Caacupe, SanBer...

The dia de la Amistad went well, I got lots of chocolate and regalitos.

On Friday night all my friends and I went to a dicotecca, May B, for a school party (vicius). It was definately a great time since the music was way better then the last time I went to a club. More Reggaeton y menos electronic. We stayed out until about 3 so we didn´t dance a ton but it was sufficient.

Saturday at our church I got to help out with the misa (mass). A girl was having her quince there so alot of people were dressed really nice and were taking pictures.

Yesterday my family and I went to Caacupe which is a really important city for Paraguay. Every year in December thousands of people make a pilgrimage there for the feast of the Virgen de Caacupe. There is a amazing basilica there that we visited. Marcelo and I climbed to the top and looked out over the whole city. After that we went to Casa de Marienela and Casa de Monte which are really nice and beatiful places to stay. Marienela is a religious retreat house that a lot of people from Italy built. A lot of work was put into it and there is a lot of really cool craftmanship there. Monte is really cool because it was up on a mountain and looked out over the jungle. They had like a mini zoo with tucans and parrots and the like. Both places were really cool and I took tons of pictures so my camera almost ran out of batteries.

We also stopped at a leather stand where they had lots of stuff. I bought some leather work for presents and momentos de Paraguay. My family was really nice to me and bought me a terere thermos with my name on it. Im really excited about it... I already bought some yerba mate for the states and am looking for a bombilla (metal straw used to drink it).

Lastly we went to San Bernadino which is a summer resort town on lake Yparcarai. Since it is winter now it was pretty empty but it was nice all the same. There I saw my friend Kyle from Minnesota who lives in Luque and is on the soccer program. I haven´t seen him since we got here. Seems like he has been having a good time as well. He said we have an AFS camp on Saturday but I really hope we don´t because my family might take me to Itaipu this weekend. Itaipu is the region adjacent to the border with Brasil... really far from here but beautiful. Hopefully I can go.