This blog entry is about all of the amazing friends I have made in Paraguay so far!

<--This is Melissa. She is 17, loves Victorious, One Direction, and dancing. She is also an acrobat! Have you ever been to one of those Cirque du Soleil shows? Well she does that kind of stuff, which so cool! She wants to studying abroad in the U.S. next year, and we are hopefully going to meet up! 

<--This is Atenea, She's 17 too. She is always smiling and has perfect handwriting! The other day she asked me if she could dye my hair black…as you can tell from the picture that didn’t happen!

<--This is Sol! She's also 17...now that I think about, I am pretty sure all of the people I hang out with are 17!

Anyways, Sol spent a few months in England earlier this year, so she know what it's like to be an exchange student. She is always helping me with my spanish, especially in the beginning when people would be talking to me and asking questions and I had understood literally nothing, she would explain everything to me in really simple terms (in Spanish). Other people would just give up and tell me in English which was not helpful!

Claudia is the one on the left in the front row. She loves to play basketball, almost never comes to school and she is always making fun of the little things I do that are different. She is really funny and outgoing person and she can always make me laugh.

<---This is Gonazlo. He is probably one of the funniest people I have met since being here. He is like a five year old stuck inside the body of a teenager! When he talks he slurs a lot of his words so for the first two months I was here whenever he said anything someone else would have to repeat it to me because I had no idea what he was saying!

<--This is Sebastian (the one on the left), he was one of the first people I met when I came here. He is super nice and he is always offering to help me with stuff. He sometimes tries to speak English with me but all he knows are bad words, so the conversations are always really funny! He wants to go to the U.S. for college or an exchange year. :)

<--See that guy behind my host sister? That's Rafa. (Not sure why I don't have any other pictures of him...)  He is pretty much fluent in English so every so often we will have a conversation in English or he will make some comment in English and I always burst out laughing and everyone looks at us like we are crazy! He is also really patient when I try to speak Spanish, even when I stand there for two minutes trying to make a sentence make sense. He is one of the friendliest people I have met here. :)

<--This is Bernhard. He’s a German foreign exchange here with AFS. He’s only 15 but as tall as a skyscraper! But that's how all the European foreign exchange students here are, I always feel so short!

Anyways...so he goes to my school (he's a grade below me) and his house is about a 10-minute walk from mine. We have become really good friends over these past few months, it’s so nice to have someone to talk to that is going through the same stuff as you. He's been here for almost a year and in leaving in June. :( 

<--This is Kate. She’s an exchange student from the U.S. too! She lives about 30 minutes away in a city called Luque. I’m so glad that she’s here; it’s always so nice to hang out with her because we are going through similar experiences and she understands what it’s like. We’re missing the same things, learning the same language, not wanting to leave, thinking about what's going to happen once we get back to the states, sharing stories, laughing about the differences between the U.S. and Paraguay. It’s also a relief to speak English once in a while!

I have obviously met a lot of people being here and this is only a handful of them (the ones that I hang out with the most). I haven't met anyone here that I haven't liked. When people ask me what my favorite thing about Paraguay is my answer is always "the people". The way interact with each other and the way they treat me, I just love it so much! Everyone is incredibly nice and friendly!

Chau!