Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Lots of fun

The weekend in TO was lots of fun. Friday night we went down to the Reservoir to listen to Big Rude Jake perform (although it was in another incarnation - they still played some classic Big Rude Jake songs, along with a few old standards). Drinks were remarkably expensive, so I stopped at one, and I lindy hopped around the tiny dance floor with Ben and Yves multiple times (trying not to run over the one or two stand and grope couples). The music was very good, and Ben was kind enough to gift me with all three of the CDs available for sale. I've been listening to them ever since, and they are very enjoyable indeed.

The Saturday classes were perhaps a bit too easy, although Joel and Alison had a very interesting approach to teaching the Balboa basic, which made it entertaining. The dance scene in Toronto is a little weird to me, since they sell alcohol and other drinks - it meant that many of the men stood around with drinks in their hands when they weren't dancing, making them effectively very hard to ask to dance. Strange. But I had many good dances with interesting partners, and was surprised on many occasions, which is definitely the point of going and dancing in another city - it's nice to expand my follow horizions once in a while.

Sunday classes were more challenging, but all doable, and I'm looking forward to trying out some of the variations I can do autonomously on the Ottawa dance floor. I'm also looking forward to trying to teach some of my guy friends a few of the moves - that way I'll have someone to do them with.

We lucked out and had amazing food for our entire stay in Toronto. We stuffed ourselves silly at Saturday lunch at a Japanese/Korean restaurant (I think we got special treatment and extra food because Mi-Young spoke to the waitress in Korean), and then had fabulous Thai food at a little restaurant near Ben's place. Sunday lunch was goat roti - very tasty, though I ended up taking half of mine home and having it for lunch on Monday.

I mostly succeeded in suppressing my instinct to feel responsible (and therefore anxious) for how much Yves and Mi-Young were enjoying the weekend. It was great to see Ben again too - he has a nice apartment now, in a great location and very quiet, plus we all met his cat Sage for the first time. She may only be 8 months old, but she's huge already, and a very determined laser-pointer chaser. Ah, I remember when my two were that young :-)

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