Good Things

I am totally over last week's little issues, and as of now, I am feeling super for several reasons.

First of all, Saturday night a bunch of us girls got together and had a little festa sans men. As if that in itself is not enough fun, we all brought clothes, shoes, and jewelry that we didn't want anymore. So in between eating pizza, pão de queijo, and cake, we dug through piles of our friends' clothes searching for something good. Although I definitely had the least amount of stuff to trade, I mean I did only have 2 suitcases when we moved here, I walked away with some totally adorable things. None of the shoes fit my big ol' feet, but I snagged some black pants and shirts to wear at concerts and a couple really cute dresses. SCORE!

The second reason I am happy is because of the incredible experience I had last night playing Shostakovich Symphony No. 7, "Leningrad." The piece is gigantic and involves 125 people. We played with the Experimental Orchestra, which is like the youth orchestra here, and the musicians filled up the entire stage. The piece was written during WWII and one can hear the soldiers approaching Leningrad, feel the torment and crying of the victims, the hope that remained, and the eventual triumph over the Germans. The piece is very moving in that respect and has some bombastic trombone parts. The Teatro was packed, and everyone seemed to appreciate our efforts. I know it was an incredibly rewarding experience for me that I will always treasure.

This is a rehearsal pic from the newspaper 

article about the concert. 

You can't see the trombones, but there 

were 6 of us in the very back. 

The full theater before we started.

The third reason to smile is that after a long month of waiting, the package my mom sent us finally arrived!! She was told it would take 7-10 days to get here, but according to the tracking, it's been sitting in Brazilian Customs for the last couple of weeks. I never stopped waking up with the hope that today would be the day, and it finally was the day! In our package, we got some much needed chapstick (haven't found any here), contact solution (very $$$ here), some cool Cardinals paraphernalia for the man of the casa, my favorite tea that they don't sell here, yummy salt-and-vinegar chips, and some clothes for me, among other things. All in all, it was worth the wait, and we're already looking forward to the next one!

Recent Frustrations

Lately we have been presented with various situations here in Manaus that really test our patience. While we have actually gotten used to most of the smaller ones, we've encountered a couple especially trying times already this week.
Not much is as embarrassing or annoying as going grocery shopping, getting through the check-out line, and having your card rejected when you try to pay. We had just that happen to us today, but this time, it wasn't that we didn't have enough money in the bank. Right before leaving the house, I checked the balance on my food allowance card (like a debit card from my job), and I saw that it had just been refilled. What luck for us! Needless to say, we left the house with just that card, bought about $100R worth of food, had a rejected card, had to ask them not to put our food away while we walked home, got a real debit card, and walked back to get the groceries. Ughhhhh. It's most frustrating cause it's not our fault, and we wouldn't have bothered to use the card if I hadn't seen the balance on the internet.
Even more annoying, this weekend we planned a vacation with some friends for our week off during Carnaval in February. My friend found a great deal on airline tickets online, and there will be two other couples going with us. Since we were all together, we decided to buy our tickets from the airline's website. We each had to try, no exaggeration, like 40 times to get the tickets to go through without an error. And every single time retrying, I had to enter our names, credit card number, and other info all over again. After 2 HOURS of trying and getting extremely frustrated, my friend ended up getting the tickets for us. We even waited on hold for 30 minutes calling the airline, just to find out that they can't actually sell any tickets, and the problem was just that the system was busy. It was past midnight on a Sunday, which means it was 2 in the morning in the big cities of Brasil, and this is a major airline.
I'm getting the impression that this is really not that unusual here. It's like businesses don't mind if they don't make money or something.  Kinda like the time we went to the movies 15 minutes late, and the guy was too lazy and apathetic to sell us our 6 tickets. Too much work for this so-called worker. I mean, he'd have to take our cash, count it, and put in the drawer. Wow, I'm exhausted just thinking about it!
Oh, and don't get me started on how your debit card won't work at an ATM or at a store when it's particularly busy here... :)

Stuff

Well, a whole week has passed without us going to a party or exploring some part of Manaus. My poor, neglected camera!! I think the fact that I was sick with a cold kinda slowed us down. I just wasn't in the mood to hang out with a bunch of people, exhausting my brain speaking in Portuguese while trying to hide my used Kleenex, ya know?
Luckily I started feeling better just in time for our orchestra concert last night. We had a guest conductor from Italy who spoke only Italian the entire week during rehearsals (my new favorite number is 55 in Italian), and we played some great repertoire. Probably my favorite concert yet this season- Rossini's La Gazza Ladra, Nino Rota's La Strada (movie soundtrack), and Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. It was not an easy program, but it was so worth the extra rehearsals. And we played for a full house that was very appreciative, including my hubby.
Now that the Cardinals are out of the Playoffs (boo), Jay is much more available on weekends. We even spent a Sunday afternoon yesterday at the mall with no mention of kick-off times, and he admitted that he was a little happy to not have to be "so obsessed" with football now! Better luck next year, Cards!

Go CARDS!!!

Since this blog is officially called "Our Jungle Journey," I thought it would be nice to include a little something from Jay's point of view.
I just got home from playing an almost 2 hour long mass with chorus, and I was immediately given the pleasure of watching the end of the Cardinals game on the computer. It had finished just a few minutes before I got here on tv, but we have a subscription online to see all the games. Anyway, after an amazing game filled with lots of ups and downs, this house has one extremely happy man in it.
Here's to hoping that next week's game against the Saints doesn't conflict with my concert... I mean, that the Cards win again!!!!! ;)

 

The Beautiful Manaus

Ok, so I know that almost a week has past since January 1st, but we had such a great time with some friends, that I figure better late than never to tell you all about it...
We were both still lounging around in our pajamas when my friend called to say they would be by the house in 10 minutes to pick us up. Luckily neither of us are high-maintenance, and we were ready with a few minutes to spare.
Our first stop was to see the land that our friend purchased a few years ago outside the city. She hasn't had the money to actually build anything on it, but she has big plans of course. There are other houses already built with people living in them nearby, but there are also still a lot of open lots. And by open lots, I mean spaces of uncleared rainforest. While it seems kind of sad to consider chopping down some valuable Amazon rainforest to put up a house, at least there is a reserve on the other side of her property that will always remain forested. And it's not like her property is that big...

When we weren't being eaten by ants or mosquitoes...

Ready for anything!

The toucan in the tree... see his profile?

There were all sorts of ants and bugs out there, as one would expect. We didn't know we were going there until we were in the car, but for future reference, I don't recommend wearing flip-flops, halter top, and skirt to the jungle. But being out in nature and getting to see huge toucans was worth it! Maybe next time we will get to see a monkey (though we could definitely hear them this time).

Next, we made another unexpected stop at a mutual friend of the other couples with us. I didn't take any pictures there, but this family definitely lives in balance with the land. They grow a lot on their land, and have bee hives around their house. We even got to taste some fresh from the comb honey! Super sweet!

We decided to spend the end of the day visiting Ponta Negra, a very posh area of town. It is basically a stretch along the river that has rides for kids, all sorts of snack and food places, and performance areas for bands or dancers. It gets very popular at night, and I've heard it's a good place to find a "date" for the night, if you know what I mean. The other side of the street is full of high-rise, pricey condos. Because it was super crowded when we got there, we parked at the fancy Tropical Hotel nearby and went to watch the sunset from their private beach.

These steps lead down to the river, but the last time

I was at this spot was high season,

and the river was almost up to the top of that wall.

This phenomenon is so amazing to experience.

Meu amor gettin his feet wet.

Our love at sunset.

The day couldn't have ended in any better way. This sunset was absolutely gorgeous, and spending the first day of the New Year with people I love was a real gift. 

Happy 2010!!!

One thing I can say with all certainty is that people here LOVE fireworks. Starting bright and early on December 31st, we were awoken by the sounds of loud and rapid blasting. Immediately fearing for our lives, we soon remembered we don't live in a war zone, it's just Manaus. This continued throughout the entire day at 10 minute intervals.
I guess, being a girl and all, I just don't see the appeal of setting off your own fireworks. It seems a little ridiculous to be lighting them during the sunny day, too. Why not just wait until midnight to do it? Oh, don't worry. There were plenty of fireworks leading up to midnight, too, from all corners of the city. I mean, I do love a good, organized firework show, but random shooting sounds kinda freak me out.
Oh, and some people lit some fireworks around 10pm that made all of our electricity go out in our neighborhood while we were getting ready for our party. Did I mention how annoying it is???
Anyway, after getting ready by flashlight, we went to our friend's place for a little get together. A lot of our friends were out of town for the holidays, but we had a good time with the friends that stayed. Of course, no party would be complete without lots of food, including a manufactured bird that is a cross between a turkey and chicken. No one has ever seen it except in the supermarket, cause it is not exactly a naturally occurring animal. And it didn't really taste like chicken or turkey. Strange.

Some pics of us and our friends....

Noemi, Ana, and me

We were making them pose for us :)

Our hostess with the mostest, Noemi

While we were kinda bummed to be so far from our NYC friends, we still had a good time and got to reflect on our past year. We went through a lot of ups and downs, waiting and anticipating, and we closed one chapter and started another. I hope this year brings us all more ups than downs and that we may have health, happiness, and peace in our lives. Feliz Ano Novo!