Shopping: A (South) American Pastime

Some of you may be shocked to hear that, while we have a pool right here on the compound, I have only been in it once, and that was a few days ago. Today was yet another leisure day, and what did I do? I read The Return of the King, of course. Brilliant book. But others disagreed with my priorities and preferred to spend their time in the pool, or on the beach.

We did eventually get around to doing something productive in the afternoon, with a short choir practice. The main even of the day, though, lay in our trip to a nearby shopping mall.

Now, I am willing to put forth the debatable position that shopping malls are incredibly boring, but this proved to be an interesting trip. For one thing, the mall was expecting us to do a flash mob.

If you know anything about our repertoire, we have nothing quite befitting a flash mob, but we did the best we could with In a Grain of Sand, singing spread out around the railings looking down to the first floor, until we all slowly walked onto the staircase and arranged ourselves. Though I was nervous no one would hear us above the hubbub of the mall, my fears proved ungrounded as people crowded to hear us sing and applauded after each piece. We were then ushered up to the outdoor patio of the food court, to perform on a stage.

(the stage is behing all those chairs and tables... and don't worry, there were more people than this when we performed!)

We managed to squish all of us onto the dais, and with a few mikes in front of us, continued our singing.

Oh, and the view was breathtaking.

(don't you just love clouds? I love clouds)

(that's Harley, if you couldn't tell by the hair)

(more clouds!)

We also managed to grab some delicious chocolate from one of the shops. Oh, and Brendan and Vaughn got asked if they had cocaine. Is it usual for tourists to carry drugs (besides Imodium)? I don't know.

The biggest surprise came, however, when we learned of a... change of plans regarding our performance with the University here on Saturday. We were supposed to perform Mozart's Missa Brevis with them, and that is still the plan. However, we have been told that they have no choir. So... we will not be able to practice the choir part with them much. As such, we pretty much have a week to learn this piece on our own. Oh, and it's thirty pages long. 30! In a week. Doable--yes. But it will be a lot of work. If you have it in mind, please pray for us as we must work extra practice times into our schedule. If there's one thing we have learned in this trip, though, it is to be flexible.

We ended the day by talking about our word of the day: dissonance. Not all dissonance is bad--it can point to something greater (see C.S. Lewis for more on that). The beauty, though, is in the resolution. And even when life throws dissonance at us, we can know that God is working all things for his glory and the good of those who love him.

At the moment, we are relaxing before heading to bed, enjoying the (relatively) cool night-time air (it is just after 11 PM). Tomorrow holds another full day for us. And to think, we already only have a week left. Time flies when you can't check it on your cell phone 24/7.