O Paraguay, where art thou in my blogosphere?

Paraguay, waiting for you to come visit is un-bear-able! (Note the Paraguay flag at bear’s feet.) Image courtesy of Alvimann, Morguefile.

Every once in a while, armed with the appropriate foraging rations of Diet Pepsi and chocolate pretzel M&Ms, I go exploring through my WordPress dashboard to review my blog stats. Curiosity compels me to look at my data to see which posts are the most and least popular so I have a sense of what people are reading and what works for them.

Since I travel whenever possible, I like to see where in the world my readers are situated. I adore the WordPress stats page that shows everywhere the blog has been read.  It’s color-coded, where the darker colors indicate the highest readership, plus there’s a list of flags accompanied by their country names.

My blog’s penetrated most of the world’s continents. Imagine that — I never realized how extensive the blogosphere can be. I’ve been read by people I never, ever imagined would visit my blog. Three of them were published authors.

Much of Asia and Africa has stopped in at least once — there are some gaps but I get it since some of those countries are in remote areas. Europe, Australia and North America are frequent visitors, bless ’em.

Antarctica — nope. I think penguins ate the Wi-Fi antennas.

Even South America’s gotten in on the act, it seems. But there is one South American country that stubbornly holds out: Paraguay. I’m hoping somebody from there will come visit one day. (I wonder if chocolate would help?) Just one visitor, that’s all I ask.

Maybe I should go grab a boat, sail down there and go cross-country until I get to Paraguay. They’ve got some snazzy waterfalls and a rockin’ set of historical ruins called La Santisima Trinidad de Paraná. (Gorgeous name, especially when you say it out loud.) You can work wonders in someone else’s country with polite behavior and a smile. It’s worked for me so far.

When I visited Clervaux Castle in Luxembourg, I once visited an amazing photography display called “The Family of Man” by Edward Steichen. The point of the display was to show that although we all come from different countries, we still go through the same life experiences, such as birth, joy, laughter, pain, fear and hope.

Maybe some Paraguayan readers will want to drop in and visit sometime when they see a post of mine that resonates with something in their own lives. We’ll see.

Blog readers, any thoughts about all the countries and the people that read your writing?