25 Juli - Afro-dance

We rolled out of bed with all our muscles screaming at us and got ready to go back to Fellbach for more Capoeira. I guess on the bright side, we didn't have to ride our bikes to the train station. We took the bus to Allee Post and then another bus to the train station took the train to Stuttgart and then another train to Fellbach and walked to the Capoeira studio.

GuGu taught a lot of reaction and defense techniques today. He, like his brother, has a tendency to go for the legs which is not a move I've seen in any Capoeira videos. One of the aspects of Capoeira that I like most is that it is not about actual fighting, but more like playing. Taking my legs out and head butting me takes some of the fun out of it for me, but of course it is all about learning different styles.

After about three hours of Capoeira training, we did some Afro-dancing. Many of the movements seemed very animalistic to me... particularly bird-like. The guys mostly played the instruments while the girls danced. We learned a number of moves and did them over and over to the beat of a drum and when he changed the beat of the drum, we changed the dance move. They were all eight count moves, so the beat count was the same, but the sounds were different. It was very cool and I love to dance no matter how much I suck at it. Skylar just read his book and laughed at us. At one point he took a video, but while it started on us, his attentions quickly moved to DannyLo (the 8mth old baby) and would every now and then swing back to us, but quickly return to DannyLo who just tried to grab the camera :)

Ricky invited us to go with them to a Roda tomorrow morning. I wish we knew the details of the workshop and I could have planned to stay in Fellbach rather than ride the train back and forth. It really is difficult to miss announcements and information because they are in German. Sometimes they translate, but sometimes, they just forget.

When we got into Heilbronn, we stopped at the police station to file a report about Skylar's bike. Then I realized I didn't even know what kind of bike it was. The officer asked if we had a 'bike pass' that came with the bike because it should list all the details. I explained that Diana bought the bike for us and that I would ask her. He tried filling in a form with the information we did have, but finally just handed it to me and said that he took English in school, 25 years ago and was not following anything I was saying, so if I could fill it out and bring it back, he would appreciate it. So we left and said we'd come back on Tuesday with the form if we got the information. Sometimes I forget that I need to say what I am trying to say in as few words as possible otherwise the person gets lost trying to not only keep up with the speed of what I'm saying, but trying to translate too many words. Makes having a normal conversation pretty difficult most of the time; I find myself sounding like a robot.

When we got home, I looked at the train and bus schedules. On Sundays, the connections are less frequent and start later. We would have had to walk about a mile to the Sbahn at about 5am in order to make it work. I was actually considering it, but at 2am when I couldn't fall asleep because the pain in my legs kept waking me up, I decided we better skip this one.