(upbeat music) - [Alexis] When I come to McDonald's, eat some, eat a burger with my girlfriend, we do stuff like that, yeah.

- Oh, so it's like a date night?

- Sometimes they do actually do date night.

- Have you been on a date to McDonald's?

- No.

(chimes sounding) - Hi, I'm Meg, executive producer at Nashville Public Television and on this series we talk about the little things that people notice when they first moved to the region from another country.

And today I'm here with Alexis Baez and Alexis moved to Nashville, Tennessee from Encarnacion, Paraguay and we've been talking and he shared one thing that really stood out to him when he first moved here about McDonald's.

So Alexis, tell us, what's the difference from your experiences between McDonald's in Paraguay and the United States?

- [Alexis] Okay, so difference of McDonald's in Paraguay and United States, I would say McDonald's here is more casual so there's everywhere you can go and get it at McDonald's.

- Yeah.

- And Paraguay, we don't have like a many McDonald's.

It's like maybe one each city.

So it's like three, only cities are big cities there.

So it's like luxury to eat McDonald's there.

Yeah, because it's more expensive- - It's more expensive?

- More expensive for different actually burger style than we have there.

This is the reason that it's a little different than what I see when I came here.

- [Meg] But it's the same menu items, more or less?

- [Alexis] It's the same menu items.

Everything's the same.

It's just, it a culture thing.

Because it's, you know, from United States, so it's something like that.

When I come to McDonald's, eat some, eat a burger with my girlfriend, we do stuff like that, yeah.

- Oh, so it's like a date night?

- Sometimes they do actually do date night.

- Have you been on a date to McDonald's?

- No.

- Oh.

- I haven't because when I was living there, for like 10 years ago, we didn't have McDonald's.

- Oh.

- It's just been like a few years, like maybe eight years, something like that.

- [Meg] Yeah.

- [Alexis] But since my last trip, yeah, I can see like the people with their friends, people are like with girlfriends, and stuff like that.

So it's like kind of different, what we have in Paraguay and the United States.

- And would you say that people consider it like, that's American food?

Like they're almost like the, you know, representing what people eat in the United States or not so much?

- Yeah, something like that.

Because you know, like some, some stuff like people see United States like, like in movies.

Some stuff like that.

People, McDonald's is something, like they want to do it, too.

They want the experience and that's the reason they go to McDonald's.

That's the thing is like kind of luxury there because that is the whole reason.

It is because people see movies.

Oh, McDonald's, eating McDonald's with their friends.

- Ah, that makes sense.

There's always famous- - And they want to have the experience, too, like people have in the United States.

Yeah.

- Okay.

So it's rare, it's known.

- It's known.

- It's in movies.

And it's like this, oh this is a place where I can try American food.

- Exactly.

Different, different type, like, burger.

Yeah, because they actually, the burger they make there they do it on kind of like a stove but this is a grill, so okay, we don't do burgers on grills there in Paraguay.

So it's another thing too.

Yeah, it's different.

- Interesting.

- So they're gonna try something new, you know?

- Okay, and so what is like typical, if there's typical, like fast food restaurants in Paraguay?

And what would you eat there?

- So we have also like a, like a store, like a where they sell burgers and stuff like that but it's a different type.

They actually put like a eggs in the burger, stuff like that.

- I've seen that in Spain, interesting.

- Yeah, so they put in like a ham, eggs, stuff like that.

So, you know, they're like, okay this is kind of usual, really, I don't want to try anymore.

So someday when you see McDonald's you say, I wanna try this different thing.

The cheese is different, the meat is different.

So, that's the thing, like people wanna try the new thing, yeah.

- Well, very cool.

Well now I wanna try a Paraguayan burger someday with an egg on it- (Alexis laughing) and put that on the list.

Thank you all for tuning in.

I hope you learned something and found it as interesting as I did.

If you enjoyed this video please give us a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel so you can follow more in the series.

- [Announcer] Next Door Neighbors is made possible by the support of the Nissan Foundation.