May the Adventure Begin!

I left my house at 7am this morning so I could make sure I would get to the Brazilian Embassy by no later than 9am. By arriving at 9am I was eligible to forego waiting in line and picking up mine and Murray's visas right away. It took me 1 1/2 hours to get up to San Francisco (I truly feel sorry for those people that do this commute every working day--it is hell!!) When I arrived on the 9th floor of 300 Montgomery Street I was greeted by a very large number of people already camped out in the hallways waiting for the embassy to open. "Get in line" they all told me very clearly! By the time the embassy finally opened at 9:10 the entire elevator lobby as well as an entire hallway were jam packed with people wanting to go to Brazil. Wow! I'm sure the tourist industry there will be very pleased about this.

As soon as the doors opened I was allowed to go and stand in the line to pick up visas. It took less than 5 minutes to get all the papers we need for the trip. What a relief. I was praying that nothing had gone wrong or that they had lost one of our passports. So now it is completely real and we will be boarding our flight to Brazil tomorrow. It will be a hellacious long two days of traveling, but the end result will be arriving in Rio Grande at around 11pm Nov. 29 and preparing for our two confirmed concerts. We will do a television interview on Friday morning and then rehearse in the afternoon with the brazilian musicians. I am really looking forward to the opportunity of working with musicians from a different country. We will definitely see how the universal language of music fares in this new environment. :)

It is so exciting to get this opportunity to travel to a different country to perform, meet new people, perform in front of a new audience and experience the brazilian lifestyle, if only for a few days. I will make notes along the way and take lots of pictures that I will post upon my return. I'm sure there will be many stories to tell and maybe even some new songs that are inspired by this adventure. Ciao.