Dancing Fools

We survived our ballroom boot camp and had a great time. Not counting the small near melt-down on Wednesday, we managed to do very good. You would be amazed at how hard it is to learn how to dance . . . with a partner. Karlo and I have tackled just about every other team activity. We ride a tandem bike and a tandem kayak - both of which can be relationship breakers. You would think that dancing would be easy for us, but it wasn't!

Then again, we never take any ‘easy’ vacations so this was no different. It was definitely a challenge and we rose to it. Every day included at least 6 hours of classroom instruction. We didn't have real dance shoes and as a result my feet were barking. Plus the rooms were air conditioned for polar bears. Thank goodness for the gift shop and my new wardrobe of long sleeve Killington shirts/sweatshirts. Here I am smiling because it was the first time all week that I had bare arms and no goosebumps.

On Wednesday and Thursday the true stars showed up and what a treat that was. Joanna Zacharewicz and Jose De Camps, the U.S. National Professional Champions in American Rhythm and Mambo were there hosting workshops and they also put on a performance on the last night. Both of these dancers appeared on Dancing with the Stars. Karlo and I took their Swing workshop and amazingly we were able to keep up. I got to dance with Joanna!!! How exciting that was. I got some pointers from one of the best dancers in the world. I think just touching her helped me. Sorry ladies, I didn’t get to touch Jose. Bummer.

I still can’t believe that we performed in the big show on the last night. I never dreamed Karlo would agree to doing that, but he did and we managed to do a good job. Sorry that I don’t have a video of it (yet), but we looked something like this:

Ok, maybe it didn’t look exactly like that, but that was a nice fantasy.

We really did have a great time. So great, in fact, that Karlo wants to go back! I’m still trying to get over that fact. Now that we’re actually dancing I hope that we continue the trend and make a better effort to practice our new skills.

Here is a little movie I made for our new dance friends: