So I didn’t blog yesterday, it was our ‘day off’. So I took the day off from the blog as well. But don’t worry, I’ll catch you up with what we did yesterday.
We got a nice late start yesterday checking out of our hotel around noon to get lunch and do some shopping before heading to the next city. We headed to the marketplace and (after several wrong turns by our driver) grabbed sandwiches at a little food court type area packed with people. And for good reason, the food was delicious, I had a turkey sandwich. After our quick bite we started to wander around the stores a bit. I would’ve taken pictures of it all, but we were instructed that our cameras were likely to be stolen, sorry, next time I’ll bring a disposable.
The streets were packed with people and the stores seemed to be grouped by what they were selling. If you found a tool shop, it was next to 5 other tool shops. The jewelry stores were surrounded by other jewelry stores, and so on. And when the thunder and rain came rolling in around 3 o’clock, we were luckily near the umbrella stores. We got a grip of super cheap umbrellas (some didn’t even last an hour) and kept moving. We were trying to find the ‘biggest percussion store in south america’, but we were not able to, even though some of the people in the group had been there before…. but it was still an entertaining adventure traveling ~20 blocks in the full blown rain.
We bought some percussion toys at another music store that we found and met back up with our (seemingly inadequate) driver and drove about an hour to the next town: São Jose dos Campos
We got to the hotel late, but were able to catch the end of dinner (around 10pm) in the hotel. Then a few of us weren’t tired and decided to try to find something to do. After spending far too long deciding what to do in the hotel hallway, Obie got a map from the front desk and we found a nearby shopping center to walk to. It was only a couple blocks away and we found it no problem, but it was after 10pm and that meant (in this small town) it was closed. So we walked back to the hotel and returned to our rooms. Obie and I watched the new Karate Kid movie (which neither of us had seen) before going to sleep.
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Today was yet another reasonably scheduled day. Me and Obie got up for a decent breakfast from the hotel around 9:30, then went back to sleep, then up again at 1:30 for a much better lunch. I got the Americano sandwich, which is turkey, cheese, lettuce, tomato, and fried egg, I think that has become my go-to lunch meal if I see it on the menu around here. After lunch around 4:00 we headed off to the venue at a Bola do Neve church about an hour away. The show went well, one of the keyboards they provided was having issues like a couple notes not working at all, and a few notes not always sending MIDI Off messages, but nothing terrible happened. The crowd was good and they appreciated us and once again I was compared to a host of a popular myth busting television show they get here in Brazil.
After the show we went and had pizza with the pastor and his family, they had all sorts of weird pizzas, I saw a few with peas on them, as well as beets and oranges. Strange stuff, I didn’t try most of them. Around 1:30 we finally got out of there (these Brazilians like to eat dinner late and talk for a long time at meals) and drove an hour back to the hotel, it’s now after 3am.
Good night!
