People of Guyra

It has been very important to me to have the opportunity to socialize with some of my colleagues on the trip. We were with the four of us: me, Evelyn, Natalia and Rodrigo. The first two are young woman like me, around their 23-24s. as I understood Natalia is the referent for tourism in Guyra and Evelyn is studying something with Ecology and environment and works part-time in Guyra. She is wanting to do her master abroad so I advised her to look up Wageningen University too. 

Rodrigo is a guy at the beginning of his 40s, a very friendly person, with something I would call a talent in getting close to people. I was fascinated by the way he got quite close very rapidly to people. He is willing to help, to do thing for other and he actually does them. 

In general I have the idea that in Paraguay, even more than southern Europe, people get very open very fast . There is a way of communicating and talking with people that are not personally related to you that in a country as the Netherlands would sound kind of fake or would make people suspicious (if someone calls you 'my dear friend' after 2 days you know each other, what would you think?) but that in this context somehow it is very authentic. In Holland you would call 'someone I know' people that here are called 'friends'. It does not mean necessarily that they get to be treated with the privileges or the trust typical of friendship but it gives directly a closer feeling.

I would just like to conclude with a small reflection, until now of all the people that work at Guyra I met 3 that went abroad with an exchange programme of AFS. How incredible is that? There is a Dutch guy that did an exchange in Paraguay and now lives here, Rodrigo which went one year to New Zeland in '95 and Evelyn who went to Germany a couple of year ago. And finally me who went to the Netherlands and stayed there. Exchange programs really make the world a smaller (and I think better) place