(There’s not even much capoeira in this entry, I promise!)

I’m living a charmed life this weekend. Friday evening went to capoeira for two hours, even though it’s supposed to be only one. It was a really good class, though it was stupid hot in the studio. You know it’s too hot when people nearly injure themselves slipping on the sweat on the floor. Afterwards I went home, showered, talked to my mother on the phone for a long time, read and went to sleep.

Yesterday, I slept in, drove to Joan’s a little after noon, and we ate a lovely homemade lunch of spaghetti and bruchetta with limeaid. This was followed by iced passion fruit tea and watching the first two episodes of City of Men, a nineteen episode Brazilian TV series by the same people as City of God with the same basic concept (kids growing up in a Rio favela) but slightly cheerier. The Los Angeles Times calls it “a Brazilian Wonder Years. With some guns.” Basically, awesome. I’m glad I bought it and envision myself sitting through all of it with several different friends.

Then we went to REI, where, after some hesitation, I bought the bike I had tried out the other day. Buying a bike has been on my to-do list for a year, but upon arriving in MD I discovered my neighborhood was completely non-bike-friendly, and by the time we moved it was too cold to bike, and my attempts at getting one this spring were unsuccessful. But, yay bike!! It was slightly more than I wanted to spend, but I also got a super lock with $1500 worth of insurance (I did NOT spend that much, don’t worry). I only intend to be in North America for another nine to eleven months this time, but it’s nice enough to either sell or drag back to Illinois at that point.

Drove back to Joan’s and then we went for a ride, ate Jamaican jerk chicken, played a game on her roommate’s Wii, and baked fig-maple syrup cookies while discussing plans for our bake-sale fund-raiser for our batizado.

We stuffed the bike in my back seat and I headed home, where I made banana bread while talking to my dad on the phone for a long time, in preparation for Samia’s eventual return at an unspecified time this weekend.

This morning I biked the three miles to Joan’s, and together we biked the two or so to the metro, and metroed to Takoma Park farmer’s market. After buying peaches, tomatoes and bell peppers, we ate chicken and avocado sandwiches and metroed/biked back, though not before taking a detour to a park, where we swung for at least forty five minutes (yay, swinging). Back at Joan’s, we watched five episodes of City of Men, and learned many important life lessons along with Laranjinha and Acerola. Then I biked home, found out Samia is coming home tonight, and make chocolate cookies while talking to her on the phone while she was in the airport in New York.

On my way to pick her up now. Plans for tomorrow include catching up with Samia finally and possibly Suzanne, and *biking* to campus to meet up with some of the UMD capoeiristas for an informal roda on the quad.

Then Tuesday... back to reality.

(But only for a while. The next two weekends are already spoken for by a variety capoeira events...)