Our town changed overnight.

Tents and stalls have sprung up on the streets. Here and there, plastic chairs are being lined up on the sidewalk; there are even trash cans now, although everything was perfectly clean without them. A paradox, by the way—how that works is beyond me. Banners and posters are hung everywhere; even the local Catholic church is hosting a lunch and recruiting volunteers for the occasion. The stadiums are no longer stadiums: they’ve brought in rides, carousels, and trampolines, setting them up right in the center, still a bit haphazardly. The same thing happened to the sports fields and courts. For now, it’s all empty.

From Friday to Sunday, people from all corners of Maine will try to squeeze into little Yarmouth for the annual Clam Fest. Try to imagine a special effect like in Titanic, where the ship's deck "comes to life" from the present into the past. In a week, all of this will be filled with people—and it will finally make sense.

In a week—can you imagine? The level of preparation reminds me of the Quidditch World Cup final.

My attempts to figure out why people from all over the country would flock to such a small town failed. I gather it’s for the fair itself, the shopping, the rides, the delicious food, and tradition. We’ll see; this promises to be an interesting report.

And at work, they’ve been talking about nothing but Clam Fest since June. An unprecedented rush is expected, and potatoes, potatoes—it seems like it's constantly four baskets deep.

Well, buena suerte para todos de nosotros.