probably how people in your host country communicate too. That just means YOU need to limit YOURSELF though. Turn Facebook chat off. Delete the Messenger app. Disable notifications on your phone for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, whatever it is that you use. Spend some time organizing your Facebook friends, and set your newsfeed to only show posts from people in your host country. Turn off the computer/phone at 10pm. Or 8pm. Or 6pm. If you can't hold yourself to it, ask your host parents to help. Make it harder to interact with people from home.

Talking to people from home is hurting you in the long run, even if it makes you feel better right now. It makes you feel better because it's comfortable. It's easy. It's familiar. Of course that's what you want when nothing else seems comfortable or easy!

But why are you here?

Did you want to make friends? Improve your language skills? Become a family member? The ever-so-vague "experience the culture" that we all wrote about in our applications?

That's not going to happen if you leave one foot in your old life. Of course it can be uncomfortable, difficult, and strange sometimes. You need to confront it though. If you let it keep being a little uncomfortable while relying on home to get through it, you're not going to have time to make great friends, speak fluently, integrate into your family, or truly "experience the culture."

I know it's hard, and I know you might not think it's a problem right now. I did the same thing. In retrospect, I spent WAY too much time online that I should have spent talking, studying, walking around town, watching TV, literally anything would have been better than sitting on Facebook.

If you can relate to any of this, please consider the following:

• Put your phone away unless you're using it to talk to people you met in your host country.
• Keep pushing new friendships. You need to keep trying to make plans. 
• Get involved. If you don't know who to make plans with, join a club or team to meet new people. Ask a teacher if you don't know how, and don't be afraid to try something totally new. Dance, stage crew, swimming, volunteering, why not? 
• Stop posting so much in your native language. If over half of your Facebook is in your native language, your new friends can't interact with you! 
• Make contact with home a treat. Set up a weekly or monthly Skype call with your parents or a best friend. Write down things you have to tell them so you don't forget in the mean time. 
• Write a weekly or monthly blog or newsletter to tell people what you're up to. If every seventh grade classmate and second cousin is sending you messages asking how you are and what it's like, you're probably wasting a lot of time repeating yourself! 
• Unless it's a true emergency (your health or safety is threatened) wait a little bit to tell someone. Try to solve/get over it by yourself, and if it's still bugging you in a day or week, *then* tell someone about it. 
• If your host parents have set rules about when/where you can use technology, it's because they see this as a problem now, or it was one in the past. They want to spend time with you, but you're on your phone/computer. Don't ruin your relationship with them over some Facebook messages!
• If it's your family/friends back home who won't leave you alone, you need to talk to them about why they can't contact you so much. If you need to, ask a volunteer in your home country to talk to them as well. 
• Remember that host parents, liaisons, volunteers, etc. are there for you. Most of them would be more than happy to talk with you when you're feeling homesick or unhappy. 
• And for the love of god, GET. OFF. NETFLIX. Unless you're watching it with someone else, you should barely be on it!

Your friends from home with either be your friends when you get back, or they won't. What you do now probably won't change that. You have the rest of your life back home, if that's what you want. This is your only time to be on exchange.You're 1/4 of the way done with your year. Don't wait any longer to start to change something you're unhappy with. 

Ciudad del Este

I know why you can never leave the Hotel California. It's a tangled maze of hallways, courtyards, rooms, and stairs in the middle of Ciudad del Este, Paraguay and happened to be the location of the last AFS camp of the semester.
Friday morning I got on a bus to Asunción with Jana (German exchanger in Pilar) to meet up with the Gran Asuncioñeros whom we got on another bus with to go to Ciudad del Este. I got to meet a lot of people who've been here since August, along with seeing a bunch of my friends from February again. Most of the people are from Germany, but there are also a few from Austria, Belgium, Iceland, the USA, France, Switzerland, and Turkey. Ciudad del Este is about a 4 hour bus ride from Asunción, but as these last two weekeds have taught me: long bus rides are WAY more fun when the bus is filled with 40 other exchangers!! My bus (we were split into two groups) watched some movie with Elijah Wood, but everyone else in the movie had a reallly thick Cockney accent, so I found it easier to read the Spanish subtitles. I guess that's a good sign! The other bus was lucky- Slumdog Millionaire, subtitled in Portuguese. Ya gotta love movies that come on DVD-Rs in a cellophane bag with a office printer labels...

Friday night involved a tasteless dinner and some frisbee injuries at about 1 AM. Saturday was a little more exciting. We went to the Itaipú dam in the morning. It's the largest hydroelectric project in the world, and is on the Paraná river, between Paraguay and Brasil. We got to visit both sides of it (Paraguayan and Brazilian) but didn't have very much time. The sheer size of it is absolutely amazing. I tried to take pictures of it, but they don't really do it justice. After the damn, we had some sessions with the volunteers where we got to write letters to future exchange students and ourselves. We also played a pretty intense game of ultimate frisbee involving an immobile tennis net, some unripe passion fruit, and nice neighbors of the hotel.
Later on Saturday, we watched the Paraguay-Chile World Cup qualifying match. Even though Chile won, it was still fun seeing a bunch of foreigners outdo the Paraguayans with support for the team. Even with this loss, Paraguay is still in first place for the division, tied with Brazil at 24 points. Chile is in third with 23, Argentina 22, Uruguay and Ecuador tied at 17, Venezuela at 16, Colombia at 14, Bolivia at 12, and Peru has a measly 7. Technically Brazil is ahead of us because of goals scored, same with Uruguay and Ecuador, but points-wise, we're tied.
Sunday we began the day with a trip to "Salto Monday" (not monday, it's guaraní) which is a decent-sized waterfall. It's absolutely beautiful. I'm not sure why we didn't go to Yguasú, but either way, Monday is beautiful too. After not enough time there, it was back to the hotel for a pretty emotional goodbye/last session. A few hours later, it was back on the bus to Asunción. We had some amazing Chipa in Eusbio Ayala and got into the city around 8. From there I went to a volunteer's house for the night. They told me I was leaving at 8AM to go back to Pilar, meaning I got up at 6AM Monday morning to get to the terminal in time to buy my ticket. There is no 8AM run to Pilar. The first one is at 12AM. I ended up going on a taxi tour of the city, and watching the England vs Kazakhstan game at another volunteer's house. Everyone except for the empleada (maid) was asleep for most of the few hours I was there, but she seemed to enjoy ranting about Paraguayan politics to me and gave me some amazing grapefruit juice.
The bus ride back to Pilar was as smooth as it can possibly be on roads built by a corrupt dictator, and we got back only 4 minutes behind schedule, which is pretty great in any country and amazing by Paraguayan standards. Now I'm back in school, getting ready for exams. Unfortunately, my school is considering moving exams back a few weeks until after winter break thanks to Swine Flu. I know it's mostly passed out of the news in the US, but it's just starting to arrive here, and if it sets in, it's going to be bad. The medical care just isn't here, and even if there are vaccines, the people most at risk won't have access to them. Masks are starting to become a bit of a trend, but nobody's seemed to notice that wearing a mask, then taking it off to drink tereré out of a straw that everyone present is sharing doesn't make much sense. I just hope it doesn't get worse here...

Halfway.

I'm officially more than halfway through my exchange now, but I still don't know exactly when I'm leaving due to a rather interesting circumstance.

Back in Wisconsin, I was my school's Model UN president. After I was already in Paraguay, Horlick Model UN was invited to a conference in CHINA! Considering what's normally our most distant conference is run by the University of Chicago, a whole two hours away, this is a pretty amazing opportunity for us. At first, I thought I wouldn't be able to go, seeing as the China trip leaves August 1st, and I wasn't scheduled to be back until the 6th, but I actually AM able to change my departure date, and it's looking more and more likely that I will be in China in August! The main obstacle, at this point, is fundraising for my group. They are all working their butts off back in Racine to try to raise the money, and I think everyone who was selected to go deserves the chance. It's a really great group and I feel bad about not being there selling donuts, serving spaghetti, and running rummage sales with them, so instead, I'm resuming my job as website editor. The Racine Journal Times actually ran an article about us/them a few weeks ago, which you can read here:
http://www.journaltimes.com/articles/2009/04/21/a_plus/doc49ed4d139faff568323887.txt

Next week, 14 May, is the Paraguayan independence day. There's going to be a huge parade, and every school has a band and colorguard. Inconveniently, they practice during school in the courtyard, making it more impossible than usual to get anything done. It wouldn't be so bad if it was cohesive music, but it's still disjointed snare drums and trumpets, combined with the school across the street's band doing the same thing for HOURS every morining. School is still basically impossible. I can understand most of the worksheets, but I can't understand the explanations, lectures, or notes because nearly everyone else in my class is too busy either screaming, fighting, running, arguing, complaining about nonexistant homework, throwing paper, laughing hysterically at someone else throwing paper, or some combination of the above. The level of the work isn't really a problem for me, it's the fact that A) It's in Spanish/Guaraní, and B) It's too loud to think. This is somewhat normal in Latin America, but in comparing experiences with my other exchange friends in Paraguay, my class seems to have taken it to a new level. I would love to switch, but I'm now being told that we have exams the first week of June, which is news to me, seeing as I've been told that they're in the middle of July, the beginning of August, or the end of June up until now. I don't think anyone really knows. If exams really are in three weeks, I'll basically be done with school work. If they're in August or the end of July, I won't even be in the country anymore. Aggh. Nobody knows answers, and I'm starting to think people make up answers when they don't know them.
The people in my class take tons of subjects (Math, Statistics, Logic, Spanish, Guaraní, English, Psychology, History & Geography, Philosophy, Geology, Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Science, Religion, Arts, and Gym) but I'm only getting graded in 7 or so. It's an impressive-sounding list of classes, but most classes are only for an hour or two a week, so they are not very in-depth at all. The teaching methods here are also not very...effective. In most classes, the teacher copies from the state-required book onto the board, and the kids copy word-for-word, into their notebooks. I've actually had a teacher slightly upset because I used different punctuation than was in the book. If the teacher doesn't want to copy onto the board, sometimes they just read it outloud, slowly, and we have to copy. If the kids complain enough about having to write, the teacher gives us photocopies, which we have to pay for. The final exams are a supposedly big deal, but they have something like 4 or 5 chances to take them, so nobody even studies until the third or fourth time they're given. When I got here in February, most people were still taking exams from the school year that ended in November. If a kid fails, the parents assume it was the teacher's fault, and I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see someone openly buying a grade. Also, we have to underline everything with colors and put everything that's turned in (almost nothing) into pretty folders. If someone messes up on a word in notes or on an assignment, it HAS to be whited out, or if there's no white-out at hand because it's been either thrown at someone across the room, or used up writing on the walls, totally redone on a separate sheet of paper, which is ridiculously expensive here. This is one of the only things I flat-out refuse to do. I questioned a few teachers on why, and they had no idea. I think they might have actually stopped requiring that now...

Updates

Last week I got letters and pictures from my cousins, the Pitrof kids: Sydney, Olivia, Tony, and Sam, which my host family thinks they're adorable. So to start off this entry, I'll answer the questions they asked in their letters.
Do you like your new home?
Yes, I do. My house is between the center of town and the countryside, so I'm close to both. There are currently 8 of us living in the house, so it's a pretty big change, but I like it. Mostly, I like our yard though. Growing in the yard we have grapes, avocados, grapefruits, limes, apples, and a few fruits I haven't figured out the names of yet.

How's the food?
The food here is actually pretty good. It's pretty similar to US food, with slightly different ingredients and very different names. In the morning, breakfast is usually chocolate milk or coffee and bread. Lots of times we have snacks at the school's cantina, maybe a half-sandwich, some cookies, or an empanada. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day, and is a lot like dinner in the US. Usually there's some kind of grain (rice, pasta, mbeyu, borí, sopa paraguaya) with some sort of meat or vegetable and mandioca. We have merienda in the late afternoon. It's usually a lot like breakfast, except maybe with a bananaor yogurt. Dinner is really late, and we almost never eat it during the week. On weekends, I usually go out to eat with friends for dinner.

Did you teach them how to play football?
Here, "futbol" is soccer, but I'm working on teaching my little brothers how to play "futbol americano" which is what they call what we know as football. I can't say that I've been successful in teaching them the rules/format, but they love playing with the weird-shaped ball.

What sports are there?
In my city, basketball is actually the most popular sport, with soccer, tennis, and volleyball also being pretty popular. In the rest of the country, however, soccer is the most popular sport. Because basketball is only popular in my city, most people are fans of one of the national soccer clubs as well as a local basketball team. Volleyball and tennis aren't really watched, but lots of people play them for fun.

Do they know English?
Well, my English teacher does! English here is like Spanish class there. Other than her, I know a Peace Corps volunteer from California who lives in my city, an AFS returnee who lived in Chicago for a year, and a Mormon missionary who speak English well. There are a few people around who speak a little English, but mostly everyone just speaks Spanish and Guaraní. In the big cities like Asunción and Ciudad del Este there are more people that speak English. On the border with Brazil, cities like Ciudad del Este and Pedro Juan Caballero, a lot of people actually speak Portuguese more often than Spanish. In the countryside, everyone speaks Guaraní and some people don't speak Spanish. In my city almost everyone is fluent in Spanish and almost-fluent in Guaraní.

Are there TVs there?
Of course! The most popular show here is The Simpsons. Almost all of the programs come from other countries, and a lot of them just have subtitles instead of being dubbed. Because of this, there are programs from the USA, Brazil, Thailand, Korea, the UK that are just subtitled in Spanish. Other shows come from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Venezuela, and Argentina.

Is it fun there?
Sometimes! I don't think some things like math class are fun in any part of the world though.

Is it ever cold or is it always warm?
It's never cold like it is in Wisconsin! It never snows. So far, it's been between 80 and 100 degrees Fahrenheit most days. Because Paraguay is in the Southern Hemisphere, the seasons are the opposite of what they are in the United States. It's spring in the US, but it's fall here. When we have summer vacation, it's the middle of winter here. Christmas is usually one of the hottest days of the year! It will get cooler in the winter, but it usually doesn't get below 40 or 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

What's your brother and sisers names?
My oldest sister is names Patricia, but it's pronounced "pa-tree-see-uh" in Spanish. She's 16, and will be coming to the USA for a year in August as an AFS exchange student. She's in my grade at school, but in the other class that specializes in business.
My oldest brother's name is Victor. He's 14 and plays soccer.
My other brother's name is Anibal (ah-NEE-bahl). He's 10, and also plays soccer and violin.
Also living with us is my 12-year-old cousin Laura and my grandpa, plus my parents, of course.


Easter here is basically not celebrated. More important is Semana Santa, the week before Easter. I didn't have school last week Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, and there were activities instead of classes on Tuesday. I got to meet some of my "extended family" from Asunción last week. There's a HUGE fishing competition in my city over Semana Santa, but nobody cares about the fish anymore. It's more about going to the park and the beach for the music and food, and we luckily had GREAT weather for it.

It's finally not so sweltering hot, but it's still in the 80s daily. Due to this change, my school has started letting us wear our gym pants instead of our skirts, which is a cause for celebration. School is still REALLY different here. There are no text books (there's no money for text books) and we stay with the same people all day. The classes are only one or two times a week, so not too much gets done...

Cowboys and Birds

So I´ve completed my first full week of Paraguayan high school. Some subjects are surprisingly easy (Matemáticas, Física, Lógica) and others are basically impossible for me (História, Lengua Castellana, Guaraní, Química). In total, there are about 20 or so subjects. I was kinda freaking out for a bit, but someone finally told me that I only have to choose 8 or 9 to actually be graded in, the others are just a formality. I´m still not sure which ones I´m taking, but I should know by the end of the week.
This weekend is CARNAVAL! Last night we went out to eat for a friend´s birthday, then to the parade area. It´s so much fun. Everyone runs around with these cans of spray soap bubbles, attacking everyone else, and there´s a huge speaker system set up blasting the same bizzare mixture of traditional Paraguayan music and reggaeton that seams to always be playing and isn´t sounding quite so bizzare anymore. Every now and then this drumming group comes out and performs. It´s amazing music, the kind that somehow just gives you energy (which everyone needs, seeing as this all doesn´t even start until 10PM or so and goes on all night) and all 15 or 20 members of the group are in perfect sync. They range in age from about 14 to 50, and enlist younger kids to help them carry the equipment. After a few hours of this, the parade starts around midnight. The costumes in the parade are incredible. They´re all similar in design, but all different colors, and slightly different styles. Always beaded, sequined clothes, glittery skin, and elaborately feathered and beaded headdresses and, for lack of a better word, "wings." The wings aren´t really wings, but massive decorations made out of a massive amount of feathers worn on the dancers´ backs. Everything in their costume combines with their stilettos and dancing to make them look like elegant birds. The guys in the parade are all dressed as cowboys, with some added glitter and sequins. I really don´t know how birds and cowboys go together, but I guess for one weekend a year in a small town in Paraguay, they do. The dancers range in age from adults to little girls who couldn´t be more than 6 or 7 years old. I don´t know when this all actually ends, but it was going strong when we left around 2:30 because both of my little brothers had finally fallen asleep.
The flowers here are all so beautiful and exotic looking. Some of them only flower at night, and I´ve been told that the flowers now are nothing compared to what there is in May and June.
In other news, my family has internet now, meaning that pictures will be posted soon! I´m currently working on getting them uploaded, but it´s taking a while. Hopefully I can get them up today, but if not, later this week for sure.

School

I started school on wednesday. It´s called "Colegio Nacional Italiano Santo Tomas¨but everyone just calls it Santo Tomas. The "Italiano" in the name just means that there´s an Italian flag in the school seal, and it was probably founded by an italian; it´s not like the classes are in Italian or anything. The schedule is really different. I don´t even know what Monday or Tuesday´s schedule will be. Wednesday we had an assembly-thing in the morning, and it felt like I was back at Sacred Heart, between the uniforms, and the 2 hours of religion class. After, 2 periods of Math, 2 periods of Chemistry, a period of history, and a period of art. That goes from 7 to 11:50. Then lunch at home. At 2:30, we go back to school for 2 hours of religion, 2 hours of Biology, and 2 hours of general Sciences. That doesn´t get done until almost 6 PM. Thursdays I have 2 hours of Spanish, 2 hours of something called orientación (no idea what it is), and three hours of Physics. That´s it. The hours aren´t actually hours, there more like 40-minute periods, if that. Tomorrow I have Math, "lógica", and religion in the morning, a lunch break, than statistics and psychology. Also, the kids stay in the same room all day, and the teachers change. The desks are sized for elementary schoolers, and are in a horseshoe around the room. I think I have 30-some kids in my class, but supposedly no more than 20 or so are there on any given day. The school is arranged around a courtyard, with two floors of classrooms and outdoor hallways. There´s a sitting area and a basketball court in the courtyard. The uniform is a gray skirt, school polo, and some of the ugliest shoes you´ve ever seen. My classmates are actually really disruptive, for the most part. I can´t hear ANYTHING most of the time. Not that I could understand it if I could hear it. There are a couple people I already know in my class though, so they´ve been helping me.

The weather is still HOT. It´s been raining more this week though, so I think it´s cooled down a bit. There´s been one GREAT thunderstorm, and a few showers. They´re still trying to teach me Guaraní too, but it´s not exactly working out. I know a few common words, but I still can´t understand Jopará. I´m also starting to understand ¨Paraguayan Time.¨What that means is that when my spanish teacher says she´ll be there at 2, don´t bother showing up til 20 after because she won´t be there until at least 2:30. Unfortunately, school actually DOES start at 7.

I have my next AFS camp March 13-15 in San Bernadino, near Asunción.

Still hot...

It´s been ridiculously hot! School starts next Wednesday. I get my uniform tomorrow- a gray skirt and white blouse. I´m going to be in the general class, rather than trying to do something specialized for just a semester. That means I´ll have a ton of classes, but for a short time, and not every day. Here, the kids stay in the same room and the teachers change rooms. I´ll have Spanish, English, Guaraní, Math, Physics, Chemistry, some sort of History, Gym, Art, Choir, and who knows what else.

Everything here is so cheap! An hour of internet is less than a dollar. A pizza is about $1.50. Soda is $0.25. Phone calls are expensieve though.

Everything´s going great so far!

About Paraguay and AFS

Paraguay is a landlocked country in South America, between Brazil, Argentina, and Bolivia. It's about the size of California. Spanish and Guarani (indigenous) are the major official languages. Both Spanish and Guarani are used frequently, with Spanish prevailing in cities and Guarani in rural areas and isolated cities. The east is humid and rainy, the west is dry and arid. It's in the southern hemisphere, so our winter is their summer. (I will arrive in February- the middle of their summer, just before school begins.)
Just under 7 million people live in Paraguay. The capital and largest city is Asuncion. Other larger cities are Ciudad del Este, Encarnacion, Concepcion, Luque, Villa Hayes, Caacupe, Villarica, Pilar, and San Juan Cabalero. Hydroelectricity, generated from several major dams, supply most of the country's power. Soybeans are the most important crop.
Many people are poor, but many of the families able to host exchange students are middle-upper class. School runs on a half-day schedule, with classes being either in the morning, afternoon, or occasionally evening. Usually kids are put into a "track" in high school, such as business, sciences, or arts.

AFS was started in WWI by ambulance drivers from the US as the American Field Service. The group was reformed during WWII, and started exchanges after the war. At first, exchanges were just between the USA and several western European countries, but today high school students from over 50 countries are involved. AFS maintains an international umbrella organization, but is really made up of national organizations in each country. AFS-Paraguay was started in 1962, and hosted US students in 1966 for the first time. Today, AFS-Paraguay hosts about 200 foreign students a year from all over the world, and sends out approximately 150 Paraguayan students.