I like to arrive with a day to spare on international trips because I have found that the quality of “computer labs” varies widely. It is common to find a large proportion of machines too antiquated or virus riddled to run the software we are teaching. Arriving a day early gives me the chance to negotiate and trouble shoot this before the students arrive. This desire is not always understood, and I have learned to roll with it. If nothing else it gives us an extra day to acclimate and explore and, since it is a weekend day, doesn’t add to the cost.
Our sponsor has been a very kind and accommodating host. I worked in the morning and then he and his sister in law took us out to lunch. His English is good, but his sister in law teaches math at an English school and so she came to translate. We went to a Brazilian Barbeque, which was similar to The Carnivore in Kenya…men carrying around spits of meat and carving them onto your plate. It was phenomenal. Paraguay is known for their beef. It is a country with 6 million people and 12 million cows. We talked a lot about hydropower. Paraguay is #1 in hydropower per capita generation. Currently, they use all that they can[1] and still give most of their allotment to Brazil for a nominal fee. But most of their development plans revolve around attracting energy intensive industry. Apparently the Paraguayan economy grew 12% last year and while we were in the car, our host’s brother was on the radio talking about fuel cell technology he is working hard to spin up.
The computer lab was setup at 6 and we had the usual problems…but got everything in place by 11. We also met our translators. Guillermo (who is an American with the Corps but of Peruvian decent and lived in Peru from ages 15-21) who set the trip up and invited us to teach, and Aleix, a post-doc at the University of Arizona from Spain.
Amanda and I got Google Video Chat working and I was able to see and talk to the girls. It was a much more fun way to interact with toddlers during an extended trip.
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