Dancing with the stars...

This story starts in 2003, on the San Francisco University campus in Quito, Ecuador. I was studying abroad and was enrolled in a Latin Dance class. Week after week, I looked at myself hopelessly in the full length mirror as my hips refused to move like my latin classmates seemed to be able to effortlessly. Coordinating feet, hips, and arms, all to the rhythm of the music was impossibly complicated for me.

Fast forward 9 years. Social dancing is a part of life here. And last night, the day I never dreamed would happen arrived.

I was at my friend Alex's house, making brownies in his kitchen, chatting with Adrian, a newly made friend from Mexico. "Do you dance salsa?" I asked. "no" he answered. "merengue?" I asked hopefully, wishing for a more positive response. Merengue is, after all, less complicated. He didn't dance merengue either. "Oh, you disappointed me." I told him, "I was just telling Edwin the other day how much I want to dance but we always have more girls than guys and I was hoping you could help us out".

The topic changed, I popped the brownies in the oven, and the song "Mi niña bonita" came on. Edwin pulled me over to the empty half of the kitchen to dance. "Julian, Camilo, Adrian!" I called out to the guys in the room, "ask the girls to dance!" Pretty soon, we had a kitchen full of dancing couples. As the song changed and we all changed partners, I found myself with Adrian. We danced merengue, then salsa. "Here's what you do" I said, demonstrating some basic steps. After we were more or less comfortable with them, I thought we should attempt a spin. I am decent at following when my partner knows what they're doing, but without a lead, I'm usually pretty lost. Much to my surprise and delight, I walked Adrian through the entire spin. "Let's try it again, faster this time!"

I think it's still obvious I don't have latin blood when I dance. I still lose the rhythm more than I'd like to admit. I'm not always sure if I'm dancing salsa, merengue, vallenato, or something else all together. But, I have now given a dancing lesson to a latino. And I'm just a little bit impressed with myself. :)

(not from last night, but if you want to see me show off my *amazing* dance skills, I'm towards the end of this 15 second clip)