Rainy week

This week was a typical week with school and teaching, etc.  On Tuesday, after school, my brother and I went to Encarnacion for a meeting promoting AFS Paraguay to study abroad. It was interesting the prices and how expensive it is for someone here to go to another country.  It is the same price as America, but without the money converter, so in Paraguay with the money used to go abroad, you could buy a nice house instead. It doesn't really make any sense to me, but if you are extremely wealthy here, you can go abroad. After the meeting, my brother decided he wants to go abroad for sure. It has always been his dream to go to America, hence why he is taking two English classes (5 hours every Saturday), just to learn the language to go abroad. So at the meeting we asked about scholarships and he is starting to fill out the application and then we will work on the scholarship part of it. I am very happy and excited for him!

This past week was very interesting with the weather because it was so different from California. Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday there were thunderstorms, because it's winter here.  The lighting is very visible because there's no tall buildings anywhere so you can see the whole sky, it's very cool. Anyways, when it rains in Paraguay, the whole city basically hibernates and shuts down. No kids go to school and no one leaves the house. It's not rare for it to rain, but since it's always so hot it's kinda a big deal haha. So I didn't know that people don't go to school, so on Wednesday I walked to school and I enter the room and there was only one student and the teacher, so I got to leave early :) In the local school, where I teach, it's for the residents of the neighborhood and the kids who can't afford to go to a better school outside of the town, so most kids walk to school. The roads are all red dirt roads or big cobble stones that are very bumpy, so when it rains, all the dirt turns to mud so you really can't walk to school unless you try, like me, and get completely covered in mud by the time you get there. So most people just stay at home for the day. Even in Encarnacion, the main city where all the roads are paved, at my teaching class on Saturday, only three students showed up because it was raining and taking the bus and everything is just too much of a hassle so people have stay at home days. It's very funny I think!

That's just a little bit of the week, and I'm sure more exciting things will happen next!