The Paraguayan hour is killing me!

so if there is one thing that i should talk about is how my peoples are accustomed to being on time. We are a culture that moves fast. We have people to see and things to do. Our lives run on time. If you are not on time, we get deeply offended for not respecting our time. We can even lose our jobs for not being on time. Time is a concept that is deeply rooted in our culture and what keeps us moving quickly and efficiently. Here in Paraguay no es así (It´s not like that).

In Paraguay time is not a factor to the culture. It´s not important. It doesn´t offend anyone if you are late to events. You don´t get kudos for being on time or early either. In fact, you might be sitting in a cloud of awkwardness while you wait for other people to show up to a meeting or function. The directora at the high school told the teachers in a meeting today that they should really try to be here on time. School starts at 7am. But still there are no penalties if you are late. It was merely a suggestion...

I´ve been really getting frustrated with the paraguayan hour lately. I have an english class that starts at 5 30pm on mondays and thursdays. Well its supposed to start at said time but a lot of times it doesn´t get started until 6 or 6 20. So the last class I got kinda upset with the class and was like you guys really need to try and be here on time because I don´t like sitting around for half hour to an hour waiting on you guys to get here. they seemed confused so i had to explain a lil about my culture and how we get offended if people are not on time. i felt myself getting upset. they promised that they would try to be on time. well, today its raining so i know for a fact that no one is going to go to class because the rain is a deal breaker that paraguayans will not go out in the rain! so i won´t be able to see if my lil talk with them actually worked until thursday.

Then, the paraguayan hour struck again on friday when we had movie night. i had a small crew of really cool paraguayans that helped me set up everything. like we had a legit movie theater going in the high school. we had huge speakers, projector, music playing, and good food. the directora finally got electricity for this part of the building that has been out of electricity for a while. but when it came to show time...no one came.....we waited an hour, only one student showed up. so the directora told me it was time to call it quits and pack everything away. then an hour and a half later 5 people show up. 10 minutes later, 10 people show up. I will be damned that 2 hours after the event was supposed to happen a huge crowd of folks showed up. but by then we had already taken everything down. and if we would have started the movie on time they would have missed the ENTIRE movie! i was super bummed. frustrated with my community. felt unwanted, unproductive, useless.

but then i started analyzing those feelings. i felt super unsuccessful and came to the conclusion that my upbringing, my culture had sparked those feelings within me. We are supposed to be pumping out good working products or events for the greater good. And these events are supposed to start on time. in paraguay, i have to learn to play by different rules. the people here don´t care what kinds of goods and services you are putting out there. Character, family ties and laid back style is what is important here. that is something in my two years i am not going to change. paraguay is never going to be on time for me. things will always start later than planned. no one is going to think that i am lazy or unsuccessful because no one came to my movie night... i have to find a way to work within the framework of paraguay´s culture. I have to find a place where i fit in, where i can feel successful in my work too. In retrospect I don´t feel like movie night was a complete disaster because I have identified members in the high school and the neighborhood who i know will help me set up a project, will participate to start a project and who just might see the value in creating a better community here in the city of paraguarí.