This morning I had my first real dose of real homesickness. I have already had the "I miss everyone so much and wish I could be in my own house" homesickness, which is a little different and more expected. This homesickness was an unexpected wave of feeling out of place and lost. I got up this morning after a nice dream with my grandma helping me bake cookies. I had to go downstairs to get my luggage- it was supposed to come at 11:00 pm last night, but it didn't make it, and after staying up until 1:00 am to wait for it, I finally went to bed. So I went into the elevator to go downstairs to get my stuff and there was an elderly man in the elevator with me, so I said cheerily, "Good morning!"... When he didn't respond, I remembered... right, foreign country. So I followed up with a "Buenas dias!" but I felt all of a sudden alien and displaced. Not the greatest realization to have first thing in the morning.
After breakfast I came back up to my room to work, and was having computer issues and general problems, when all of a sudden someone turned on some music and Blur's "Beetlebum" was playing. I immediately felt grateful for whoever had such nostalgic taste of music, because it immediately grounded me and I remembered how me and my sister shared that album, and how often we listened to "Song No. 2". It sounded like it was coming from the room to the right of me, and then I got a bit confused, because I was next to a stairwell... After looking around a bit, I opened the cabinet that the TV is in, and somehow, it was turned on to VH1. Somehow, the TV turned on right at the time when I was feeling foreign, and somehow, it was turned to a channel that wasn't blaring rapid-fire Spanish. There is clearly a simple answer- the TV was on an alarm timer or something- but it did seem strangely fortunate that that happened.
The concert went really well- the audience absolutely loved the orchestras, but by far the best part of the concert was when this cute girl snuck on stage to play trombone on the encores... Oh wait, THAT WAS ME!!!!!!! Hahhahahaha, it was awesome. The orchestra plays "Tico Tico," a Brazilian piece that the musicians and audience get up and dance to, and everyone gets out these colorful scarves to dance with. Well, more musicians want to dance than play, so I made a deal with Brian, one of the YOA trombones, that I would borrow his trombone and play if he danced. Well, as it turned out, Andres Lopera, another trombonist, is actually the conductor on the last pieces usually, so he loaned me his horn, so I got on stage for the encore "Tico Tico" with my scarf and everything and played with the bones. Then, the audience loved the orchestra's performance so much they wanted another encore, so I got to sightread the Mambo from Bernstein's "West Side Story." It was really fun to play trombone again- I think it's been like 4 months since I've played- and it was nice sitting back there with the low brass.
Our flight back to Bogotá the next morning was ridiculously early- we had to leave the hotel at 3:45 am, so after eating dinner at midnight, there wasn't much sense in going to sleep. It was horn player Monica's birthday, so we celebrated a bit, and some of the musicians came out and serenaded her and we all sang. Later we walked a bit around the hotel, but not far, because Cali is kind of sketch. We got some street food around the corner- a delicious arepa filled with cheese and butter. It was toasted over coals and tasted like popcorn and was piping hot. It was delicioso.
3:45 am rolled around pretty quickly, and we got on the bus to catch our flight. Unlike the previous internal flights in Colombia, this one was pretty straightforward and we got to Bogotá on time. We checking in the the hotel- the same one we stayed in the first few days when we arrived, and then I had to get some work done before napping.
I can't believe the Colombian portion of the tour is almost over! We will say goodbye to our friends of the FJC orchestra after the concert tomorrow, then be on our way to continue our tour solo.
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