Well, apparently, I have been keeping pretty busy working on things other than my blog lately. The tour has officially started high-gear. We have board members with us now, special events going on every day, and bigger and bigger concerts, with more important VIPs attending. Needless to say, this has made my job that much busier, so I have had hardly any time for my updates.
Medellín was a great city- I really liked it there a lot. The shopping was close to our hotel, and I finally felt like I was in a city, instead of the rural places we had been before. It was pretty cold, and really rainy though, which made it a little less appealing. We hit up the mall, and I finally got to have some McDonald's! I have McDonalds menus and wrappers from a McDonald's in Sweden, and one for each time I went to Japan. Now I have two cheeseburger wrappers in Español. "Hamburguesas con Queso!" We looked around the mall for a bit, but it was pretty expensive. Not "expensive" really, but regular mall prices, which I wasn't prepared to be paying for junk I don't really need. I ended up buying some lip gloss, so I could look all cute at the concerts. The concert was outdoors in a park in the middle of a relatively shady part of the city. Me and Stella and our Tour Manager, David, sat in the cafe area behind the concert seating during the concert and talked. This little boy came up to us at one point and was just talking to us, and practiced a few words in English, and said I had pretty eyes, and just warmed up to us in general... I thought it was sad at first, and then I realized that he was working us, and got a little worried about getting robbed by this little 9-year-old. And then I felt sad again that this child was brought down to this level. He asked us for money in the end so that he could have bus fare to get home, but we didn't give him anything, because it was obviously just him working us. It was very sad. After the concert, one of the board members threw an impromptu after-party for the full orchestra, with glasses of wine and hours d'ouerves for everyone. We had to re-direct the buses and re-organize the plan for dinner, but the musicians had a good time, and appreciated the chance to formally celebrate what they were working so hard to do.
The next morning, we had flights to Cartagena. Originally, I was on the first flight, which was supposed to stop in Bogotá and then go to Cartagena. Because the plane carriers here are not as effective at fitting a lot of luggage into the overhead compartments, we ended up finishing loading late and then could not take off, because there was an air show at the Bogotá airport. At first it was a disaster, because we weren't going to be able to get in until much later, and the staff had a lot of work to do before the events that were in the evening. But then, and I don't even know how this happened, somehow we ended up convincing them to fly us straight to Cartagena instead of waiting to go to Bogotá. Crazy, right? I mean, in the first place, that kind of stuff would never happen on a plane in the US. American flight attendants are fast at getting luggage into the compartments, and cram suitcases in there like it's Tetris. But then, the spontaneous chartered jet thing would never happen in the US either. I don't know how we ended up convincing them to change the flight, but it worked out great because we ended up getting there earlier than we would have originally.
We had an AWESOME time in Cartagena. It was HOT, and beautiful. I have a lot more to say about Cartagena, as it was definitely my favorite place of the trip so far, but I am tired and have a lot of catching up to do as it is.
We drove to Baranquilla next, which was a pretty unremarkable city, and the hotel was pretty "meh". The concert was great though. I think the musicians were finally well rested, so they sounded wonderful.
In other random news: So I really like this reggaetón song by Daddy Yankee. I have decided to learn the lyrics to help me learn some more Spanish.
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