The summer choices

ok, so, my hellish job, as hellish as it is, has this one GIGANTIC benefit:
****FIVE MONTHS OFF PER YEAR*****

And we are in the home stretch now. Even the janitor on my hallway is counting down the days - he came into my office tonight singing "Five more weeks! Five more weeks!" Five more weeks and then I am FREE.

So what will I do this summer? Well, I just locked in my 3 part-time jobs, which will be:
(1) Half-time job running elephant research at the Oregon Zoo. But I can be out of town a lot.
(2) At least 10 days radiotracking crossbills (birds) through the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming. Mid July. YAY. I am really psyched to get to go be a real field biologist again, and also to finally learn radio-tracking.
(3) Three weeks doing sea turtle research, split awkwardly between Boston, Maine and Oregon. Late July to mid Aug.

Now I've got to pack all the edges around those jobs with one (or two?) of the following four musical choices:

(1) BLOCO X. The premier samba party of Europe, the weekend party to end all weekend parties. Rumor has it Bloco X is going to be in France in May! Possibly Tours. This is overwhelmingly tempting! I've always wanted to meet the French sambistas, who are reportedly neck-and-neck for worlds-best-nonBrazilian-sambistas (tied with the Japanese), and plus of course I could go hang out in London for a while and catch up on the new incarnation of Verde Vai. Plus I could attempt, and fail, to learn yet another new language to add to my other 8 attempts.

(2) NEW HAMPSHIRE. Brand new East Coast camp this year in NEW HAMPSHIRE! Run by the same marvelous people who do the California camp. This is also overwhelmingly tempting!

(3) CALIFORNIA. Mestre Jonas is coming to California Camp! This is so overwhelmingly tempting that I'm already trying to bribe other Lions players to go with me and just told Brian I was definitely going (temporarily spacing on the other 3 overwhelmingly tempting things on this list). And by the way - O Dia reported last week that Jonas has, at last, left Mocidade. This has been building up for a long time - Mocidade doesn't pay him a thing, and the current president is driving Mocidade into the ground. It's sad; I feel like the Mocidade that I love does not really exist any more. Anyway, Jonas is switching to Cubango of Grupo A. Which is across the water in Niteroi. I've never visited Cubango... but now I will have to.

(4) And then of course there is BRAZIL. Plane ticket prices are shockingly low. And I have a FREE, FREE, FREE place to stay - my very own apartment in Salvador, which I can use freeeeeeeeeeee for 2 months this summer if I want. And in fact, if I vacated my house here in Portland, put all my stuff in storage, and just flew to Brazil for two months, I'd end up saving a couple thousand dollars. And Lisette, my friend and Salvador apartment co-owner, just posted the most wonderful blog entry about Boipeba, one of the magical islands near Salvador...I dare you to read it and not want to buy a plane ticket instantly:

http://www.brazilnutadventures.blogspot.com/

And the sea turtles are there....


I think it is going to come down to Bloco X vs. Boipeba. This is going to be a hard one.