Open Window English Language Institute

By Lisa Cortes and Melissa Weinblatt

Last night we had the time of our lives.

We were invited to Open Window, an English language institute run by Luis and Alicia Sanchez Negrette. It was a fabulous experience.

We gave individual impromptu presentations to two different English classes. It was refreshing to speak a little Enghish and interact with the students. The second class was comprised of students ranging from fourteen to eighteen years of age. They also gave presentations to us about their country that were incredibly enlightening, covering subjects such as tourisim, politics, music, education and production. Not only were they very well prepared and articulate, but we all agreed that their English was considerably better than ours!

We were coined The Spice Girls and Emily was the much-anticipated Militar. They had a terrific sense of humor and prepared an amazing meal for us that we enjoyed together over live music played by one of the students. Heather got his autograph, which will certainly be worth millions one day - no joke!

Luis (in photo with Emily) is the District 4790 GSE chair.

Some of the dishes that we sampled (some of us sampled a little more than others) included:

Millanesa - similar to chicken-fried-steak with lime or lemon juice on top.

Chipa -cheesy, salty, biscuit-balls. (We made these in Corrientes)

Sopa Paraguay - similar to cornbread with an egg-like texture.

Postre - star shaped, deep-fried with cream cheese in the middle.

Guiso- soup that college students eat according to Luis. It consists of rice, tomato sauce, oregano, potato or sweet potato, etc. IT WAS REALLY GOOD.

Okay, well we would love to share more but our new friend Flopy (one of the students) is here to take us shopping and we just finished our te con leche y azucar.

Ciao, ciao.