Brazil Tour 6: Pickpockets and Sweat

January 5

We were planning to go to the post office in the morning to mail our postcards, but when Sara got up to go to the hospital for her bug bites Ellie (our trip coordinator) made her call us and tell us not to go because it was dangerous. So we waited downstairs for Lauren to tell her not to go, but she was late so we went to breakfast and Catherine met us there (we saw Lauren leave a half hour later, but she came back later just fine). Also we were going to rehearse strictly Beethoven in the afternoon, so the parents and people not in Beethoven got to go on a trip to see these waterfalls. Rebecca went to the waterfalls along with Bassoon Jeff.

In the morning the tour guides arranged for these people to come exchange our travelers checks (that was the only time during the whole trip when we could exchange travelers checks and why I tell people never to bring traveler’s checks). Then I went with a couple of guys to the supermarket to get more water and a razor. (when we left Florianopolis in a hurry I left my Venus razor in the shower, and here’s a plug for Venus: I borrowed one of Sara’s disposable Bic razors for a day and it was the worst shave of my life. I might as well have taken a butcher knife to my legs. So Venus it is). So I found some water and got some Brazilian coffee and chocolate for souvenirs and then I bought a razor with a bunch of guys looking on. It was funny because-they didn’t understand why I spent so long looking at them and didn’t want to just take any old one. But since my legs were still smarting from the run in with the Bic I was inclined to be picky. Then when I tried to pay with credit card leaving they wouldn’t accept it for some reason, luckily I had cash then. The boys bought cases of beer (of course). Then we walked back to the hotel.

Then Courtney decided that she wanted to go to this open air market place to look for earrings and other souvenirs. So the group that went was: Courtney, Heather, Tony, Andrew, Eric, Mike, Pete, Sean.  And somebody else I don’t remember and me. We took a right out of the hotel and walked down. On the walk I ended up in the back which made me nervous because they were warning us that it was dangerous and there were pickpockets. So I maneuvered to be in front of Pete and Mike. We stopped under this over hang place once we got to the market and Courtney said to meet back there at 12:40 (we had to be on the bus for rehearsal at 1pm). It was about 12 when we stopped. So the group kinda broke up for a while, and I wasn’t too impressed with the stuff at the market. I have a lot of trouble buying souvenirs. Often things just look cheap or like something people would throw out. I always want to get really meaningful stuff, but if I find something it’s too expensive…Then we ran into the hot brass boys.  So then the four of us were walking around and wanted to get some food. So we stopped with them at Bob’s Burger. They were talking about how a bunch of the brass boys were going to take a plane to El Salvador after our trip was done to have some vacation time by themselves.

After they finished eating we walked back to the meeting point. Everyone else was there and Courtney was all flustered and said “We need to leave right now” so we started walking and asking what had happened. Apparently they got attacked. Some guy tried to grab Heather’s purse, so she tried to pull it away from him and he grabbed her hand. So Courtney tried to pull her away from the guy and he hit Courtney on her bad wrist really hard. And then they struggled and ran away from him. And then they spent the rest of the time looking for the rest of us but they couldn’t leave because we were supposed to meet them.  It was weird because I had forgotten to been scared the whole time.

When we got back to the hotel I ran upstairs and grabbed my cello and lunch, but of course we didn’t leave on time anyways because Paul was enjoying a nice lunch upstairs . . .  Finally we loaded onto the other two buses (my bus was with the waterfall people). The rehearsal place was really hot! No air! We were sweating so bad!  We had a really long annoying rehearsal. I hate Beethoven! One girl got “swamp ass” as Violin Pete put it. Which was when she was sitting and got sweaty the chair she was sitting on got a puddle in it.  Gross? During break we were talking about how jealous we were of the people at the waterfall. We were like “yeah, they’re probably swimming in the waterfall, yeah they’re having fun.” But then Eric said “they’re probably caught in traffic” so we felt better. Finally rehearsal ended.

When we got back to the hotel some people wanted to go shopping again. Wes (he is a Lehigh graduate who has been on all of the orchestra trips so far and he plays the viola, he’s really nice and can speak fluent Spanish which is helpful) led the way to these open air markets. I didn’t want to go at first but they said it was from a left out of the hotel so it was not the same as Courtney’s place, but we ended up making 3 lefts s(3 lefts = a right?) so it was Courtney’s place from the morning. When we got to the place I realized it was the same place and I didn’t want to go back after Courtney’s experience. I was with Adam and Catherine and Adam refused to go down there and Catherine said she didn’t really want to go down their either, she just wanted to find another disposable camera because she had used all of hers up. So we decided to just look in the stores along the street and not go down to the open air part. Two other students walked with us too. Adam got all scared though and refused to go anywhere. But I told him we couldn’t just let Catherine walk by herself and he was like “oh yeah”. But then the whole time we were walking he looked scared and kept looking over his shoulder. Then all of a sudden one of the student’s with us yelled “ow! There’s this pain in my back” and we were like what is it? And he said “he didn’t know but if anything happened there was an epi-pen in his room”. So Adam asked if he could look at his back (he’s an EMT) but the kid refused and was all weird. (Why wasn’t his epi with him?). The whole time we were walking then he was rubbing his back, and the others were looking around scared. I’m normally a nervous person, so if I’m less nervous than someone-they must be petrified! It was odd be the most relaxed in the group…Finally Catherine and I decided we couldn’t tolerate the others panicking anymore and walked home.

So then we hung out by the bar for awhile. The hot brass boys were there and Courtney was drinking a beer.   Then we got on the two other buses again (the waterfall people were going straight to the pizza place). Dinner was at this pizza place and it was that night that the bidet incident occurred.