Tarea from Sitka and DANCE

Hey All,
To those who don't know, I am working for an English credit while here. Every post with asterisks around the title are going to be graded by my English teacher, Ms. Christianson. (Btw, Hi, Ms. Christianson!) I'll be posting one of these entries every week...if there are no computer difficulties.

On a different note, I'm still dancing!!!!!
On Monday I performed with my folklorico group for three different TV stations. And one of them INTERVIEWED ME. Me, on TV. Speaking English. EEEeeekkk... Ximena, one of my classmates, translated the questions from Spanish to English, then my reply from English back to Spanish. And then, blast it, I was made to look a fool in front of everyone. He asked me to dance! I had no idea what do, until my partner, thank heavens, saved me by basicing until we were deemed boring. And not a moment too soon.

Sadly, we didn't win the competition. Oh well, it was great fun anyway. And our pictures made the newspaper...Wait a minute, MY PICTURE made the paper. I was sitting on Fernando's lap, being quite the flirt (coqueta)and they snapped a shot! Still haven't gotten comfortable with putting pix up, but you will see it someday. Because frankly, I'm a babe. Okay, okay, maybe that's going a bit too far, but it was a pretty sweet shot.

Today we went to a university to perform for some function. And let me tell you, this was a very VERY interesting show. The audience was great. There were tons of college guys! Ha ha, I think guys learn to whistle here at a very young age. But I discovered a problem the second I stepped on stage. We were dancing in complete sunlight. The stage was completely carpeted in red. After eight counts my feet were burning. We danced and smiled the best we could, but it hurt terribly. One girl even left the stage, still smiling, to dance on the grass. After a long series of basics, and turns, all on the stage of fire, we got to jump to the grass. Hallelujah. Somehow I didn't realize my partner wasn't there until I reached for him, and he wasn't there. I basiced through eight counts of partners until I could get another partner to save me. From there things went smoothly, until twenty counts later. My favorite part of the dance comes half way through. In it, four guys form a circle and grasp wrists. The girls sit on the links and are lifted above the men to smile and wave at everyone. But somehow we were a couple short. It was a small circle. Then another partner completely spaced a fight scene, where Paula and I fight over him. Later on he was on the opposite side of the field. I had to flirt across a whole freakin field of grass!
Up until that point I thought it could get no worse. It was a ton of fun, but so many mistakes! Well, it got worse. Remember the stage of fire? Yeah, I can't walk normally now, and my blisters are throbbing. All of the girls are suffering. Really, a red carpeted stage, when it's 28-30 degrees out! (Celcius. That's roughly 88 Fahrenheit. Very roughly.)

On the bright side, because there is always a bright side in sunny Santa Cruz, there was some fighting near my school, so it was cancelled for the rest of the day, as was my Spanish class! This is a different world, but if you're smart, you'll be fine, and you'll get to skip school. With the whole school, and hang at a friend's house.

I'm hoping to do just that after I shower and bandage my feet and wash off this blasted stage makeup. So this is it for now.

TKM (short for Te Quiero Mucho...or I love you a lot)
Eri