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