I have visited France, Spain and England and live in Washington, DC, a city full of tourists, but it was in Asunción where I felt like a tourist for the first time in my life. I felt like the tourists groups that visit Washington, DC and walk around that city in matching t-shirts and buy key chains and other trinkets from random, cheesy souvenir shops. That’s exactly how my LearnServe group looked and acted. Everybody was staring at us because we were foreigners in Asunción. Most Paraguayans have dark brown hair with brown or hazel eyes and caramel skin. Compare that to my group of 14 people, my little LearnServe family. We are different from each other in many ways – height, race, skin color, gender, age, etc. But even though no one in our group looks related or at all alike, we ALL look completely different from a typical Paraguayan.
I’ve never felt so out of place in my life as people stared at us, some smiling and some snickering, but the city was drawing me in. It was like no other place I had visited and explored because it’s genuine and real. Nothing is hidden…not the buildings (both new and old, nice and falling apart), not the graffiti and murals of awesome art and not the bañados, the small shanti towns, and the more affluent neighborhoods. As I continued to explore and walk around Asunción with my group, I appreciated my LearnServe family, our craziness and our uniqueness, and I stopped worrying about how the local Paraguayans were perceiving us. When I finally let go of that feeling of being a tourist and ‘different’ in an unknown city, I saw how beautiful and unique this city of Asunción really was.
Grace B., Washington Latin Public Charter School
