NUTS roasting, on an open fire.

That subject is a Lawyer family inside joke. I'm sorry if you're not on the inside, but it's really funny. You're missing out.

I was a block away from the Queen today! It is Remembrance Sunday, so many many proud people attended the solemn ceremony on Whitehall Street. Patriotism is interesting in a country that has been involved in such a long history of wars and service. The ceremony was obviously well rehearsed probably because it's been an annual tradition for 87 years. I'm guessing that the metal detectors at the entrance to Whitehall are a more recent addition to the ceremony. The Queen was the first of many to lay a wreath in memory of troops on the Centograph. There was a long moment of silence sandwiched in the middle of great live British band music and some occasional bagpipes.

It's beginning to look a little bit like Christmas in London! Oxford Street is decorated and everyone is strongly urged to be a busy Christmas shopper. The window displays are particularly festive. The multiple ice rinks are popular and well zambonied. And most importantly, I bought roasted chestnuts from a street vendor guy outside the British Museum! And while we're preemptively celebrating things, let me inform you that there's only 44 days until the new year!! Happy Easter!!

Internship - day 1

Although I had to say goodbye to dad this morning, I had a pretty great time at my internship. My supervisor took me on an art delivery mission. We packed up his car with bubble wrapped art and drove to a children's museum on Old Kent Road. Then we collected some more art for the same museum at a special art storage facility. I stayed at the children's art museum for the rest of the day. The people at this museum are very young and friendly. They are busy putting together an exhibit called "X marks the spot" which will explore the idea of maps. First, they put me to work documenting the art pieces that we delivered into a table which reminded me a lot of my TSG summer job. Other than that, I drank a lot of tea, got to know my coworkers, and eventually I got involved in the exhibit construction! I made a palm leaf out of green tissue paper and twigs. So far, they haven't noticed how dreadful my artistic skills are.

I'm looking forward to the rest of my week at the children's museum, then I'll head back to my original supervisor at the Cuming Museum for more adventures in artgalleryland.

pinky swear

I promise - a post about my BRILLIANT time in Yorkshire/dales/moors is in the works. for now, CHECK THIS OUT:

under and over the channel

(I apologize for any upsetting absent accents.)

I left early Friday morning, not knowing exactly what to expect with a bus ticket to Paris. Unfortunately, the bus driver used no magic spells - we simply drove onto a train and popped through the chunnel.
Unlike my boring bus, Paris did not disappoint. I stayed with my good friend Christine in her 5th floor apartment near Trocadero. And as if walking up and down the stairs wasn't enough, we walked all over Paris. But first things first: Montmartre and Moulin Rouge. We had lunch at the cafe where Amelie works, then explored Montmartre including the Sacre Couer

We found a lot of street markets
The rest of my wandering in Paris was mainly along the Seine. Parisian autumn is beautiful until it starts raining. Then it looks a lot like this: On Monday it was rainy, but I went to all the touristy things while Christine was in class. I found a great museum called Guimet Musee National des Arts Asiatiques. I loved it but it made me sad how little I know about Eastern culture and religion. My last minute tourist stop was Chopin's well-loved grave in the Pere Lachaise cemetary. No magic on the way home either - our bus caught a ferry to Dover from the French coast.

Mind the Gap. really.

I forgot to Mind the Gap and I have a big bruise on my shin to prove it! The nice announcer woman tells you over and over again "Please mind the gap between the train and the platform" but it's hard to mind the gap when there's a huge mass of humans rushing to get in and out of the carriage!

Did you know that the color of the underground lines MATCH the poles and seats of the individual carriages on that line? I am so impressed.

For instance, here is a District Line train, which is green on the London Underground map:

Recent interior design upgrades

Flat 1, 39 Marchmont Street recently got a new look. Is it Mod, Retro, Classic . . . ?

An Art Exhibition in the stairway

Halloween Decorations, compliments of our American holiday design consultant, my mom

Slug Trail

And another living decoration which I couldn't document: a mouse!

The slugs are gone now, but the mouse is still with us. Jane's ceiling had a very bad leak whenever the guys upstairs used their shower, but it's been fixed. We've also had a difficult time trying (and failing) to set up the internet in our flat.
I love our little home away from home, including its quirks and malfunctions!

Shakespeare's old stomping grounds

Last weekend we went to Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare's birthplace. Shakespeare's grave is in a beautiful church on the river. The cemetary outside was fascinating too, but I didn't get to check it out as much. There were three organs inside the church and (of course) a giftshop. The grave was in a very honorable place near the alter and his bust was above it on the wall. The bust holds a feather which they replace every year, in case Shakespeare's ghost wants to come back to write some more! Jane and I walked around town after the church visit to see all the Shakespeare touristy things, but we decided that the cost was not worth going in. It was much better that was because we had money to spend on scones with clotted cream and jam with tea!

In the evening we saw the Royal Shakespeare Company perform a GREAT production of Twelfth Night. All the theatre productions I've seen this semester in London have been really well done! After the play everyone went to The Dirty Duck pub next door because that's where the actors and actresses go after the show. We saw Viola, Antonio, Sebastian, Lord Andrew, etc. They were very popular (Antonio was especially popular with the giant group of 18 year old girls).

We spent the night at a B&B, got a full english in the morning, then went to Warwick Castle, where all the castle scenes from Monty Python and the Hold Grail were filmed!

Fieldtrips

I'm so lucky that my program director is so London-savvy. Oberlin-in-London spends their money very wisely, in my opinion. So far I've been to 3 plays - one comedy about an Indian family (Rafta Rafta), one about Joan of Arc's life (Saint Joan), and one contemporary one about an Indian mathematician (A Disappearing Number). The math one was my favo(u)rite, of course, and since I saw it I've been checking out books at the British Library on the subject.

We also went to Hampton Court, a royal palace and gardens where Henry VIII hung out
Greenwich, where Greenwich Mean Time was started with a great photo op of the prime meridian. And there's also a Royal House of sorts and a sweet market where i ate some weird nougat.
The Tower of London, which houses the Crown Jewels - very sparkely and lots of torture stories and equipment. The Chapel there has 1500 bodies buried underneath it. gross.
This weekend I'm going to Birmingham to go to a brass concert at Symphony Hall with my physics class.

Old Places and Green Things

Classes have been keeping me very busy for the past few weeks. I still have plenty of time to get around London because I only have class 2 days a week. There a lot of HW that involves reading, which any math major will agree, is a huge pain.
History of London is by far my favo(u)rite class . There is one lecture a week, and the other class meeting is set too meet at some location in London. From there the teacher takes us on a walking tour and stops to give us tidbits of information about sites. So much of London exists in quite the same way it did centuries ago. There are markets from the Medieval Era, colleges from Tudor times, and of course churches from ALL eras. It kind of blows my mind.
However, when I'm on a walk without the History of London teacher, I'm more interested in the modern aspects of the street. Shops, restaurants, theatres, and advertisements are just fun see because they are different! I'm addicted to strange-looking candy bars with funny names like Flumps, Tiger, Magnum, etc
People watching is a fulfilling pastime here. If there is ever an empty bench in Russell Square, I love to sit and watch all the naked children running in the fountain, people rushing by, tourists getting lost, gardeners keeping things beautiful, pigeons being dumb, and dogs having fun.
All the parks in London are beautiful and while the sun in shining, they've been my top priority. Hyde Park with all its ducks, St. James Park, Green Park, Reagents Park (excellent ice cream stand!), and all the tiny ones along the way. There are a lot of private green spaces in London that are fenced off. Only the people who live around the square have access to the park. Seems a little odd to be able to say "This is my tree! You can look at it but you CANNOT enjoy its shade" but I guess it's as close as you can get to having a backyard in central London.

Coach and Carnival

The Oberlin-in-London program had a fabulous coach tour of London. Unfortunately, it was not in horse drawn carriges like I originally though - coach means bus here. The best part about the tour was our hilarious guide - an older Londoner lady name Suze. She showed us all parts of lesser-known London, or as much as she could considering the size of our coach. We saw Chinatown, some Mews, the best place to have afternoon tea, expensive car dealers, and even the pub where the Horse Guard drinks! She said "Ladies, you should really go an meet those nice men," and proceeded to tell us about the time she went there and met all the kind young gentlemen.
Other notable sights were:
-a modern skyscraper that Londoners refer to as The Erotic Gherkin-The market where Diagon Alley was filmed
-Lord Mayor of London's building which Londoners call "The Testicle"
-A popular Japanese noodle restaurant chain called Wagamamas
and lots of other things that I'm looking forward to find again and explore!

She did not approve when we told her of our plans to attend the Notting Hill Carnival because she is wary of it's violent history and general rowdiness. Although we did not abide her advice, we had lots of fun! Loud, rowdy, crowded, drunken, dirty, fun! We joined the throng of people in the streets and avoided stepping on the garbage as much as possible. Eventually we found a parade to join and had lots of fun watching everyone dance and eat and party! The next day I got my face painted, and ate some delicious Caribbean food and watched a parade consisting mainly of scantily clad women wearing beautiful, intricate, brightly colored costumes. The carnival isn't comparable to anything I know of in America. There isn't any structure to it, but that doesn't seem to inhibit it's popularity in any way!

Running into history

I've come to the conclusion that the English from the Tudor and Elizabethan Eras must have been perpetually uncomfortable. The National Portrait Gallery gave me the opportunity to observe this. In every portrait, the subjects sit so awkwardly and smile unconvincingly, if at all. I liked the exhibit though, it was the easiest history lesson I've ever had, and it was an accident to learn anything at all! Out of all the people I met at the Portrait Gallery, I liked Queen Elizabeth I and Lady Jane Grey best. Jane was Queen of England for 9 days, appointed in King Edward VI's will to carry on Protestant England, but then was captured by Mary I supporters (Roman Catholics). But after killing a bunch of people, Mary died, and that's when Elizabeth stepped in! She was great! And that's the History of London! (brevity spares you from boredom)
I love all the sidewalk tile mosaic entrances to buildings The National Portrait Gallery has one, and even the Hardware Store that I live above has one! I guess English people have a lot of pride in old-looking things.
London is great! I've barely had any jet-lag, so I've been getting up at normal hours to go explore. It's a lot of fun, even though the weather has been mainly gray and rainy. Usually I find cool, free, touristy things, but London has a lot of less popular, but equally cool things too. On one walk, I found Tavistock Square which has a large statue of Ghandi in the center.
The park has more trees an benches than the average London square, most of which are dedicated with a plaque noting the donor or honoree. It's really cool - lots of peace groups and Indian leaders and Mayors of various London boroughs. Yay independence!
Also I've noticed a lot of thoughtful old Londoner men hang out here to read newspapers and smoke their pipes. It's a reassuring sight - I'm glad those men still exist in more than just my imagination.

It's time to wander and enjoy!

I ran into so many tourist attractions on my first full day in London. I walked to Trafalgar Square, mourned the construction site of St. Martins in the Field, and walked into the National Gallery, visiting many rooms in the 1800 - 1900 section. When i got too tired of standing, i found a nice bench and got out my guide book out of habit. Looking on the map I realized how close Trafalgar is to the Thames, so I made a quick decision to leave the Gallery, and walk to the Thames. I wandered down Whitehall to the Horse Guard, went through the Horse Guard Parade to St. James's Park, glimpsed Buckingham Palace through the trees at the far end of St. James's Park, saw the Centograph, then went down the Victoria Embankment to the Houses of Parliament/Big Ben where i could see Westminster Abbey a couple blocks away from me. My day went on like this, back up the Victoria Embankment where various famous and/or beautiful buildings are visible and then up the streets of Holborn (pronounced (Hoe-bun) to Bloomsbury.

All the pictures are on my photobucket site now, so this boring, list-like entry can be illuminated a bit by some visual help.

Lodon meets Emily meets London meats

I'm here and I'm settled! London is absolutely wonderful. The streets are bustling and the shops are cute and plentiful! I live about a block away from the Piccadilly line on the underground and about 2 blocks away from Russell Square. I cannot get pictures onto the computer today, but I'll try to post some in the next week. Russell Square is gorgeous with a fountain in the middle and grand old trees all around it. Of course the London squirrel and pigeon population has found Russell Square too. After I arrived yesterday, I got out of my flat as quickly as possible to start exploring. I walked all over Bloomsbury, only got lost a few times, and successfully used my maps to find my way home, just like a good tourist should! I tried to find a fish n' chips place or a pub to have dinner but i ran out of energy so I just got a hot dog from the vendor outside the British Museum.

My neighborhood has many bookshops, markets, Indian restaurants, and pubs. My flat is quirky, small, but lovable. I picked the room with the balcony, although the balcony is just as dirty as the rest of the flat. I'm excited for my roommates to arrive because then we can properly commence the buddy system!

summer

Working full time is not a blast, no matter what they tell you. Perhaps it's the lack of redwoods in the office. What I'm saying is I MISS CAZADERO MUSIC CAMP, but the rest of the summer was worth it!

The week I spent in Oberlin after finals to play in commencement band flew by and after driving 14 hours in a VW bug with very little space for passengers, Andrew and I made it to Connecticut!
Andrew's corner of Connecticut is beautiful. I enjoyed spending time with Wainacht family and friends and doing New Englandy things like hiking, river floating, cruising Newport, stealing Dunkin Donuts by accident, and making bonfires out of anything free and flammable.

My inner trumpet dork had a good fling this summer too. I went to the International Trumpet Guild Conference in Amherst, MA and then Chosen Vale Trumpet Seminar in Enfield, NH. That is me playing at a morning masterclass at Chosen Vale. I learned a lot; for example, the maximum amount of time I can comfortably spend solely with trumpet players, talking about trumpet things is 2 days.

After trumpet camp I returned to trumpet camp and stole andrew away from CT for a week. We drove to CA in my little yellow bug in 4 days staying with trombone players from Oberlin in Akron OH, Cedar Rapids IA, and Larkspur CO. We only stopped for gas and food and stretches - it was so much fun! I would recommend roadtripping to anyone.

In California, Andrew got to see San Francisco, redwoods, the bike trails and fields of Davis, the golden mountains, and most importantly, I think he now understands the importance of a good burrito.

Global Warming Scapecow

It’s official: Taking to the roads in an SUV’s got nothing on cattle flatulence.

Although cattle hold the worst offender category, all barnyard critters have a hand to play in greenhouse gas emissions, and Livestock’s Long Shadow includes damage done by sheep, chickens, pigs and goats.

And it’s not just climate change that cud-chewing cattle can be blamed for.

They are also charged with a host of other environmental crimes, from acid rain to the introduction of alien species, to creating dead zones in the oceans from poisoning rivers and drinking water to destroying coral reefs.

Lest anyone jump to the conclusion that cattle are responsible for little green men type “alien species”, the scientists who wrote the report are talking about “Invasive alien species”, namely plants, animals and micro-organisms that occur outside of their natural habitat or country of origin, and due to their ability to outperform and outgrow indigenous species, they establish themselves in these non-native habitats.

In layman’s language, the weeds, pests, encroachers, invasives, exotics or non-indigenous, in other words, the party crashers.

Cattle are catalogued as environmental bad apples and if nothing comes along to stop them they will double their damage to Mother Earth by 2050 as demand for meat increases.

Burning fuel to produce fertilizer to grow feed to transport it—and clearing vegetation for grazing—produces 9 percent of all emissions of carbon monoxide, the most common greenhouse gas. And their wind and manure emit more than one third of emissions of another, methane, which warms the world 20 times faster than carbon dioxide.

In a textbook case of mistaken identity, Gore misidentified the perp in his movie, An Inconvenient Truth as man. In global warming, the bad guy is the cow not the cowboy.

Al Gore's Cattle Call

3 loads of laundry and a shower later, I'm no where near done unpacking. But done enough to take a nap.


FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO ENJOY CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER,
FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DON'T LIKE SPOILING THE ENDING,
PLEASE start reading at the oldest entry, entitled "Home for the Holidays" and work your way up!
but really, it's your decision.

We have been at the Sau Paulo Garulhas International Airport for 9 hours and we have 6 hours to go. It's been very boring and all we want to do is go home. We had breakfast, then sushi and we have been sitting in the same two chairs next to an outlet watching movies and shows from Rachel's lappy. We also made a scavenger hunt to make the time pass more quickly with things like: jumpsuit, open fly, twins, acid wash pants, etc.

We have been waiting around for many days now. As soon as we got back from the second day of beaches we fell asleep and then I got sick. I got too dehydrated and fainted whenever I got out of bed to use the bathroom or fill up my water bottle. In the morning, Rachel and the hostel receptionist called the doctors and two came up to the room. They did normal doctor things (except they didn't speak English) and then hooked me up to two IVs at once. I was pretty scared since I hate needles a lot, but it helped. We cancelled our boat tour plans that day because I still didn't feel great. We caught our 12 hour bus ride to Sau Paulo at 20:05 and then another bus to the airport and since then we haven't moved much.

The hostel in Florianopolis was very nice. I'm so glad we stayed there because there were a lot of helpful translators for me and the doctors and the workers also were very helpful in answering questions.

We asked one where to find a good Cachaceria and she directed us to Cachaceria da Ilha where we got 5 free shots along with our Caipirinas. Oh, being two American girls in Brasil . . . Good thing we're careful and keep an eye on eachother! Brasilian men can be very flirty in an uncomfortable way. A guy at the hostel asked to "show us something" upstairs this morning, but he wouldn't tell us what it was. He said "you'll see," when we asked, so we said we didn't want to go.

The second beach day was our breaking point. It was so much fun and so beautiful but it was just a few too many hours in the direct sunlight. We hiked around the dunes, climbed some rocks next to the beach, and checked out two really great beaches. Rachel has sunburns on her knees, back, stomach, shoulders, chest and left ear. I have sunburns on my stomach, thighs, lower back, armpit-region, and inner arms. It makes travelling extremely comfortable.

A whole new world...a thousand things I never knew...

The festival ended with a bang. Trumpet mock auditions weren't bad, but it was too hot in the room, and the speech about a Phil Smith interview wasn't translated well and it ran 20 minutes into lunch. A picture extravaganza followed, then Rachel and I escaped to have a quick lunch before heading to the bus station. Two km ended up being very far, especially with no shade or sunscreen and carrying instruments. We figured out bus schedules with the help of a suprise translator whom we were very thankful for.
I got a bad sunburn on my shoulders from the walk, but I was happy to be done with tickets. I talked to Gisele, my temporary, long distance Brasilian mother, at the internet cafe about Floripa plans. She had called my room five times the previous night, but I missed them because I was at Agua Dolce having honey/lemon cachaca shots and a passion fruit cachaca drink.
Gisele called at midnight though and we confirmed plans of meeting with her aunt and cousin, Ingred and Tatiane at the bus station and staying at a hostel in downtown Florianopolis. The plans worked out well today but we were exhausted from staying up all night dancing at a loud club, then saying goodbyes.
Florianopolis is gorgeous and fun. The city is on an island connected to the mainland by a bridge. After dropping off our stuff at the hostel and locking up our trumpets in the handy lockers in our room, Ingrid and Tatiane took us to some south island beaches. Unfortunately it had to be the day that both Rachel and I forgot our cameras. We went to one beach, and walked to another, then ate two 1.5 foot long anchovies served with head and tail served with fries (batatas fritas), rice, and a stew with tomatoes, flour, fish, and onions. It was a delicious lunch. Then we went to a different beach were some religious parade celebration happened to be. There were cannons going off frequently, but it didn't disturb my nap very much.
On the way back, we stopped to get churros filled with carmel, sugar cane juice (caldo de cana), and coconut (coco) water served in a coconut. All the bees that hang out around these street stands don't sting as far as I know. They are treated more like flies by the Brasilians, but they still scare me.
I learned today that any word with ~ao ~oe at the end has a nasal sound. It's very hard for me to do. Also, almost all Portuegese words end with a vowel sound so that's why the English learners always add random extra vowel sounds to words they are trying to say. It was one of those "Oh, now I get it!" moments.

Walk

Lizzie, Rachel, and I went on a walk all over town this evening after a light snack of churro filled with carmel and a cone of soft serve ice cream - both common street vending snacks here. The residential areas were really beautiful. The streets were cobbled, almost every house had at least one tiny, annoying, yappy dog in their fenced front yard. The houses are all very different and the nice houses are on the street adjacent to run down ones. Higher up on the hills, the houses get generally nicer, but it is a lot more integrated than in America. The houses reminded me a little of San Francisco with their colors, but a lot of the landscape and design looked like Arizona and New Mexico. One weird atribute is that they don't have drain pipes for their gutters, but they use chains instead.

Yesterday, Rachel and I went on a walk on the bike path. It's endless and always busy with runners, bikers, and various other people in spandex. One thing that strikes me about Jaragua is that it is so full of different smells all the time. Vanilla, cars, fruit, sausage, and lots of things I don't recognize. I also saw one wall that had broken ottles cemented to the top instead of barbed wire. It's a pretty good idea!

Now I'm looking forward to Floripa with Rachel, although we still have no idea how to get there. I'll be sad to leave all my friends here and I really don't want to go through another 30 hours of traveling back home.

Annoying yappy dog.

Broken bottle defense mechanism.

I'm so glad I don't have to secure return trip travel trough the festival. Everyone except for Rachel and me has to sign up for buses to Sau Paulo to get to the airport in time to check in. The problem is that the buses filled up and so some people got stuck on a bus which will arrive 12 hours early at the airport. It will probably all turn out fine knowing Brasil, but it's stressful in these preliminary stages.

Playing for the new teacher in masterclass is an experience. He is from Argentina, so he speaks Spanish which is kind of garbled and he lisps. So the class is sort of language-less although we get by with an assortment of translations. He always wants to hear Rachel and I for some reason. He likes Americans almost too much and sort of ignores the Brasilians. In class today we played some excerpts and got pretty silly. We were joking around about Chris (an American with the same job as me, "Professor") working out by lifting his massive trumpet all day long. This resulted in the teacher calling Chris "super beautiful." Someone tried to explain the difference between beautiful and handsome, but it didn't really matter, since Chris really is super beautiful. Chris is the one on the left. The Argentinian teacher is on the far right. And the trumpet teacher from Sau Paulo is standing up on the left.
Yesterday we went shopping for "authentic" Brasilian clothes downtown. It was unsuccessful but very fun. There are so many little boutiques here. We tried on jumpsuits, bright things, and revealing things. In one store, a worked poked my arm and said "sol" (sun), I presume she was commenting on how white I am. She probably hasn't seen someone like me in a while. I wasn't even sunburned. I'm just pink.

The nights here have been a lot of fun. There is one bar that we go to a lot called Agua Doce (sweet water) which is a cachacaria. There is a beer garden closer to the festival called Quick Dog that is also popular. It is only open from around 4PM until 2AM, although it looks like a lunch place since it is an outdoor patio. One night we stayed in the hotel and had Brasilian wine one bottle of which smelled like poo. Last night we went to the piano bar which is located in the festival building. I learned a Brazilian dance (Farho?) from my friend Sabrina.

Rachel and Chris at Agua Doce

Emergency!

I learned today that Brasilian hospitals are much beter than I had shallowly assumed. And on a less positive note, I did not see any monkeys in the rainforest. Rainforests are NOT teeming with monkeys. It is a disappointing fact of life.
On our day off from the festival, everyone got to choose from four touristy options which trip they wanted to go on. Myself and several other American friends and the same amount of Brasilians chose the rainforest four instead of two beach options and an amusement park. We went to a place that had 14 waterfalls (catotze cachoeiras). I can't tell what they're called, but I don't think it's the really famous one that is also somewhere in south Brasil. This one was only 30 minutes away by a very scary bus ride. Our driver didn't really like using the break, even on the dirt road to the park.
First we hiked up a trail to the 14th waterfall, and then we hiked back down a trail, stopping at each waterfall on the way. The trails were trecherous, muddy, steep, and full of rocks. Many people got mud stains from falling, and one person got something a little more permanent! Lizzie fell at the 6th waterfall trying to get a good picture (great photog that she is) and after some of our Brasilian friends took pictures of her falling, our tour guide came down to the rescue with his first aid kit and relayed to us that she would need stitches. After lunch, Lizzie, two stand-in translators, and I went to the emergency room in Jaragua. She got three stitches and she said it was done very well and very cleanly. And the icing on the cake - it took all of ten minutes in and out the door! We were impressed. No line at the emergeny room? That's unheard of! Plus, there was no fee. The Farmacia down the street helped us find bandaids, a neosporin-like thing, and such. But they did not carry any monkeys.

Wildlife sighting

We saw a dinosaur!! It was HUGE!! It was actualy a lizard (lagarto) and it was probably four feet long with the tail. It crawled away under a car.

The Oberlin Brass Quartet played in a fountain and it was our best performance. The fountain was not on. We had a few listeners and Angela was there to help us get everything together, including transportation and chairs. Angela has been our savior from the beginning of the festival. She is the only person in the festival office who willingly speaks english to the Americans, so she is our go-to girl and our mother hen. Today I gave her my camera to take a few shots during the concert and she was so excited! She said she was a "lucky girl" to be able to get out of the festival building and listen to us.

I can't find postcards anywhere. I searched everywhere for vitamins and postcards today: in a Farmacia, a photo/card/things store, a grocery store, and a book/magazine store. The Farmacia had something that looked like multivitamin tablets, but I'm not sure and I want to be safe because I watched REquium for a Dream two nights ago and I definetely don't want drungs...ever! The grocery store was AMAZING!!! It had bread grillers, which are popular here, lots of weird snacks and cookies and chocolates, strange chocolatey cereal, and tastey looking fruit. I bought some mini bananas, chocolate, and gum, but there was a lot more that I wanted. I'm quickly falling in love with Brasil. The language, the people, the town, and the lifestyle. It's very comfortable.

Next Friday there will be a brass concert in Joinville, which is about 40 minutes away, so we will get together with the Wisconsin and Michican brass quintets to play Dahl possibly and other brass ensemble pieces. The other Americans who are here are nice, but I love the brass people the most, as usual.

My friends in band are named Bruno, Carlos,Sabrina, Laticia, Karl Muller, Naber, and two I can't remember. They are all trumpet players of course; I don't make friends with anyone else. My friends have taught me some Brasilian things:
espigas=corn
which I confused with
inspiras=inhale
which the conductor was trying to tell us to do
expiras=exhale
cupo=cup
Yamaha is pronounced Iamaha which the emphasis on the ma. It's actually really fun to say, I recommend it.
I'm also learning to count during rests.
The beers I've had here are called Brahma and Skol, but they weren't from the tap. Caipirinias are the sugary national drink that I mentioned before. They are good as are the beers, but Caipirinias are very sweet and strong.
We eat in the festival's cafeteria every day for lunch because it is free! The food in the cafeteria is a little strange. I doubt it's a good representation of Brasilian food, but they seem to like it, so I'm not sure. There is always various pickled vegetables (no unpickled vegetables), rice, potatoes (mashed or boiled and buttered), and meat. The beef is tough but spiced well, the chicked is gross, and I didn't try the fish because it was not recommended to me. We had a sausage plate at an outdoor cafe and it was delicious except for the mysterious little rubbery bits.

Festival Mysteries Unravelled

We have 3 hour masterclasses every morning from 9-12. There are about 60 trumpet students in the class.This week the teacher is Paul Merkelo, principal trumpet of the Montreal symphony and the other teacher who will be here both weeks is the principal of the Sau Paulo Symphony. (please excuse my lack of accents and lack of accurate dates throughout) They are both good teachers and put a lot of energy into the masterclasses and seem to care about us on an individual level as well. This is kind of remarkable since there are so many students in the class. Paul doesn't speak Portuguese, but people can interpret for him so it works out well. Paul went to Eastman and Fernando went to Julliard.
We have been playing and drinking a lot. They have a regional drink here that is very sugary and strong. It made me late to masterclass today, but time is only a suggestion here. Schedules are very relaxed, and most of the organization is completely non-existent. I'm starting to enjoy it, even if I am a bit compulsive-schedule-oriented.
We arrived one day late to the festival and subsequently missed auditions, so none of the Oberlin people will be placed in the Rite of Spring concert, but we have been placed in other ensembles. I am the only Obie in band. It is my favorite part of the day, but I don't know how long that feeling will last. I'm supposed to play first and second parts, but there seems to be no part assignments anyways and very random seating. The rehearsal is three hours long, from 2-5. I've made a lot of Brasilian friends who try very hard to speak English. Some cannot or do not try, but many are very friendly. The band practices in an outdoor, covered, fenced basketball court.
Tomorrow I want to find postcards and stamps and practice piccolo. We shall see . . .