24 Juli - GuGu

I met with Diana this afternoon, mostly just to touch base and see where things were at. We had a decent lunch in the Mensa while we chatted. I told her that I felt bad about not having my project set up before I got here and seemingly wasting so much time. She of course said not to worry and that my research has been helpful to Wendelin and even if I am not able to find all the data I need, it is still useful to evaluate why. I feel a little better, but still pretty cynical about the whole endeavor. She also invited Skylar and I to stay at her house in Karlsruhe this weekend. We can't stay for the whole weekend because we have a Capoeira workshop, but I told her we would try to come by for a bit on Sunday

When Skylar got home, we went on to Fellbach for Capoeira. GuGu is Mesquita's brother and is visiting from Brazil. His name is actually Joseph, but that is not a common name in Brazil and somewhat difficult to pronounce, so they call him GuGu (pronounced JooJoo). He is giving a workshop all weekend. Tonight we had three hours of our regular class and then the group from Tübingen came and we went for three more hours. We did a lot of back bends and acrobatics. He even taught me how to do a kip up! It's not perfect, but it's a start. Again he made me do about twenty back bends to standing and back. We also did head stand walk overs and over the shoulder Absprungen. 

At the end he started giving a speech and going on and on and Ricky was translating from his Portuguese to German, but not English. I kept watching the clock tick closer and closer to midnight and was worried about catching the last train back to Stuttgart to make the last train back to Heilbronn. I finally caught Ricki's eye and motioned that we had to leave. I felt terribly rude, but I didn't know what else to do. She kindly offered her place if we did in fact miss the train, which was really nice. We booked it out of there and rode like the wind to the station with three minutes to spare. Phew.

On the midnight train back to Heilbronn there were dozens of drunken teenagers and barely anywhere to sit. We put the bikes in the bike car and went into the next car over to sit down because there was some guys scarfing down Burger King like they hadn't eaten in days. Just before 2am when the train was mostly cleared out, we arrived in Heilbronn and went to get our bikes... only Skylar's bike was no where to be found. Someone took his bike right off the train! We got off and found someone who looked like they worked at the station and they luckily spoke English. He explained it to another guy and they pointed us in the direction of the police station. The officer was just leaving and said to come back tomorrow.

I stood there for a while contemplating how to get home... and decided to take off the basket and sit Skylar on the back of the bike. Everyone does it in Amsterdam; how hard could it be? Well, once we got the balance under control it wasn't too bad. After a while, Skylar stopped hitting things with the metal basket because he decided to place it on his head. Skylar kept whimpering that the bumps and curbs hurt his bottom and then seemed to grow fearful of me spilling him on the sidewalk. When we got to the steeper of the hills in combination with six hours of Capoeira training, I nearly died. I don't even know what time it was when we collapsed into bed. Why are people so mean and stupid?