Traveling to a not so distant memory.

Hello dear friends of Read. Cash! How was your day??

Me? I've had a hard long day.

Rehearsal was moved to much earlier and that screwed up my whole schedule for today. To add to this wonderful mixture, my fibro is really getting on my nerves, the pain is everywhere and I'm getting pissed off by it. But hey, this girl's gotta work, this girl's gotta eat.

So I left early to my rehearsal, meet up some friends to go all together, and upon arrival, we were the first ones there, and guess what? The rehearsal started late, very late. Man, if I would decide to be late the rehearsal probably had started on time, but nooo.

Did I tell you what are we playing? I think not.

We are having a concert tomorrow for the National Guard, as they are celebrating the festivities of the Virgin of Chiquinquirá, its Patron Saint, and November it's her month.

I just love Chiquinquirá, she is also the Patron Saint of all zulians, I mean, the people who are from Zulia state in Venezuela. And my mom's name is María Chiquinquirá, so all more reason to love her.

Zulia it's also the birthplace of Gaita. It's a musical genre typical of Venezuela and mostly played at Christmas time. Tomorrow our concert has some Gaitas and Carols, or what we call Aguinaldos, cheerful songs about the holidays and the Baby Jesus.

As we were going through the repertoire, the conductor said to the percussionists were they had to change to Gaita Rhythm.

Ta tucu Ta tucu Ta tucu Ta tucu....

I was having a hard time rehearsing because I wanted to dance and sing the songs, but I got lost on my part and missed some important entries haha gladly I wasn't the only one doing that, and the conductor is a very patient man and he was also enjoying himself, so no harm no foul.

Then, I remembered last year, we also had a Christmas Concert and the Gaita Drum was left in my house and I kept it for more than a month. This allowed my sister and me to finally learn to Ta Tucu Ta tucu ourselves.

The madness!!

I didn't get the special drumsticks for that kind of instrument, so I got a hacksaw, cut a broomstick, and made some myself. For a moment there my mom was mad because she thought that I had used the new one haha. But no, it was an old one, and I made two sets, one for me and one for my sister. We studied with some youtube videos and practiced whenever we could.

By Christmas Eve, we tried our new skill, practice didn't pay off too well, although my baby nephew was thrilled and wanted to learn too. Then my brother-in-law asked us to play something, so my sister assigned me the drum and she got a cheese grater to play the Monay, I can't explain to you what it is, but it's an instrument from the percussion family.

Well, later I learned that mom recorded our little performance and three months ago I decided to share it on Hive, but for that, I had to upload it on YouTube first. There are only three videos on my channel, hopefully, there will be no more, but since i's there, I'll share that one with you now.

I look terrible!

I was still recovering from Covid and was carrying extra weight due to all the steroids I had on my body. Also, I didn't feel like brushing my hair or anything.

Hahaha I have no shame showing you this, we had fun, which is the most important thing, and who knows, maybe this year I'll get that drum againg and get better! One can only dream haha.

And you? Do you have fun Christmas-related anecdotes? I'd love to hear them!!

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See you next time!

✨✨Blessings✨✨

@rebeysa85

November 25th, 2021.