Job Discussion Forums

[thehairyhorse]

Anyone worked here - thinking of heading there for a bit (in Feb, March)??

[Phil_b]

Yep....

I was there til about 18 months ago..... The big language schools out there are the Centro Anglo-Paraguayo www.anglo.edu.py and the Centro Cultural Paraguayo-Americano www.ccpa.ws. The first is more likely to hire Brits and the second more likely to hire Americans. The school sorted out my visa - I went in on a tourist visa and they could change it. I don't think that there's much of a problem with border hopping either. There is no income tax, you just pay a social security levy (IPS).

There's not much teaching going on in Feb, it tends to get going again in March. That time of year is hotter and more humid than a mosquito's armpit.

As you'd probably expect, wages are low, and so is the cost of living, I think it's the cheapest place I found in South America.

If you've got any more specific questions, I'd be happy to answer them... stick them up here, there isn't much info on Py here.

[moonraven]

Good place to run guns, too.

[Phil_b]

Guns, cannabis, cocaine, stolen cars, scotch.... you name it... they ship it. I somehow managed to mention Paraguay without mentioning the enormous corruption - internal, external, public-sector, private sector. This is the biggest obstacle to progress, whether it's economic or social in the country.

[moonraven]

And the US military is crawling all over the place supposedly chasing Hezbollah, but really with the agenda to "secure" the world's biggest freshwater aquifer....

[Phil_b]

I read something recently in ABC Color www.abc.com.py that said something about a recent study that showed the aquifer to be saltwater... That'd throw a spanner in the works of a lot of property investors. There's a hell of a lot of companies that have been speculating by buying land on top of the aquifer.

[moonraven]

ABC is fronting propaganda for the US government--as usually. Just another strategy to get their hands on the aquifer....

[matttheboy]

Transparency International's last corruption list put Paraguay firmly at the bottom as the most corrupt nation in Latin America, quite closely followed by Ecuador (of course the joke in Ecuador goes that they weren't found to be the most corrupt nation because they paid to avoid it...)

[Phil_b]

I thought that was a Paraguayan joke (they were 3rd placed internationally)

[Phil_b]

The most accurate account I've found about Paraguay is "At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig" by John Gimlette (Hutchinson 2003). It's easy to get hold of in the UK, I don't know about anywhere else... but if you want to know about the country, you could do far worse than read this.

[Ipora]

I�ll be moving to Paraguay (most likely Asuncion) at the beginning of April. Anyone have any hints about what organizations are out there?