Like a caged animal

It's already been 10 years since I came back from Paraguay so I might not remember all the cultural collides I had with Paraguayans.

But I do remember the feeling of trying to get along with everybody.

At the starting camp, there were people from Paraguay (of course, the the people working for AFS), Norway, Denmark, Italy, France, United States, Germany, Holland, Iceland, New Zealand, Turkey etc...When you have that many (80+) people from different cultures in a small space over the course of four days, you are bound to get a huge amount of information and habits that you cannot comprehend.

I remember feeling extremely exhausted trying to get to know everybody. My mouth was aching from all the talking. I don't know if I made any sense at all in the end. This was the situation for everybody at the camp. I guess this was because we were all in a foreign country and in a foreign culture in were nobody knew what was about to come. It was almost like a social experiment on how people react when put in a situation which they cannot control. The whole camp, as far as I remember, must be one of the most stressful experiences I've ever had.

After the camp I was really relieved to go home with my host family. I felt like a rescue dog going home from the pound.

That night I slept well for first time in a week.

-Johanna