Hugs and Pastel...Never Ending

This morning we had the chance to participate in a church service at Cristo Lutheran Church. We were a little unsure how well we would be able to follow along, however, the church had kindly provided us with an English translation of the bulletin and sermon. We also quickly discovered that Lutheran culture seems to be a universal. We sang many familiar hymns, spoke the same liturgy, and ate lots of food at a potluck. At lunch we were treated to, of course, a huge, delicious meal consisting of hotdogs and pastel, a thin pie crust with various sweet or savory fillings. We were also treated to a few local songs from some of the members after church.We had an opportunity to meet and visit with many young people at the church.

After church we were off to another city and university, Feevale in Novo Hamburgo. We took a short bus tour of the city including a shoe factory, a view of the city, and the two Feevale campuses. We also toured the newer Feevale campus before heading to the theater to prepare for our evening concert. The theater in which we sang was about the size of the Winspear and our audience was the largest we have ever performed for, 1400. Needless to say we were all a little nervous heading into the rehearsal. We had a photographer from the univeristy following us around and I'm sure he captured plenty of pictures of our stunned faces. Our nervousness quickly turned to excitement when we were greeted by the Feevale choir with a welcoming song. Fernando then told them to come and give us all big hugs. We received many big, heartfelt hugs and once again Brazilian hospitalty helped calm our nerves. 

This concert was a large, important affair involving a partnership signing between Concordia and Feevale. We had a chance to share the Canadian national anthem, some Canadian music, as well as sing the Brazilian national anthem and songs in Portugeuse. Rehearsing our Porguese songs with people who actually spoke Portugeuse was...interesting. Actually we thought we did pretty well preparing ahead of time and only made a few small adjustments. Singing the Brazilian national anthem was a whole different story. It was sung at what we considered a breakneck pace and we stumbled out about half the words and mumbled "watermelon" in Portuguese the rest of the time. Thankfully we had the Feevale choir and audience leading the way. The rest of the concert was a big success and a very exciting experience. We once again received a standing ovation which only added to the excitement of the whole evening.

Following every choir concert we have a tradition of joining hands, yelling 1, 2, 3 PRAY, and then our chaplain will lead us in prayer. This evening we had the Feevale choir join our circle. We had to continously widen the circle as more members arrived. We ended up with a circle of about 60 people. After the prayer we had another hug session complete with more people crying. We have dubbed this open outpouring of emotion "the Brazilian feels". We are definitely feeling like celebrities as people ask to take pictures with us and offer us food and gifts.

After the concert we headed back to Porto Alegre for...you guessed it... more food. We went to a pastel restaurant where we tried various types of pastels. Some types included chicken curry; chocolate, mozzarella, and coconut; apple and cinnamon; and vegetarian. Our long, eventful day ended around 12:30 when we arrived back at the hostel. The excitement wasn't quite over as one group of girls discovered a gecko in their room. There were a few screams as the gecko was corralled into a Ziploc bag and taken downstairs. Apparently the gecko was more afraid of the girls then they were of it because it's tail fell off when it was taken outside to be released into the wilds of downtown Porto Alegre.