Castelo Brennand and Boa Viagem

Hi All,

Contra-Mestre Gordo is getting ready to record another CD and we´ve been fortunate enough to hear some of his new stuff, which is pretty cool... here´s a jam session with some improvised instruments.



I don't think we have introduced Rivane yet. Rivane is Gordo's significant other and has been absolutely great to us. She is excellent to talk to because she has had lots of experience talking to other Canadian capoeiristas. She speaks slowly and clearly and has the patience of a teacher...because she is a teacher. Here she is trying on a samba mask at a art/craft show she took us to.



We also visited the Institutio Ricardo Brennand, which we saw as we were passing by going to the Instituto Ricardo Brennand. The Brennand brothers (the other brother has the weird ceramics museum we mentioned in the last blog update) appear to be extraordinarily wealthy old eccentrics with too time on their hands. The Instituto has exhibits of all sorts of crazy junk that Ricardo likes to collect. Lots of medieval armour, swords, knives, guns, painting of naked ladies as well as statues... of naked ladies. (Just to make things clear, I do realize that the statue below has two naked men in it) The weird part about it, is that the instituto is not really a museum, because it has no explanation and no organization really. It is just a massive collection of historical junk housed in a modern day castle that must have cost a large fortune. And the library was off closed to the public the day we were there. Leanna pouted.



Ah, but I can´t forget the Thinker.. or O Pensador here... I´ll have to check later to see where the Rodin originals are in the world, but somehow I doubt this is one.



And here is Monitor Malhado, a capoeirista from whom we have been taking classes these days, helping us get Acerola fruit from the tree in the courtyard at Gordo's. We make juice out of it... Some really good juice around here!



This last picture was taken at Boa Viagem, a famous beach just outside of Recife (although the urban sprawl is continuous, it goes by various names as you go along). Unfortunately you can't swim here because of the risk of sharks, but the beach is nice. We were shocked at the the amount of beachfront property here, just look at the never ending row of apartment buildings along the water behind us.



In other news...(it is Leanna writing/editing now) I have a new apelido--that is a capoeira nickname. When I left, my nickname was Borracha, which means Rubber, a rather obvious name for me I think. However, our group has a number of other Borrachas. Also, I am told that Borracha is a male sounding name (and Manteiga, Mike's nickname, which means Butter is a female sounding name...which maybe explains why everyone was mixing us up--doesn't explain why everyone thinks we are brother and sister mind you). So, Gordo put some thought into it and re-named me Gata instead. Gata means female cat, so named for my agility in the roda. I will have to keep practicing to fully live up to the name I think!

Anyway, that is all for now.

Leanna and Mike