How does this mofo get three cakes in one week? My uncle´s birthday was last Monday and my aunt baked him a cake then. My aunt and I (I was forced) had to sing "Feliz cumpleaños" to him. Then on Thursday night, my uncle and I went to a nightclub to celebrate his birthday. Wifey stayed at home while we partied. I had to sing "Feliz Cumpleaños" to him again. Yes he had cake too. Then came Saturday, the night of the BIG party. They had been preparing allweek and cooking the last three days until the party. I snuck into my room and went to sleep because they had been working me all day and knew that it would be a long night. I found out later that they finished shortly after i went to sleep.

My uncle had been hyping this up since I had been here.

"Ya gwan ta see how Panamanians get down!"

Well food was of the utmost importance. I told one of his friends that in the States you rarely find anything more than chips and dip at a party, except for those Southern or West Indian parties thrown by an older crowd. He said that if he went to a party with no food he would poison the punch. HA!

Well when i got up, the music had started but noone was there yet. It took about 30 minutes before people really started coming in. Now since I had been in Panama, I had been to two parties already. One at the nightclub which was pretty empty except for about 12 people who were with my uncle and another at a discoteca (club) that I went to with my tio y tia a few weeks back. That discoteca was mainly a Latin (cholo) joint. The whole night they played tipico and salsa. I got to practice my salsa a bit with some cholas. I can´t do the fly spin-the-girl- stuff yet but I was getting the steps down. I was tired as hell that night.

Anyways this party was going to be a "chombo rompo" (I made that up, yeah i know its lame). A few cholos showed up. Some neighbors and some that married into the family but most were chombos. But that is not the important thing. The important thing is that the DJ is playing for a chombo crowd. For a chombo crowd the music consists of alot salsa, alot of soca, some reggae and some american stuff. Because the crowd was primarily mid-20ish to 50ish (with most in the middle), the american stuff was mostly 70s and early 80s.

So I did my thing, slid in danced then slid out and chilled.

PLAY DAT TING MAN! PLAY DAT TING!

I talked to alot of people. One of the neighbors, a 13 year old boy named Miguel, was inside watching TV. Most of the children there (like 10 of them little mofos) went inside and watched TV when their parents danced while one of the older (grandparents) sat in there with them. Miguel only speaks Spanish with a few scattered English words, mostly pertaining to computers and games. I have found talking to younger people helps me with my spanish because they tend not to talk as fast. Of course most of our convo was about games, Dragoball Z (Zeta) computers and girls. What else is on a 13 year old´s mind?

We went outside for awhile cuz the youngins was loud. Outside I messed around with my ginga, something I always do when standing for awhile.

"¿¡Sabès capoeira?!"

"Sì un poco."

"¿¡Tienes el instrumento?!"

"Sì està adentro."

"¡Muestrame! ¡Muestrame, por favor!"

At this point I can see he is bursting with excitement and curiosity. Well this sure is interesting. I wondered how he heard about it.

"¿Comò lo conoces?"

"Una pelìcula."

" Ohhh. ¿Solò La Fuerte?"

"Sì"

That horrible movie "Only the Strong" is probably the only reason most people have heard of capoeira besides "Eddie" from Tekken of course. The worst part is the terrible depiction of capoeira by the Asian-looking hero of the movie who prior to the movie knew no capoeira. He was some sort of Taekwondo (or another popular Asian art) practitioner.

Anyways I was thrilled by his interest and showed him my berimbau some moves and talked a little about the history. Afterwards when taking my berimbau back inside, my uncle saw me with it and reminded me that i had to do a "show" for his birthday. What is a "show" you ask? Well the DJ was suppose to play "Everybody was Kung-fu fighting" and then I was suppose to do capoeira to it. Of course noone would be dancing because well that just ain´t poppin down here. Only those chombos who went to the states back in the day would know about it.

So the time comes. I hear it beginning. Aww man... It wouldn´t have been so bad if my knee wasn´t hurting. I wasn´t practicing pretty hard earlier that day and combined with the dancing I had done, I didn´t know if i could make it. But my uncle was calling for me and pushed me outside in the back onto the dance floor...

Aww fuck it!

EVERYBODY WAS CAPOEIRA PLAYING!!!!!
THOSE KICKS WERE FAST AS LIGHTNING!!!!

Ginga, Au, Mea Lua, Negativa, Hasteira

What little I knew, I was doing.
Side step, Side step, Watch out don´t kick the lady! HA!
It was pretty fun. But wait do this the whole song?

Hell naw!

You got me into this, so you gonna get some too.

I pulled my uncle out there too. I he went back but I kept trying and then he came out.

He did some karate WAYY BACK in the day so he did his little thing. I just smiled Au´ed around him, ginga and negativa under his kicks. Then that was it.

Everybody liked it and cheered. Geez this is kinda lame but fuck it, it was fun. I was drippin with sweat but surprisingly not tired. I went out to the front of the house and played some more with myself...

Wait a minute that doesn´t sound right. How about "BY myself"? Okay that´ll work.

After that I relaxed a little and went back in time to NOT sing "Feliz cumpleaños" for the THIRD time to my uncle. Got a couple more dances and then that was it. People started leaving around 2 AM. Of course we had to clean up everything which put me in bed about 4 AM. Hey that meant I didn´t have to go to church!

I have been trying to find a way to get out of that for the past two Sundays.

Going to church with my aunt (uncle goes to a separate church) is a post within itself.

...continuaràmos luego...

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"the real pyramids were built with such precision that you can't slide a piece of paper between two 4,000 lb stones, and have shafts perfectly aligned so that you can see a tiny aperture through dozens of these mammoth blocks