You May Say that I'm a Dreamer...

Since my Spanish is obviously not fluent (yet) and I have definately not even created a dent in the second language of Chile ( yes, there is a second unknown language that "Lonely Planet" didn't tell you about it's called Castellano which is basically Chilean slang but it might as well be a second language) So whenever my friends want me to do something they tell me the bare minimum.

This is what happened on a Tuesday;

My good friend Marcelo (who is totally into Guns N' Roses and rock & roll galore) asked me do I want to sing with him while he plays and then Saturday we would play together, seeing as how it totally doesn't matter what you sound like as long as you know the english words, I was like sure. I won't get embarrased singing with one my best friends so might as well go out and do something. Of course by Wednesday I told my brother about it, and he said "Oh, you're doing it for that festival in the school on Saturday right"........um I am not quite sure actually. So of course I ask Marcelo and it turns out that yes, it is for the festival, and yes there are going to be people watching. This is not what I had in mind, seeing as how I only sing when no one is in the house. But, I guess that means nothing now. Thursday during music class (which I hope I can go to everytime seeing as how I chose art which turned out to be a very boring class) we went up to a locked music room to practice, the three songs they chose, well I didn't really know the words all to well or where I was even supposed to come in to sing. We were basically starting from scratch. I had papers of lyrics I had to read from, it was not so pretty. By Friday we were basically allowed to skip school to practice for the day, by then I had 2 of the songs memorized. With a piano, and 2 guitars going and me with no microphone I can't hear myself and I was rather getting annoyed by all the noise. But with luck, one of the guitar players had to write a history test which apparently took forever. So it was the Pedro playing the piano, and Mela playing the guitar....but a lot quieter this time. It was great I could hear myself, and I actually made progress on where to come in to sing. Seeing as how the singer and piano have more in common then the guitars. In a band the guitars are almost like selfish little children creating all the noise and getting all the attention (solos anyone?) where as the piano and the singer are quiet and are more to keep the song on track. So, with only one guitar it was great. I even had to sing "less pretty and more gritty" in a part of a song which really does hurt your voice.

Saturday we had to be at the school by 2:30 to get some practice time in which really didn't work seeing as how we never really got the stage to practice. Or at least for me I didn't get to practice with the microphone at all. Our drumist was like we don't have time to pracitce with the microphone but your awesome so you don't need too. Haha I basically said "Screw you all on the stage I am using that microphone" and once someone turned it on I did just that. I sang bits and pieces of the songs ...and even some of our guitar players joined in on some parts. So for the 4 hours of waiting for the show to start we basically sat around talked, tried to practice but we eventually went up to the music room to practice each song twice, and they basically told me this "If you mess up, keep singing, cause no one really knows english anyways" Which is true because when we were listening to other people singing we couldn't tell if it was spanish or english because there english pronounciation was so bad.

While waiting to play, I had invited Clea and Liz (other exchange students) to come and watch me. At first I was thinking it might be awkward for all my friends to be with my exchanger friends just because we would be speaking english, but it wasn't it was actually pretty great. Since we would talk in English and we would actually translate almost every thing we said. It helped us practice since we were talking a lot more. As well as I find translating things a lot easier than just speaking Spanish to someone. So, Fabi was my main friend that we talked to and it was pretty awesome. As well as Pedro, Marcelo and Mela. Hahah in Clea's school she apparently only has one good-looking guy whereas in my school they arn't as few. I introduced her to the Baeza Brothers, her jaw dropped. She hadn't seen three good-looking guys at once in her entire time at her school, whereas in one moment I can show her three ahahah. It was hilarious. Everytime she would turn around and she would see Pedro (yes, I do have a friend named Pedro, but not like the guy from Napolean Dynamite, this one has a jew fro) she would gasp and be omg this is so not fair ahhaa. Of course I had to shuffle them around and make them kiss a bunch of people they don't know, but that is the Chilean thing to do. But, it was awesome how my very two different groups of friends came together so well. It does help that they are gringas as well!

We were the last people to officially go on the stage, and our band name was named "T-james" yeah it was named after my nickname I was very embarrased. As well as the master of ceremonies had to announce that I was the foreign exchange student from Canada. When we were finally ready and all the sound checks were done, we first sang November Rain the hardest song for me to sing because of all the entries but I nailed almost all of them and even when I didn't no one could tell. The hardest song was done with. Then came Patience. It went fine and dandy. We were then told to get off even though we were supposed to do 2 more songs....but then they said "Oh well do one more" so we did Imagine. This is basically just the singer and a piano song, with a slight hint of a guitar. It was going really well when we came to the last chorus.

"You may say that I'm a dreamer" ....the piano got disconnected by someone. In this song the piano is the main instrument, so the guitar stopped as well. Ugh after a couple seconds of fumbling through words I decided to go solo (accapalo? I can't spell) I did the rest of the song by myself, and I got the biggest around of applause through the whole section. It was amazing. When we got off the stage I was greeted by Liz and Clea and gave them the biggest hugs ever (they already call them Taylor hugs because they are so big). I was also greeted by like 6-8 10year old girls. Who ran after me. They asked me questions about the usually things. I couldn't even congratulate my band mates since they swarmed me. Since Clea and Liz were there as well they swarmed us. They first only talked to Liz and me since we have coloured eyes and stick out a lot whereas Clea has dark hair and eyes. She was lucky for a couple of minutes when my brother came over to hug me. (This of course made the girls scream "pololo. pololo.pololo"[boyfriend] I had to explain to them that he was my brother and he was Chilean) Lucky that he did that because it got me away from the girls. And since we had to talk to Marcelo on the bleachers I was even luckier that I was able to climb on the bleachers and hop over them to get away ...for awhile. Liz got away as well, and Clea got backed into a corner we couldn't even see her since the girls had pretty much attacked her. Liz and me may have been bad friends for not helping her but we weren't going to risk our lives ahahha. We had some time to talk with people for 5 minutes when Clea came back with our fan club. Finally Fabi told them to leave and we had some peace.

We eventually had to go. We were getting a ride from The Baeza Family (if you haven't noticed the Baeza family and the Perez family are very close they know everything of the other family and they both love they other family to death) Of course another Chilean thing is that the number of seats in the car doesn not define the number of people that can fit in it. Seeing as how it was suppose to seat 7 people and we fit 10 people. All the girls in the back and the boys in the middle. We were able to talk in all Spanish except for a couple of inside jokes which is going to happen when you know a different language and you want to make a secret comment. We eventually arrived at our house, and Liz, Clea and me were talking about our different experiences with Chileans that only other exchangers understand. Jose joined in on the english. Even though we should be speaking Spanish but I thought we deserved it since we translated everything and talked to a bunch of fanatical girls in Spanish when we couldn't even hear them properly from the music.

That day, was just such an awesome day, since you combined an event I worked hard for, with being able to speak Spanish and be understood most of the time, and have both your Spanish friends and exchanger friends come together and be able to talk to one another and conjoin. It was just plain AWESOME!!

These are the days that I love..