This weekend at OSU was SO much fun... Totally one of the best dance weekends... I know that I say this about almost all of them... but this one really was AWESOME!
First the basics:
Key People
Liz - my partner,
Pam & Pat - good friends
Tom & Jee Sun- other members of our car
Natalie (CUA team member) - good friend
Awards:
3rd American Swing syllabus with Natalie
3rd Hustle with Liz
CMU GOT 1st INTERNATIONAL TEAM } WE ROCKED!!!!!!!!
CMU GOT 2nd AMERICAN TEAM }
The Story:
We left on Friday about 6... I think we had about 6 cars going - we had 19 people go altogether... Nothing too terribly exicting on the way down... Jee Sun fell asleep and we teased Tom that he has this effect on all his dance partners b/c the same thing happened on the way to CUA. In Ohio we were supposed to meet everyone at one of the OSU team member's houses - which on the directions was dubbed the hospitality house. The directions were not all that clear... Things like turn onto waldeck, take an immediate right down an unmarked alley. When this alley dead ends the hospitality house is right in front of you. We totally couldn't find this dead ended alley - and so we asked some random person if he knew wehre the hospitality house was. The guy had no clue and rightfully so - b/c it wasn't officially called that - they were just using that name for our comp. So that was amuzing. Then once we got there we had a great time telling stories and lots of laughing and a great way to start a comp weekend.
Then our host came to pick us up... Our hostess was the nicest lady... she had mattresses for everyone and already had the table set for breakfast the next morning. She was just incredibly nice. Liz and I slept on this air mattress type of thing... That was interesting. It was kinda like sleeping in the hammock.... we both kinda ended up in the center of the mattress.... And trying to roll over was nearly impossible. I slept fine, but Liz had a very difficult time going to bed.
The morning of the comp we did the normal things.. had a decent breakfast (okay so that was abnormal).... But this time Liz put some makeup on me. Mascara and whatever is user to draw in eyebrows.... And for shits and giggles (Liz term) she added a Charlie Brown curl which everybody got a kick out of (we didn't leave it though :).
The ballroom was enormous. There was a full length ballroom, tables all around it, and a full length ballroom side practice area in the same room. It was AWESOME! We did a quick and dirty tailoring job on the tails to make them look good. This included useing a black rubber band hooked around the lower buttons, and a couple of well positioned saftey pins. I danced Rookie/Vet w/ Angie and we got called back several times. Which was really cool. The Liz and I had some great dances... I reached my goal, BTW... The goal of dancing EVERY dance well... I would rate almost all of the dances at an 8.... Whereas normally Cha and Rumba are 10, Samba/jive 7, smooth 4 - this time almost everything was an 8... Which means that the Cha and Rumba were not as strong as they have been in the past - but that is okay. We did fairly well on the smooths and some of the moves have never felt better. We even got called back in waltz/foxtrot!?.
Latins were just painful. We got called back in both rumba/cha and samba/jive (two dance heats) with almost no break in between. We literally could not breath at the end on the second jive. We are actually kinda glad that we didn't make finals because I don't think that we could have end danced it. Oh, I danced American Swing w/ Natalie b/c Liz was dancing it with an old friend... We somehow managed to get third - which is really strange b/c I don't consider swing to be one of my stronger dances. For Latins, I wore Pat's latin shirt instead of mine b/c mine is so big now.... And to make it look better and make sure it sayed in place we pinned the shirt to both my underwear and pants. Now I say we b/c Liz did all the pinning.... That was interesting. We were standing right off the side of the dance floor with my pants undone and Liz's hands way inside of them trying to pin the shirt at the right length so that I could still raise my arms. That was quite amuzing.
After that we were supposed to have a fun dance competition, which included hustle,merengue,and WCS. But since we were running late we went right into team match. The fun dances were done immediately the team match - which kinda upset Liz b/c she has a special west coast costume that she wanted to wear. Instead she ended up wearing what she wore for team dances - which is a very latin lavendar leotard which just screams "look at my crotch". Not something to do a WCS in :) ... but we did anyways... Anyways for team match - we danced Am Rumba and Intl Cha. In the rumba - we did a couple of saultry dips that we had come up with about 20 minutes earlier (team matches are open). And in the Cha we started amost immediately with our new "supergold move" - I think I told you about this one. Anyways - we kicked some serious butt! It was GREAT!. Beating CUA, and coming in first - what a rush. And now we have definately established a friendly rivalry between CMU and CUA. It seems that since I was good friends with Natalie, and Pat was mild friends with her - that it opened a whole doorway between our schools. I made two more friends over there, Liz and Natalie's partner totally bonded, and It seemed like both teams were just long time friends.
Anyways, after the team match we had the fun dances... so Liz had to Hustle,Merengue, and WCS in "The Purple Crotch Thing". We were going totally crazy during these dances. I mean we had just taken FIRST and we were wired. B/c of that we both were doing some cool, sexy, improvisional stuff, in these dances. We got third in Hustle - which is really kinda bizzare b/c I don't particularly care for the dance....We made it to the finals in merengue - that was fun... we did a lot of sexy stuff there in Merenegue. Then in WCS we got 2nd place (unofficially)... Our score was the second highest, but there was a three way tie for first that had to be broken - so we didn't place at all.... That was a TOTAL shock... My mouth literally fell open when we didn't place.
Then we had a little bit of general dancing.... Which was fun but it was little difficult b/c we were already very tired. And of course we hung around until the bitter end. We exchanged local phone numbers with Maryland and CUA b/c some of us wanted to go out that night. We got back to our crash space - I depinned myself from my latin outfit and got ready to go out. Now at this point in time - my body, esp my legs were very much in the mood to sit at a nice relaxed bar and talk to people for a while. The club that we ended up going to was a dance club - so we ended up dancing more. Liz and I were the only ones who went - but we met up with Natalie, her partner, one of her teammates, and a guy from OSU. We had a really good time. If I would have been able to move and dance well it would have been even better. But I got closer to Natalie and Lisa, Liz and Natalie's partner totally bonded. And we ended up having a really good time. We got back to the crash space around 3:30-4:00. Kay Teague and Bob, the people who M/C and scrutineered the comp were also staying in the same crash space. They were up when we got in - so we ended up talking to them for about 1.5 hours.
Then trying to go to bed was a nightmare.... at least for me. By this time - my back through my toes were throbing and in pain.... I could not for the life of me lie on the floor. I was so restless. I could only stay in one position for about 2 minutes before It hurt too much. So I ended sleeping sitting up until I became sufficiently asleep to be able to return to the floor. Overall I got about 45 minutes sleep total. On the drive back we talked alot about the events of the comp and other fun things.
It was definately a very fun, very successful weekend.
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