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 4: We came here for concerts?

January 3

This morning the brass and a representative from each section went to this workshop for children. The brass played something and then each instrument played something too. They filmed it and put it on TV later and we saw it. It was really funny because they kept cutting to a fellow cellist of mine playing the same thing over and over on the cello and they were only focusing from her neck down.  Then we all went to rehearsal.

So then we drove to the concert hall where we took a picture in front of our billboard. Then we walked to this food court place near by and had Chinese food.  Also there were fried bananas again. Then we went back to rehearsal, but the stage was really hot-so gross. We went back to the hotel to shower and eat before the concert at 9 (the conductor got on the bus and said we had time to “shit and shower” (he meant to say shave)). We unfortunately had to play the Berlioz with Donna the crappy guest soprano.

The concert went really well-apparently we turned away 300 people since the hall was already full! The audience was really enthusiastic and whistled and cheered after every piece. It felt like we were rock stars or something. And then our conductor had wanted to take us to Studio 54 but the bus drivers didn’t want to go because they had to drive us early in the morning to Porto Allegre. So a couple of us got caipirihia’s again and we sat inside at a table. And the boys ordered Absinthe since they couldn’t get it in the US and wanted to try it. They all did shots of it and this crazy grad student did like 3. So we hung out at the bar until like 2:00 or so.

We packed that night even though we were really tired and wanted to take naps while packing. And we were supposed to get up the next morning at 5:30 because we were supposed to be on the bus by 7:00. But since there were no alarm clocks in the hotel room we were depending on our phones. Which when sleep deprived on a trip is pretty easy to turn off. And phone calls to the room were also easy to stop when the phone is pulled off the hook…Luckily we had packed the night before and one of our diligent friends pounded on our door at 6:30.