Stepping Out of the Boat

We have come to that point in the school year between spring break and the end of the year where the kids are crazy and the teachers are starting to put it in autopilot and holding on tight trying to ride it out. We are also in the final stages of our stay here, or so we keep telling ourselves. We have eight weeks left to experience anything that we have missed along the way. Until our time is up we dance.

We have been taking dance lessons for about 6 or 7 weeks at a studio that is about 7 blocks away from a guy named Quico. This is the same place that Claire and the girls took cardio classes earlier in the year. We found out about this place because he used to teach some sort of dance lessons to students at St. Michael's. Now he just keeps to the studio.

We are currently involved with a couple different classes at the same time. On Monday we go for Salsa and on Thursday we dance Meringue. The first few weeks were made up mostly of us standing in a line facing the large mirror in the front of the room as Quico taught us the basic steps. We worked on our few steps forward and back and our couple steps to the side. In the way of meringue, we learned how to shake our hips. The phase that followed consisted of us learning different steps in each dance and then practicing them over and over until we felt like we had it.

Now, before I go any further let me explain something. There are five of us, me being the only guy other than the instructor. This makes four girls and only two guys. Ever since those first couple lessons where we were all doing the basic exercises, the hour has been made up of me dancing the entire class while the girls rotate between Quico and I. The second phase that I was telling you about earlier weren't so bad either as we were taking our time learning each step. However, we are now to the point where all the steps have been learned and it's just a matter of putting them together. When we get to class now Quico just turns on the music and we dance for the entire hour. When I say "we" I mean I dance for the entire hour while the girls get to rest every other song.

If the physical exhaustion wasn't enough to do me in, keep this is mind. Along with being the token male of the group also comes the responsibility of memorizing all the moves and then learning how to lead each one. All the girls are in charge of is making sure they are keeping the beat with their feet.

I know you are probably thinking something along the lines of "at least you are getting your moneys worth" or "you are getting more practice" but knowing that we still have 3 weeks of classes left all I can think of is how tired I am.

In a completely unrelated story, but an instance that we thought was blog worthy, is that the leak in the apartment plumbing still has not been fixed. This means that plumbers had to come back into our apartment to rip up more of the tiles in our kitchen to find the problem. They again think that they have it this time. Until tomorrow, when they come back to fill in the hole and replace the tile, we are currently living with a giant hole that runs along the wall in our kitchen.

The morning after this second attempt Claire woke up to find the surprise of the month crawling in the bathroom, and no it wasn't a jitter bug. After screaming and waking me up Claire explained that there was a small snake looking bug crawling across the floor and that I need to take care of it. I got to the bathroom just in time to see it craw down the drain that is next to our bathtub. So I dumped some water down the drain hoping to flush it out. After a second or two it crawled back out where I was then able to scoop it up with the dust pan and put it into a Tupperware for a closer look. It turns out that intruder is a red giant centipede that is about as long as my hand from finger tip to the base of my palm. As we read online this particular centipede is poisonous but not fatal. If bitten swelling and a bad case of a flu like sickness would most likely be the result. We have since disposed of our brief pet and are now on the lookout for any of his relatives.


Ahhhh the Dominican