June Summary
June was a busy and fun month. I left on the 2nd to spend a week in Sardinia with a friend, followed by Corsica for a few days. From here, I went to Rovinj, Croatia for the Sea Sun Salsa Festival which is one of my favorite places in the world. While the festival wasn’t as much of a banger as in 2022 (when it was 100% bachata), I still had a great time. One of my closest friends - and my dance practice partner in LA - came back to Madrid with me for two weeks after Croatia to explore the dance scene here, take some lessons and practice. Considering the name of this webpage, you can imagine how exhausted I was after being with friends for a whole month, every day. I had the BEST time and the friends who I was with are wonderful, low maintenance friends but dang, I was spent. It took me a couple of days to feel grounded again which required meditating, drinking tea, spending time reading and saying a few no’s to social activities. The first day by myself felt a little lonely and I spent a good part of the day missing my friends in LA, my Mom, my cat and my former life. It took me about a day to recalibrate but once I did, I felt back to feeling happy and excited to be on my Madrid adventure. It is funny how emotions work. One day something that seemed SO exciting can seem uninteresting or have lost its luster. I have read time and time again to not put too much weight on emotions when exhausted, tired or otherwise not feeling great. As soon as I recharged my battery, I felt so much better!
Seena and I took two privates with Borja and Lydia, they dance bachazouk. The zouk influence and moves are the moves that I want the most help and practice with as many of the tough spins, turns and body-led movements are from zouk. Borja and Lydia are both SO nice, patient and excellent teachers! I have my first 1:1 lesson with Borja this week so it will be great to see how that goes. I also have my first private with Asier on Wednesday! He is the guy who I met at Joliet in Madrid 6 months ago and he is on one of the Esencia dance teams. Tomorrow I am taking two classes - one ladies styling class with Sonrise and one bachata 2 with Miguel and Sonrise - at Esencia. It will be a fun dance week and over the past few weeks I have made it to Jowke, Host, Calypso, and Bongos. I am finally finding my groove and while it has been slower than I initially thought, it has all come about very naturally. The culture in Spain is way more relaxed than in the US… people just don’t seem to stress so much here. Another thing I find hilarious - dinner is eaten at 9, 10 pm, so much later than in the US. So you think you have all of the time in the world. However, the majority of nights I am wandering around with a friend looking for food, gelato and everything is closed!! Which means this is happening - our wandering - after midnight! I can't seem to quite hit the sweet spot and totally miss the main time for tapas and dinner.
People are also really friendly when out social dancing. I have really enjoyed my nights out and I am looking forward to getting to know more dancers and go out by myself. The last few weeks Seena and I went out together and ended up dancing a lot, so it will be good for me to be “unattached” for more social dances and to meet more people moving forward.