Salsa!

Although learning to salsa dance is one of those to-do list things, I have spent a lot of time down here in Colombia avoiding salsa at all costs.  At school functions any and every man will offer a hand to take any girl to the dance floor, and unfortunately I have fallen victim to this on a couple occasions despite my "no se nada"s and "necesito aprender"s as we venture to the dance floor.  It's not that I have anything against salsa, I do want to learn, but through lessons, not embarrassment.  For my birthday in November, David got me 2 salsa lessons, which we have yet to take.  His fault, not mine.  I did take that one salsa class in high school and have been Zumba-ing my way around our little living room lately so perhaps my salsa skills will start on their upward trend. 

Last weekend two of our co-workers, Stetson and Beatriz, had a black and white party for their 30th birthdays at Tienda Vieja.  And I just remembered that David and I had our picture there, we're famous!  While I was hesitant to accept David's offer of a little salsa dancing at first, eventually I got onto the dance floor and practiced my salsa steps.  The basics are fairly simple and I did actually remember some from that one class I had my junior year.  While everyone else out there was still better than me, I was beginning to feel a bit more comfortable and enjoyed dancing a bit.  And while I am the last person David is willing to take instruction from, we have some patient friends who were helping us out.

We took a break from dancing and were surprised by some real salsa dancing entertainment.  I was beyond impressed with their fast moving hips and feet, especially considering how young they looked.

 

After about four or five songs each dancer broke off and grabbed someone from the crowd to bring to the dance floor.  Of course David was picked (thank God it wasn't me) and while I scrambled to capture the moment I managed to get a snippet of the dance moves in video (sorry you have to watch it sideways).  David, as well as all the other people pulled to the floor, were eventually pawned off to strangers as the dancers went to grab more people from the crowd.  Although I had begun to feel comfortable with salsa, my stomach still knotted up each time one of the male dancers approached the 5 foot radius around me.  Luckily I never got chosen, I'm sure they could sense my fear.