Day 2.5: The First Show!

Oi!

It's been one heck of a day. We started out with an excellent breakfast at our hotel-- can you say, papaya? The fresh fruits and juices are really outstanding ways to start the day, and if that doesn't do it, the coffee is superb! But that's just the beginning.

Next up was a tour of Curatiba. We had a delightful little tour guide -- Nancy. Having heard that we are from Luther College, she assumed for much of the morning that we were German, and made frequent references to our "thousand-year-old castles" and occasionally spoke to us in broken German: oops! It's a beautiful city, though. It was actually used in my textbook last semester as an example of urban planning that maintains commerce while preserving natural space, and it was really neat to see that in person. Nancy built on that, explaining how the city wanted to get rid of polluting factories and return to its organic roots.

For lunch, we stopped at a fancy restaurant, where we were lucky to have an all-you-can-eat meal. The waiters kept bringing out plate after plate after plate: pastas, meats, salads, sodas... It was splendiferous. But the best of all came after the meal. In the same room, a group of students from an international school were having lunch, and treated us to a cappella renditions of I'm Glad You Came, by The Wanted, and I'm Yours by Jason Mraz. I'm not usually one with a penchant for platitudes, but these kids were exceptionally adorable. And after that we had espresso with whipped cream... I have no words for how wonderful that was. Then gelato? It just kept building.

But most importantly: our first show was tonight! We played at Theatro Bom Jesus for the Festival no Improviso Jazz e Blues. It was really an excellent way to start our tour circuit. As always, we started with a processional through the theatre, but we had to wait outside while the rhythm section started and received a lot of gawks from Brazilians. Fortunately, we took the time to learn an an important phrase: "I don't speak Portuguese!" (No fahlo portuguese). That'll definitely come in handy.

The show went swimmingly. We got a double encore, and I lost track of the standing ovations we received. On top of that, one of show's organizers, a jazz organist, played a couple of charts with us. It was a ton of fun.

After the show (which lasted about an hour longer than we had previously planned) the school took us out to dinner. Although it was pretty late (some people didn't get their food until close to one in the morning) it was fantastic dining, and a great way to unwind after our first full day.

With that, I will leave you until the next blog -- Boa Noite!