Brazil Tour 9: Bouncy Bouncy!

January 8

Breakfast at the hotel and bring our stuff downstairs, checkout. Becca and I walked around the hotel to stretch our legs before the long bus ride and we claimed our seats early. But Becca sat way in the front so that she wouldn’t get car sick and at first she ended up next to Donna (the diva soprano hired to play with us on our trip. Not only was she not a very good soprano but she was more immature than most of the college kids on the trip). Donna got mad cause she wanted to be with her husband AND she wanted to close the curtains but Becca said no because she needed to see in order to not get motion sick. So Donna threw a fit and stormed away and luckily a student traded seats with her so she was happier. One of our trip chaperons told Becca after she didn’t know what to do when Donna was throwing her fit. Becca also tried not to talk to Donna and was looking around like she couldn’t hear her.

When we started the trip Gilda our amazing tour guide started singing “on the road again, that’s the only part of the song I know, on the road again” it was funny. For the first part of the trip I tried to sleep. Then we had a rest stop at the Japanese place again and we tried to get these cheese filled puff things but it turned out to be ground beef-really gross. And I had a can of the peach ice tea that Becca is obsessed with even though she told me it would make me have to pee.  Gilda put “Scary Movie” on which was awkward to watch with your 64 year old tour guide and the parents on the trip.

Oh and then the famous Bouncy Bouncy story: Donna was taking a walk on the bus and first she goes by my friend Courtney and makes the Wallace and Grommit scary teeth smile face. (the order of the seats was me, Eric, aisle, Courtney, Tony). Then on her way back she is going side ways with her back to Courtney and the bus bounced so she went backwards and Courtney opened her eyes just before Donna’s butt hit her in the nose so hard it made her eyes water. Then she rebounded off Courtney’s nose and Eric and I looked up in horror as we nearly got smothered by her massive chest (thank goodness we didn’t). She asked Courtney if she was ok and then said “bouncy bouncy” as way of explanation. It was all we could do to not start laughing until after she moved on . . . ]

The stupid ice tea went through me so I had to pee ridiculously bad but I didn’t want to go on the bus because another student had already destroyed the room.  I kept hoping Gilda would talk about stopping but she kept talking about the scenery and the beaches and how it was her favorite beach. Finally she said we’d stop in 30 min.  So when we finally stopped I leaped over my seat mate to get out of the bus. But I hesitated before going into the place because Gilda had said something about paying. (Later she told us that she hadn’t meant to confuse us, it was just that the bus had to pay, not us, but some countries make you pay for the restrooms so I never know). Luckily I just went though because the line got long after me. Oh and Sara went with me and there was a huge cockroach in her stall-gross. Afterward Becca and I got Nestle coconut ice bar things which are our new addictions-so good. And we walked around outside for a while.  Then we got back on the bus, Adam checked out our bus and told Becca that if the bus crashed she would go threw the window which was not a happy thought for poor Becca.

Then more bus time, I napped a little. Once Becca said to me that too bad naps weren’t measured by the amount of drool you did cause if so she would have had a good nap. Finally we get to Curitiba and Gilda starts talking about how it is dangerous and “yes I know. We care about you, yes, we don’t want you to get hurt. Yes it is dangerous I know” and I turned to Eric saying that maybe she was going to say  “I used to be in a gang.”  Gilda is awesome. We saw their funky bus terminals which are round and look like for outer space.

Check into the hotel in Curitiba, we’re on 7^th floor, takes forever to go upstairs. Our room is cute which I told Becca and Paul the conductor got confused cause he didn’t know how a room could be cute. Then back downstairs for dinner at hotel. Dinner was good though with AMAZING chocolate mousse. Thank goodness Becca and I figured out how to two plate the buffet line-it’s a balancing act, but we got our dessert with our dinner before it ran out.

Brazil Tour 8: Monkeys and Massages

January 7

We tried to sleep in until 11 but mom called at 10. There had been a possible tour in the morning but we had decided sleep was more important at this point. Mom said she’d call back again at 11 so we could sleep more, but then she fell asleep so I waited until 11:15, then showered and then she called at 11:30. Again in the morning some of the brass had to do a TV interview thing. Becca had tried to mail the postcards from the waterfall place but couldn’t so we decided to go to the post office because even though Ellie warned us about it Lauren had gone fine. So we watched the Brass thing on TV with Adam and then Becca, Sara, Adam and I all went on a walk to mail the postcards. But we missed the post office and ended up walking like three more blocks past it down this big hill and then back up it. But the post cards were finally mailed.

We had been planning to eat somewhere out of the hotel, but then we decided it would be easier to just eat at the hotel so we came back to eat there (Sara, Becca and I). I had pasta, it wasn’t very good. But on the salad table there was hard bread and pepper stuff to make bruschetta which I liked a lot.

Then we had an afternoon rehearsal but Becca didn’t have to go I think. She and the saxophone Chris were the only two people not in the pieces we played so she went with Karen (the conductor’s wife) to try and get Goucho CD’s and to this jewelry place. The stage was the crappy really hot one. I think all us cellos shared my water bottle-ew backwash.

When we got back I really wanted ice cream. Sara and I ran into Adam who said he and his roommate Matt were going to get Vitaminas so we asked if we could go to. So we ran upstairs to get ready. I told Rebecca and Sara and they were gonna go too, and then we ran into Catherine, but Catherine wanted to walk in the park. So I said ok we could walk to the park and get ice cream there. So Sara and I went back down to tell Adam and he was sitting there with all the hot brass boys!! And I had to tell them we weren’t going with them! It was very sad.

While we were waiting for Catherine and Rebecca Donna the soprano came up to us in this see through green top with a lace bra underneath-I wished she had a censor thing over her! And she gave me her Wallace smile and asked where the concert was that night and I said I didn’t know. So she gave me the smile again and kept asking, finally she left.

So then we walked to the park which was nice though and there were monkeys in cages so Becca finally saw her monkeys. And we got ice creams on sticks. On the way back Catherine wanted to run home but we didn’t want her to go in the streets by herself so we convinced her we couldn’t find the way home with out her (which was actually true).

The concert that night was at 9pm and again we couldn’t eat until afterward. I could see Paul off stage before the piano piece and he was sweating really bad (he sprayed Courtney with sweat every concert and she sprayed Eric and I with dead skin from her sunburn) and all of a sudden Donna in her be-sequined dress whipped out a handkerchief and started mopping his brow. It was funny/ weird.  Then as we were packing up Catherine said she felt funny and dizzy so I made her lay down cause she seemed like she was going to faint. I think it was a combination of not having dinner yet, not being able to move from the stage and how hot the stage was. Luckily Chris (trumpet) was really nice and went and found me Nay (the piano soloist) and 4 Brazilian doctors as well as some coke so she could have something with sugar to drink (I made her finish my water bottle). Then Chris carried all our stuff out the buses and I walked with Catherine.

Then the bus took us back to the hotel where they had a buffet dinner set up for us. I sat with Catherine, Becca, Sara, Liz, Alli, Jeff, and Megan. I heard the “Bohemia” story: Ali was trying to order a “Bohemia” the beer but they couldn’t understand it so finally she tried to speak in the Brazilian accent and yelled “Bohemia!” and they understood. The 8^th was Ali’s birthday so they were counting down the time. Plus everyone wanted to rush down to the bar because if nobody is there it closes at 12 but if people are there it stays open. Catherine and I got coffee drinks which were really good. There were these Brazilian chicks-really young though-that the orchestra boys were flirting with-kinda gross.

After I finished my coffee Rebecca and I went up to Adam’s room to get our “massages” (they really were massages but when I told the story later I used quotation marks which made it seem like it had been something else even though it really hadn’t been). Rebecca accidentally brushed Adam’s leg once and he thought it as a bug and slapped down really hard-luckily she had moved just in time so he only hit his leg. It was really funny. His other roommate came up to get his camera and was like “so many hot Brazilian girls” and Adam asked him what was going on and he said “we’ll see.” Ew! (Adam said that when he and Matt woke up in the morning the other roommate was moving his mattress back into the room-where had it been??? Ew! And supposedly the hot trumpet boy hooked up with another girl too).  Matt came up and he was funny when he opened the door cause he opened it slowly cause he heard noises and he walks in on a massage chain.  We were talking about things that can only go one way cause Adam said if a girl doesn’t shave “just pet down like a shark” so Matt said it’s like those spiky things on ramps at parking garages. And Adam said yeah like Chinese handcuffs and Matt said  “no you’re wrong”.

Then we went upstairs and packed and went to bed.

Brazil Tour 7: The Meat of the Cow’s Bebe

January 6

Breakfast at the hotel. Then we drove two hours to Caxis. Very pretty countryside. When we got there we unloaded our instruments and “did all of the bathroom things” as our tour guide said. We were supposed to get right back on the bus, but instead we waited in the sun for an hour. Since one girl, Daria had to leave early because something was wrong with her ticket so they wanted to straighten it out there at the college so the rest of us all stood around outside. And finally we got back on the bus but now we were an hour behind schedule. Oh we almost ran over an alligator.

Then we got off the bus at this Italian restaurant where this guy and his posse came out and sang to us. They sang some American songs and some Italian songs (“Va Pensiaro” the piece we played when the high school went to Italy). And we sat down to a really yummy dinner. First we had soup which was noodles filled with veal. Adam wanted to know what was in the soup so he kept asking the waiter and finally he said “it is the meat of the cow’s bebe” Jeff was like “did he just say bebe?” Oh and there was this “wine” on the table but really it tasted like grape juice with a wine after taste (so it was really sweet and I liked it). The rest of the meal was like this buffet stuff. Some noodles and fried cheese. Then for dessert we had tapioca in a wine sauce with cream (really good but not nearly big enough). While we were eating Paul came over and told us that the tour guide on his bus was kinda weird. Apparently she kept changing things and told the bus that Paul was bad and that they had almost refused to take us on the trip today. (Our tour guide was the sweetest lady ever). We were supposed to go on some tours after lunch, but we were behind schedule so we only went to one winery place that is only 30 years old. We had a cool little tour of it though and got to taste some wine. I liked the white one I had.

Then we drove back to the university where this guy talked to us and we watched a promotional video about the university. Everyone at the university was all dressed up, but Paul was in shorts and a t-shirt and we were all really casual too-oops. And then they gave us a gift bag-complete with a t-shirt, info on the university and a squishy heart. Yup, a squishy heart. Then we drank some coffee and piled onto the bus to go to the concert hall place (except some people walked because it was really close but I wasn’t sure how close it was so I took the bus).

So we had a quick rehearsal on stage. Paul dragged the rehearsal out even as the doors were ready to open so we had to run down and quick change afterward. They set up this tented area for some people to change in. But the guys left the thing open so Jeff started “seductively dressing”. I told him he was going the wrong way and he said “This way I have more to take off later”. So after the concert he pretended to do a strip tease. When I was putting my cello away he was like “wait I didn’t say goodbye”. I thought he meant me but then he ran up and grabbed my cello.

The concert again felt long and Paul did his usual speech in the middle where he said happy new year in Portuguese and then got a translator to give his speech about thanking everyone and thanking the translator and embarrassing them and then about how you may not know that most of the orchestra is not music majors. . . blah blah blah.

Then we had dinner at the university Goucho place. Argh another meat bar! I didn’t really eat too much, just some bread and stuff and drank some wine. Megan wanted a fanta but she didn’t know how to make them understand so she kept saying “fanta” then “fanta sota” saying it so that it rhymed which made us laugh because saying “sota” wasn’t gonna help. Then they had another goucho show and then afterwards we all just started dancing. I was trying to make Jeff dance with me but funnily enough he wouldn’t.  Oh and Eric tried to do a feet stomping imitation of the Goucho spear dance (where they dance over a sword without touching it).  Then on the bus Becca and I slept for the two hours back. Then sleeping at the hotel.

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.

Brazil Tour 5: Gouchos

January 4

Thank goodness someone woke us up and that we had packed the night before. We unfortunately didn’t have time to shower, just to throw our carry-on stuff together and go down to the lobby. Then we went to the breakfast buffet to grab some food.  So then we went to put our stuff on the bus and I was really tired and out of it so I was like leaning all over my cello.  That is probably the only useful thing  traveling with a cello involves. Normally it is just me trying to hold onto my luggage, enormous purse and awkward cello, but in terms of something to sit on or lean on, a heavy duty flying cello case picks up the slack. So we got on the bus and the stupid parents on the bus had decided to move around (us kids were keeping to the same seats).

A 6 hour bus ride made even longer because we had a lunch stop in the middle. I was sleeping for a bit, then Rebecca said she was feeling sick because she gets motion sick. So I went to the front of the bus and asked Linda one of our trip leaders if she could find someone to switch with Rebecca so she could sit in the front so she might feel better. Linda said she’d switch with her. So then I sat with Linda for a couple hours and went in and out of sleep. So then we stopped at this rest stop that was like fast food. But it was really confusing because they didn’t have the toilet paper in the bathroom-like you had to bring it in with you before you entered-who knew? And then we only saw the place to buy snack food first and didn’t realize that we could buy actual lunch food. Rebecca still wasn’t feeling well, but we were having trouble finding someone else to switch with her. So when we got back on the bus we finally found a couple that would switch with both of us so we sat in the very front of the bus (our bus driver was actually on a level below us). Unfortunately this was when they put a movie on (Jingle All the Way) so now I couldn’t watch it because we were too far forward. And we were next to Donna, who luckily wasn’t too annoying. (She makes this weird smile that looks like the Wallace face on “Wallace and Gromit”). The parents were being really obnoxious about trading with Rebecca even though she was really sick-why is it parents are always more immature than the students on orchestra trips?

Then after the bus ride we checked into our room which was the same set up as the last hotel (little sitting room, a bathroom and two bedrooms, one with a twin bed and then one with two doubles where Rebecca and I were). Luckily our room had the phone in it this time so we could set a phone alarm and not worry. So then we took a nap, some people went for walks and stuff.

So when we woke up we went to dinner at this Gaucho place. The dinner was TONS of meat. It was like every part of the cow (and pig and lamb) imaginable and these guys would come out with the meat on sticks and cut some off into your plate. (Needless to say I actually didn’t eat much of that). We had little coasters that said “sim, por favor” or “não obrigado” which indicated whether you wanted a hunk of meat sliced into your place. (When I was in China I heard that there was a restaurant like this in Wuhan, unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to go.)

Then the Gaucho’s did a cowboy dance thing. One of the dances was this spear dance where they had to dance over a spear but not touch it. Then they made our conductor come up and try the dancing and dressed him up in cowboy clothes. Then they started dancing and pulled people from the audience to dance with. Then we paid to leave the food area (there was always a receipt like thing that would be filled out while you were in a place and then you’d pay at the door to leave). Then Rebecca and I were looking for souvenirs. So we got this green tea stuff and this hollowed out gourd to drink it in and this special spoon straw. But we aren’t sure how to make it because the directions are in Portuguese . .. oops.

This is the Lizard story:

Ok so one night Rebecca and I were in the lobby and Sara was in the room and our friend came and knocked on the door:

“Are Sarah or Rebecca here?” Sara said no we weren’t.

“oh, there’s a lizard in my room” long pause

“do you want to come in?”

then he walks in, walks around the room and keeps repeating that there is a lizard in his room she asked “do you want me to come back with you?”

and he said “no, it’s ok”

so then he came downstairs and found us and told us and he was all upset about it his roommate was downstairs too, not caring at all and he was like “I was looking for a book big enough to crush it”

“What?! You don’t crush lizards!” I exclaimed, “it’s not like a spider! You get them out of your room, not crush them!”

He seemed disappointed, and had trouble sleeping cause he was worried about the lizard. At the time I was imagining something close to an alligator, but in retrospect I realize it was probably a tiny one…