Tumbling and Juggling

Ballet was really good today.  I may not have the extensions that these girls do but the teacher says he enjoys our emotion much better than their legs. He said something along the lines of "Yes they are pretty but I will not pay money to watch a show with their dead faces." I may answer his questions in class but I don't think I have that much emotion when I dance ballet. It is something I always work on of course so it was nice to have a teacher think that our dance is expressive.


Modern is still great. I love getting to have Chien-Ying teach again because she uses all the same combinations from our Advanced Modern class. Everything just feels so comfortable on my body and I already know the combinations so it doesn't take much thought process to relearn the combinations. Also this class moves about 5 times faster than classes at SUU so I loved the challenge.

For Chinese dance today we had a different teacher. His name is Simon and he planned to teach us very different things from our previous Chinese dance teacher. He taught us some tumbling and how to juggle. Having a gymnastics background, the tumbling came much more natural to me than the juggling but I still really enjoyed both. We started with a tumbling, working on handstands and standing back tucks. I have never been able to do a standing back tuck but after that class I could do one with a spot very easily. 

We then moved to juggling and learned many different techniques to juggling. It is a completely different thing when you do movement that involves another object. It was so interesting to try something so new. I may not be a master juggler but I did juggle a few balls into the air for about 30 seconds. 

I really enjoyed learning from Simon. He loved the confidence that we all had with something that was different and unknown. He said we were all very outgoing and willing to try something new, even if we failed. He wanted some of our energy to rub off on the other Taiwanese students. It was such an amazing feeling to have someone compliment our enthusiasm.

After our day of dance the Taiwanese students took us out to a night market. These are very popular in Taiwan and each one is their own experience in themselves. They usually have tons of food and shopping. I loved getting a chance to try so many different local foods. We tried stinky tofu, which does smell really awful. We also tried some more dumplings and some of their lemon juice. Even though a lot of the food here is fried, it still feels so natural compared to food in the United States. They have a lot less preservatives in them so it tastes better and more natural.

I am really enjoying my time here getting to know all the girls and my Chinese is improving a tad. I can now count to ten, say hello and goodbye, and thank you. There are a few other words and phrases but those are the ones I most commonly use.