Hiya!
Comparing this weekend to all of the other comps, I would probably put it last in terms of fun.... But looking at it alone, it was ALOT of fun!
General infomation: The Group Dynamics of the trip really sucked
Main cast (ie stayed together through the end)
Danny "Mapman" Carlson, aka "Pappa Smurf"
Susan
Karen
John
Pam
Liz
Sam
Pete
Me
Extras (ie came and went throughout the trip)
Fei
Ajay
Johanna
Dave
Lena
Okay... Fri. We were planning on leaving at 5. We were ready by 5:30, but then Karen forgot something at her apartment and had to run back. Stupidly Dave, who was traveling in an independent car, drove her back to her apartment. This was stupid, b/c the people traveling in dave's car had planned on leaving at 3, they could have taken off at 5:00 if Dave didn't leave. Of course Fri, was freezing cold, so I ended up bringing my thick jacket... The rest of the weekend would have been served real well with my thin one. In my car was Danny, Susan, John, and Karen. We had two other cars with us, Liz, Pam, Sam, Pete and Fei & two of her friends who were traveling with us. We fell asleep for the first 1.5, while Liz's car was singing and goofing off. Then we stopped to eat at Big Boy's or something like that. After that we played cards until dark, then we told each other secrets/ stories. That night we stayed in Allentown at Fei's house.
This was lots of fun.. it seems that almost every night we segregated into grad and undergrad. The undergrad consisted of me,Pam,Liz,Sam,Pete, & Fei (but she slept in her own bed). We were all on the floor in the living room, while the grads were in another room. We were being really giggly and having fun... We played a drunk game (we were all sober) but it was funny. One person whould say... "Wanna buy a duck?" The next person would say "A What?". The first would say "A Duck."
"A What?"
"A Duck."
"Does it quack?"
"Of course it quacks"
Then the second person would ask the next person "Wanna buy a duck". The third says "A What?", the second says "A what?", the first says "A duck" ... etc
It was funny... Then Pam steamrolled us. Fei had left to drop off her friends, who lived in AllenTown. When she came back, her dad said something to her in Chinese, which we interpretted that it was time for us to go to bed. Later, just found out it was just "how was the drive" kinda stuff... But we went to bed anyways... It was really hard sleeping that night... I had the raft blown up to much and it was REALLY noisy. In the morning we had a group back massage b/c everyone was sore. We took showers and went to the grocery store to pick up muffins for breakfast. Pam & Fei & Sam went to Kmart to get socks for Sam (he forgot to pack them) and contact stuff for Karen (Who either forgot or ran out). Then when we got back, we waited until Karen was finished repacking till we left (Beginning of a theme). We left about 2 hours laters then we had initially planned.
We drove to the hotel in New Jersey, checked in and segregated again. Two rooms, 6/4 split. The 6th undergrad was Fei who was staying with us and going back home after the comp.
After spending 1.5 hours in traffic entering NY, we spent the night at the comp watching the championship and open stuff. We also saw a demo from Tony & Melanie somebody... I think that they are National Latin Champions. They were of course awesome!! Their last dance was something that they made up..... My was it sexy... Total foreplay dance. When I get a girlfriend, I definately think that that is a dance to try to learn. VERY SEXY.... After the dance, Liz turns to me and says and awe-inspired "DAMN".
Then we went back to the hotel... Almost everone took showers that night b/c we were waking up by six the next morning. Fei & I were on the floor, while the others were in the two beds (that's the undergrad room that I'm talking about). We were about a 1/2 hour late leaving b/c Karen kept saying just 5 more minutes of sleep. Continuation of the theme. Luckily, there was no traffic (who in their right mind would be awake at 7:30 sun!) and we got to the comp in time to register and warm up... Actually we were the first ones there. and had to help set up a little. :)
The competition was huge... 200 competitors and the floor was always extremely crowed. Also there were normally 2 or 3 dances per heat. And most of the time I didn't know at least one of them. So I spent most of the morning learning the dances I didn't know. ie American Tango & rumba. Lena, my partner was about 1/2 hour late, and we ended up missing the first two heats which I think were Am Waltz, foxtrot,tango, and int waltz & quickstep. We placed 5th in Int Foxtrot and Tango. Which I found extremely funny. Int Foxtrot is very hard and I've never formally learned tango, just tips from people here and there. I think that there were about 10 couples, but I'm not sure. Then we sat for a while and danced again in the novice catagory. My smooths were off, I wasn't hitting any of them, I was however hitting alot of the smooth dancers. VERY CROWDED floor. They didn't have a lunch break, so during some of the gold stuff I took off to have pizza downstairs... Then we watched the kid competition. They had ages 3-teen competing. There is one factory...er I mean school in Brooklynn called the Kaiser Dance Academy that just mass produced ballroom dancers. They were all incredibly good! But the cutest couple was this 3 year old couple cha-ing. After that we danced the latin stuff. During the american Rumba... I kept switching. Everytime I would come out of a fan, I'd switch back to international and it would take a measure or two for me to switch back. Very amusing. All the latins felt good, except we only placed in samba and jive. Which I totally don't understand. I suck at samba ( at least I thought so) and my jive is not all that wonderful. But we got 5th there too, I think that there were 14 couples. Then for the latin novice, we were so tired that we totally didn't care anymore and did everything that we learned... It didn't matter if we knew it well or that it was a gold step (we were only dancing bronze). It was fun. The day as a whole was very tireing. They hardly had any general dances b/c they were trying to get through so many heats (50 or so). So I slept a little there.
After the competetion Pam took off with Andrew and Min (team members, will get to them later) to go meet up with her boyfriend in Princeton. Speaking of boyfriends... Karen and John i think hooked up right before the trip. They were so nausiating.... Just hanging all over each other the whole time.
We went back to the hotel to shower and change and then head out for the night. I thought that that was really lame. If we are going out to dance, why bother showering. Then we ate at a pretty crappy steak house and went dancing at the continental club. This club plays live swing music. It was really neat. Just going out and trying all the jitterbug stuff that I learned...er forgot at SSQQ. It was pretty cool. Then after that we drove through times square and headed back to the motel.
Mon we took the subway from Jersey to NY. The sub dropped us off at 33rd and 5th Avenue. We walked up 5th toward central park, b/c several of us wanted to go there. Oh did I mention that it was raining a little. We stopped to look at Grand Central station and dropped off John & Karen who went to China town. We stopped in a couple of stores and looked around and stuff. We ate lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe, then continued on to central park. We walked all the way across central park, then went to the guggenheim museum. I persoanlly thought the museum was excessively boring, but the architecture was really cool. BTW the Guggenhiem is located at 90th and 5th. We caught the subway back and waited 20 minutes for john and karen (no surprise at this point). I was never able to get in touch with Tejas, primarily b/c the hotel was in another area code and it would have cost $3 to call him. I called him from the Hard Rock and left a message sayign I was sorry, I never got to see him.
Then we headed to Princeton, where Andrew and Min were. Min lives there, Andrew is her boyfriend.... So we stayed there. We watched the tape of the competition since andrew taped it, and waited for dinner. Andrew didn't realize that the dinner he was preparing took like 3 hours to make. We didn't eat until 11 which really screwed up doing anything that night. After dinner, I ran to princeton (abou;20 minutes) away to try to see Bethany, but she was already asleeep an wasn't planning on answering hte door. So we came back and went ot sleep. The next morning the van was planning to leave at 7, but liz was planning on leaving whenever they woke up. So I had the van drop me off at Princeton at abnout 7:30 b/c it was just about 5 minutes out of there way. I saw Bethany for about an hour before her 9 o'clock class. We went to breakfast together and talked and stuff. It was really cool that it worked out that I got to see her. I walked her to her class, and then as I was leaving I was looking at the people passing me... You'll never guess who I saw. Stormy Chamberlain. Does the name sound familiar? She was in YSP! It was so cool!!!!! So we talked for a couple of minutes as we walked to her 9 o'clock class. Then on the way back from that I ran into Manoj, who was from the SMART program, except that he lived in Houston, and we hardly ever saw him. So I walked him to his class. It was so cool. It felt just like CMU I could hardly walk two feet without running into somebody that I knew!!! It was SO cool.
After that I stood around waiting until Liz came to pick me up. She said that they were possibly going to try to be there at 9:30, but that depends on when they wake up... at 10:30 I called them and they said that they were just finishing up there showers... They finally picked me up at 11:30 and we took off from there. I didn't mind waiting though... I knew that It was going to happen. I was just happy I got to see Bethany and it was a totaly bonus to see Stormy and Manoj. I did find out that my thick winter jacket is not wonderful when it gets soaking wet. Down does not dry fast. The car ride back seemed excessively long. Probablly b/c I hadn't gotten anymore then 4 hours sleep each night, and sleeping on the floor doesn't help.
I fell asleep last night at 9... fully clothed. I woke up at 2:30 this morning brushed my teeth and went to the bathroom and went back to sleep until 9 this morning.
I think that about covers it for the weekend. Although I'm sure that I left out some stuff.
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