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Batizado - report

I've been away for Thanksgiving and unable to tell the story of my batizado on the 23rd of November. A batizado means baptismal and is basically the formal portion of a belt test in capoeira. See they entry from November 17th.

The students arrived at noon to stretch and prepare for the batizado. My friends showed up at 1:30 PM for the actual event. We were joined from mestres and instructors from other groups in Boston. We started a singing only roda at 12:45 and then graduate level capoeristas played. The roda was opened to all students at 1:30. We all played for a while until the Mestre gave a speech about Brazil and his Mestre and then started handing out the belts to students.

He started by handing out the lowest cord, "crua" or raw, basically a white belt. (see cord ranks at Boston Capoeira) Students were called to the front to collect their cord and receive their capoeira nickname in Brazilian Portuguese. Then they walked counter-clockwise around the circle until they were able to thread their belt in their pants and tie it with our group's knot. Each one of them would have to play outside instructors in the roda. Usually this resulted in an instructor taking the student to the ground at some point. It is very humbling and at least for me pisses me off enough to want to train harder. There is another catch in that the higher the belt, the more instructors/mestres that play with/against you.

I was the first one called for my belt rank, "amerela" yellow, the third rank. Jarred and Debbie were also given the amerela belt. I was given the nickname, "urso polar" (sp?) which translates to polar bear or as they intended, "big white bear". I'm not that pale but I guess to Brazilians I'm probably an albino. Of course since I was first I had trouble tying my knot.

Before I go into how bad I did against the instructors, let me say that I played in a 10-hour volleyball tournament (which we won) the day before and was completely shot. The first instructor was mild to me, using push kicks to knock me to the ground. The second instructor was this incredibly quick shirtless monster. He had me on my back in no time cowering below him. The third guy I don't even remember. And by the time Oricio came in (yeah, 3rd belt means I'm supposed to play with 3 people but I guess I got my money's worth) my legs were on fire. I don't think my quads have ever hurt that bad before. I just remember hoping that he would take me down before my legs gave out. I have a funny picture my girlfriend took right as he started taking me down.

After my ass kicking the batizado seemed to drag on forever. The fire alarm was pulled at the Dance Studio so firemen evacuated the whole building and we stood outside in the cold for a good 30 minutes. By the time we handed out the remaining belt ranks and closed the batizado it was after 5:00 PM.