Bailamos!

Oy! I have so much that I want to write about, but unfortunately I have an exam tomorrow so I need to keep studying - but I'm taking a break to write a quick message.  This is of course following a quick Skype break, a quick meal break... lots of breaks...

So.  Many of you who know me have seen me "dance" and know that my dancing usually consists more of... flailing.  Well.  Last night I got to put my flailing to its true test: I went to a salsa dancing lesson.  Now, when I flail I prefer to flail with my arms and my legs, in general my torso remains stationary.  My true dancing abilities lie in Irish dance which uses very little torso.  My norweigan friend here put it best when she said "I was given cold, Norweigan hips.  Not hot, latina hips."  Being Minnesotan I think that I can claim SOME Norweigan heritage as well - even though there is no Scandinavian blood flowing my veins, there is a certain Minnesota/Scandanavian stiffness coursing through my muscles.

With all this running through my brain, I decided that it was time to really give salsa a try.  I have done it before, more or less unsuccessfully.  So, I put on my dancin' shoes and met up with everyone at school.  We then took a bus (that had an acordian player on it!) to a salsa bar.  We took up about 4 tables in the bar - and we were pretty much the only ones there.  Except of course for the PROFESSIONAL salsa dancers who were rehearsing before we had our lesson.  There were hips swaying, feet flying and women spinning in ways that had to have been defying physics.  It was truly incredible - I can only imagine how beautiful it would be when the women had proper sals clothing on (they were in jeans and street clothes.)
Our teacher told us to use it as "inspiration" and not to get intimidated.  Right....

After watching this lesson for about 45 minutes, it was finally our turn.  A very enthusiastic man ushered us all onto the dance floor.  With a smile and a shrug we all reluctantly lined up.  The lesson (of course) was in Spanish.  Which was just as well, his directions didn't mean a whole lot regardless - I simply watched and tried my best to imitate what he was doing.
With the music blaring and him yelling we began.  It started out pretty easy, simple steps forward, backwards and to the side.  I was starting to get pretty confident.  Then the music started going faster and our feet were supposed to as well... I began to resort back to my favorite run-in-place-and-flail dance move, but I was able to catch myself and try to stay on time with the music.  Really, as long as you move your hips - you're fine.  I've found it's not so much about what your feet do, as long as you try and step somewhat in time with the music, it's more about the hips.  Like Shakira says- hips don't lie.  If you're off time from the music your hips show it more than your feet (though both of my showed that I was clearly off time...)

All in all, we learned 5 different dances - of course now I don't remember all of them, I think there was salsa, barchata, samba, regaeton, and then something else.  For the salsa we dances with partners - this was definitely the hardest part.  When the guy knew what he was doing, it was SUPER easy - though I still continually spun the wrong way.  I got many laughs and "hahaha gringa.." to which I would smile and say "si... soy gringa..." oh well - there's no denying my gringa status.
I am proud to say that I was not the worst one there, some of the guys from our school had 2 left feet and no sense of rhythm - so I didn't feel as bad when I stepped on their toes and spun the wrong way.

After about an hour and a half of spinning, stepping, a little flailing, and a lot of laughing - our lesson came to an end.  It was so much fun!  It was slightly embarrassing, incredibly exhausting, but such a different kind of dancing than what I"m used to!  I'm hoping to go back to the lessons each week that I'm here so that I can come back to the US a little bit more comfortable in salsa (maybe comfortable enough to try it again back in Denver!)

It's so hard to believe that it's already Friday tomorrow!  This week has absolutely FLOWN by!  Some other things I did this week were: go to a mall, wandered through downtown, went to some museums, ate a lot of delicious food, took the metro, and walked a LOT!  I'll write more about some highlights when I get a chance - I just thought the salsa dancing was too fun not to share :-)
Tomorrow we're going to hike up the Cerro San Cristobal (a big hill that's part of the Andes that's situated in Santiago and provides a great view on smogless days) then there are some various day trips over the weekend, so I'll probably be back to writing on Monday!  Expect a super long post then!)

Classes are going well, my host mom told me she was really impressed with my Spanish so far! I'm getting better each day, slowly but surely.

If you get the chance - look up the band Aventura (I'm totally obsessed) they're a Baracha band from the Bronx (go figure) but they're SUPER popular here and have excellent music!
I recommend the song "Dile El Amor"
Besos! Chao!