Since the school I’m teaching at is well-known within Paraguay, the U.S. ambassador extended us an invitation to his annual Independence Day bash at his residence in Asunción - Paraguay’s capital city. For some background, the ambassador is somewhat of a colorful character. During his post, he discovered that his true calling was recording Paraguayan folk songs in Guarani (I believe his side of the story was that the idea came to him in a dream), so he recorded and released a C.D. and now entertains fans with concerts when not busy with diplomatic policy. Keep in mind that he is not Paraguayan - he’s from New Jersey.

This party was not your traditional backyard, Fourth of July barbecue. For one thing, it was on July 1- and it was Mardi Gras-themed. After making the hour and a half trip to Asunción, walking into the ambassador’s residence felt like walking into the Twilight Zone. Outside the gates, little children were barefoot in the streets begging for change, but inside, a live jazz band was blaring Frank Sinatra songs, oversized Mardi Gras masks read “I love USA” painted on in glitter, waiters walked around offering chicken wings and empanadas, and Americans and Paraguayans alike were decked out in elaborate costumes ranging from Superman to a giant pumpkin. The Ambassador himself was unrecognizable in his full-on Benjamin Franklin outfit complete with a kite, tearing up the dance floor to a Grammy-winning Cajun band imported direct from New Orleans.

To make things even stranger, the party seemed to have sold it’s soul to American corporations. Signs and tents from sponsors ranging from McDonald’s to Dodge were among the patriotic decor. Pizza Hut was even on hand to give out personal pizzas and Budweiser girls in tight, red jumpsuits handed out key chains and bottles of beer. Apparently U.S. tax dollars weren’t enough to cover the ambassador’s bill. The rest of the party’s cuisine ranged from Cajun to Chinese, and a giant American flag made out of cupcakes to top it all off.

The ambassador took the stage and made a speech in Spanish and then lip-synced to one of his Paraguayan hits. Then he read a statement issued by the White House, wishing Americans all over the world a happy Independence Day. As clich and recycled as the statement was, hearing it in my little American enclave in Paraguay, complete with corporate sponsors, eccentric guests and a melting pot of themed party-ware, actually made me a little homesick. Although it was far from a traditional Fourth of July celebration, the party pretty accurately summed up what the U.S. is all about.

We had been a bit worried to go to Istanbul, just us three girls, because we assumed (as did our mothers) that it was culturally safer to travel with a guy or two (the Turkish population is almost entirely Muslim). But we were wrong.

Istanbul is, culturally as well as geographically, a gateway between Europe and the Middle East. On the path to becoming part of the European Union, yet with a distinctly Middle Eastern feel. Women in fill Islamic dress walk by women exuding that European je ne sais quoi in flowing strapless dresses. You could see a television with the Turkey v Czech Republic game anywhere you where looking, with people cheering and drinking (they won - surprisingly - 3 to 2), yet five times a day Muslim call for prayer would reverberate across the city through loudspeakers on the top of the city’s many mosques. I loved the unique feeling this mesh of cultures gave the city.

Well, except for the 4:30am call for prayer which consistently woke me up.

However, what surprised me most about Istanbul was its families. Everywhere we went where happy children running around, playing with siblings, cousins or friends and smiling from ear to ear at their parents. Growing up in Southern California I couldn’t help but think: I have never seen so many happy families outside of Disneyland.

When a little girl’s brother accidentally fell into the fountain in the park and found himself soaked up to his knees, she jumped in not long after him in an attempt to make him feel better. With two wet children under 10, the laughing father decided it was time to leave, and walked back through the park with a child on each arm skipping along.

Outside our hotel window on the day before we left was a group of five little girls. It only took me a split second to notice what they where doing - they were playing Chinese jump rope. I had loved the game when I was their age and had played it on the streets of Beverly Hills with my friends, just as they were doing now, 15 years, and half a world away. It was nice to know that no matter when or where, somethings - like the joys of childhood - are universal.

Although it is only spoken by roughly four million people, and nowhere outside of Paraguay and around its borders, the government insists that it be taught in all Paraguayan schools. This includes the Macchi Institute that I am teaching at. Even though it was built, funded and run privately by Americans, it still has to comply with the Ministry of Education’s mandates. For the American administrators of the school, adding a Guarani class to the already packed schedule (Paraguayan students take about 20 different classes a year) seems unnecessary. Their argument is that the students are already taught Guarani in their homes and it isn’t spoken anywhere else so unlike learning English, it doesn’t exactly open any doors. Guarani is also not a written language so transforming it into one for teaching purposes seems unnatural. But the counterargument is that Guarani is an integral part of Paraguayan heritage and culture and not teaching it in schools may lead to it dying out. Either way, it is an interesting debate and one that may be having a greater effect on the Paraguayan education system as a whole, since right now it is ranked among the worst in the world.

The students at the school I teach at, the Instituto Cultural Reinaldo Macchi, are cute enough to make me forget about the cold for a couple hours a day. These students come from some of the poorest families in the area and were hand-selected to attend this school, which is the most prestigious with some of the nicest facilities in the country since it was built and run by Americans. Unlike most schools that have classes for only three or four hours a day, the school day at Macchi runs from 6:45 a.m. to about 4:30 p.m. Quite a full day. The Macchi school also strives to be above the pressures of the public academic system, especially teacher strikes that frequently shut down public schools for weeks at a time. The school also continues to import directors from the U.S. to keep it from falling into the corruption that Paraguay and much of South America is infamous for. Currently the school has 60 students, 15 in each grade from 7th to 10th.

The students’ previous English teacher had them all create e-mail accounts and write to me before I got down here. The messages I got were so adorable that it’s necessary to attach one of them on here so you can see how these 13 and 14 year olds explain themselves with the little English they have.

alexa
hello!!! how are you?I am Romina, I am from Tobati-Paraguay.I am from Institute in Tobati.I am in 8th.
I would like to meet you.I like english class, I like to learn much.I want to speek English and I want to learn vocabulary and verbs
I hope you do well.
I hope we understand eachother
I am very smart, and funny, talkative, tall,
Your future student:
ROMINA

I have no real teaching experience but hopefully I’ll be able to live up to these kids’ expectations. Either way it will be an interesting summer.

Newspaper pages here devote plenty of space to netball and cricket and racing, but the one sport to rule them all is undoubtedly rugby. Rugby is everywhere. It’s not hard to stumble across a children’s team practice or an impromptu game in a park. The most famous players, those on a first-name basis with the public, populate PSAsand commercials. There’s rugby league and rugby union and Super 14 and Sevens, but rugby wouldn’t be rugby without the All Blacks, the national team of the national sport. The All Blacks dominate rugby internationally, and the team’s success overseas means they’re ubiquitous at home. Their silver fern logo is often shorthand for New Zealand itself, and though it might be an exaggeration to say I see more fern flags that official national flags, it’d be a small one. The All Blacks are so integral to the culture here that I don’t find the name unusual anymore, even though it raises the eyebrows of Americans who don’t know that team’s uniforms are all black. It would be wrong to spend a much time in New Zealand without attending one of their games, so I bought a ticket for the first game of the season here in Wellington.

After a completely All-Blacks-less semester, the build-up to the game against Irelandwas interesting in its own right. A few articles in the paper focused on ex-pats who couldn’t quite decide who to cheer on. Bar signs challenged their patrons to drink Speights (a beer brewed in the South Island) instead of Guinness. And when the day of the game finally arrived, everyone in the city seemed to be talking about the game, clad in All Blacks gear and streaming toward the stadium. With a silver fern painted on my cheek and plenty of layers on, I was ready to go.

If you are more interested in the atmosphere of the game rather than the rules of the sport (like me, for instance), the haka that kicks off the game is not to be missed. The team performs a Maori dance before play begins, but “dance” certainly gives the wrong impression. The haka, called Ka Mate, is meant to reflect New Zealand’s cultural heritage while intimidating opponents, as the team slaps their thighs, sticks out their tongues and chants in te reo Maori. I know what you’re thinking. Sticking out their tongues? You might think that someone sticking out his tongue wouldn’t be especially intimidating, but when that person is an All Black, it’s a fierce display of athleticism.

The haka drew an enthusiastic response, but I was surprised to find that was it for the chanting for the rest of the game. All Blacks fans are devoted, almost filling the stadium on a winter night in the pouring rain, but they weren’t as boisterous as I expected. Last fall, I attended a D.C. United game. Say what you will about soccer in the United States, but those are some obsessive fans, constantly singing and cheering and waving flags. When they weren’t setting off stink bombs and throwing beer in the air each time a goal was scored, I found their boisterousness endearing, and I expected something similar from All Blacks fans. There wasn’t that same spectacle; instead, everyone actually watched the game. Even when New Zealand beat Ireland in the end, there wasn’t a big scene. There was hardly a person on the streets of Wellington that night who hadn’t been in Westpac Stadium, and everyone seemed happy for their team. Instead of provoking crazed individual reactions from their fans, the All Blacks and rugby are part of the cultural fabric, something that unites the country around them.

It reminded me of the morning crowd taking a break from work to watch the game on TV (though I’m still not sure which game). Everyone came together gripped by the game, but no one made a big fuss about it; it was just part of the morning. Rugby is a national obsession, something that is indelibly Kiwi, but fortunately it’s one that doesn’t require me to wash beer out of my hair.

I’m not really complaining - here at the LSE we didn’t start school until the first week in October, and had 10 weeks of break; our third 10 week trimester didn’t even comprise of any classes - but there is something to be said for the fact that the summer equinox is fast approaching, and the only summer I have yet to experience is the 80 degree weather here in London and the sun rising on my way home at 3am from a night out.

On the other hand, except for my four, 3 hour exams, I haven’t actually been in school since mid-march. It is a funny thing studying for an exam for a course you haven’t had or looked at in three months. Imagine taking a final for a Spring semester class the next fall.

However, thanks to this system I have been able to do more traveling and spend more time with friends then I thought possible during an exam period. At the end of last week, the day after my second to last exam, my friend and I hopped onto an Easy Jet flight to spend two days in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was amazing, and I would recommend everyone try to make it there sometime in their life.

Edinburgh is a small big city, with a hometown feel and architecture that ranges from the very very old (the castle as it stands is partly from the 16th century) to the very very modern (the new parliament building was designed by Enric Miralles). As is wasn’t bombed as much during the World Wars, it has less of the random splatter-art -feel that characterizes the London skyline.

We spent our first day at the Castle, and our second day lounging in the park in the center of the city after a tour from a friend who has lived in Edinburgh for 4 years. And while we went to no museums on our trip, it was great to experience the city from a local’s perspective. We couldn’t have been happier sitting on the grass and watching everyone soak up the magnificent weather with the castle in the background - leave it to me to get sunburned in Scotland…

“We don’t have Target in New Zealand!”
“I can’t believe that Australians say ‘thongs’ and not ‘jandals’!”

And so on. But that was among American friends. I’m finding that this identification has become a bit more pervasive, even when I’m among New Zealanders.

Today was my last tutorial for my news analysis class. I am the sole foreigner out of ten students, something that left me terrified on the first day after my tutor grilled me about my political beliefs and presented a hypothetical scenario in which I was shot. I think it may have been to demonstrate newsworthiness, but I can’t say for sure; my mind was preoccupied and racing to think of any class I could add in its place. But I decided that my tutor was quirky and not actually out to get me, and since then, I’ve settled in just fine. Maybe it’s that we do see eye-to-eye politically, or that I have embraced New Zealand English by diligently using find and replace on all of my assignments to make sure I’m analysing and not analyzing, or that I can participate in discussions about Kiwi TV shows.

My other classes never really presented this problem. No one in my Renaissance literature tutorial is a 17th-century Londoner, so we all muddle through together. My Pacific studies class is more conspicuously divided between Islanders and palagi (a Samoan word referring to white non-Pacific Islanders). My being American doesn’t matter much there, but in a class that presumes prior knowledge of New Zealand-specific media and politics, I struggle a bit more. After that first day, I’ve tried not to make it an issue and blend in as best as I can.

Before today’s tutorial, my classmates and I were chatting about our essays that we’d finished the week before. Mine was about Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s apology to indigeous Australians delivered this past February, which lent itself to a discussion on Australian vs. New Zealand race relations and national character. I joined in, talking about “our responses” to events in Australia. Talking to a room full of Kiwis, I said “we,” referring to New Zealanders, but no one said a thing about it and the us vs. them discussion continued.

Successfully going incognito as a Kiwi didn’t last for long. Later in the hour, my tutor mentioned Shrek the sheep, which was met with knowing laughs from my classmates and a confused look from me. I was gently mocked for being “the foreign chick” once more, but who knew?

With that said, here is a list of things off the top of my head I will miss most, followed by things I am looking forward to in the States. I realize this list is pretty generic, but it’s true.

Thing I’ll miss:

• the people
• the accents
• pubs/good pints of Guinness
• my flatmates and friends
• learning so much about Irish history. It’s almost embarrassing how little I knew about Ireland’s tumultuous relationship with England before this semester
• nearby, legal card clubs
• St. Stephen’s Green, especially in the spring
• the absence of humidity (which I didn’t notice until my mother asked me how humid it was here)
• old men always dressed in their Sunday best
• Kilmainham Gaol, my go-to place (literally) for bringing visiting friends
• being able to easily follow Premiere League soccer
• being able to jet set cheaply to any other European capital at my whim

Things I’m looking forward to:

• my girlfriend, friends and family
• the dollar
• burritos and sushi (not together)
• four words: Whole Foods iced tea
• the monuments
• understanding everyone’s accent (although this became less of a problem as the semester went on)
• late-night public transportation
• driving
• being able to watch basketball, baseball, and football games at reasonable hours

That list isn’t nearly exhaustive on either end, and I’m sure I’ll miss a lot of little things about Dublin that I won’t notice until I’m gone, but it should give you the general idea. I’ll likely post once more after I get home to tell you guys about my adjustment.

The comedian, David O’Doherty, mentioned getting his passport stamped when arriving in New Zealand, prompting the customs agent deem everything “awesome.” But it’s not just the extreme enthusiasm for something that is usually less awesome and more routine and necessary. It’s the multitude of ways through which that awesomeness can be expressed. I’ve become accustomed to using choice and keen, but the most iconic Kiwi phrase is undoubtedly “sweet as.” You could exclaim that something is sweet or cool or mean (a good thing, of course), but adding “as” somehow makes everything sweeter and cooler and meaner. To what is all this sweetness being compared? Nobody’s entirely sure, but that’s no problem.

I’ve come a long way from the first night of orientation when we were told to go grab our togs and jandals, and everyone just stared until it was clarified that we might want to change into bathing suits and flip-flops. Since then, I’ve learned where the wop wops are and what a dairy is. I know how to pronounce Paraparaumu and whakapapa. I order my food for takeaway instead of to go and say cheers instead of thanks. I’ve been mistaken for an Australian and I’ve been told that I don’t really have too much of an accent. Despite all this, I can’t quite bring myself to say sweet as. Before I leave New Zealand, I hope to happen upon a situation that is maybe sort of nice but still declare with confidence that it is, in fact, sweet as.

At least on this side of the pond, GW England seems to have things firmly under control. Or to be more specific, Resident Director of GW England, Daniela Passolt Olimpio, and Professor Laurie Kaplan have things under control. Since I arrived in London nearly 9 months ago, Daniela and Laurie have yet to expose me to the GW bureaucracy so well known to my fellow rising seniors, and have answered every question I posed to them in a time frame that makes me think they might be super-human.

For example, when I was asked by The Hatchet last fall to interview President Knapp on his trip to Europe, Daniela sent me an e-mail to ask whether I needed help getting a room at the LSE, or anything else for the interview - even though I had never mentioned to her a word about it.

While the GW England program is much smaller than GW study abroad in general, Daniela and Laurie should serve as a example of what a GW study abroad program should be like, and not just because part of their job description is to take us fun places and feed us lots of good food all on GW’s dime.

My fellow GW England students and I have reveled all year at how much our study abroad experience makes us feel like we go to a small liberal arts school, not a university of over 20,000. It was here in London we got to have high tea with President Knapp and Dean Brown while discussing everything from Knapp’s plans for the school (and our takes on them) to Dean Brown’s marriage story, not back in D.C.

And while I have yet to try to get my courses here to transfer to the ones I want back at GW, the time I have spent in London with Daniela and Laurie has given me hope for the future of GW’s study abroad programs.