Hastings of Harrington Lane: August 2010

Friday, August 20, 2010

Beatles in Brazil...

Although we do have a ton of beatles, cockroaches and other interesting insects down here, this post is about some beatles of a different variety...

THE BEATLES!

Since starting at our company, I have worked off and on with a writer and a musician to record some songs for Wizard's new language books. It's been quite the experience, as I've loved performing my whole life...but have never made a CD or anything....Besides, who wouldn't love singing songs about burgers and fries, the weather, prepositions or long lost loves?

Exactly.

Martha, the lyric writer, happens to be a very successful owner of her own Skill language school and always throws fun activities for the community through her students. She invited me to sing some Queen songs at her next school concert, as she's been a witness to plenty of silly "Jam sessions" where Rafael (amazing musician/music writer) and I rocked out to some of their classics. I LOVE QUEEN. But, as a last minute change, I had to sing Beatles, which I've never tried to listen to, since they seemed too cliche and I grew up with my Dad jokingly calling them "The Beatless."

Newsflash:

I LOVE them too.

The concert was great.

Kids sang tons of classics...

Teenagers belted out some sweet ballads...

Rafael and his right hand man had some sweet guitar/piano solos...

and I got to sing a few songs as a guest artist with one of my
favorite gal pals, Cris, backing me up.

(Cris and I...she's our black momma of the office and I love her!)

(Our support group/fan club...we like to keep it small and extra special ;)...Thanks J!)

Everybody giggled over my Portuguese...

(Rafael: Psychologist by day, musician by night and friend to both of us!)

The funniest thing about the entire shindig was a series of events near the end. I had just finished the concert with "A Little Help from my Friends"and I heard Martha asking Rafael if we could do another song... some Queen this time.

My interest was peaked...BUT...

No practice...

No Music...

No nothing...

So, I said, "Oh, we don't know right now, maybe next time...." thinking I was golden and done being nervous for the night.

Then, the next thing I know, Miss Martha is up there announcing that the American will be up momentarily with an encore performance of Bohemian Rhapsody.

What?!

Holy impromptu and outrageous fear of slaughtering an epic song.

But, it turned out pretty dang cool, thanks to a perfect guitar solo from this guy and a quick rearrangement of the song cutting out all of the crazy choral parts in the middle.

I wouldn't say it was thunder bolts and lightning...

but it wasn't very very frightening and I did feel like a Rock Star!

I'm so glad I kept a cassette tape of Queen in the Mustang

for all those years....Thank-you Emily...sorry Vandenberg Village neighbors. ;)

(Me, Martha and Cris)

In the end, The Beatles by Skill concert was such a fun night and I was grateful for the opportunity to do something creative again.

So, stay tuned for when you can hear my sweet melodies about Burgers and Fries...

I'm sure they'll make my Mom's Top 20.

;)

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Rio de Janeiro...

Two weekends ago we got to go on our first married get-away together....to Rio de Janeiro!!! It was our dream get away for a long weekend and we enjoyed every minute of it!

We left Thursday night at about midnight for an adventurous night bus ride and arrived in Rio de Janeiro just as the sun got there too.

I can still remember getting in the taxi, winding around some roads in a more "urban" (or ghetto...however you want to say it) area. Then, all of the sudden, we came around this curve and it was like the whole city opened up and I could see the Cristus for the first time. Beautiful memories...

We stayed at a hostel about two blocks from Ipanema beach. It was great, with hammocks on the roof, a room to ourselves and plenty of interesting people to talk to.

We went to Ipenema Beach our first day there...My theme song the week before was "The Girl from Ipanema," so I wanted to test it out.

I think I was a little too white and overdressed to be that girl...but that's ok. I guess I can be the Gringa from Ipanema!

We walked the beach nearly end to end and got some good R&R...

And realized that it was my first time in the Atlantic Ocean!!!

Had to show the Brazil flops for proof...

That afternoon we took off for Pão de Açúcar.

It was perfect timing, because we got to see the sites by

day and night and see a gorgeous sunset!

On top of the first island mountain, we saw our first wild monkey of the three on this trip...So glad that happened because seeing a random monkey was on my bucket list for Brazil and I hadn't seen one yet. Monkey....check.

There's always a whole lotta of suga' on the sugar loaf!

We ran around and saw the sites, then caught the gandola just in time to get to the higher mountain before sunset...

Overlooking Cococabana and the centro side of Rio...

We kept having to play chicken with the clouds...lots of our pictures came out like this...

I guess that's what you get when you're IN them!

There were some pretty views to be seen!

One of my favorite parts of the experience was at sunset....These billowing clouds were hovering just at the tops of the mountains, and as the sun set, the clouds lowered just enough to see Christ standing. If that's anything like the second coming will look like...that will be one dazzling day!

I had another picture when it was slightly lighter than this and zoomed in...and it totally looked like a super blurry version of the picture we have in the forrier of almost

every LDS church of the second coming...

I would have included it, but Jordan said it would probably be good to not have over 50 pics on here...so I settled for the high 40's and it unfortunately didn't make the cut.

The next day we set out to find Cristus Redentor...

and happened to find a sweet old house we both agreed on...

and rode on a train that took us all the way up the mountain...

Silly tourists...

I read on a travel tip site that if you sit on the back right, facing backwards, you get the greatest views....and they weren't lying!

We got up to the top and enjoyed a great afternoon with 360 views and the towering Cristus statue behind us...

...Foi Maravilhoso...

We tried to battle the tourists and get some good pictures with Him...

(which really means J had to put up with me asking a random stranger...or making him ask...if they could try and get a picture)

This one was from a lady who lied on the ground for us...so nice...but we still couldn't get our heads and His together...

So we went down to another look-off, sat dangerously close to the edge of a wall seperating us and a cliff and got one with all of us...and walked away happy...

...to the end of a look out with the entire bay...

You can tell it was sunny **squint**...but don't you love those seemingly floating mountains?!

We also saw monkey #2 here...so the day pretty much couldn't have been better!

On our last day there we went to this awesome fair, where we bought some sweet stuff, including these necklaces that they made on site. J and I even got to pick out the stone combo's...One for me and one for him...

Just kidding, he got a wallet! ;)

Then we headed off for our 3rd Omni-bus adventure (which are awesomely efficient there) and found the Botanical Gardens...where there were beautiful trees, crazy trees like this one with questionable balls on them...

flowering trees...

trees of unusual size (if you haven't noticed, we love all things in giant porportions)...

pretty fountains and palm "hallways"...

and J's favorite, Bamboo. Great thing we're moving to China, right?!

This also happens to be Bamboo of unusual size, if you can't tell... ;)

The Botanical Gardens were started by the King in the early 1800's and were the Royal family's own gardens for quite some time.

That's why you can find awesome pieces of classic architecture like these ones...

Classy...

And...our 3rd...that's right, third monkey sighting of the trip. And this time there were 4 of them...Can you find the monkey in this picture?

When you look up, all of the mountains look like this...

Beautiful forests everywhere...

Which we loved to explore...

...and found waterfalls!!

The gardens also had some interesting swirli cacti, that fought

with the bamboo to be Jordan's favorite...

As we were leaving I noticed these little lovelies...

And thought their choice of naked dancing statues

by the entrance was intriguing...

Then, we got to finish off the trip by spending some

quality time with the locals, fishing by the moonlight in what

I like to think is the real "Rio de Janeiro"....

(Aren't the flavela and mountain in the background great?! I feel like

this briefly depicts life for manywho live there.)

Later that night we came home via the Night Bus (first class this time...for any of you traveling by night omnibus in the near future, it is worth the extra R$12 [US $6]. We both slept almost the entire time!) and returned to enjoy a relaxing day off in our temporary home of Campinas.

We are so glad we got some time off and have been able to explore one of the greatest places in Brazil. Iguazu Falls and Manaus (for the Amazon and there lovely pink dolphins) are also on our bucket lists...but we aren't worried... because I'm sure we'll be back!