Half Way There (But Where is There...!?)

It's hard to believe it, but I've officially been working in Texas for 7 weeks now and have reached the half way point of my internship! Reflecting back on my experiences so far, living down here has actually be better than I expected. I've gotten to do things I never thought I would, met a whole lot of fun people, and have just been pretty happy in general. Even though I've moved far away to places where I don't know a soul and survived before, you never know what is going to happen somewhere new. It makes me happy that I've been able to make this experience my own yet again. : )

Now let's get down to some of my adventures this past week. One very fun part of my Monday last week was getting to meet up with one of my bosses from school to have dinner and catch up. It was great to see her and the restaurant we went to had really good food! It's a little surprising sometimes how nice it is to meet up with a person from your life at home while you're far from it. We had a great conversation and it was totally worth spending part of my evening driving back and forth.

As far as work goes, this week was pretty normal. I had my midterm review on Wednesday which actually went really well. My bosses really took it more as an opportunity to help me communicate my progress and less of an opportunity to tear me a new one. That is always appreciated. I like that I know what my group is expecting of me my last 7 weeks and what I can do to get everything completed.

Hmm...one very cool event that I was able to particiate in this week was the Soulsafest put on my City Dance Center in Beaumont. This is event is a combination of a workshop during the day and a social dancing/performance event at night. The way the workshop went down is that there were 4 hours of classes (samba, salsa 1 & 2, and hip hop). I ended up doing all the classes except for samba since I got a late start getting to the dance studio. The teachers were great! We have Salsa Eddy and Lucia D (I don't remember her last night at the moment) come in from Houston to teach and then to perform later on that night. Eddy taught the salsa classes and Lucia taught the hip hop and samba classes. They definitely did a great job and I think everyone who attended their classes felt totally welcome and like they learned a whole lot. I had never actually taken a class in hip hop or salsa so it was a great experience! Our hip hop class learned part of a routine for "Boom Boom Pow" and our salsa classes learned about 9 salsa moves to use on the dance floor that night. To say the least, I was TOTALLY pooped after 3 hours of dancing.

After recovering a little back at home, a couple of us met up at a southern cuisine restaurant for the social dance and performance portion of the night. Probably the best parts of the performance were Eddy and Lucia dancing salsa and also Lucia's dance company doing a samba with full Carnival head dress and a whole lot of glitter. We also got to dance before and after the performance to some salsa, merengue, reggaeton, and a few other kinds of Latin music that I can't remember off the top of my head. It was a great time! Even while I was driving home I was thinking about salsa beats. It was kind of like how after you get done ice skating, you still feel like you're gliding for a while. In the same respect, it took at least an hour for me to recover from thinking in terms of salsa.

That about sums up my weekend. Today is a lazy day around here. I just need to take care of some stuff around the apartment and hopefully get some errands done so that I have groceries for the week. Plus I need to recover from some of my aching muscles. Dancing all day then dancing all night in heels definitely wears you out!

This coming week should be pretty calm around these here parts. I have Friday off so I still need to figure out what I'll be doing for the long weekend. Beyond that, it's all open for interpretation.