blaarg. sitting around doing nothing is only amusing for a small period of time. today i sat around WARC from like 11 to 5. i just chilled and talked to students all day. which was enjoyable, but you know i am a little tired of having no actual reason to be there. theoretically i am there to help honorine with office crap, but she is never there so i usually just sit around socializing. then at five i went to the dojo at club olympique (a fitness club near WARC) to watch the karate class and the kung fu/full contact class. actually, i went to sign up for the latter, which is a lot like kickboxing and meets three times a week. but i got there early (i was sick of sitting around WARC) and saw karate as well, and the kung fu class never actually showed up so i didnt get to talk to the dude about signing up.
but i know it actually exists cuz last saturday i went with two other students to try capoeira (history - scroll past first paragraph, photos)and the kung fu/full contact class was meeting before hand. the full contact is a lot like kick boxing, which i took for a few months in the states (until i couldnt afford it anymore). i really really enjoy martial arts, but im always too broke to pursue them. however, classes here are pretty cheap. capoeira was only 2500 CFA (about 4 USD) for an hour and a half.
capoeira really fucking hard. especially for a girl that has never in her life done a cartwheel, and now im supposed to do a cartwheel, stop mid-wheel, kick some shit, and keep going. not to mention backflips and one handed round offs and wierd body bending, and all of this mess is really slow and so very hard on your muscles. this assumes you have muscles to start with. i know havent much in upper body strength, and now, grace � capoeira, any illusions i may have possessed about having buff legs from biking and dancing have been remedied. i am so sore i had a hard time sitting down to take a shit today. i was sore yesterday, but the second day is always worse for whatever reason. plus i was so pumped from the class that saturday night i went out dancing all night (im smart like that). fuck i can barely walk, every damn muscle is so sore.
but it was so dope!! ..first we did all these crazy exercises, and my body was shaking from the effort. but i got kind of pissed coz i sucked so bad, which is good for me since when i get pissed in a determined way i try harder. then at the end we all got in a circle (like you can see in the photos) and two people played the instruments and we all sang. it was in portuguese so i didnt understand but i sang the phonemes (shit not phonemes, the other one but i forget what its called) anyway.
and the master went in the middle and made us all dance-fight with him. that was so so fun, i apparently am too aggressive and "need to move more like a serpent and less like a tiger." basically i move too fast and combattative and need to move with more strength and control. when the boys that were really good (casie-one of the students i was with-and i were the only chicas) "fought" (the style of capoeira they do is the non-contact kind) each other it was so fuckin dope to watch. if i am ever that good..
yeah, so on sat night i spent the night at helen's since i am not allowed to come home until like 8am if i go out and clubs get over at about 5. but i slept for shit since she doesnt have any sheets or blankets and so i was freezing. she lives about a minute from ponge so then i went to his house on sunday afternoon. i watched he and some of my medina friends play football-er, soccer-against another medina team in some parking lot. it was the big game (the smaller ones are played in the street) and people had money placed on it and whatnot. but, the game will never be finished coz the other team scored a penalty (according to the ref) but they refused to acknowledge it and "my" team refused to let it slide and so everyone refused to play and everyone got all their money back. ponge decided he doesnt want to play with that team anymore coz they bullshit too much. generally i give only the mildest of fucks about sports that involve balls, but when its peeps i know (ponge, aziz, omar, some other kids) playing its a little different. ponge's pretty good, apparently he was the captain of the team for years when he lived in casamance (the instable region of senegal south of the gambia). it reminded me of being in high school and watching shaun's wrestling matches...
so after the match i hung out with ponge and slept in his room. we started messing around but i think its good to not have sex every time you want it, so i stopped and said i needed to go home (which actually was true). i saw him all weekend and things have been going really well so i decided not to visit him today, although i definitely had time to. a little bit of longing lusting and desire keeps things interesting.
