First Day

The Saga of My First Day:

8:45 am: I was dropped off at the bus station and began the arduous wait of standing awkwardly in the way for a while.
9:15 am: I finally got on a bus, prayed it was the correct one, and set out towards Ballet Nova. My nerves were pretty bad--not knowing anything about what the next hour would hold tends to do that to me--so I pulled out my iPhone, hid it behind my lunch box, and just read from the New Testament. Remarkably, I did not get motion sick, and non-remarkably, reading the words of Jesus calmed me just enough to walk steadily again.
9:30 am: I walked into the studio and waited. No signs, nobody available to assist me, nobody offering to show me where to go, so I waited. And waited. Eventually I was able to talk to the receptionist and she started to take me to the dressing room when the artistic director interceded and showed me herself. I walked into the dressing room unnoticed, or if noticed then ignored, and tried to figure out what was going on--if I needed flat shoes, pointe shoes etc. A few minutes later a girl walked in who looked what I imagine I did: confused, nervous, and alone. So I walked over to her and just asked if she was new too, and we both sighed of relief to not be the only ones terribly out of place. It turns out there are roughly 6 dancers from different studios. Their hometowns range from Fairfax, Va, to Columbia, SC (me), to the Dominican Republic, to Spain. And yes, the latter two speak amazing Spanish. I will definitely be talking to them a lot, as one is bilingual and willing to talk in either language, and the other doesn't speak very much English, so if I can talk to her that would be super great for both of us. Because, hello. I love Spanish and am desperate to practice so yay! Fun fact: When I was praying for this trip, I threw in as a little bonus request, "Oh and I'd be great if there is a person who spoke Spanish and would be willing to help me." I asked for one, he gave me two. God is good.
10:00 am: We had a meeting where people were introduced and the artistic director just gave some general business stuff.
10:30 am: Ballet class. I felt totally comfortable in the class, definitely not out of my league, but not below it either. There were between 15 and 20 girls in the class, which is a little large, but not bad. The teacher was lovely and gave many helpful corrections. My poor body was sweating and shaking like you would not believe, though.
12:00 (ish): We went right into pointe class. My feet were already dying and pointe did not feel good, but does it ever? Same teacher and it was pretty basic stuff, but still helpful
12:45: Lunch! Got to talk to some of the girls from the studio and it was fun to learn about how (differently) their studio is run. I love hearing about different methods of organizing studios, and the pros and cons of each
1:15: Variation--we learned a bit from the ballet Giselle, which has to be the most balletish ballet of all times. We learned about 4 of the variations of the Ghost Queen who has girls who died of broken hearts torment their boyfriends who broke their hearts by making the guys dance to death. (It's ballet...)
2:15 Ballet history seminar was really interesting, the teacher was funny and made the class pretty interactive. Plus it's information I'm so ignorant of but so necessary in my career as a dancer. I quite enjoyed it.
3:30: Hip hop. I'm leaving it at that.
4:30: Went and waited in the sun for the bus which arrived about 20 minutes later, managed to not pass out of exhaustion on the bus for 15 minutes, then walked the 15 minutes back to my Aunt's house (figured out how to do that all on my own).

Now to stretch, ice, and mentally prepare for tomorrow. And I think we're going to get some great Thai food tonight. It's been a fantastic day overall, and I think it's going to be a great 4 weeks.