We Danced the Night Away

SPU weekends are often full of having nothing to do, which helps to explain why so many people go home.

There’s always the let’s watch a movie approach, but people get tired of that one pretty quickly.  I just finished The Hunger Games yesterday, which means that I currently don’t have a book to read and, if you know me well, I normally always have a book to read.  (By the way, there is something extremely unsatisfying about finishing a book on a Kindle because you can’t slam it shut with a sense of finality, but that’s a topic for a different time.) 

Next there’s the let’s play FIFA and 2k12 approach, which applies mostly to guys.  I tried playing 2k12 last night and I lost by 60 the first game and 50 the second game, which definitely leaves some room for improvement and I’m not really sure I care about improving.

My friend Googled “things to do when you’re bored” and lists of things showed up.  One of them was try swallowing your tongue, and it only took me 30 seconds to figure out I couldn’t. 

Point of the story is… everyone was way past the point of general boredom. 

So I immediately snagged the opportunity to go swing dancing when I found out a group of people were going.  My boyfriend, Will, was thrilled about getting off campus and definitely wanted to go, so we both ran back to our rooms and got dressed. 

Then we were off, driving into an unpredictable snowy Seattle wonderland.  It snowed yesterday for the first time since I’ve been in Seattle and, though most of it didn’t stick, people were afraid to go out.  It was as if a giant famine hit the city and left no survivors—our car seemed to be one of the only ones driving anywhere.  Seattle is beautiful when it’s glossed over with snow.  It’s frozen in time like a picture.  After we got out of the car I felt like I was walking through a world that didn’t exist.

Seattle doesn’t cope well with snow though.  In fact, it freezes over fairly quickly and with the amount of hills that it possesses, travelling or going out in general isn’t always the smartest idea.  We definitely witnessed a few people slip on the sidewalks while we were trying to find the Century Ballroom where we would be dancing.

We finally did, on the second floor of a building, and we walked in to be greeted by couples moving in a flurry of motion.  Swing dancing has many different styles and I’m sure at least 10 (maybe more) were present in that room.  Once you learn you start to develop your own, which means there are slightly different variations for every move and every step.

But the basics aren’t difficult and I spent the first 15 minutes or so teaching Will the simple step-step-back step-step-step-back step movement for our feet that would allow us to dance and then add on extra movements.  He was confused at first but caught on quickly and then observed the other people on the dance floor to see if he could learn what they were doing.

Spinning me proved to be a small obstacle and then we were doing the windmill and an arm slide (I’m not sure what else I should call it) and he was tipping me back at the end of every song.  He was determined to learn all of it in one night, which is impossible, but we agreed that we would definitely go again.

3 hours passed way quicker than they would have had we been sitting back at SPU trying to figure out what to do.  It seemed as if the night was over before it started.

We literally dance the night away.

I love that I can say that.