I feel good! Da da da da da da da!

The other day we had a performance at a two schools and my, oh my was it HOT! Sheesh. I could have stood still and still sweat like crazy! I think my teeth were sweating!! I don’t really think that it is THAT hot, it’s just the humidity is probably 900%! You should have seen us all. We were a sweaty mess! LOL! I wish I had a photo to share of how ridiculous we all looked, it was quite funny! Anyway, back to our two performances. We arrived at the first school pretty early and made our way down to the room where we’d do our performance. It was a small room about the size of our rehearsal space back home. We ended up not bringing all of our equipment into the room because it would have been crazy loud. We brought in our battery powered amps and hooked up the instruments and vocal microphones up to them and that was our PA system. The BQ played a fun 30 minute show first. One of the songs they play “Tuba Tiger Rag” is so much fun! As the title suggests, it features the Tuba. Every time they play it, I can’t help myself…I have to dance! Most of the dancing is in my seat…because I don’t want to embarrass myself too much let alone embarrass them with my crazy and goofy moves. I’ve heard it several times, but it is just one of those songs that make you smile every time you hear it. The tuba player has the perfect personality for that song too; and actually he dances while he’s playing…pretty awesome. After the BQ played, Dawn (our piano playing oboist) and Dave (our sax totin’ bassoonist) played “Amazing Grace” for the students too. We then got up and played a few songs too. 4 out of the 5 songs were in Spanish. Yahoo! I did say to the students that ‘I’m sorry but my Spanish singing is better than my speaking Spanish’. They thought that was pretty funny. I need to work on that though. After each group performed, the students asked questions about various things such as ‘how long have you been playing your instrument?’ to ‘how much does that instrument cost?’. I even got a few students wondering about how much my backpack cost…to which I received a gasp when I told them how much it was. The second schools performance was the same and actually some of the students from the first school were at the second performance too…which was neat! I guess they didn’t get enough the first time. At the end of the second performance though, the band joined with many of the students and played a couple of local songs one “Linda Mujer” (“Pretty Woman” not the Roy Orbison Pretty Woman, but a local song). They also played “Oye Como Va” and I sang on it. It was fun.

We returned to the ship and oh my goodness walking into the cold air was AMAZING! Opening the door to the air conditioned area of the ship was like receiving the sweetest, coldest slap to the face! Sweet relief from the humid air of Panama. We’re so spoiled. It’s funny how we love our conveniences so much. Another funny thing is that we have a few Panamanians on board while we are here and I’ve seen them walking around with blankets draped across their shoulders! HAHA! I guess it’s all relative. When you are from here, you get used to it…while we were all sweating like crazy at the schools, the students and teachers looked as cool as a cucumber…no sweating…no dampness…not even a hint of condensation above anyone’s lip. I guess I enjoy my Midwest weather. Cold sometimes, warm other times…hot, humid and sweaty less often. I miss home, but for the most part, I am enjoying my time and especially the experiences.

Thanks for stopping by….
Keisha