Tag Archives: Family

While I’m waiting for my niece or nephew…Barlovento event photos

My sister Jennifer is having a C-section…well…could be right now, I’m not sure.  It was supposed to be this morning, but it was postponed due to emergency surgeries.  So I’m sitting here going crazy because I have no idea what’s going on.  We don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl, so that adds even more to the excitement!  Luckily, my parents are with my 5 year old niece, Laine, and I’ve already Facetimed with her twice, so that has helped.

In the meantime, I’ll post some photos from a capoeira event earlier on Wednesday night.  This was at a classy rooftop bar in Casco Viejo called Barlovento, and our group actually got paid to do it!  Only a few of our best capoeiristas performed, so I had the chance to take photos.  It has been really cool to see how different one event is from the next.  We’ve gone from a street festival with a ton of people to a deejayed event where we didn’t use our own instruments to a tv performance without much of a live audience to a swanky bar.  Instead of wearing our usual school shirts, the guys went shirtless and the women wore small white tops or sports bras, so there was more of a primal feel to the performance.  It all had a very cool vibe.  Here are a few photos:

Between visits – Street festival performance and our FIRST ANNIVERSARY!!!

After Ashley and Angela left, but before our friends Diana and Joe arrived, I had a capoeira performance at a street festival!  It was a lot of fun because, unlike other events, we had the chance to perform several times throughout the day.  We would set up shop on one corner, play a few songs, sing, try to get the crowd involved, and show off some moves (or for some of us, try not to look too silly).  Then some members of our group would grab kids from the crowd and let them participate – teach them to do some kicks and how to esquiva or dodge the kicks.  There were a TON of people out, and capoeira is exactly the kind of thing that draws a crowd at that kind of event.  I think we did four separate performances, moving from place to place and taking breaks in between to grab water or watch other groups perform.

We also met up with a breakdancing group in town, the head of which is friends with several CDO members.  When he saw us approaching, he gave us a shoutout and invited us to take turns on the dance floor.  It’s been interesting to see how many similarities there are between breakdancing and capoeira…both take huge amounts of upper body strength, balance, and rhythm.  Yes, I was gently shoved onto the makeshift dance floor (read: cardboard on the street), but with a friend, so it wasn’t as horrible as you might imagine.  Then the others showed off their handstands and aerials and more than made up for my lack of moves!

Watching (and participating in) a little breakdancing…some of us may have looked a little silly, but it was fun!
My beautiful and fun friend!
The ladies of CDO Panamá
Without the weird orange line down my face….
I was excited that someone captured this! I’m finding that still-shots are often a lot more flattering than video or real life when it comes to my level of capoeira. 🙂
They don’t call her Ninja for nothing!
We had fun interacting with all of the kids that day.
Lourdes doing a martelo
I think Jessie is upside-down for about 40% of the time when she plays.
Moisés shows one of the kids a few moves.

We’ll see if this works, but I think I can also put a link to the professional video from that day here.  Try it out, Mom.

I also have a video of one of the girls (I can say girl instead of woman because she’s 18 and I feel the need to use the word “firecracker” to describe her…which makes me old enough to call her a girl) pulling a kid into the roda.  Very cute.  Click here and pray that I know what I’m doing.

Okay, so Joe and Diana, two dear friends from Raleigh, were due to arrive on May 31, our first wedding anniversary.  Unfortunately, they got stuck in Atlanta overnight due to weather.  Eric and I spent a couple of hours refreshing the delta.com site to see if there was any way they could make their connecting flight, then looking for a new way to get them to Panamá that night or early the next morning, but alas, there was no way for them to get to us until the following night.  So instead of picking our friends up at the airport, we looked through the beautiful dating/engagement/wedding album that my mom made for us, watched our wedding videos, and tasted the wedding cake that my mom flew down here from North Carolina in March!  Yes, it was still good…although the black icing looked pretty nasty.  Who chooses black icing?!  Um…we did.  Thanks.

Wedding cake!

Wedding cake!

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Ashley and Angela visit from ATL

On May 23-27, my Aunt Angela and cousin Ashley came to visit from the Atlanta area!  We packed in as much as we could in only three full days, while still trying to let them have a laid back vacation.

We went to see the Canal, of course:

Canal diagram

A diagram of the Canal, showing the three sets of locks. The Atlantic Ocean is shown on the left, and the Pacific on the right – oddly enough for everyone who doesn’t live in this part of Panamá, where it is the opposite way on a map! Weird, huh?)

Ashley captained our fake ship through the Canal in the simulator-type thing.
Eric, Angela, and Ashley checking out the locks.
No, seriously, they’re cool people.
Thug life. Fo’ real.
In front of a huge container ship going through the locks.
Cousins!

Also, this occasionally happens around here.  I’ve been dying to get a picture of it!  The amazing part to me is not that they drive around with big guns in the air, but that they wear long sleeves, long pants, helmuts, and…well…basically skiing gear…in this tropical climate all the time.  So yes, I think Panamanian cops are heroes.  Or really dumb.

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We also drove about 2 hours outside the city to a town called El Valle de Anton for a little escape.  We started by seeing the little market, then had lunch at La Casa de Lourdes, where we had this whole beautiful house to ourselves.  We ate…or maybe I should say dined?…on the back porch with this magnificent view.  The temperature is also about 10 degrees cooler in el Valle, which was a welcome change!   IMG_5201 IMG_5202 IMG_5203

Eric and I may or may not have discussed having a Panamanian wedding for the sake of using this place for a reception.  BEAUTIFUL!  Or maybe Dan and Sarah should have a destination wedding???!!!!  That would really be a lot better for our budget.  Thanks, guys.IMG_5204 IMG_5205 IMG_5208

We had no idea we’d end up having lunch at such a posh place and were dressed for hiking.  Oh well!  IMG_5210

Ashley and I had amazing Corvina – the local white fish, like a sea bass.IMG_5212

Eric had a huge pork chop that he kept referring to as his Christmas ham due to its size.  Also amazing.IMG_5213

Oh, and the sangria!!!IMG_5243 IMG_5241

We got pretty good at the four person selfie, thanks to Eric.  This was in the front yard of the restaurant.  Not a bad view.IMG_5244

Looking back up at the restaurant from the front yard/drive.IMG_5217 IMG_5220

After lunch we “hiked” to a waterfall.  It was actually a wooden path through the woods and took about 10-15 min to do the loop…if you went slowly.  My knee was giving me some trouble, so we took it slow, and I was grateful for the complementary walking stick they loaned you for the silly $5 entrance fee.  Still, a lovely day, amazing temperature, and great company!IMG_5224 IMG_5231

We also took a monkey-less and sloth-free tour through the Parque Natural Metropolitano, which I guess we deserve because I used my buddy the park ranger to get us in for free.  Now, I actually do feel like I paid something for the visit because he called me three times a day for several days in a row after we exchanged numbers during my first visit to the park with my parents (for purposes of sneaking me in only…I thought I had made this quite clear, seeing as how I had told him that my HUSBAND and I live here).  However, the monkeys disagreed, refused to show their faces, and we were left marvelling at the superhighways of leaf cutter ants that trekked all through the forest.  Still pretty cool, especially when traveling with a biology teacher, a nurse, and a Georgia Tech grad.  When running around with a bunch of dorks, lots of things end up being cool.  🙂

They also humored me by watching one of my capoeira classes!  Luckily, we were getting ready for a presentation, so they were able to actually see a roda.  The group loves having guests, so Ashley and Angela were invited to stand in the circle with us and clap while they watched us.  I was very happy to have another part of my family see what I have become so passionate about!

To sum it up, their visit was just lovely.  They’re so easy going and relaxed, and it was nice just to be together!