Hey guys! Happy Fridaayyy!

Ok, so I already fcked up. I forgot to post this yesterday. *GASP!* OKAY it was bound to happen, all right? I was trying really hard to be on top of it, but I slipped a little. Shit happens.

Well actually I was just sleeping all day and then I had to go host a class at Boogiezone and then by the time I got home, I just didn’t do it. Oops. My sleep schedule is all sorts of fcked up if you haven’t noticed.

Anyways, onto the challenge. There’s actually quite a couple things that I’m proud that I’ve accomplished in the past couple days. But I’m going to choose one that I haven’t really spoken extensively about on my blog yet. I’m really proud of my progress with my dance training.

Photo from deviantart.com

(You’d be surprised of the random shit you find on google images…)

As I’ve said, I’m really proud of my progress with my dancing. I started dancing when I was around 13-years-old. That was the year I joined the dance team at my junior high. At first, I was really reluctant because I come from a family of dancers. Most of my aunts from my dad’s side all have danced, my dad is actually a former ballroom dance instructor, and my older sister was at her prime with dancing during this time. I wanted to be different so I thought I should join sports to stand out.

But then I realized I sucked at most of them… 😦

But to my own surprise, I discovered I was good at dancing! Yay! So I decided to just embrace it and make it my own. You know what it’s like being a teenager and not knowing where you fit in. Yeah, that feeling sucked, so I just took this opportunity to shine.

I continued dancing all throughout high school. I would take classes at different studios and I eventually joined the JV cheer team my sophomore year to get out of doing PE. Let me just put this out there… I really, really, strongly disliked it. Cheer and dance are like… distant cousins. They’re DIFFERENT. I hate the whole sharp angle shit and throwing people in the air. I was the flyer since I’m a short Asian girl and I was terrified half the time. I almost sprained my ankle doing a stunt. Yeah… my happy place was at a dance studio with mirrors and a bar and doing across the floor. Not in a grass field with 20 other screaming girls doing back flips.

Luckily, that only lasted a year because for my junior and senior years, I joined the varsity song team. Song was literally MY LIFE. My pride and joy. I absolutely loved it. For those of you who don’t know what a songleader is, a song team is basically a dance team with pom poms. We typically do a lot of jazz and hip hop routines. We do cheer with the other cheerleaders, but we’re not doing stunts or flips like they are. You’ll see song teams do kicklines (like the Rockettes) or turns, leaps, etc. Basically all the dancey stuff.

I’m naturally a peppy person so song combined my natural peppyness and my love of dance into one. I hate to toot my own horn (aw, who gives a fck… this is my blog) but I was voted MVP 3 consecutive years and I was captain for 2 years. So yeah, this was my LIFE.

When I got to college, I didn’t really have time for dance anymore because I became the “A” word… an ADULT. I started working part time at Starbucks and I was going to school full time. It was really difficult squeezing in my dance training in all that, but I tried. I never got to dance for any teams because of how busy my schedule always was, but looking back, I totally regret it. Especially now since I staff at Boogiezone. Oh my jeezus. The first thing ANYONE will ask me is “so what teams have you danced for?” Sometimes I just want to answer, “Umm.. in real life? Because I’ve danced for everyone in my dreams.”

Too much? I told you I get weird in here.

My only pet peeve with the SoCal dance scene is that most people won’t take you seriously as a dancer UNLESS you’ve A) won competitions for your studio or B) have danced with multiple teams and won something. So as you see, the common ground between these 2 factors is that you have to be a WINNER!

People IN the dance scene can argue with me all they want that their team or studio promotes a healthy, open dance environment but if you were in my shoes for a day, you’d understand that it’s fcking intimidating as shit to just walk into a hip hop class BY YOURSELF while the rest of the class is from the same team or they’re all super trained hip hop dancers. Trust me, I’ve been dancing for years and I can’t help but feel intimidated by them. I don’t know how to fcking freestyle! I mean, I can bootyshake but that gets old really fast.

Anyways, this post turned into more of a rant now, LOL. But in all seriousness, I am SUPER proud of my progress. I feel like I can hold it down now when I’m in a room full of dancers. It’s still a work in progress, but I can feel myself improving each week.

Okay end rant. I’ll have Day 10’s challenge posted later tonight. I have to unfortunately be the “A” word now. Yeah… you know what I’m talking about.

An astronaut. Catch you later, Space Cowboy.

-Alice