small fish, BIG pond

So it has been quite a few days since I last updated everyone which is good because it finally means I've been busy! woo! So here are some quick updates on what went on this weekend.

Friday night I braved using the subway for the first time. It isn't that I'm afraid of the subway, I just feel like I don't understand it yet and I'm always nervous I'll go in the wrong way and end up somewhere else and I won't know how to get back. Anyways, it went fine and I made it to Union Square to meet up with Rachel and Ana for dinner. We went to this amaaaazing Vietnamese restaurant and had the best pad thai ever! I felt the chop sticks were part of the experience and, even though I struggled, I never asked for a fork! haha. Saturday I went out with a couple of the girls in my building (one being from Wheaton). We went into some stores for a while and then headed over to Madison Park for a BBQ Festival. It was intense! Sooo many people and there were tents everywhere with BBQ companies from the south who come up for this every year. There were dead hogs just stretched out right in front of us and you could see them cook it. Kinda gross at times but also a cool experience (sorry vegetarians..). We got pulled pork sandwiches and they were delicious! Then I walked to Grand Central around 5:00 and bought a ticket to Bronxville to visit my friend Natalie. Had a lovely home-cooked meal at her house and hung out with her and her friends. I took the train back on Sunday afternoon to get ready for orientation!

So Sunday night was just a "meet and greet" type thing. There are about 70 of us in the program so it was kind of overwhelming to figure out who you were going to talk to. They told us a little about the program, collected our tuition (bye bye $$), and then we had to play an ice-breaker game. For those of you who don't know, I HATE ice-breakers. With a fiery, burning passion. I think they are dumb and they make me so nervous. Anyways, it wasn't too bad, minus the fact that there are so many of us and they had us all get up and play this game so it took forever! I left really excited to get this show on the road.

Yesterday (Monday) we had a more in depth information session where they went over rules and regulations and policies and such. Then they gave us our BDC Intern class cards and we were all set to start taking class! This week we get to take whatever we want (though the amount of classes is restricted) so that we can try out different levels/teachers/styles and see what we like. I took ballet with the same teacher at 12 yesterday and it went better than the first time haha. Then I hung out at BDC for a few hours going around to the different studios (there are five in the building) and observing different classes. There are huge observation windows in all studios which is awesome. It's amazing how much there is going on at BDC all the time. It seems like no matter what time of day it is there are always a ton of classes going on and they are always jam packed with dancers. It's such an amazing atmosphere to be immersed in. I'm learning so much already just watching. I came back to my room around 3:30 and hung out and had dinner and then went back to BDC at 8:00 because I was going to take another class at 9. From 9-10:30 I took a lyrical jazz class with Derek Mitchell and let me tell you, I got my ass kicked! It was awesome! haha. He was so intense and worked us super hard and I loved it. I sucked at times, but I loved it! Pretty much the whole first half of his warm up was done on releve (like on your tip-toes, for you non-dancers) so you had to balance hard core! My calves were in knots/still are haha. He also gave a crazy ab and arm workout and THEN we got up to learn a dance. By this time my muscles were so shaky! But the dance we learned was so great. I really love lyrical and this dance was right up my alley. It was way more difficult than anything I'm used to, but I really enjoyed the challenge. I also love watching everyone around me dance. I'm learning so much just by being surrounded by phenomenal dancers and it's pushing me to work harder than I ever have before.

Tonight I'm going to take a contemporary class with another teacher (at 6:00) and Julie Kapur is actually taking it, too, so it'll be fun to see her! (She's a Wheaton alum and comes back every year to set a piece on the dance company). It's really a dream come true to be able to dance like this every day and I'm definitely going to be a much stronger dancer and person after this experience. Tomorrow we have our placement audition and Friday is the Pre-Professional track audition, so I'm getting a little nervous...(especially since I just found out that the Pre-Pro audition will be evaluated on our execution of three styles, none of which are my specialties: theater dance w/ singing, hip-hop, and tap....say what?!?! so we'll see how that goes...).

Hope everyone is doing well, miss you all!