Welcome December

I was sitting in the middle of Asuncion on a bench when I heard a woman next to me say 'it's fucking hot'. As it turned out, she was a Paraguayan woman who teaches German at the Goethe Institute. On the following Friday, we were allowed to accompany her to a class and were asked to teach the students - mostly students, lawyers, and engineers - swear words and toasts. I had to chuckle when everyone diligently took notes in their notebooks while Marie wrote expressions like 'bullshit talk' and 'shut up' on the blackboard.

After class, some of the medical students invited us to a party that we went to last weekend. While there, the freshmen are locked in a cage, their hair shaved off, and smeared with motor oil, the students who move up to the last year are called gods and celebrated accordingly. Of all days, it rained here on the day of the party as if the world was coming to an end. Pretty inconvenient for an outdoor party. But in the midst of the storm, completely soaked from the rain, we had a lot of fun and were welcomed by the students with lots of beer and tequila in 'the third world'.

On the first Advent, exactly one month after our arrival in Paraguay, we went to the 'Estadio Defensores Del Chaco' stadium in Asuncion and watched a match between Olimpia and San Lorenzo. Olimpia is THE team here in Paraguay and is about to win the next championship title. Roughly comparable to Bayern Munich in Germany. Which we find a bit displeasing...