Good Days

Hey! It’s been a while!

Life has gotten pretty busy here. We are nearing the end of the semester (only about a month left!) and work is piling up. Why is it that teachers like to give you big projects and papers all due at the end of the term. I mean really. They all do it. They all know everyone else does it. Why can’t they space it out a little better?

Because of that, I may be rather unreliable in my updates over the next month. I also may resort to bogging as a source of procrastination and the number of posts I write could skyrocket. It all depends.

This last weekend I went to a big event hosted at the university by my instructor’s Capoeira group. They do two events every year, a big one and a little one. This one was the little one. It started off with two evenings of “seminars” taught by 3 Contra Mestres (Mestre is the highest level, these guys are just under that) [it takes about 30 years of training to become a Mestre] that came from Brazil, Peru, and Guayaquil (the other big city in Ecuador). There were also a few other invited experts from Colombia and other places around and in Ecuador, but they didn’t teach classes, just helped out with other parts of the event. Saturday, there was a final seminar and then we all got together to have a rola. A rola is what would be sparring in any other martial art, except that Capoeira is not about the fight. There IS no fight, there is only the “game,” friendship, and training the body to “free the self.” That’s the best translation of it all I can articulate at the moment anyway.

The seminars were great and I had a lot of fun learning a bunch of new things. I hadn’t realized how used to my instructor’s methods I was. It was especially interesting to learn from the Brazilian Contra Mestre, Narcelio. He didn’t speak any Spanish. Or English. Or any language I actually know how to speak. He spoke Portuguese. Fortunately, that meant I wasn’t the only one being confused half of the time since the Ecuadorians also had a hard time understanding him. It was nice to know that I can basically understand Portuguese though, if I try hard. Even with the language problem, Narcelio was my favorite to learn from. Everything he does is perfectly executed. When he does a backflip, he does it slowly. When he moves, he just seems to know exactly where his body is. It’s amazing to watch.

Saturday night was the Bautizo, or the ceremony where everyone gets their new chords. Chords are to Capoeira what belts are to Karate and other such martial arts. The thing about Chords is that they not only require certain skills to acquire, but time and dedication as well. Like I said before, the highest ranking belt takes nearly 30 years to get, and that’s not because it takes that long to acquire the skills, it just takes that long. I still don’t understand all the interworkings of it all, but every time something is explained to me, I like it more. The ceremony started with the higher levels receiving their next chords. They “played” with each other first, then each played with an expert level Capoeirista, and then received their chords. The certification for the chords is done prior to the ceremony. The final group was all of us who were ready to receive our first ever chords. For us, events were a little different. We didn’t play amongst ourselves, but dove right in to playing with the experts, and this time they chose us and played us to the end. By “end” I’m referring to when they finally took it upon themselves to throw us on the ground. The idea of the first Bautizo is to cause the newbies to fall so that their first fall is caused by an expert. Once the newbie has fallen, the game is over and the expert gives them their chord. Narcelio gave me mine. I think it made my entire week.

So I now have the first chord of Capoeira and I feel like I’m part of a bigger group of Capoeiristas. It’s a good feeling, especially here where it’s hard to feel included in anything sometimes. Spending all-day every-day in another language and away from the groups I have dedicated myself to for the past two years is hard sometimes. When I’m having fun though, I can forget all of that, and life seems really good.

Yesterday was one of those “life is good” days.

I’d been cramming in homework since the day before, and it promised to be another chock-full day, but, through a bit of fortune that came my way, I ended up with some free time. My ICRP was cancelled. Of course, I didn’t find this out until I arrived at the gate and the guard told me that everyone had gone to Ambato, kids and all. Since I had some free time, and the FIFA Ecuador vs. Peru game was set to start in half an hour, I decided to call a friend or two to see if we could get into the game. I got a hold of Gina, but neither of us was willing to pay enough to get one of the remaining tickets, so we walked around looking at Ecuador merchandise, bought ourselves some yellow shirts, and generally had a good, if indecisive, time. We met up with Emily in Quicentro, the mall across the street from the stadium, changed shirts in the bathroom, and bought some delicious ice cream. After having a bit of an adventure trying to get OUT of Quicentro, we decided to head over to where we knew a group of K kids were hanging out, eating, and watching the game. We arrived just in time to see Ecuador score, and only barely left before they scored again and finished the game 2-0. We managed to beat the traffic home from the stadium though, so it was worth it.

And just to make it clear, life decided to find me a four-leaved clover.