Maringá Country Festival

UPDATE - I ADDED A NEW VIDEO SO YOU CAN SEE/HEAR WHAT A BRAZILIAN COUNTRY MUSIC CONCERT IS LIKE!

Azul was sponsoring a country music festival in Maringá, Paraná and needed someone to go set up our material so they sent me. When I landed, I just chuckled to myself, laughing at the fact that I was in the middle of nowhere, by myself in Brazil…going to a country concert. I hate country music. Anyway, the festival organizers paid for my hotel this time. During the day, I was treated to a delicious traditional feijoada lunch and some acoustic performances from the bands. Then at night, I got to hangout backstage with the bands –unfortunately I had no idea who anyone was, or it would have been even better. We got free drinks, free dinner, and VIP front-row seats. I had never heard Brazilian country music before, and had no clue as to who these bands were, but I actually had a pretty good time!

An added bonus to the trip was that one of my good friends from the mission lived about an hour from there in a city called Londrina. So on Sunday I took a bus to his house, and ate a little churrasco with his family. He showed me around town, then we just went back to his house and reminisced about the mission and looked at all his pictures. It was great to see him again after 3 years, and to swap battle stories from the mission field. I always love being reminded of my mission, and it’s one of the main reasons why I wanted to come back to Brazil.



The bus ride back to Maringá turned out to be kind of an ordeal though, but that is starting to becoming sort of commonplace in my travels… It had rained so hard in Londrina that tons of tress had fallen all over the city, and the power had been knocked out. So when I got to the bus station, the whole place was completely dark. I had to wait until 8:00 at night to get the next bus, and it wasn’t even a direct bus. So because of the rain, and the indirect route, a 1 hour drive turned into a 4 hour bus ride. Blah! All I wanted to do was get back to the hotel, Skype with my family and girlfriend and get in the jacuzzi. But no! I didn’t get to Maringá until midnight. On top of that, I was stranded at the bus station because I had used all my cash to buy my bus ticket since there was no power for my debit card to work. I figured I would just be able to find an ATM to withdraw money to pay for a taxi back to the hotel. But since I was in the middle of freaking nowhere Brazil I couldn’t find an ATM that accepted my card. Luckily, I remembered that I had grabbed a card with the hotel’s number on it in case of emergencies, and they sent a cab for me. I made it back to the hotel at 1am. Did I mention I had to wake up at 4am for a 5:40 flight??? As bad as it sucked, I just had to laugh at the whole experience. Just one more story to tell!

I slept for about an hour and a half. I was pissed I had to wake up so dang early. Then as I ws flying back to Sao Paulo, I watched the sunrise over the cloud cover, and it was one of the prettiest things I have ever seen. Suddenly I forgot about how upset and tired I was, and was just glad to be alive. But, now I’m sitting in the Campinas airport, back to being pissed off again. I get off the plane only to find out that Azul’s bus back to Alphaville just left, and the next one isn’t until 9:30. Great, 3 hours in the tiny Campinas airport is exactly how I wanted to spend my morning after sleeping for an hour and a half….awesome.