I've got alot to learn...

I wanted to post this last night, but was too tired to write after swimming, playing futsal and following that up with a roda at Bangsar. The fact that it rained practically all day long was seriously depressing, but only slightly delayed the start of the roda.

Anyway, the roda itself was awesome. We were visited by Professor Versatil from Grupo Batuque. This group is based in Los Angeles, USA, n is lead by renowned Capoeira Mestre Amen Santo. To the non-capoeiristas, Mestre Amen Santo played Mark Dacascos' capoeira teacher in Only the Strong. Yes People!!! A protégé of Mestre Amen Santo joined us at a roda..

Anyways, the dude was awesome... Its not like he flipped around n stuff... but he made the roda tons of fun mann... thou i kinda regret not takin the opportunity to play against him myself, just watchin him was awesome mann... like i said, he didnt do stuff which is totally flashy, but maybe he just went easy on us novices... He did have an awesome game against Instructor Rafael thou, but still nothing REALLY flashy.. which serves to provide me with another awesome example that I dont really need to be entirely flashy to be a good capoeirista in a roda..

I realized a couple of things thou... Firstly, his game seemed extremely relaxed as compared to the fast-paced game I'm learning and used to watching... He made it fun to watch n play capoeira.. He messed around in every game, laughed, played, n generally had fun, instead of taking everything so seriously..

The second thing I realized when he played against Instructor Rafael. Our instructor could definitely keep up with this guy's game. The only thing that may have overpowered Rafael would be Versatil's tremendous size... the dude was atleast 6'2", easily... n Rafael's about 5'9".. but back to the topic: what i realized during their game was that our instructor, through some reason known to him, tries to show us the vicious side of capoeira. I'm not sayin he's bein brutal with us or sumthin... but my guess is he's prolly a lil tired of us tryin to be flashy n showy, and tryin to make us more aware of what happens when rodas get violent.. Basically, as i mentioned in an earlier post, he wants us to be more aware of the trickery that sometimes occurs in rodas... And try to take care of ourselves when facing a dangerous opponent.

The third realization: I wanna try learning Capoeira Angola. Its different from capoeira regional (the fast-paced game the world usually recognizes as capoeira) in that its much slower. It looks easy to the casual observer, but Ive heard it requires more technique, and more precision in each movement. I definitely wanna try it out now, especially after watching the roda last night... Maybe i'll ask Rafael one of these days to teach me some Angola.

N oh yea, the guy's gonna be visiting our training sessions sometime this week. I hope I can get a few pointers from him... I did talk to him after the roda about his academy (thats when he told me that he studied under Mestre Amen Santo), got his name-card. If i'm lucky enuff to get to the US by this summer, Id def wanna find a good academy to continue with capoeira. So i asked him about training in NY. He mentioned a couple of his mestres had academies there, so i might check those out, if, God-willing, I'm lucky enuff to get accepted into the uni there...

Sigh, I've got a loooooooooooooooong way to go mann...

Adios ppl..