Meeting the Ambassador . . . Just a Day in the Life

Well it's not every day that we get invited to meet the American Ambassador here in Asunción, but our time here in Paraguay has been so full of these sorts of surprises that it somehow didn't seem that odd when the director of Fundacion Paraguaya called last night and asked if we wanted to join him for a tour of the San Francisco Escuela Agricola with the organizations board members, the Ambassador, and the USAID team.

A little background info: The San Francisco Escuela Agricola is a self-sufficient agricultural school run by Fundacion Paraguaya. The students come from very poor and very rural areas and if it weren't for this school, they would probably never get a high school level education. They learn both academic subjects and farming skills and when they graduate they have two degrees, a high school diploma and a vocational diploma in agriculture. Remarkably, after graduation, 100% of them go on to college, go to work in upper level positions on commercial farms, or pursue their own business plan with a loan from Fundacion Paraguaya's micro-finance program. The best part is that the school is entirely financially self-sufficient. They either use or sell everything they produce on the farm and as a result, they don't have to accept any funding from the government nor do they have to charge any school fees.

So, yes, I think this school is a fantastic idea and somewhere along the way I committed to teaching English there once a week . . . oops. So every Tuesday I make the long trek to the school where I teach a morning class to the 2nd-year-students and a late afternoon class to the 1st-year-students and eventually I make it back to my house in Asunción exhausted at 10pm. Do I love it? Has it always been my dream to discipline thirty 15-year-olds in broken Spanish? No, but I'm trying to stay positive about it.

Back to the point -- Ambassador Liliana Ayalde pulled up in two Excursions with two armed body guards and a following of USAID officials:

We proceeded to introduce ourselves and then roll up our sleeves for the farm tour. At every stop, the students sat waiting to great the ambassador. I was super proud of how confidently they introduced themselves and talked about their work.

My favorite student, Tomas, did a great job of showing the Ambassador how to dig a hole . . . very high tech!

And, everyone agreed that the piglets were cute:

When we took a break for some school-made yogurt, cheese, and dolce de leche, Nick got his opportunity to tell the Ambassador about Kiva and how significant they've been to development work in Paraguay.And although she hasn't joined the FP lending team yet, she seemed to think so it was pretty innovative.