Posts Tagged ‘Dancing’

Update

// March 30th, 2009 // No Comments » // China

Wow it’s been a long time!  I’ve been up to a lot since I posted anything.  I guess it has just been taking me a while to get back in the groove of things in America, especially getting used to taking classes again.  Well, here’s what I’ve done since being back from China:

  1. Dec. 26, 2008 – Jan. 1, 2009:  Once again the best week of the year at Lindy Focus in Asheville, NC.  Dancing with my favorite people in the world in the happiest place in the world for 5 incredible days.  If you want to see what the week was like, just take a look at any of these videos.
  2. Jan. 2 – 5, 2009:  College Conference at Montreat, NC.  I spent the weekend with the Coopers at the annual college conference.
  3. Jan. 10 – 17, 2009:  Service trip with the Coopers working with Appalachia Service Project.  We worked on a wonderful person’s home putting up siding during the coldest week of the year.  It was a challenging week for all of us, but we all had a blast and got to meet some really amazing people.
  4. Jan. 20, 2009:  Classes start – first time taking a college course since last May!
  5. Mar. 6, 2009:  I found out I have been selected as a recipient of the Critical Language Scholarship for Chinese!  The scholarship is hosted by the U.S. Department of State and will be sending me to China this summer to study Chinese.  I’m pretty amped about the whole thing and can’t wait for the summer.  Another trip to China!
  6. Mar. 7 – 15, 2009:  Spring Break.  I went home and helped out around the house since it is now up for sale.  It was nice to take a break from things at VT.  I forgot how busy life can get here.
  7. Mar. 13 – 15, 2009:  All Balboa weekend in Washington D.C.  I discovered for the first time how amazing Balboa can be and am now in love with the dance.  One awesome weekend of dancing, with an equally awesome band on the Friday night dance:  The Blue Vipers of Brooklyn.

So that’s about it.  Things have been going by extremely fast, and in about 6 weeks many of my friends will be graduating.  I’ll still have another year to finish.  I have been working on putting together an application for the Fulbright Scholarship for after I graduate in 2010, so we will see how that goes.  Oh, and I built another website – my second ever.  It is for the swing dancing club at Virginia Tech:  Solely Swing.  Check it out some time – I think I did a pretty good job with it :) .  Much better than the site used to be.  Okay that’s all for now.

Church and Swing Dancing

// May 26th, 2008 // No Comments » // China, Dalian, Dancing

Yesterday was a good day. I started the morning off by going to church for the first time in China. I went with the Americans from Missouri State, and it was a really unique and awesome experience. Since the church here does not have an actual sanctuary, we all got in taxis and rode down to someone’s apartment for worship. When we got there I felt like I was truly at home. There was even real coffee (which I haven’t had yet since I got here). Even though we were in an apartment, I felt like this was what a real church should be. It doesn’t matter where we are – a church is the people, not the building. We sang some worship songs together and watched a recorded sermon with a really great message. Afterwards we went out for lunch. It was just like a normal Sunday back home in the States, and I am so thankful that God put such an awesome group of people here in my life.

That night I got to do another first in China – Swing Dancing! Together with the same Americans and some Chinese and Australian friends we all went to this beautiful restaurant downtown. We made an agreement with them that if we all ate there, we could use the floor to dance later. Turns out there is another guy here from Texas who’s done some swing too, so together we taught everyone the basics, and about an hour later everyone was dancing away. It was one of the most unique classes I’ve ever taught with such an international crowd, and I couldn’t stop saying to myself, “I can’t believe I’m in China swing dancing!” Everyone seemed to have a great time and we may do it again.

Yesterday was a good day.

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