Got my Dancing Shoes on

So the social last Friday went very well. I didn't know what to expect and I have to admit: I thought we would be receiving class instructions from a salsa professor. In fact, for the first 20 minutes no one moved out of their seats. We anticipated the professor as we nervously sat amidst an empty dance floor with salsa music blasting from the speakers. No professor came. Little by little, slow ripples of people began to rise and ask one another to dance. Our class, huddled together on one isolated corner, began practicing "the basic," "side basic," "fancy basic," "left turn," "right turn," and even some couple moves.
I had brought my mom mainly because she had been begging to come but presumably, I guess I wanted to dance with someone who knew what they are doing. After Friday night, I wished I could inflate a good dance partner and deflate him when I'm done...I think I learn best and quicker when I dance with others.Moreover, he would have to be "good" because that way you'll learn from the best, and one day be the best! Unfortunately, the woman to man ratio in our class is about 450 : 4 1/2 so we can never have more than five minutes with a particular dancing partner. My mom said she learned how to dance salsa by going to parties. I guess that's all a social is... a party.

So after pushing my mom to dance with this one guy, who had multicolored dance shoes on, and seeing his dance moves I decided I would approach him and ask him for a dance. He was an older fellow, perhaps in his thirties and once we started dancing I saw just how incompetent I really was. He was advanced, by far, and it showed. He tried to turn me, I went the other way, our arms tangled and toppled over my head and it appeared, from afar, that he was holding me in some sort of WWE headlock. I apologize. We gave it another shot. Again, Betty spaghetti arms went flying in every direction. He explained to me that I shouldn't move my body to the movement of his hand. In other words, when he pulled my right hand to the left, he was only prepping me for a turn, this means that I should not complete the turn by shifting my body all the way to the left but instead wait for his signal- his guiding my hand to the right- to turn.

I learned a lot on Friday night and had a few good laughs. I definitely need to practice more but now that I have bought my dancing shoes, I'm ready to take on any and all obstacles!