Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving from Paraguay!  I miss all of you and wish I could be there with the family!  I am going to a Thanksgiving lunch at the Ambassador’s house today.

Paraguay has gotten really hot.  Yesterday it was 108 degrees here, and humid!  This isn’t even the hottest time of the year yet… we are actually still in spring.  Yikes!  Other upcoming excitements here include insect season, snakes, and presidential election campaigns.  I haven’t encountered any snakes yet, thankfully!

Everything in my apartment is going well.  I don’t have hot water here, but I really don’t need it!  My electric oven/stove works now, so I have been cooking lots of food.  It feels really good to eat healthier again.  Time passes by very slowly here so I spend a lot of time cooking or doing jigsaw puzzles.

As for finding projects here… I’m still looking.  It get’s more and more frustrating and upsetting everytime an organization doesn’t want to work with me.  Come on Paraguay, I’m offering free business help here!  These are some of my insights from what I’ve learned about business in Paraguay:

• A lot of people NEED help in business, but they do not WANT help in business.
• There’s not a lot of diversity of products here, but people like the choices they have.  Everyone is afraid to try new things.
• People are poor, but they are not suffering.  This means that there is no urgency to change.  While many businesess here are even losing money, the owners are content as long as they have time with their families.
• Business here is not driven by making things more efficient or more profitable.  Competition is nonexistent.  Everyone wants to have the same type of businesses and share the gains.
• People are intimidated by education.  While I thought that having an MBA would make me more qualified to help businesses here, it seems to be one of the many reasons people do not want to work with me.  I think they feel intimidated and threatened by education.
• “No” is not a word in the Paraguayan dictionary.  All of the organizations say that they are interested in working with me, but when it comes time to talk about what type of help they want, there is ALWAYS an excuse.

In summary, all of these challenges make trying to help businesses in Paraguay nearly impossible.  I have a couple of possible leads, but I’m not sure I should keep my fingers crossed that they will work out.  It seems that there is always an excuse here not to work.  The most common ones here are: we are too busy right now, the holidays are coming up, no one works here in January because it’s too hot, and no one will work with me until after the end of April elections.

I’m still doing the best I can to make things work here, but it feels like all odds are against me.  I never imagined that it would be so frustrating to volunteer.  It’s so difficult not to take all of these rejections personally.  At least my Spanish is getting better 🙂

The whole point of this post was that I am so thankful for all of you friends and family that have been supporting me through this tough time.  I know I’m not a very fun or positive person to talk to right now.  I really do appreciate all of you that have listened to me, or even read my blog!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!  Please run a little faster in the Turkey Trot, and put a little extra pumpkin bread and Joyce’s potatoes on your plates for me 🙂

Yours Truly, Julie G