I’ve had a chance to call home over the last couple of days and the one thing I hear from everyone is that “You’re coming up on your first full week away”. It’s weird because today marks exactly one week of travel, but it feels like it has been much longer than that. Since Saturday, we’ve had a 5 hour van ride from Encarnacion back to Asuncion, a 3 and a half hour plane ride from Asuncion to Sao Paulo, a 5 hour flight from Sao Paulo to Bogota and a one hour flight from Bogota to Cartagena. In the midst of it all, we’ve been fighting various infirmities and other issues. All of this has come together to make the last two days seem like a lifetime worth of activity. Luckily, yesterday was a much needed rest day. We all slept in until about 3pm and got out to see the city. When you do any kind of work that enables you to travel and do your job, you’ll find that although your passport has many stamps, there was never any time to make a connection with the city. Any kind of free time must be rationed so that you can actually feel like you’ve visited a place.

The second week of our tour brings us to Colombia. I have to be honest, the only thing that I’ve known about Colombia was that there was some great coffee here. On the short ride in I saw that the Juan Valdez coffee house is as popular as Starbucks back home. I’ve learned that Cartagena used to be a fort city that facilitated the slave trade. There is this huge wall that surrounds the city and was used as a defense mechanism for the many castle like structures that it in encompasses and also as a means to keep the slaves from escaping. The city sits on the coast and is on the same level as the sea. This means that during the rainy season, which is now, random showers and thunderstorms occur frequently throughout the day. It’s not uncommon for any street or major thoroughfare to be flooded. Check out some of the pics I’ve taken in the beautiful city of Cartagena:

Does this work for me?? The locals seem to think so!!!

» Read more: Cartagena, Colombia

Just to let you guys know, some of the blogs may talk about things that happened a couple of days earlier. This is because I still write all of the time, even though I may not have an Internet connection to post everyday!

I stepped outside of my hotel this morning just to get a breath of fresh air, take a few pictures and observe natural life here in Asuncion. If I had to sum my experience up in one word, it would be movement. There are many buses, cars and pedestrians everywhere we go, significant of the fact that this city is alive and well. Everyone has a different story and many of them are interested in my story – “What has brought me to Asuncion”. My interaction would range from the frequent “thumbs up”, to the gratuitous smiles, communication through signals (because my Spanish is not good at all!!!) and the rare instance of a native that speaks English. One thing that has remained consistent through it all has been my acceptance. I must say that I have not encountered any negativity from the people here and for that I am truly grateful. It encourages me to continue to be a good person and not to let go of my dreams of this world one day being a peaceful place.

Here are a few pictures of this beautiful place and some of the things we’ve been doing:

Street Side in the business district…

» Read more: The People…

AFAR has done a few interviews with the local press in Asunción and some of the articles, as well as others are starting to surface on the internet. This should be a treat for those fluent in Spanish! Click on the links below to see what they’re saying about us!

1. Ultima Hora
2. La Nacion
3. ABC
4. US Embassy in Colombia

It’s official! AFAR has safely made it to Asunción, Paraguay and our 2007 tour has begun. The flight here was great. It took about 9 hours to get here and I slept about 95% of the time. So it was really easy for me. We flew in to Sao Paulo and caught a connecting flight into Asunción. From what I’ve been hearing, connection flights in Sao Paulo can typically have layovers of five hours or more, so we were blessed to only wait about thirty minutes or so for our flight.

Living in America, you take for granted that everything is in English while the Spanish translation sits quietly beneath. For the first time in my life, everything’s the exact opposite (if there is any English at all). In other words, my Spanish proficiency is about to sky-rocket!!! Right now, I want to send a special thanks to all of the teachers and professors that tried to convince me that French would be more important to learn that Spanish. You guys had very keen insight! I just wish I hadn’t listened.

We had our first experience ordering food yesterday. That was funny! Jahah and I were in the food court of a mall jumping up and down, pointing at pictures, trying out our chicken impressions (although our french fry impressions didn’t convey too well our intentions…(you just had to be there, lol)). Some kind of way, we ended up with a grilled chicken sandwich with ham, cheese, bacon and egg. So progress was made, not necessarily what we had envisioned, but we at least got some food!

Here are some pics:

This is the view from my hotel room here at Villa Mora Suites:

We stay on the main road here in Asunción. It’ really cool because you can stand outside and see the people and get a feel for how life is here. The people are very nice here and most times they just walk up and start conversations. A lot of people enjoy the opportunity to use the English that they have been learning with Americans.

The Current conversion rate:

So it’s roughly around $5000 Guaranies to $1 American. This means that about $30 should take care of us for the next 3 days.

In preparation of our arrival, all of the cars had to get AFAR tags:

Just kidding! I saw this while riding down the street!

Lastly a shot of AFAR and some new fans from the Centro Cultural Paraguayo Americano (CCPA):

Our first workshop and show is Thursday. We’re excited to be here and can’t wait to start working!

Well, it’s that time of year again. The time when I usually tour with my band AFAR. This year we’ll be visiting some great countries in South America. Insert Self promoting image here:

This year Marc is joining us and Doron decided to sit this one out.  I think he’s still tired from running all over the world!!! Everything seems like it’ll be tons of fun.  The greatest thing about the tours we are blessed to do through Jazz at Lincoln Center and The State Department is that everything we experience on our travels reminds us not to give up on humanity.  Life can seem very hopeless and sad at times, especially with murder and crime rates increasing.  Being a part of these tours not only allow us to exchange musical ideas with other cultures, but it allows us meet and spend time with some incredible people with incredible stories to tell.  It allows us to have a first hand look at cultures that we may have only seen on television or read in a book.  It makes you take another look at your life and re-evaluate everything that you thought you couldn’t do and everything that you thought you couldn’t make it through.

It’s impossible to do this tour and not come back a changed person!

Well, someone must have moved my cheese because South America… Here I Come!!