Weekend in photos

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Back in June we had attended some classes in Philadelphia for African and Persian martial arts. They group (Historical African Martial Arts Association) told us they were having an even bigger event in August, so we put it on our schedule.
Our friend Al and our goddaughter were also interested, so we all made plans to be there:

https://hamaassociation.wordpress.com/hamaa-the-gathering/?preview_id=921&preview_nonce=840787d803&preview=true&_thumbnail_id=1747&fbclid=IwAR2KRFw4PMMUpiEi_ClftK2WogGnbDmVjeqVy7EC6WNOtMACEKpJwztapaY

My wife and I got out of work at 2 to make the 5 hour (without traffic) drive.
But, just as we were going, a very large thunderstorm hit.



As we drove through Connecticut, we were getting tornado warnings, even though we were through the worst of the storm.



As we went south, the weather got better and better and we saw the sunset in NYC.






Once past NYC, the traffic wasn’t bad at all, but the storm cost us a lot of time, so it took us about 7 hours total.


Al and his daughter met us at the hotel after they did the feast part Friday night, but we were too late for it ourselves.




Saturday morning we had a nice breakfast and headed over to the class. It started earlier than their website indicated, so good thing Al had been there the night before to hear that.





They had a grand master there for it. Not every day you meet someone who has almost 5000 wins in tournaments.

https://legendsofcarolinamartialarts.com/class-of-2017/germon-miller-sc/


As she also has a PhD, she was giving a talk on the history of things.


And, she seemed to take a shine to our goddaughter, which is nice.


The classes were very interesting, but a lot of work. Our goddaughter really seemed to be having a good time. It was the most I’ve seen her smile and laugh in a long time. I guess we should have her beat people with sticks more often…











It was a very good time. Both informative and good for teaching skills. The folks running it gave Gabriele some practice swords in the hope that she’ll keep coming back to these. It would be nice if she does keep up with it.


At the end of the day did they do some sparing and Gabriele borrowed some equipment and took part as well.




My wife and I had to get back Sunday so didn’t stay for the formal tournament. Al and Gabriele did and she did take part in it, winning a few matches, but not the over all event. As she had just started, this is still her doing amazingly well.

(The young man who did win, Jamal, was in the class with us and both my wife and I worked with him and thought of him as very fast and skilled. So, to see his name as the winner was not a surprise at all. In the photo of the women with Gabriel, he’s the guy passing in the background…)

Then, back through the bad traffic of Philly to the hotel.




We had been invited to a social event with the group afterwards, but after it taking us an hour to get back to the hotel, we all decided we wanted to stay there and rest.

It was a nice sunset.




We left at 6 in the morning Sunday while Al and Gabriele went back to the tournament.

The drive home went very fast and we had time to rest at home for 2 hours before going to practice. Very few folks showed up as Covid is still rampaging through the troupe.