Salvador, March 2013

So here is my long-awaited update on what I did during my time in Salvador, Brazil, over spring break.  I arrived there after an epic long journey on Friday morning, and stayed for about two weeks, until the second Thursday after that.

Salvador, Brazil

All the previous times that I visited the program, I just stayed with my then-boyfriend, but this time, since we're not dating anymore, I stayed with two female friends from the orchestra, L and G.  One is the principal cellist, and the other is the principal violist.  I had a really great time living with them! They are really sweet girls, and made me feel so welcome and at home.  They invited me to do a lot of things and helped me to have a great time.  I really hope next time I go back I can stay with them again, since I enjoyed it so much!

Whenever I go to help out with NEOJIBA, I do similar things, but my days never follow an exact set schedule.  The mornings are the most variable part of my day.  Sometimes I go to another nucleo (branch of the program), outside the center of the city, to help out and teach there.  Other times, I teach private lessons to the horn players in the TCA nucleo, as space permits.  And finally, sometimes I just stay home and practice, or do other chores that are necessary.  After lunch, I usually either teach a sectional for the horn players of the second-level orchestra, give some private lessons, or attend the full rehearsal of the second orchestra, where I often play with the horn section and give advice from within the group.  In the evenings, I work with the horn section of the top orchestra.  Usually, I perform with the top orchestra while I am there, but this time, because of the concert schedule, I couldn't.  Instead, I played with them in some of the rehearsals to offer advice, gave private lessons by pulling students out of the full rehearsal, or observed the rehearsals and offered comments.  My workday ends at 8pm, so usually afterwards I would go out to dinner with friends, or do other kinds of social activities.

Teatro Castro Alves

Because of the aforementioned breakup, some things were obviously quite different this time.  However, things were not weird as I had expected.  Between Y and I, everything was exactly the same, except minus the dating part, which was just as I had hoped.  It was really great to see him again and hang out after so much time without really talking.  Also, being single this time made many orchestra members seem more comfortable inviting me to do things with them, which I really appreciated.  Also, since I was living with people with whom I really couldn't speak English, it made me practice my Portuguese even more than normal.  Though when I arrived I had forgotten a lot since my previous trip, I soon remembered all that I had forgotten and learned even more vocabulary.  I also finally got to the point where I was able to start self-correcting some of my more difficult grammatical errors in Portuguese.

In my limited free time, I did some fun things.  On my first full day there, I went to a concert of the Orquestra Sinfonica da Bahia, which was quite interesting as it contrasted poems of Carlos Drummond de Andrade with music written on themes from his poetry.  I wasn't very familiar with his poetry before, but I really enjoyed the readings they presented at the concert, so I think I will do my final project for my Portuguese poetry class about him.

Açaí na tigela

I also ate a lot of açaí.  Açaí, pronounced uh-sai-EE, is a very trendy fruit in the US right now, but we don't eat it the way they do in Brazil.  There, açaí is usually served na tigela, or in a bowl, as opposed to the fusion drinks that are all the rage here. The fruit is frozen and then blended to make a kind of thick milkshake texture, and is usually served with bananas and granola.  You can also go to specialty shops where you can order it infused with other fruit flavors.  I tried a lot of different flavors but I think my favorite was com abacaxí, with pineapple.

Praia Porto da Barra

And of course, any trip to Salvador would be incomplete without visiting one of their world-famous beaches! I only had really two free days, and one of them was rainy, so we just went to a city beach, called Porto da Barra.  This beach lies right on the boundary between the Atlantic Ocean and the Baía de Todos os Santos (Bay of all the Saints), and you can swim on either side.  We chose to swim on the bay side, since there were fewer rocks there and the waves were calmer.  The water was super refreshing in the 100-degree heat, but when I was on land I stayed in the shade of the umbrella.  With my gringo skin, I can easily get burned in under ten minutes in the harsh Brazilian sun.

Additionally, I learned how to cook some new Brazilian foods, so look for the recipes up here sometime soon!


Until next time!

Lauren

Temporary Haitus

I'm currently in Brazil, as I have mentioned before, and it's proving quite difficult to blog from here. I'll be back probably around the 22nd or so, when I return to the US.

Until then!

Lauren

25 Things before 25: Run a 5K

Running a 5 kilometer race was one of the things on my list of 25 things that I was a bit scared of.  I know for a lot of people 3.1 miles is no big deal, but for me that's the furthest I have ever run in my entire life.  I went into it just aiming to a) finish, b) not walk, or walk absolutely as little as possible and c) get under 33 minutes if possible.  I had been training at an 11:33 pace, so I figured I could probably push myself and just squeak in under 33 minutes.




When I woke up in the morning, I looked outside, only to find a dusting of snow.  Upon checking the race website, however, it wasn't cancelled, so I resigned myself to having to run after all.  I registered and got my number and my free t-shirt.  Unfortunately, I don't own any proper cold weather running clothes so I had to put my shirt over my jacket, which soon became stifling once I started running.













Off we all went.  I had to keep pushing myself not to start walking, and I actually accomplished all three of my goals!  I finished with a time of 32:45, which is a pace of 10:33 miles!  After I finished I felt really awful, which I guess means I truly did the best I could have done.  Here I am after I recovered enough to not look like I was dying anymore.

In retrospect, it wasn't as horrible as I thought it would be, but I don't know how soon I'll do another one.  I really felt bad after, like I was going to vomit and/or faint, and I'm sure I'll be sore tomorrow.  Anyways, it certainly was a challenge to myself to really work hard and not give up.  And I do feel really good that I achieved my goals in this segment of my bucket-list!

I was ranked 1233rd overall, out of 1838 participants, and I was 78th in my division (females ages 20-24).


Until next time!

Lauren

Saturday in New York

I spent the whole day yesterday in New York.

I went there on the train with a friend from Yale, M, who happened to be going in at the same time.  We had planned on meeting at the station at 7:30 but I accidentally set my alarm for 6pm instead of 6am.  I threw together an interview-appropriate outfit and rushed to grab a cab to the train station.

After a quite pleasant ride on the commuter rail and then the subway, we arrived in Lincoln Center.  M picked up his opera ticket, and I went to my lesson.  I'm currently figuring out what I'm doing next year, so I needed to meet with a long-term substitute musician in the New York Philharmonic, who teaches at one of the schools I'm looking at.  It was an amazing lesson.  I really learned a lot from just a short meeting with him!

Then I rushed across the plaza to the Metropolitan Opera, where I had a ticket to see Wagner's epic religiously allegorical opera Parsifal.

I don't often get a chance to go to the opera because of the expense of the tickets, but a professor who I get along with very well couldn't make it yesterday, so he had an extra ticket that he passed along to me.  I was way up in the highest row, but the sound was still amazing.  Sometimes it was a bit hard to see what was happening, but I think that's mostly because of the simplistic costume design for this production, in which most of the singers were wearing identical things, so it became pretty difficult to tell them apart.

Despite the length of this opera, I really enjoyed it! The show started at noon, and we only got out of there just before 6pm.  There were two intermissions.  The first act was good, but a bit long at two hours.  I started getting a bit uncomfortable when we still had about 20-30 minutes left.  The second act went by really fast - it was so enthralling that I didn't even notice how long it was! By the third act, however, I was getting ready for it to be over, and I didn't enjoy it as much as the first two.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Wagner's music, you MUST give the overture to this opera a try.  It is some of the most beautiful music ever composed, and it isn't as aggressively chromatic as some of his other music.  You can really hear the religiosity of this gorgeous music.

If you're interested in a more in-depth exploration of this opera, there is at least one full production available on YouTube, here:

After the opera, M and I reunited to go out to dinner with D, a friend of mine from high school and undergrad who goes to Juilliard now.  We had some delicious Chinese food and reminisced about all the crazy things we did back in the day.

I got back to New Haven pretty late at night, and then I had an exciting day today as well, which you will be hearing about in a separate post soon.

Until next time!

Lauren