Virgins and Benefit Concerts

Greetings from the surface of the sun. It's been a while (is awhile a word, or is it necessary to divide it in two?) since I updated my blog, again I will shamelessly use the old "I have no access to the internet where I live" excuse. I'm in Asuncion today because I'm playing tonight in a benefit concert, with other Peace Corps bands and some Paraguayan groups too. It's no Farm Aid or anything, but it should be a good time.

Life is good in site. Last week was the annual festival of the Virgin of Caacupe, a 9-day event attended by 3 million Paraguayans (half of the country's population). The tradition is to walk to Caacupe to honor the Virgin, but we sort of cheated and took a bus halfway there. We still had to walk about 20K though, nothing to sneeze at. The festival is supposedly a religious event, but with hundreds of thousands of people present the cathedral and the happenings there receive little attention. The rest of it is a giant market, with hundreds of food and souvenir vendors. It's sort of like a State Fair. My sister would have loved it.

Work is rolling, too, slowly but surely. My friend Hugo and I are making a bee smoker, and the tree planting project is rolling along steadily. Hopefully we'll get some seedlings in the ground by March or April, if the municipality gives us the funds we need.

Hope everyone is enjoying the cold weather, I sure miss it. Peace...