Once again, it has been a long time since I have written. Before it was because not enough was happening, but this time it was because too much is happening and I haven’t had time to write because I’ve been so busy.
Last time I wrote was before our dress rehearsal/pre-concert thingy. That went pretty well. Of course it was very nice to finally get to perform the repertoire we had been practicing for so many hours. The dress rehearsal, as I discussed in my last post, was also a concert, which was open to FJC (the Colombian orchestra we’re touring with) and the faculty.
The following day we had our first real concert. It was an outdoor concert as part of a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Meta, the state in Colombia where we were. It was pouring rain, though, and it was so windy that some of the people sitting near the edges of the stage got wet. Surprisingly, we still had a huge audience, with people standing around the edges because there weren’t enough seats. The audience was so appreciative that we had to play a number of encores for them. It was a great concert to start the tour with.
The next day we traveled by bus to our next city, which is called Ibagué. Villavicencio is about 4 or 5 hours away from Bogotá, and Ibagué is about 2 hours from Bogotá also, but in the other direction. So after about six hours on the bus we finally arrived in Ibagué. From the hotel we had a great view of the city. We had a free day before our concert at night, during which I spent the entire morning in the swimming pool, and the afternoon exploring the city a bit. One of my friends from FJC grew up in Ibagué and she showed us some of the nice pedestrian shopping areas.
Our concert in Ibagué was also outdoors, in a sort of public amphitheater in the park near where we were walking earlier. This concert was much better than the first one. After the concert, a bunch of us went to a party at my friend’s house in Ibagué. It was really nice to finally get out of the tourist mode and hang out with people who actually live in the city.
The next day, we had another three-hour bus ride to Armenia. There we stayed in a hostel. We were only in Armenia for a very short time so we didn’t get to see anything there, but the scenery was gorgeous. We were actually there for such a short time that we weren’t even allowed to get our suitcases out of the truck! Our concert there was the first one indoors, and I felt like the orchestra played the best it has so far in that concert. It was also the first concert where I played with a soloist. All the concerts include the Copland clarinet concerto, but since it’s only strings, I don’t play. The concerto I was playing was Scottish Fantasy, a violin piece. The soloist was the concertmaster of the Colombian National Symphony in Bogotá. Another notable event that occurred in Armenia was that I drank my first cup of coffee that I liked. It was so delicious but I’m pretty sure I won’t like coffee again when I return to the US.
After that we traveled to Manizales, which has been my favorite place on the tour so far. One of my friends from the US had an adventure on the five-hour trip. His alarm didn’t go off, but his roommates didn’t realize that he wasn’t awake because he talks in his sleep. He didn’t wake up until 10 (we left at 7), so he had to take a public bus and then a taxi to the next hotel! It was a good thing he’s fluent in Spanish…! Anyways, in Manizales we were staying in a really nice hotel outside the city. There were actually three hot springs in the hotel where the majority of the orchestra spent all their time. It was especially nice because it was pretty cold there, maybe in the high 40s, which feels freezing after a few weeks of 90º. One of the best things about our time in Manizales is that we had so much free time there. We had the whole afternoon free before the concert, and the day after the concert we had the whole day completely free. On the concert day, I decided to go walk around with two friends. We found a pasture with a ton of baby cows that were incredibly adorable. Then we decided to climb up this hill from which we could see everything. The only thing was, it was covered in glass higher than my knees and it had just rained so it was really slippery. It was really fun, though also incredibly muddy and wet, and when we got to the top we had such a nice view. After the sound check in the concert hall we had some more free time, so one of my Colombian friends who plays horn took me around to show me the city. With him was his friend who is from Manizales, and actually organized this really big-deal international horn festival in Manizales for the past three years. After the concert I met some other horn player friends of his, who we would see again soon. Once we got back to the hotel, we had a huge dance party that lasted until 8am, though I went home early at 5am. It was really fun. I’ve learned how to dance pretty well at this point, but it is way easier to dance here in Latin America, where the guys are all good dancers, than in the US, where the music isn’t as conducive to partner dancing, and the guys don’t really know how to dance any more than I do.
The next day was completely free. After a kind of late start, we decided to wait to go to the city until the bus left at 2pm, so in the morning we played cards and just hung out in general. In the afternoon we went into the city. After walking around for a while, we went to a mall where we had coffee and snacks. Then we went for a ride on the cable cars. Instead of a subway system, Manizales relies on cable cars as their form of public transportation. Even though the city isn’t that big, it is so mountainous that they created the cable car system in order to transport supplies and construction materials in the late 1800s. Later they converted the old system into the public transportation system it is today. It was a lot of fun to go on it with all my friends. Manizales is also home to the fifth-tallest cathedral in the world, so we went up to the top. Even though it was rainy and cloudy, it was still an absolutely breathtaking view. We had to walk up 70 meters to the choir loft, and then up again probably about the same amount to the roof of the church. From there we walked up a staircase on the roof itself, which was as steep as the roof was, and was about equivalent to the steepness of the Great Wall of China (imagine each step is as high as my knees). Then we were finally in the base of the steeple. From there we walked up this spiral staircase reminiscent of a lighthouse’s. They actually had some remnants of the original staircase inside, which was the most rickety thing I have ever seen. I can’t imagine walking up about 500 steps on that with no railing! Anyways, it was absolutely incredible!
After we finished the cathedral tour, we ran into some other people from our orchestra in the plaza, who convinced us to accompany them to go bungee jumping. I actually was really excited for it – it only cost about $5, and since it was so high above the city it would be a great view. Unfortunately we couldn’t go on it because it was raining, so instead we went for a walk around a different area of the city. We were in the highest point of the city, and from the edge of one of the cliffs we could apparently see five states. At this point we were with the horn players who live in Manizales, and one of them especially was a fantastic tour guide. He seemed to know about every building in the whole city, and told us about all of them. He then took us to this fantastic outdoor arepa restaurant. For those of you who don’t know, arepas are kind of like the Colombian/Venezuelan version of an English muffin, but they eat them kind of like sandwiches. After dinner we went directly to a club, where we danced all night.
This morning, we left for Medellín, the third-largest city in Colombia. We have the rest of the day free because our concert isn’t until tomorrow, but I volunteered for one of the orchestra’s outreach programs. They actually invited me to participate in the first one, in Villavicencio at the very beginning of the program, but then realized my Spanish wasn’t good enough to really help out much. But now my Spanish has improved so much that they judged that I could do this one. I’ll be giving sectionals for a youth orchestra and then observing their rehearsal. It should be interesting, and I must say I’m really looking forward to it! We’ll stay in Medellín for two days, and I believe from this point forward we’re mostly flying to the other cities rather than having these long and boring bus rides.
I’m having such a great time on this tour, I must say. I actually mostly hang out with members of FJC rather than people from YOA. Because of this, I’m speaking Spanish pretty much constantly and my vocabulary and grammar skills are improving immensely. The really annoying thing is that some of them speak a little English and they can understand when I speak, but even if I’m really tired and don’t want to speak Spanish, they refuse to listen if I speak in English. I also have translation responsibilities during rehearsals so that the whole horn section always knows what’s going on. So it’s pretty much like total immersion for me right now. I’m also working a lot on my Portuguese. After learning Spanish it’s really easy. My Brazilian friend who is teaching me made me write two essays completely in Portuguese on the last bus ride, and then after I wrote them in an elementary style, we fixed them up into professional language to resemble a newspaper article. Meu português e meu espanhol estão melhorando cada dia. In addition to learning a lot about language here, I’m also teaching a lot of English. I think my students have strange vocabularies though. I teach them things as I go along, so they know a whole lot of words about specific topics and absolutely nothing about others. My Colombian friends all call me Super-Gringa rather than Lauren because I’m generally the only non-Colombian hanging out with them. They also call my friend Diana (who is Colombian but lives in the US) Gringa-Paisa (paisa means something like fellow countryman) so at least I’m not the only one!
I really love Colombia and I’m glad we are spending so much time of the tour here. On the other hand though, 10 more days is no time at all! I’m going to make the most of the short time I have left here, but I’ll try to write an update soon. I think I’ll also put up a post of pictures soon.
whatever i want.
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