New International Relations

This afternoon there was a special program for the 5th graders at Koji's school, which includes Koji. 

The group that put on the event didn't have enough people from other countries, so they asked me to join. 

It was a flashback to those good old JET Programme days, where I became a complete expert at flashing pictures of myself, my parents, Oregon and my hobbies. 

Fortunately, there was much more on the docket than my blathering. The lady wearing a yellow dress in the above photo is second generation Japanese-Paraguayan. The dress she has on is crocheted by hand and took more than a year to make. In my ignorance of Paraguay, I assumed Spanish is the main language. I wasn't completely mistaken. According to Wikipedia, 

"The Republic of Paraguay is a mostly bilingual country, where both Spanish, an Indo-European language, and Guaraní, an indigenous language of the Tupian family, have official status.^[1]"

This lady counted to 10 in Guarani, and the sound of it was compelling. Compared to English and Japanese, it sounded so..... Foreign. 

Here's a list of the numbers 1-10 in Guarani:

http://www.native-languages.org/numbers/guarani_numbers.htm

I have more to say but I'll have to add it later, Friday night is overcoming me~~