so last night ben and I had nothing better to do, so we decided to go back to Villa Madalena (bar district). After dinner, we wandered around looking for the bar from saturday night. At one point we got to a major intersection, and saw a cop car driving by with their lights off. I thought that was kidna wierd, so i pointed it out to ben.
As we watched the car, they stopped, watching us. Bad vibes were exchanged. Then the cops all bailed outta the car (brazilian cops roll like clowns, with cars packed full of officers) telling us to put up our hands. two had their guns drawn, and one was pointing their gun at us. Ben didn't understand what was going on, less the portuguese commands, so I told him to get his hands up and tried to explain to the cops that he spoke no portuguese and mine was bad. they had us turn around, spread our legs, and lock our finges behind our heads, still yelling at us as they interrogated me about where we from and what we were doing. ben and I stayed calm, more confused than scared despite the guns. the cop who patted me down stopped at my wallet, asking me if I had any drugs on me. of course I didn't.
they never asked us to present any form of identification; i suppose our accents spoke for us. they also never apologized for the harrassment--an apology definitely would have been appreciated at least from the cop who unnecessarily grabbed my balls really hard as he frisked me for weapons.
the bar scene was lame that night. it was a monday after all, and super cold. maybe that's why they bothered us, cause it was strange for anyone to be out at all. Afterwards, ben and I stopped at the first bar we saw and got some stiff drinks. the mood had been killed by the incident, so we left soon afterwards (the bar was closing early anyway).
fuck the police.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
??!!?!?
So let's pretended I posted this on saturday.
Sat was a day full of surprises. It started out with a trip to the MASP, thinking it was the museum of modern art. turned out to be the museum of old ass art, which was ok, but i mean i twas really funny getting off the elevator expecting some really out there shit and finding a bunch of dusty portraits.
After the museum, we went to see a concert. I thought it would be cool if ben saw a batucada (lots of drums), and i saw in the paper there was a group reording a dvd that night, and student tickets were cheap. so we go to the venue, and even though we bought them that day, we were 4 ROWS AWAY FROM THE STAGE. that was our first hint that something was up. we looked around, expecting to see kids our age (it was a pretty small auditorium, second hint), and instead we saw a ton of families. hint number 3. we started joking about how we were going to see the brazilian version of Raffi. ha ha. when the show started, a bunch of kids ran out on stage. hmmm.....that's a wierd way to start......the group we were seeing was called "Meninos do Morumbi," which means 'Boys of Morumbi' or 'Kids of Morumbi.' 
The newspaper ad showed 2 adults with drums, so I assumed it was the latter. Nope. It was a social program run by a music school. We stuck aroudn and put up with the show for awhile; the drumming was cool, but the little kids singing kinda ruined the vibe. we bailed after an hour, and on our way out were confronted by about 20 clowns at the door. that caught us way off guard. I was so surprised i tried to grab ben outta the way, "we can't go this way!!" some lady saw us leaving and told us we were missing the best part. whatever lady...
The newspaper ad showed 2 adults with drums, so I assumed it was the latter. Nope. It was a social program run by a music school. We stuck aroudn and put up with the show for awhile; the drumming was cool, but the little kids singing kinda ruined the vibe. we bailed after an hour, and on our way out were confronted by about 20 clowns at the door. that caught us way off guard. I was so surprised i tried to grab ben outta the way, "we can't go this way!!" some lady saw us leaving and told us we were missing the best part. whatever lady...the biggest joke about that was that my uncle new what we were getting into, and so did this girl i invited (she's like, "uh, i'm outta town right now, maybe we can hang out tomorrow?" embarassing!), but no one gave us a heads up. And the newspaper def did not make it clear if you didn't already know the band, which apparently everyone does.
so yeah, after that ben and i retreated home laughing our asses off about the whole thing, especially the clowns, watched a dvd, then went to the bar district. we ate at this shitty restaurant where we discoverd a great brazilian beer called "Malzebier Brahma," then wandered out to find a bar. We walked into the first place that looked promising, and bought some Jager shots to get started. 2 CUTE girls next to us had never tried jager before, so we bought them shots, and well...these girls were part of a going away party for a friend, so we met this huge group of really cool kids at the bar, who i hope to see again (we traded numbers like crazy). we partied till ike 4am. i'm def not worried about meeting people anymore.
Best day in brazil yet.
Friday, July 27, 2007
my dogs are barking
so ben and I spent ald ay jsut wandering around sao paulo, and it was actually really cool. the morning started off early cause i ahd a job interview. they totally threw the job at me. in fact, i don't think i've ever had a job interview where i wasn't handed the job. then again my last jobs were snowboarding instructor, writing tutor... whatever. but yeah, the interview went great and so now i've officially got a job! start the day i get back even.
from there ben and i just hopped on a bus to go find the city. last night my uncle took us aroudn town after we treated him and his wife to a churascaria (brazilian bbq), so we had some idea what streets to check out. but as the bus got deeper into town, people aroudn us could tell we had no idea where we going. enter Ramony, this super cute chick who offered to get us to a metro station where we could get to a more itneresting part of the city. see, according to her, the downtown area we were headed to was full of boring old stuff we didn't wanna see. so she showed us which way to go and I got her number before she left, and well, the metro in SP is kinda silly. the city is basically split in half, one sides metro doesn't conenct to the other sides metro AT ALL. so the station we wanted to get to wasn't accessible from teh metro she took us to.
and so began our long day of walking. we ended up seeing a ton of the city because we jsut walekd through all of it. we waalked for about 5-6hrs, and finally around 5pm we got to the metro station we were originally trying to get to (Luz, where tehre are a few museums and junk). so we got there, bought a coupla drinks cause we were exhausted, and took the first bus we could find home, which took an hour. But hey, i'd rather have an adventure than see a museum anyday.
from there ben and i just hopped on a bus to go find the city. last night my uncle took us aroudn town after we treated him and his wife to a churascaria (brazilian bbq), so we had some idea what streets to check out. but as the bus got deeper into town, people aroudn us could tell we had no idea where we going. enter Ramony, this super cute chick who offered to get us to a metro station where we could get to a more itneresting part of the city. see, according to her, the downtown area we were headed to was full of boring old stuff we didn't wanna see. so she showed us which way to go and I got her number before she left, and well, the metro in SP is kinda silly. the city is basically split in half, one sides metro doesn't conenct to the other sides metro AT ALL. so the station we wanted to get to wasn't accessible from teh metro she took us to.
and so began our long day of walking. we ended up seeing a ton of the city because we jsut walekd through all of it. we waalked for about 5-6hrs, and finally around 5pm we got to the metro station we were originally trying to get to (Luz, where tehre are a few museums and junk). so we got there, bought a coupla drinks cause we were exhausted, and took the first bus we could find home, which took an hour. But hey, i'd rather have an adventure than see a museum anyday.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Back In SP
So Ben and I just got back from my uncle's beach house in Ubatuba where we had this chill family gathering (plus ben) for like the past 2 weeks. We gto a lot of rain, the place is sorta in the rainforest, but the sunny days we had were unbelievable. Some assorted highlights:
--meeting lots of new family. My aunts brother remarried, so i got to meet the wife, two new "cousins", the wife's sister, and her daughter. Also, my cousin (my "uncle" David's Daguhter) Adriana's kids Nina and Alice were babies last time i saw them, and now they're 7 and 9! saw that was really cool getting to know them too
--drinking caipirinhas on the beach. the first day we got there ben and i went straight to the bar, got sorta drunk, stumbled back to the house in the dark where we found out adriana and her kids had jstu arrived. I drunkenly said hi, gave them gifts, and then Ben and i both went upstairs and passed out. great first impresisons all around!
--eating breakfast with the birds. Right by the dinner table there's a hummingbird feeder, and my uncle always puts out a little tray with fruit to attract birds. the brids in the area were beautiful! there were these realy colorful green birds that flocked to the tree, yellow birds, blue birds, this one brilliant red bird called a "Tieh Sangue," and tons of hummingbirds.
--BEN AND I ROCK AT EBACH TENNIS. 29 volleys, bitches.
--oh yeah, i started running with ben. i hope i keep it up. one day ben was running alone and saw what we think was a tamandua.
--this one day, all the young kids held this goofy "Espactacular!" for us. it was like a magic show (with pretty low end magic, i mean the oldest ones were 10 or 11), some clowning i didn't understand cause it was in portuguese, and acrobatics on the hammock chairs. it was realy cute. they were super disorganized, fighting over who got to do what, and the show went on for like a half hour.
--Ben and I made the theme of the trip, "BITCHES." There was no one on the beach our age, less any girls, so we just joked all the time about the dirty shit we'd say if we foudn any. finally we met these 2 really cute girls on our beach, helena and leila, so we invited them to the next beach over for a drink. Helena said she lived near me in SP, but they were on their way to lunch, but would be back afterwards. Ben and i left the beach as well to go running (really hard run up this monstrous hill). Lunch was waiting for us whend we got back, so we didn't get back to the beach until about 2 hours after we met the girls. They had already gone home, so ben and i went to the bar alone. it was kinda late, so surprise surprise, a bunch of people hanging aroun the abr were already drunk. two of them decided to be friendly to us. super friendly. they were liek touching us and making us generally uncomfortable, and were generally just hard to get rid of. this one really nasty old lady just loved ben and kept hugging his head to her breast and kissing him. finally i was just like (in poor portuguese) "allright lady, leave us by ourselves. go to some other place away from here." she got kinda mad and gave me the "you're a jerk! i thought you guys were cool" bit and scampered off. As we left the bar, and started to rain. heavily. we got soaked. The next day we left for a friends place on a nearby island for the weekend, so we never saw those girls again. damn shame too, cause that helena girl seemed real nice, and lemme tell you, she had a rack.
Our whole family-crew went to a friend's place.
--so we spent a weekend at this island, "Ilha Bella," at David's friend's house, Carlos and Vera. These two folks have the nicest place i've ever seen. They had this sorta 3 house set up real high up on the island overlooking the ocean. the houses are set up so you can't see any other nearby houses, so you feel like you're alone at this beautfiul place. We ate very well too, cause carlos knows how to cook. i tried to learn a little, but we'll see what i picked up next time i try to cook fish. That night Ben and i hit the town. We started out with coffee with my cousin Flavia and her faincee Alex at this wierd cafe. Anywhere you sit, you are looking at display cases filled with random crap they are trying to sell you. after that we wandered around and found 3 bars, only one of which interested us. We got there early, so the place was empty with nothing but us and a Shitty DVD of some concert going (i'm pretty sure it was the same show from 40yo virgin). the drinks were terrible. they were soooo strong, and we made the mistake of trying to drink them with straws, which made them taste worse. finally the band started at midnight, playing brazilian rock. Really, they played US covers with made up brazilian lyrics. People were singing along, so i guess most of brazilian pop is probably plagiarized rock. These two girls, prob firends of the band, sat on the stairs right in front of us. We asked them over to our table a couple times through the night, and they always said no (bitches!). Later on i got these 2 local girls to sit with us. we flirted a little, then after maybe 30min one of them said they had to leave. really, they meant they were bored and were goign to the opposite side fo the room to hang out away from us. roudn 4am when Ben and i were leaving, they were a little closer to our table, and well, i was a little drunk. so i look to ben and i go "ben, i'm gonna kiss her!" he didn't even udnerstand what i meant at the time, but we went up to them to say goodbye, and i made a move on the cuter of the two. we made out for like 5 seconds, then ben and i stumbled home (up this hill for 45 min).
--Our last day at ilha bella, we went to this secluded beach where we met these 2 cool girls, esther, who lives outside SP, and her friend lorinne, who was visiting from france. it was kinda embarrassing, my relatives started talking to them, and then like called us over, and left when the four of us started talking. i got esther's email, so we're probably gonna hang out some now that i'm back in town. So at least i've got one friend in SP my age now.
so yeah, that was a long blog entry but hey, it's been a fun 2 weeks. Ben has been digging brazil, and i'm glad he's here. next week we're going to rio, and then to a beach nearby called buzios (sp?). The airports are kind of a problem though. we were planning on flying out of congonhas, but there have been problems there to say the least. A few weks a go a plane almost slid off the tarmac in the rain, and a week ago one actually did, killing at least 144 people and startign a pretty heavy fire. we were at the beach at the time, but kept up with the situation from the news. it was kind of annoying, the news never really reported anythign new. last night or the night before, we were watching some higher-up give a speech on teh investigation and he said (loosely translated), "in brazil, we traditional don't look for 'causes.' we don't liek to point fingers. we don't even liek to use this word 'cause.' the word cause implies 'responsibility,' and we're here to identify factors that contributed to the incident so we can minimize them in the future, not place blame on anyone." Now, it was recognized the nigth of the incident that a) the airport floods in the rain because the tarmac does not have special ridges, and b) the pilots had been telling the airport folks to close down, but they weren't listening and were recieving direct orders from someone or some organization to stay in operation (the brazilian FAA i guess). translation: some one is definitely responsible. I thoguth it was really funny hearing this kind of bullshit, cause i was so used to it from the bush administration, and now here it was again in portuguese. Apparently the president of brazil, Lula, can abrely even read. you win brazil. either way, the airport flooded again a few days later, there was a landslide of some construction material, and now the place is clsoed and it's supposed to be really hard to get local flights anywhere.
so yeah, the short story is Ben and I are going to take buses to rio. i'm going to stop writing now cause chances are you stopped reading. i'll update in a few days on the rio plan. And oh yeah! i've got job interviews this week, so wish me luck!
--meeting lots of new family. My aunts brother remarried, so i got to meet the wife, two new "cousins", the wife's sister, and her daughter. Also, my cousin (my "uncle" David's Daguhter) Adriana's kids Nina and Alice were babies last time i saw them, and now they're 7 and 9! saw that was really cool getting to know them too
--drinking caipirinhas on the beach. the first day we got there ben and i went straight to the bar, got sorta drunk, stumbled back to the house in the dark where we found out adriana and her kids had jstu arrived. I drunkenly said hi, gave them gifts, and then Ben and i both went upstairs and passed out. great first impresisons all around!
--eating breakfast with the birds. Right by the dinner table there's a hummingbird feeder, and my uncle always puts out a little tray with fruit to attract birds. the brids in the area were beautiful! there were these realy colorful green birds that flocked to the tree, yellow birds, blue birds, this one brilliant red bird called a "Tieh Sangue," and tons of hummingbirds.
--BEN AND I ROCK AT EBACH TENNIS. 29 volleys, bitches.
--oh yeah, i started running with ben. i hope i keep it up. one day ben was running alone and saw what we think was a tamandua.
--this one day, all the young kids held this goofy "Espactacular!" for us. it was like a magic show (with pretty low end magic, i mean the oldest ones were 10 or 11), some clowning i didn't understand cause it was in portuguese, and acrobatics on the hammock chairs. it was realy cute. they were super disorganized, fighting over who got to do what, and the show went on for like a half hour.
--Ben and I made the theme of the trip, "BITCHES." There was no one on the beach our age, less any girls, so we just joked all the time about the dirty shit we'd say if we foudn any. finally we met these 2 really cute girls on our beach, helena and leila, so we invited them to the next beach over for a drink. Helena said she lived near me in SP, but they were on their way to lunch, but would be back afterwards. Ben and i left the beach as well to go running (really hard run up this monstrous hill). Lunch was waiting for us whend we got back, so we didn't get back to the beach until about 2 hours after we met the girls. They had already gone home, so ben and i went to the bar alone. it was kinda late, so surprise surprise, a bunch of people hanging aroun the abr were already drunk. two of them decided to be friendly to us. super friendly. they were liek touching us and making us generally uncomfortable, and were generally just hard to get rid of. this one really nasty old lady just loved ben and kept hugging his head to her breast and kissing him. finally i was just like (in poor portuguese) "allright lady, leave us by ourselves. go to some other place away from here." she got kinda mad and gave me the "you're a jerk! i thought you guys were cool" bit and scampered off. As we left the bar, and started to rain. heavily. we got soaked. The next day we left for a friends place on a nearby island for the weekend, so we never saw those girls again. damn shame too, cause that helena girl seemed real nice, and lemme tell you, she had a rack.
Our whole family-crew went to a friend's place.
--so we spent a weekend at this island, "Ilha Bella," at David's friend's house, Carlos and Vera. These two folks have the nicest place i've ever seen. They had this sorta 3 house set up real high up on the island overlooking the ocean. the houses are set up so you can't see any other nearby houses, so you feel like you're alone at this beautfiul place. We ate very well too, cause carlos knows how to cook. i tried to learn a little, but we'll see what i picked up next time i try to cook fish. That night Ben and i hit the town. We started out with coffee with my cousin Flavia and her faincee Alex at this wierd cafe. Anywhere you sit, you are looking at display cases filled with random crap they are trying to sell you. after that we wandered around and found 3 bars, only one of which interested us. We got there early, so the place was empty with nothing but us and a Shitty DVD of some concert going (i'm pretty sure it was the same show from 40yo virgin). the drinks were terrible. they were soooo strong, and we made the mistake of trying to drink them with straws, which made them taste worse. finally the band started at midnight, playing brazilian rock. Really, they played US covers with made up brazilian lyrics. People were singing along, so i guess most of brazilian pop is probably plagiarized rock. These two girls, prob firends of the band, sat on the stairs right in front of us. We asked them over to our table a couple times through the night, and they always said no (bitches!). Later on i got these 2 local girls to sit with us. we flirted a little, then after maybe 30min one of them said they had to leave. really, they meant they were bored and were goign to the opposite side fo the room to hang out away from us. roudn 4am when Ben and i were leaving, they were a little closer to our table, and well, i was a little drunk. so i look to ben and i go "ben, i'm gonna kiss her!" he didn't even udnerstand what i meant at the time, but we went up to them to say goodbye, and i made a move on the cuter of the two. we made out for like 5 seconds, then ben and i stumbled home (up this hill for 45 min).
--Our last day at ilha bella, we went to this secluded beach where we met these 2 cool girls, esther, who lives outside SP, and her friend lorinne, who was visiting from france. it was kinda embarrassing, my relatives started talking to them, and then like called us over, and left when the four of us started talking. i got esther's email, so we're probably gonna hang out some now that i'm back in town. So at least i've got one friend in SP my age now.
so yeah, that was a long blog entry but hey, it's been a fun 2 weeks. Ben has been digging brazil, and i'm glad he's here. next week we're going to rio, and then to a beach nearby called buzios (sp?). The airports are kind of a problem though. we were planning on flying out of congonhas, but there have been problems there to say the least. A few weks a go a plane almost slid off the tarmac in the rain, and a week ago one actually did, killing at least 144 people and startign a pretty heavy fire. we were at the beach at the time, but kept up with the situation from the news. it was kind of annoying, the news never really reported anythign new. last night or the night before, we were watching some higher-up give a speech on teh investigation and he said (loosely translated), "in brazil, we traditional don't look for 'causes.' we don't liek to point fingers. we don't even liek to use this word 'cause.' the word cause implies 'responsibility,' and we're here to identify factors that contributed to the incident so we can minimize them in the future, not place blame on anyone." Now, it was recognized the nigth of the incident that a) the airport floods in the rain because the tarmac does not have special ridges, and b) the pilots had been telling the airport folks to close down, but they weren't listening and were recieving direct orders from someone or some organization to stay in operation (the brazilian FAA i guess). translation: some one is definitely responsible. I thoguth it was really funny hearing this kind of bullshit, cause i was so used to it from the bush administration, and now here it was again in portuguese. Apparently the president of brazil, Lula, can abrely even read. you win brazil. either way, the airport flooded again a few days later, there was a landslide of some construction material, and now the place is clsoed and it's supposed to be really hard to get local flights anywhere.
so yeah, the short story is Ben and I are going to take buses to rio. i'm going to stop writing now cause chances are you stopped reading. i'll update in a few days on the rio plan. And oh yeah! i've got job interviews this week, so wish me luck!
Thursday, July 12, 2007
enter brazil
I just got back from watching "Shrek Terceiro (Dublado)," if the title of the post wasn't hint enough as to where i'm at. Turns out my uncle/cousin has high speed at his house, so it's no big deal for me to go online, so y'all (whomever my readership may be) well get plenty of updates on this trip.
As soona s i get a hold of a digital camera i'll put up some pictuers of my place. I'm living in this little apartment behind the main house, which totally rocks. Got my own bathroom, hardwood floors, a dresser jsut big enough to hold all my clothes, and even my own tv! the tv doesn't have an antenna or cable or anything, but that's no problem because the media player dealie I brought (archos 504) hooks up to the tv fine. i've even got my external harddrive plugged in!
so i'm pretty well set up right now. Only problem is, where are all the younhg people at? everyone in my family is much older than me, so i can't really go by the friend-of-a-friend route, and SP isn't exactly a young peoples city, so i'm having trouble finding hangouts. Hopefully my cousin flavia will be able to show me aroudn to some of the hipper spots. if all else fails all jsut start hanging around local universities or something....nothing's really close to the house though, just this big ass shopping center.
oh guess what i discoverd today?? none of the bank machines aroudn here accept my atm card!!! YAY!!!! so yeah, that's a bit of a problem...i mean, credit is cool and all, but i need to have some access to cash. i guess i'll just need to wire some money down and open up a bank account locally.
whatever, i'm more concerned about meeting people than finding money.
speaking of money, here's the current job situation: I've got an interview lined up with this one school, but I'm going to be travelling for the first week of school, so that might cause a problem. From what I understand, they need teachers however they can get em, so maybe my travel plans won't be such a big deal. My friend Ben is coming down to travel with me (arrives tomorrow, bitches!) so i can't really cut the travel plans out or he'll kill me dead. Also, I might have a job as a more private english teacher for business professionals, which will probably pay better but i mgith need to arrange some form of transportation for that gig. One cool thing about the 2nd gig: don't need to figure out what my CPF is (brazilian equiv of SSN). red tape can't stop me.
so to summarize: cool house, need a job, can't find people my age. Of course, this is only day #2 in the country (and last night i went to see a show featurign the Rio de Janeiro orchestra..not the youngest crowd. lots of family though!).
As soona s i get a hold of a digital camera i'll put up some pictuers of my place. I'm living in this little apartment behind the main house, which totally rocks. Got my own bathroom, hardwood floors, a dresser jsut big enough to hold all my clothes, and even my own tv! the tv doesn't have an antenna or cable or anything, but that's no problem because the media player dealie I brought (archos 504) hooks up to the tv fine. i've even got my external harddrive plugged in!
so i'm pretty well set up right now. Only problem is, where are all the younhg people at? everyone in my family is much older than me, so i can't really go by the friend-of-a-friend route, and SP isn't exactly a young peoples city, so i'm having trouble finding hangouts. Hopefully my cousin flavia will be able to show me aroudn to some of the hipper spots. if all else fails all jsut start hanging around local universities or something....nothing's really close to the house though, just this big ass shopping center.
oh guess what i discoverd today?? none of the bank machines aroudn here accept my atm card!!! YAY!!!! so yeah, that's a bit of a problem...i mean, credit is cool and all, but i need to have some access to cash. i guess i'll just need to wire some money down and open up a bank account locally.
whatever, i'm more concerned about meeting people than finding money.
speaking of money, here's the current job situation: I've got an interview lined up with this one school, but I'm going to be travelling for the first week of school, so that might cause a problem. From what I understand, they need teachers however they can get em, so maybe my travel plans won't be such a big deal. My friend Ben is coming down to travel with me (arrives tomorrow, bitches!) so i can't really cut the travel plans out or he'll kill me dead. Also, I might have a job as a more private english teacher for business professionals, which will probably pay better but i mgith need to arrange some form of transportation for that gig. One cool thing about the 2nd gig: don't need to figure out what my CPF is (brazilian equiv of SSN). red tape can't stop me.
so to summarize: cool house, need a job, can't find people my age. Of course, this is only day #2 in the country (and last night i went to see a show featurign the Rio de Janeiro orchestra..not the youngest crowd. lots of family though!).
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
my fourth was better than yours
so, i reluctantly spent the entire day at the squad, so if you got shitfaced (which i'm sure most of you did) then at least you've got that on me.
so last night i was bored cause no one wanted to hang out, so i stayed up late watching arrested development. this turned out to have been a shitty idea, because at 645 i got a call from the squad saying they were really shortstaffed. so i roll/fell out of bed, through on some clothes and drove up to weaton, where i've been since. After i was at the squad for a few hours, it wasn't really worth it to leave since i'd have to come back in later; wednesdays are my duty night, and it was jsut bad luck that it fell on the fourth.
so enough bitching. During the day, I responded to 3 or 4 fires. I'll admit, none of them were that cool as far as fires go, and i didn't get to see anything more than a little smoke. but still, you've gotta understand, i've only been in town for a month and i'm leaving in less than a week, so i was stoked to see even the smoldering remnants of a small oven fire.
after the fires, things were relatively quiet. to watch the fireworks, we went up onto the roof of wheaton plaza, cause hey, firefighters have keys baby! wheaton is a natural high point, and the plaza is the tallest building in the area (10 stories), so we weren't theo nly ones with the idea. at the plaza, we met an engine, a truck, and 2 ambulances who had also stopped by to see the show. We lost a few crews to calls, but whatever. we had a good group and an amazing view.
from the top of the building, you can see clear to crystal city, VA. We could see ALL THE FIREWORKS WITHIN AT LEAST 60 MILES. you name it. if you saw any fireworks in maryland, DC, or northern virginia, we were watching them too. The fireworks over the mall were gorgeous. the fireworks from virginia were just colorful explosions over the horizon. the wheaton fireworks, on the other hand, were something else entirely.
on our radios, we could tune in to the channel being used to orchestrate the show from the ground, so we even got to hear the countdown. The fireworks were being shot just a few blocks from us, and the biggest ones barely got above our eye level! it was a fantastic show. Looking down into fireworks that were shooting up in series looked like a giant tree of white light.
Ultimately, we missed the finale because we got a call, a "bicyclist struck." WE showed up, and thankfully no one was seriously injured. one of the patients spoke only portuguese, so I got to play translator for the ambulance crew and the cops, which is always fun (since I speak rudimentary french and spanish too, I end up doing the translator thing alot, but i'm so much better at portuguese that it's just way more fun).
So I started my day annoyed and tired. I had to brush off invites from friends and a barbecue at my house, but ultimately I had a great time. And you know what? I don't think I'll ever see a view of fireworks as spectacular as what I saw tonight.
Of course, i am still sober and you're not.
so last night i was bored cause no one wanted to hang out, so i stayed up late watching arrested development. this turned out to have been a shitty idea, because at 645 i got a call from the squad saying they were really shortstaffed. so i roll/fell out of bed, through on some clothes and drove up to weaton, where i've been since. After i was at the squad for a few hours, it wasn't really worth it to leave since i'd have to come back in later; wednesdays are my duty night, and it was jsut bad luck that it fell on the fourth.
so enough bitching. During the day, I responded to 3 or 4 fires. I'll admit, none of them were that cool as far as fires go, and i didn't get to see anything more than a little smoke. but still, you've gotta understand, i've only been in town for a month and i'm leaving in less than a week, so i was stoked to see even the smoldering remnants of a small oven fire.
after the fires, things were relatively quiet. to watch the fireworks, we went up onto the roof of wheaton plaza, cause hey, firefighters have keys baby! wheaton is a natural high point, and the plaza is the tallest building in the area (10 stories), so we weren't theo nly ones with the idea. at the plaza, we met an engine, a truck, and 2 ambulances who had also stopped by to see the show. We lost a few crews to calls, but whatever. we had a good group and an amazing view.
from the top of the building, you can see clear to crystal city, VA. We could see ALL THE FIREWORKS WITHIN AT LEAST 60 MILES. you name it. if you saw any fireworks in maryland, DC, or northern virginia, we were watching them too. The fireworks over the mall were gorgeous. the fireworks from virginia were just colorful explosions over the horizon. the wheaton fireworks, on the other hand, were something else entirely.
on our radios, we could tune in to the channel being used to orchestrate the show from the ground, so we even got to hear the countdown. The fireworks were being shot just a few blocks from us, and the biggest ones barely got above our eye level! it was a fantastic show. Looking down into fireworks that were shooting up in series looked like a giant tree of white light.
Ultimately, we missed the finale because we got a call, a "bicyclist struck." WE showed up, and thankfully no one was seriously injured. one of the patients spoke only portuguese, so I got to play translator for the ambulance crew and the cops, which is always fun (since I speak rudimentary french and spanish too, I end up doing the translator thing alot, but i'm so much better at portuguese that it's just way more fun).
So I started my day annoyed and tired. I had to brush off invites from friends and a barbecue at my house, but ultimately I had a great time. And you know what? I don't think I'll ever see a view of fireworks as spectacular as what I saw tonight.
Of course, i am still sober and you're not.
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