An American in Asuncion

As an American in another country, sometimes you just need an all-around American day: a day, that is, to indulge yourself in your own culture and get reacquainted with your own way of life; a day full of familiar luxuries and simple wonders taken for granted at home; a day, perhaps, even to wallow around and get dirtied in the mud of what many too-good-for-you-types would consider baser parts of American society.

After eight months in Paraguay, I was long overdue for such an all-around gratifying American day. I was ready, and even hungry for, the shopping and the movie theater and the cheap fast food (which isn’t so cheap, after all, here in Paraguay). And so, last Thursday on a day off from school, I headed out to the “choochy” part of Asuncion on the other side of town. Here one can find many of the luxuries of life patterned after finer American living: nice little bakeries, expensive car dealerships, modern furniture establishments, movie theaters, a mall, and even a McDonalds and Burger King. This little piece of America in Asuncion lies in the rich part of town, about an hour bus ride away from Lambaré, amongst guarded mansions and beautiful embassies and high-fenced English-speaking schools for the children of diplomats and missionaries.

The first thing I did when I arrived to the rich part of tow was to mill around Shopping Del Sol, the nicest mall in Paraguay but comparable in the States with old Rolling Acres in Akron. There I hit up the bookstore where I pretended to be interested in reading books, but, after finding that they were all in Spanish, left in a huffy for an antiquities dealership where I had a great conversation about antique dealing with an Argentinian woman whose ex-husband lives in the U.S. After I told her that I had spent time in the Middle East and had taken a course on archaeology, she thought I was an expert archaeologist and asked me my opinion of a hand-cut rock she had. She thought it was from the era of the cavemen, but I didn’t want to tell her it looked like a common broken barn stone. “One has to be careful of you buy from these days. There’s a lot of counterfits,” she said. “Yes, you have to be very careful,” I replied with my best put-on expert voice.

After doing some window shopping of stores and styles that I’m pretty sure were dumped on Paraguay as the unsold leftovers from other shops in countries up North, I went to the movie theater where a selection of movies that opened up in the States two or three months ago were playing as new releases. The only movie that wasn’t dubbed over in Spanish (I was, after all, spending an American day, so I could hardly tolerate an American movie not in American-speak) was the one with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman about two fellows—one a rich but sad white white-collar executive and the other a poor but content black blue-collar mechanic—who find themselves spending their last few months of life adventuring together after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. I won’t give away the ending, but the movie was too long and pretty predictable. I will say, though, that while I’ve only been away from the States for eight months, Jack Nicholson looks like death in the movie and seems to have aged a few decades since I’ve come here.

After slipping out of the mediocre movie I headed down the street for McDonalds, where I ate my first Big Mac in years. Even when I’m at home I usually get something more healthy from McDonalds, but this was a special occasion: a celebration of my American heritage and the Big Sandwich that is undoubtedly a bigmac part of that legacy. The fries I got on the side tasted just like those in the States. I wonder if they ship Idaho potatoes and McDonalds ketchup all the way to Paraguay.

After all was said and done, I left the mall, the movie theater, and MceeDees very satisfied and content with myself as an American. Although many might see the elements of American culture that I experienced as ugly things—that is, the materialism represented by the mall, the ever-new need for entertainment and pleasure represented by the movie theater, and the corporatism and gluttony represented by McDonalds—the day was just what I needed to remind me of my country, bring a smile to my face, and help me appreciate the things that America does and that America is. Even if it’s only for sending name brand clothes all around the world, making bad predictable movies, and being responsible for the manufacture of big cholesterol-filled BigMacs in South America, I will always love and appreciate my country, her culture, and her people wherever I may find myself.