Cap, cap, capoeira...

Oh yeah today was another day filled with a lot of capoeira.

As it had been for the past two weeks today I had to teach at the Lycée Français La Pérouse, and as usual everything went fine. Mestre got me this little gig since he was not gonna be in the country this whole month, so he was kind enough to ask me to sub it for him. At first I really was scared since it was gonna be my first experience teaching, but you know as with any other things in life 'once you try it you get use to it' or something, hehe... Anyhow I had really liked the experience of teaching the kids and hopefully I will be able to continue doin' it in the future, I'm actually thinkin' of asking Mestre when he comes back if I can stay teaching that class until the school finishes the program, hopefully he'll agree we'll have to see what happends.

Anyhow that class went really well, I had the kids go over what we had done last week and apparently they all were paying attention 'cos they remembered all of it, well most of it. They only had trouble remembering a few minor details, but they were things everyone eventually gets. I wasn't trippin' about it, and so I moved on to having them pair up and work on a simple sequence in which one of the kids does a mea-lua de frente, and the other does cocorinha.

(*Now for those peeps not familiar with capoeira, a mea-lua de frente is a circular front kick, in which you kick from the outside to inside; and cocorinha is an escaping move in capoeira which consist basically in squatting down with both feet flat on the ground with one hand also flat on the floor and the other arm up covering you face*).

After having them do that I decided to round them up in a roda and show them the instruments that are used in the bateria, which include the berimbau, atabaque, pandeiro, agogo, and reco reco. The only bad thing was that since I wasn't planning on a music class today I didn't had all the instruments, only the berimbau, pandeiro, and agogo. So I had to make due with what I had and I got each of them to play the pandeiro and agogo while I played the berimbau, and since that seemed to work I got two volunteers to play the instruments while the rest clapped their hands. Then I moved on to teaching them two basic songs: o sim, o sim, o sim and paranae. Which they got fast and so I decided to have them play in the roda for a little bit having them do the sequence we had done earlier. I was so proud *sniff,sniff* it brought tears to my eyes, hehe!

I am so proud of the kids I have, all in all they are a good bunch and they make it easier on me since most of them seem to like capoeira. I got to admit that I am loving this experience!