This weekend was a lot of fun. Exhausting and painful.... but a lot of fun. I haven't been this exhausted since orientation.
Fri
I started practicing at about 4:30. But Tanya didn't show up so that made it a little hard to practice. Then we started setting up around 6. It was kinda like orientation, but not as fun. It was like orientation in that we were moving and setting up chairs and tables. See for orientation, we would unstack the chairs and push them really hard across the floor to their final desination where somebody else would put them in their proper place. They didn't happen to like that on Fri. Plus the people in charge were VERY stressed. Several things were going wrong. Like the variable speed tape deck we were supposed to have, never got bought and several things like that. Then around 9, I went to the other room where we were throwing a welcome party. No one showed up till about 10. So I just practiced. At the party we had total of 4 people. Talk about happening! Then we danced a little in the ballroom after the decorations were set. Oh... a couple came in from Illinios. The girl was dancing several dances with a friend of hers who goes to Pitt, so we were trying to set up the guy with a girl to dance these dances with. One of the competitors was a girl from Chatham, who I'm pretty good friends with. We called up her roomate, who I'm also good friends with, and persuaded her that she wanted to compete. So she came down and practiced a little with him. I went to bed that night by about 1. This was the 4th time this year that I've gone to bed before Chad.
Sat.
I woke up at 6:30 to be at the ballroom by 7:30. When I got to skibo... all the doors were Locked. so that was annoying standing outside in the cold waiting for a janitor type person to let me in. The we inflated ballons for 2 hours. Can I tell you how much that hurts your fingers. So many ballons. Plus my shoes have treds... so I'm trying to hold the extra balloons by stepping on the string.... I lost so many balloons... (Oh... I just want to say that if this letter is incoherent that is b/c I've had LOTS of EXERCISE and LITTLE SLEEP... but I'm getting to that). Oh, Pat told me Fri night that the place that he took my latin outfit to get cleaned, closed before he could get there Fri, and was closed on Sat. It wasn't a problem... I just wore a white shirt nad tux pants. So after the balloons, a changed into the tux. I wanted to wear the suspendeders b/c the tux was loose in Harvard. Unfortunately there were no attachment buttons, so the the suspenderes got pinned to the pants. I was lucky, the ballroom was cold, so I was able to comfortablly wear the jacket to (well at least until I started dancing when I got hot) There were not all that many people there. A couple from Illinios and about 6 people from Ohio state. We had a BUNCH of people... I'm not sure how many from CMU. The first thing that I danced was Rookie/vet smooth. I danced it with Julie, one of the team members. We got 3rd in Waltz,4th in American Foxtrot. Then I danced beginner with Tanya. We got 5th Quickstep, 3rd Am Fox, 2nd Int Waltz, 3rd Int Fox. My smooths felt AWESOME. There is just one thing that I was not happy with.... My smile. I concentrating so hard on everything else... the smile was the last thing on my mind. People actually told me that I looked mean. Me?!... look mean?! The only bad thing about the way that the comp was set up was that you danced in spurts. And if you happen to make it to finals these spurts were really long. Like you would do all initial smooth, then semi-finalists, then finalists... right in a row. By the end you are REAL tired. It wasn't as bad in smooth... but after latin... whooo.
Then for latin... I felt totally off the whole time. For Rookie/Vet, I had Julie count for me just to make sure I got the beat :) We got 7th. Then Tanya and I got 2nd in Cha,jive,and rumba and 3rd in swing and samba. It was funny.. at one of the times I was talking with Pam... she goes. Drew, We REALLY need to work on your samba. Well I only had one lesson. It was still funny though. The rest of the comp was okay. The girl from Illini was fun to watch. She is an awesome dancer. Then we went to dinner. It was two cmu'ers, two illini, and teh whole ohio state team. We wanted to go to spagetti warehouse, but noone really know the way to get there, then we wanted to go to gullifty's, but they had a thirty minute wait. We ended going to Boston Chicken, a fast food chicken place. We had initially taken two cars, but we decided that it would be easier to leave one of them at Gullifty's. So we plied 9 people in a suburban. That was interesting. Then we came back. I changed into my "semi-formal" clothes. Which when I got there I found that it wasn't semi fomral enough. So I went back to change again. (BTW, if there are a lot of spelling errors in this section, it is b/c I'm slouched way down, eyes closed typing this). The dance party afterwards was fun!. There were actually more girls there then guys. That as cool. I was wearing the pumpkin long sleeve shirt thing. There was a girl there that had a blouse the exavt same color. It freaked everyone out when we danced together. It took me a while, she was kinda shy, and I had to ask her several times. She first gave me an excuse that the song was too slow (Rumba). I came back for a quickstep (she was eating). I finally caught her on a cha. She had fun. Then I caught her again on the rumba. The Open comp was AMAZING!!!! Esp the couple that competed Latin. HOLY COW! The quickstep couple was really good too! then we had a salsa comp. That was neat to watch. We also played musical merengue chairs. I didn't ven get close to winning, but it is very fun to watch people merengue cheat. Like when it was down to one chair and 3 couples. One couple came over the back of the chair,straddling the seat and merengueing. It was very funny to watch. The best part of the night though was whne they played a little bit of country. I two stepped with PAm. That was AWESOME b/c I hadn't done it in so long. But I definately have to learn something new, b/c I was bored with it again like the second time I double turned Pam.
After the partyt was over, the ballroom was stripped down SO FAST. It took like 5 hours to set it up and 1/2 hour to take down. Then, Tamara, one of the REALLY good ballroom dancer grad students was having a party. So I tagged along with Pat and Pam and Carol to go to the party. That 3was really neat. I never been to a grad student party. I met lots of grads and danced more. There was also LOTS of liquor. Pam of course got watsed. She is so funny when she is drunk. She and Danny (another Dancer) did body shots of tequila. Like put the salt on your neck and the lemon (or lime or whatever that fruit thing is) in your mouth. Then we danced and I talked a lot to Mech E grads. Val, our dance teacher, was there and drunk. You know how I said that she was kinda stand offish and not really helpful as a teacher.... well she is more more talkative drunk. She asked me if what I have is alepicia. So I said yes, and then she asked me since when. and I told her since 5. But since she was drunk she asked me the same querstion about every 4 minutes b/c she didn't remember. It was funny. I left there around 3:45 and went to bed around 4:30.
I woke up sun at 8:30 for the 9:30 workshops. The workshops were really cool. Tamara was threre, but she was kinda hungover (big surprise there) she said that Pam & PAt were alseep on her floor. The first workshop we worked on was the jive. I don't think I've been shown the proper way to juve before, I was just alwats told that it was a fast swing. Kinda but not quite. It has a lot more up and down then side to side. Then the next workshop of on smooth. Alot about backwards steps, like in the waltz turns and stuff. I was instructed on a way to totally improve my waltz. It seems that I was leading with my feet instead of my body. So I'll have to start working on that. The next workshop was Disco & West Coast. That was cool. =Disco is a lot of fun. We didn't get through that much West Coast though.
Just the basic. But we did lots of fun stuff for fisco. Then I learned Salsa and merengue. Boy my hips are going to be sore!!!! The last workshop was C&W and line dancing. That was okay. I learned to continous turns for two step.... but I don't really think that it was a function of the workshop... but from the fact that I'm a better dancer. I couldn't do the line dances b/c it hurt my ankle too much. I can't remember if I told you in this letter that I hurt my ankle. I'm not sure when, but at some time in the competition, I did something really funky to my ankle. It is the lower inner half of my left leg that really hurts. Especially for any side kidna streches. The things that hurt most are grapevines (line dance), latin crosses (cha & rhumba) and occasionally going up on my toes in Waltz. I don't notice it a whole lot when I'm dancing, usless I really catch it wrong. I notice most while walking. But especially when I stand up after sitting for a while. I'm going to Health Services tomorrow.
Then I took about 1.5 hour nap, and spent most of the rest of the day walking REALLY slowly between my dorm and the eating place. Then tonight we went to metropol, a normal dance club. It was fun to people watch, but It verified the fact that I don't like club dancing. The music really sucked and it was PAINFULLY load. The only really neat part was that for some reason a lot of CMU people were there .... I knew like 1/2 the dance floor. I don't see how anybody could meet anybody there . Even if you were a good "non-music" dancer and you were sexy. Noone cold tell. You cant hear a word a person shouting in your ear is saying. And most of the lights are off, except for the occasional stobe light. One of the cool things was that Tanya showed up there. I thought the was pretty weird... neat but weird.
Oh... Another funny thing. When Pam is cold and she runs....she looks just like Ozone running. The way she shakes her hear when she runns looks exactly like Oz.I found it amuzing.
Well I think that this letter is long enough. Let me know if I left anything out.
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