England Danceport: Mar 1995

I skipped most of my classes on Wed. I did go to aerobics however, b/c I figured that  some movement before I whole day of sitting would be helpful. I finished 90% of my packing  before the evening. Then Liz, Pam, and I went lsat minute shopping.... bought things liks sequens  and glitter for our Disco costumes. That night, was a tough night.... This was the first time that  I had ever seen Liz cry. She had her heart broken by someone that she had fallen in love with. I  went over to her place to console her and to help her pack. I ended up working on glueing glitter  and rhinestones to the 70Õs dresses that we bought. It was a lot of fun, total regression. This of  course took the whole night. We left early Thurs. We flew into JFK airport for a 3 hr layover.  The girls worked on sewing their dresses, while we just kinda hung out. On the flight to  England, I slept most of the way. And for some reason, Liz was being incredibly cold to me. She  didnÕt even want to be around me.

 Fri, The first day in England.
So we arrive at the Heathrow airport and spend tons of time in customs. We then wait  in the airport collecting people for a couple of hours. I went to go meet the group of people from  NYU while we were waiting. This was part b/c I wanted to and part b/c it was really difficult  being around Liz when she was being so cold to me. It is always fun meeting people, especially  ballroom type people. So we all load onto the bus, for the 3 hr drive to Osmington Bay. I, of  course, slept most of the way. We stopped at a tiny shopping center for a bathroom break and a  quick bite for lunch. The place that we ate at was called WimpyÕs (and it lived up to its name).

  The place that we were staying was literally on a cliff overlooking the ocean. A beautiful place  - Just incredible. We got dropped off at the reception desk and unloaded our luggage and picked  up our info packets. We took our a quick look a the map and grabbed our luggage and started  heading towards our room.... This was incredibly stupid. I mean my two bags checked in at 50  and 30 lbs respectively. Not something that you want to carry when you donÕt know where you  are going. So we dropped our bags and sent Pat off to find where the rooms were. Pat was  asleep all the way into the camp and didnÕt realize that the place overlooked the water. He was  looking at the numbers to the rooms at the top of the hill and turned around to continue his  search. Pat was totally out of sight, but we hear this ÒHOLY SHITÓ coming from him.  (Actually, I think the whole cmap could have heard him). Pat had just turned around and saw the  amazing view that was there. The reason that IÕm mentioning it, is b/c it became one of those  repeated phrases for the trip. We dropped off the luggage in the room and then sat and relaxed  on the Òholy shitÓ hill for about 1.5 hours.

  The rooms (ours at least) were a nice size. Liz and I stayed together. There was nothing  exceedingly special about the rooms.... except for the fact the ceiling and floor were not  parallel.  We went to dinner that night, and ran into our first of a long line of british meals.  Very bland. Fish and vegetables. Very little carbohydrates. And they are very unused to people  drinking water.

  According to the schedule, there apparently was a social dance that night. I really donÕt have  any memory of that. After the social (according to the schedule) we went to the disco/pub.

Saturday
B/c I set the alarm wrong, we woke up late. Breakfast is served between 8:45 and 9:15. We  woke up at 9:00 as Pat & Pam knocked on our door. The breakfast was a little weird. The  scrambled eggs tasted funny, and the sasuage was sheep. Very interesting texture. Our first  class was a Jive techinque class. The instructor was incredibly funny. And he was a very good  teacher. It turns out that my Jive is totally wrong and I have to relearn the entire dance. The  next lesson, we went to an Advanced jive class. The instructor for this was very bouncy and  had a very strong English accent. After  this lesson, we practiced for our Disco routine. After  that we took an advanced Cha lesson. Then a samba technique class. I got a lot more from the  technique classes then the step classes. Most of the steps were open. We prefer syllabus stuff  b/c that is the level that we compete at. Then we practiced the disco routine a little before  dinner. We rushed through dinner in order to get ready for the competitions that night.

  The competitions were fairly annoying. Most of the events were open. This ment that you really  could not compete at your own level. Most of the british had routines and it was difficult  competing against that. Plus they were set on getting through their routines and would plough  into you if you were in there way. Needless to say, there was a lot of running into people during  this week. If I remember correctly, this first day was a bad smooth day, but a good latin day....  Oh, just so you know - I never made it to finals in any event throughout the entire week.

  Later that night, we worked on the Disco more... Then that night we tried to create the disco  ball. We wanted something that could be used agian, so were were going to glue all thr mirrors  to pantyhose. This didnÕt work for several reasons, but it was very amuzing experimenting  with it. It was a lot of fun for Pat, Pam, and Liz.

 Sunday:
We woke for breakfast on time today... We took advanced waltz and samba classes. I was lost in  them. We had adternoon and evening competitions today... I really donÕt remember anything  special about them. That evening we also had the cabaret team matches. We had decided to  attach the sequens to my head w/ just vasaline.  So I put lots of vasaline on my head and Liz  applied the mirrors. Once the mirrors were on, I couldnÕt turn my head or smile b/c it would  mess up the mirrors. That made things really difficult. We put a plastic bag over my head and I  wore my team jacket with the hood up. See the whole point of this was to go for a massive  shock value - especially to the people who knew me. The routine was performed to the disco  version of BeethovenÕs 5th. We arranged to have the house lights off when we started... There  were 3 couples dancing and then me being the disco ball and one person with my also shinging  lights on my head. Me and mike were concealed under tablecloths as we entered the floor.  It  was an awesome effect. It was great to hear the audience reaction when they 1) relized who I  was supposed to be and 2) realized who I was.  It was especially fun that night at the bar  afterwards when I got to talk to everyone about it. I got a lot of great comments about it. It  was also neat, b/c my head ended up being incredibly smooth after having all of that vasline on  it. That night I spent a lot of time with Natalie. We left the disco together and walked around for  a while. She showed me her room (much smaller then mine) and we went back to my room for a  while (her roomate was a little busy). While there, she got a full dose of how wacky we all are.  B/c about 5 minutes after we got there Liz came in and then Pat and Pam came in. It was just  silly. Then I walked her back to her room and we kissed for a little. That was cool.

  Monday:
We slept in a little b/c there was little going on in the morning. We attended a really cool West  Coast class that afternoon though. There was a west coast competition that night... We didnÕt do  to well in it b/c we were competeing it and not dancing it. The fact that we didnÕt make it didnÕt  bother me all that much. But the fact that it really disappointed Liz really hurt. I ended up  sitting alone on the Òholy shitÓ hill for most of that evening. I eventually wandered to the  disco, but I didnÕt really feel like dancing. Although this is amuzing... After the place closed, we  and a few other people were left. I asked Liz if she wanted to practice American Rumba for the  team matches the next day. We practiced a little, and decided that we needed another cool move  in the routine. So we asked one of our friends who was still around. This guy is the coach for  the Maryland team. So he gave us a neat move.... which we then proceded to practice. While we  were practicing, Liz happed to hit my face. Now for the comp, she had put on really long  fingernails. After hitting my the side of my head she had felt a nail come off, I put my hand  over the side of my head, b/c she did have long nails on and it hurt. My ear really hurt and  when I went to feel if it was okay, I discovered her nail inside my ear. When Liz saw me pull the  nail out of my ear, she almost peed. We were rolling on the floor laughing for nearly an hour. It  was VERY amuzing.

 Tuesday:
The classes that we took Tues were American Tango, Advanced Quickstep, Cha Technique, and  Advanced West Coast. Although we had woken up late again this morning and dashed to  breakfast.... so after breakfast - Liz went back to the room to finish up her morning things....  She fell asleep as she was waiting for her nails to dry. So she missed the first two classes. It  was funny though. She woke up with her hand stuck to her pants  - while she was sleeping she  moved her wet hand to her leg and it stuck there. The Cha class was great. He showed us  something that Liz didnÕt know. She said that what he was saying was really difficult. I said  deal - Personal Victory. There is really nothing to this story from an outsiderÕs point of view.  But this made my day.... I was tickled by it the whole day. Then they had a tea dance, which we  got dressed for. They played mostly smooth stuff which was really annoying. We had the  American team match that night.... We did really well, but (as we found out the next day)  mistakenly did not call us back for our Rumba. That was really disappointing. That night at the  disco, we ended up in a massage chain. I choose a great spot in front of Liz (did you know that  she is a trained massuse), but she was receiving a great massage from a very good looking  incredible dancer - so my massage was rather weak. The girl I was massaging, was wearing a  tight sequened dress (she hadnÕt changed since the comp) and said it would probably be easier if  I unzipped the dress. So Liz, and the others behind me were giving me a hard time about that (it  was fun though).... And she, being the front of the line, massaged my feet. Then Kim, a friend  that I had made at Indiana, told Meredith (the girl I was massaging) that she could really screw  up her massage by offer a full back rub for me. I of course immediately jumped at teh chance. I  laid down on the floor and Kim gave me a GREAT backrub. Awww it felt so AWESOME!!!!!

 Wednesday:
We had a private with the guy who was teaching all of the technique classes. He was so  awesome. He worked on Rumba technique with us. Taught both Liz and I alot. Although, that  afternoon during competition, we tried applying what we learned to the rumba. Liz eneded up  hyperextending her hip and was unable to dance/walk the rest of the night. This was really  dissappointing for several reasons. We were dancing (not competiting, finally, but dancing)  very well and could have placed. She also missed out on a lot of the socializing/flirting after  the comps that night b/c she was not up to it. So that really sucked. I spent the night flirting  though. That was very fun. After the music was over - I ended up finishing the massage for   Meredith. I didnÕt go to sleep until 5 or so.

 Thursday:
We woke up really early to pack. I did the packing for both Liz and I b/c she was still unable to  bear weight on her leg. We ended up cutting it really close though. We got to the airport at 1:30  and the plane left at 2. And they said that they didnÕt have a seat for us on the plane. It ended up  that they bumped us into a higher class for the seating... This was great. There was TONS of leg  room and the seats were very wide. It was Great! We had to wheel Liz through the airport  though, b/c she was still unable to walk. When we finally got back here, we went out for a solid  American dinner of steak. It was really good. I was so exhausted though. I came home and slept  for 13 hours.

 Other things/events/people....

 Chris from OSU.
Chris is a friend from several competitions ago. She is awesome, and an incredible flirt. The  first day at the camp, I saw on a map that there was a computer cluster. I was going to check it  out - and I invited her along. Liz and Ted (guy from OSU) jokingly called us geeks. So as we  walked away arm and arm, she put her hand on my butt and we both slyly glanced back at them.   That was fun. She lived two doors down from us, so we saw her alot. Later that week, as I was  standing outside my room... she came over to me and started pushed down on my shoulders. Not  getting the desired result she started hitting the back of my knees to try to get me to bend  down. When I finally caught on, she licked my head. I said if that is what she wanted to do, all  she had to do was ask... So she did.... I stood at the bottom of the stairs, and she at the top and  she slowly licked my head this time. That was VERY fun. I can honestly say that IÕve never had  my head licked before. She is just a lot of fun.

 Liz:
Things didnÕt go as well between Liz and I, as I had hoped. I wasnÕt expecting a lot, especially  because of what happened to her the day we left, but I excepted us to become better friends.  Although I got the feeling, especially towards the end, that she was just tolerating being around  me. I donÕt know, she is very hard to figure out. Plus she goes through rapid cycles. One minute  she will be really warm to me and things will be going great, the next she will be ice cold to me  and wonÕt even talk to me. Our interaction over the week definately contributed to the bad part  of the trip... I really wish that we had gotten along better.... not that we didnÕt get along. But it  wasnÕt like we were together.

  Overall, the trip was really good and really bad, but definatly very memorable. If there is any  more, IÕll add it later.