Humbled on Wednesday, Happy Today

Well, I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with BYU's Folk Dance program (probably not many of you), but it's something that I was introduced to this semester, and have grown to love. It was no surprise that I got onto one of the teams considering I'm a guy that tried out. Trying out was one of the main qualifying factors for guys to get on a team. Basically every guy who tried out made it to one team or another. Not to brag, but I have always considered myself a fairly good dancer. It's a talent for which I'm very grateful and enjoy very much. With that being said, the best Folk Dance Team at BYU is the Performing Arts Company (or PAC). To even try out for PAC, you have to have a special invitation. To my surprise, I was invited to try out! Now, keep in mind, there are only about 8 spots to be filled for guys and there were probably 25, maybe 30 guys there, many of which have been folk dancing for years and have lots of experience in other types of dance. All I have is a little bit of Social Dance background and a fairly quick learning curve.

Well, Wednesday evening was the first part of tryouts. They taught us four different types of dance: Ballet, Slovakian, Bollywood and Clogging. The Ballet wasn't hard, it was mostly just controlling yourself and your movement. We did a little bit of Slovakian in my class this semester, so it was halfway familiar, but still hard. The Bollywood was tons of fun, but also very hard. Wednesday when we were learning it, I wasn't getting it and was getting rather frustrated. Then we did Clogging... ha ha... I have never done anything even remotely like Clogging. About 10 min into the Clogging, I found myself wishing we would just go back to Bollywood, it was that bad. I was finally able to sympathise with the guys who just can't get dancing down. I had a nice big piece of humble pie for dessert that night.

Friday after dance class was over, my teacher came up to me and had to tell me that Edd (the man in charge of PAC and SPAC, Spring Performing Arts Company) on multiple occasions commented on how good I was doing and wanted to know who I was. That made me feel much better about Wednesday night.

This morning we finished tryouts. Not having really practiced much since Wednesday night, I didn't really feel too much better than on Wednesday. However, I did realize that my chances of making it on PAC are pretty darn slim, so I aught to just have fun and enjoy the fact that I even had the opportunity to tryout. So that's what I did.

Today was setup somewhat different than before. We all practiced together at first then went out of the room. We were called in by our numbers to dance in small groups so Edd could see us better. In each of the dances, I was called in in the first group to go in to dance. After attempting to just get the rhythm somewhat down for Clogging, Edd pulled me aside and asked how much Clogging I have done. Zero. Zilch. None. He said that I'm a natural dancer, but I really need to learn the actual steps. Wow, that was quite the confidence boost! After everything was over, we had an opportunity to show some of the other things we know besides what they taught us. So I went in and did a coffee grinder and a few flips. They once again asked how much dance I have done. Just a little bit of Social Dance. "Well, we had better see you next year" he replied.

I won't know until June ish if I made PAC or not. But I'm not holding my breath. I plan on taking some clogging this Fall. Perhaps I can make it onto SPAC for next year or possibly even PAC! Who knows. All I know is that I love dancing and it would appear that I at least have some potential in Folk Dance. So all I can do is keep dancing and doing my best and we'll see where it takes me!

I must be a masochist

A few weeks ago, I went ice skating. While there, I intentionally went sliding down the ice Superman style, hitting my knee hard on the ice on the way down. While there, I went down on my knees multiple times attempting to mimic a cool trick I saw someone else doing (it wasn't perfect, but it didn't look half bad by the end of the night, if I do say so myself). I also succeeded in knocking my knee on the leg of a table while attempting to sit down to take my skates off.

Later, I bought a pair of roller blades. On my christening trip around Provo, they succeeded in finding one of the worst spots on Provo's already crappy sidewalks, thus introducing my knees and hands and even one elbow to the ground!

In Folk Dance, at the beginning of our dance, I do a dive roll. It's ok, my hip bone breaks my fall on the wonderful wooden dance floor.

Yet again in Folk Dance, we were doing a relay race (No problem, we were on carpet this time). My partner and I had taken the lead with a piggyback ride being the only leg left of the race. She hops on my back and we take off. Not 15 steps into it, I stumble and wipe my knee across the carpet. (there is STILL a scab from that one)

Oh yeah, also in our dance, on multiple occasions, the men go down on one knee. You guessed it! The scabbed, knocked up, bruised knee!

This afternoon, I was playing frisbee. Some one threw the frisbee beautifully right toward me. Instead of using my hands, I decide to catch it with my upper lip and teeth. The result: A fat lip.

Later tonight, we are playing a game for FHE where we have crackers tied to our belts and we are trying to break everyone else's crackers off without loosing our own. It was down to Nick (a room mate) and I. Everyone ganged up on me. I attempted an awkward backwards roll, succeeding in hitting my hip, tale bone and my already scabbed up knee. Not to mention scrapping up my elbow and overextending my thumb.

I can't WAIT to see what tomorrow has in store!

Folk Dance

These are a few videos of some of the dances we have been doing in folk dance. I have a tendency to forget the names of the dances though... But the dance is still tons of fun!

I'm the second person in the line on this dance.



Third from the end on this one...



I actually remember the name for this dance... Hambo. It's lots of fun. It's somewhat similar to Vianese Waltz, but still different. I've spared you the whole song (I swear, it's half an hour long), but this should be enough to get the point...



And last, but not least, this is our Russian dance. I don't know what the name for it actually is, we just call it our Russian dance. This is the one that we are going to do for the Spring Festival of Nations on April 1. We just finished choreographing it today, and it's a work out! Hopefully someone will get a video of it when we are in our costumes so I can post the whole thing then. But until then, this will have to suffice. :-)

Waiting

Well, I'm going on a date in a little bit and I've all but run out of things to do till it's time to leave to pick my date up. Then I realized that it's been nearly a month since I last posted here on my blog. Anyway, I've been working on a research paper these past few weeks for my English class. We had our proposal for our paper due today, and like normal, I ended up procrastinating actually writing the thing out for a while. So instead of staying up really late like normal, I went to bed at like 9:30 last night (that's unheard of for me, just FYI). And then I woke up at 2:30 to compile my proposal. I got it done and I was a little worried that it wasn't going to be quite up to par for where it needed to be. But I went and talked to my teacher just after 8:00 and as she looked at it, she said it looked really good and that she was really excited to see what my paper turns out to be. I was excited that she gave me such positive feedback. Anyway, I had a test this afternoon as well that I spent some time studying for until I decided that another few min wasn't going to make a lick of difference. So I went and took the test and it took me nearly 2 hours, most of it was spent writing short answer and essay questions... Needless to say, my hand was rather tired after that.

So besides all of that wonderful stuff, as I was doing some stuff on the internet after my test, I had a though... I am taking classes this summer, why not check to see if I can get into the gymnastic class? So I looked, and there was 1 open spot left! So I snatched it up as quick as I could! I'm way excited! I finally have the opportunity that I have wanted for years! I have it Monday-Thursday at 9:00am. So I have something to get me up every day, but it's not an 8:00 class. Life is good... :-)

Ok, well, that didn't take as long as I had hoped. I still have a few min before I need to leave. Don't you just love/hate that nervous/anxious feeling before a date? I really have missed going on dates until I got back here to BYU. Anyway, I'm out of things to ramble about. Later!

Worth it

Well, to start off, I'm an idiot for having an 8:00 class every day of the week. In my defense though, I didn't intend on having my schedule the way it is at the moment. In fact, I originally had a wonderfully nice,full schedule with awesome professors. Then I changed my life goal, thus messing up my perfect schedule. So now I'm stuck with a class at 8:00 in the morning every day. One of which, is my Honors 150, or freshmen writing class. "Freshmen?", you say, "I thought you were a Junior, what's up with that?" Ya, ya, I know. It's not a good idea to fail an introductory level writing class. Though I must say, I rather enjoy this class. It is 100x better than the non-honors section that I let myself fail. Well, anyway, being an English class, and an Honors section on top of that, I often have papers that I have to write. I tend to procrastinate. This becomes a problem when my paper has to be done by 8:00 in the morning. Tuesday we had a rough draft due for said English class. So I pulled an all nighter. I finally finished at like 4:30 or so, perhaps it was already 5:00, I'm not really sure. But I realized that I had a few hours before I needed to actually start getting ready for class. So I went to my bed and laid down for a nap... Bad idea. I woke up at 1:00 in the afternoon. The final copy was due this morning though so I stayed up a little later than normal putting some finishing touches on it. Come 6:45 this morning when my alarm went off, needless to say, I didn't want too wake up. So I hit the snooze a few times. 30 min later, I pulled myself out of bed, skipped my shower and took off to class. The 20-25 min walk to class usually does a fairly proficient job of waking me up in the mornings. Once I got to class, I remembered why it is that I enjoy my class so much. Crazy though she may be, Sis. Price (my teacher) is really a lot of fun. And we always have such interesting/fun assignments! So we are starting our research papers this week. The cool part though, is that she wants us to pull our topic from something in our family history. I think it's such a unique and awesome idea! What better way to find a topic that is meaningful and interesting! So right now I just need to think of stories from my family history that I could pull an argument out of. Wither it be something informative, argumentative or problem solving, 都可以. So if anyone has a favorite story from our family history, let me know (you all know how amazing my memory is).

Oh, and also, Sis. Price made home made cinnamon rolls for us this morning. 8:00 class? WORTH IT!

School and whatnot

Well, I guess it's been a while since I updated my blog, hasn't it? Let's see... Where to start... I finally did get my stinking schedule all figured out. The only thing still missing is a job, which a guy should be calling me any day about. I have a pretty easy schedule, even if it does start early every day. I have a class at 8:00 every day, but I'm done by 10:00 except for Monday and Wednesday when I have the 2nd half of Book of Mormon at 1:00. I have an awesome teacher, Brother Bartholomew, and I found out the first day that some of my best friends are in the class too! Josh and Christie Foster, Kristen Foster and Christie's sister are all in there. It's tons of fun. Other than that, I have History 201, Honors 150 (same as English 150 except it's honors) and I'm on the 9:00 Folk Dance Team! My English class is actually a lot of fun. I had to retake English because I failed it a year ago when I just quit trying (bad semesters are NOT good for your GPA), and my friends in Nanjing last semester said that the Honors class is tons better, so I figured I would go with the Honors class. I have a really amazing teacher and it's a pretty small class. It is going to be a lot of writing and work, but I only have 9 credits this semester and I think I'm actually going to enjoy the writing, which always makes a difference. Oh, by the way Nanc, when you come to BYU in a few years, you have to take Honors 150 from this same teacher, you would love it! Besides, you'll probably be in the honors program anyway.

So the folk dance team... The first week of school I ran into some friends from back home who were trying out for folk dance and they told me I should try out as well. I figured, sure, why not? I love dance and I'm not in any dance classes this semester. So I went to tryouts and I realized that pretty much any guy that went to tryouts made it onto one of the teams. I've done dance before, but folk dance is totally different from social dance. It's still tons of fun though. Although, it is a wee bit more of a work out, which I'm ok with. We are learning all sorts of fun daces and at the end of the semester, we are going to have a performance that we get to be a part of. For that performance, we are going to be doing a Russian dance, and I'm really excited. We had an opening social for folk dance Wednesday night and it was tons of fun.

Well, I know that there's a ton of other things going on, but I'll write more about them later. Perhaps I'll actually get into a habit of posting on here, but I wouldn't get your hopes up :-).

New Year

Well, I'm back in Provo now. A HUGE thanks goes out to Aunt Terri for picking me up from the airport and taking me down here to Provo! THANKS A TON! Well, I got here with no problems. I got moved into my new apartment and have, so far, meet 2 of my 5 room mates. One of them is from Hong Kong and is going to the English Language Center. He seems pretty cool. The other room mate is from California, the Bay Area, he said. But, being me, I don't remember either of their names at the moment. It will probably not be until late next week before I can actually remember their names, if we are lucky.

So, I went up to campus to talk to a counselor to figure out my schedule and what not, then I realized that everything on campus is closed the 1st AND 2nd... Grr... So I'll just have to go back tomorrow, no big deal. But I did go and get myself a few things I wasn't able to take on the plane. I have my bags all unpacked, but not exactly organized. So that's what I get to do later this evening. But I did go over to DI and get myself a bike for $15! I think it was only $10 2 years ago when I got my last bike. But this one had a lock with it and the tires actually hold air. So as of right now, I have a working bike for only $15, no complaints here!

I know that this isn't exactly in any sort of order, except for the order that things come to my head. But anyway. I had TONS of fun at the Guison New Year Party. It was AWESOME! I saw SO many people that I haven't seen for EVER! It was tons of fun. People that I haven't seen for 4 months, people I haven't seen for 4 years (perhaps even more) and everything in between. It was a great way to end the year. It isn't ever fun to say good bye to great friends, but I am excited to be back here in Provo. Well, back at BYU at least. I'm really excited to start over. New year, new apartment, new room mates, new ward, pretty much everything is new. It's a great time get rid of old habbits and start new ones. Anyway, I'll post more later after I actually get to see what my ward is like and after I figure out what the heck I'm going to do about my classes this semester. Later!