I thought I’d give y’all plenty of time to get through the Italy trip and now that I know our only reader is through it, I’ve decided to go ahead and post again.There’s a lot of catching up to do though. I’ll try to do the Readers Digest condensed version.

1. Salsa Gala
Our dance school puts on a Salsa Gala every year and this year we were there! We went with Benni and Annka. It began on Friday night with a dance party in a club in Stuttgart. They brought in super salsa DJs for the evening and some of the local people (students from the school and others of that sort) did a few performances. I think we four felt a bit like real beginners in a room full of pros, even though we’re in the Advanced Class at our school! The next day it all started in the morning with workshops. They always had two scheduled simultaneously, so you could decide which one was more interesting for you. They were each an hour long, then a few minutes break and then the next one. It went like that (with a lunch break) until about 5 PM and then Saturday night they had another dance party followed by a big salsa show with performances by some of the world’s top dancers. The workshops were intense. They had different ones for different levels of ability or experience and they also had a few different styles of dance, not only salsa. We tried to participate in as many as possible, without killing ourselves.
We began with a course in Salsa Romantica. Basically we learned a few new steps and some techniques how to make it look really romantic, things like, you can turn your head to sort of nuzzle your partner instead of looking forward, or you can make sure the woman’s leg leans against the man’s, instead of being independent. It was really fun! The salsa we learn in the school (New York style) is so fast and energetic; it was fun to do something else. Also, the man who taught it was fantastic. His name is Manuel Mascarell, he’s from Spain and that one was his 400th salsa congress as a teacher. He was very clear, relaxed and authoritative as a teacher. Wonderful.
Next we did New York Style On 2 with Brian and Mechteld. Actually we didn’t know what On 2 meant. It apparently means that instead of dancing on 1-2-3, 5-6-7, you somehow start on the 2 and keep dancing the whole time through. It was totally confusing! Man, once your feet are trained a certain way, it’s really hard to make them do something else. But Brian and Mechteld were really good. They were also fabulous teachers. They took their time and went at our pace instead of trying to smack their program through. If I have it right, they’ve been the Dutch Salsa Champions.
After that, we did a New York Style workshop with Monica and Mitchell. They were really great. New York is what we learn already, so it wasn’t hard to work with them. And Mitchell was really funny. He did Matrix-style dance (slo-mo) every time we needed to see it more slowly and they just had a lot of energy.
For the last workshop on Saturday, we were again with Manuel Mascarell, learning a dance called kizomba. This dance is performed very slowly, with pairs dancing very close together. It’s sensual, but not sexual and it’s a terrific way to wind down after a full day of dancing your heart out to salsa. Click here to see a video of it. After that, we went home and rested a little bit before getting ourselves purdied up to go back into town for the gala evening.
Other than us dancing our tootsies off, the highlight was the show. One of our dance teachers, Sebastiano, organized this whole thing where he got people to do performances that, all put together, tell the history of salsa dancing. So I don’t remember all the different stations, but there was a performance of cha cha, one of boogaloo (hadn’t ever heard of that one either… click here for a video), one of mambo… There were two highlights to the show. One was for Sebastiano himself. His favorite movie ever is called “Salsa” and it is the thing that inspired him to start dancing. So he and Ramona (our other teacher) with two friends of theirs reenacted a scene out of the movie. But really, don’t bother with the movie. We watched it and it was pure corn. The second highlight was seeing Anne and Anichi perform. I don’t know if it was this year or not, but at some point they were crowned European Salsa Champions and they routinely perform at world competitions, so they’re REALLY good. Anne can spin, like, 45 times without falling over! They’re just amazing.
So what did we do on Sunday? We started the day with a spinning workshop with none other than Anne and Anichi. Seriously, guys: Anichi was explaining what guys shouldn’t do while their partners are spinning, so Anne just kept spinning while he picked his nose, answered his cell phone, scratched his butt, fixed his hair… And she’s still going! They’re incredible and we were able to learn from them. Spinning is hard. For non-dancers, they may not understand this, but spinning is hard. Flo and I realized that when he had my left hand in his and I should spin more than once in a row, it worked, but when he had my right hand in his, it was all over. I drifted to the right and would totally lose my balance and he’d have to catch me -and it was always that way, not just during the workshop. Anyway, we asked Anichi what it could possibly be and he simply danced a few steps with me to find out. With him it was exactly the same: left hand, no problem; right hand, falling over. All he said was, “You hang yourself too heavily in his hand when you use your right hand. Work on that.” And that was the secret! Now that I know that’s the problem, I pay attention to it and it works much better. But to be honest, I was just glad that while I was dancing those few steps with a professional, I didn’t step on his feet or anything like that!
The next workshop we did was a bachata workshop with Ronald and Marion. I can’t find a website for them. Oh well. So, bachata is danced really slowly and it’s often played in clubs as a sort of break from the fast pace of salsa. For that reason, Benni and Annka particularly wanted to learn it, so we did this workshop. Well, it’s a really easy dance to learn, but somehow it seems all the non-dancers were in the workshop and so we got bored and gave up when we’d only learned three steps after 45 minutes. Anyway, click here for a video.
After that, we tried to do a cha cha workshop. We wanted to because the instructor was one of these old guys who wears a newsboy cap and tweed pants and he just looked cool. Unfortunately, although he’s evidently a great musician and dancer, he wasn’t much of a teacher. He went too fast and no one understood what they were supposed to do, but instead of just slowing down, he powered ahead. That was naturally frustrating, so we gave up. We were exhausted anyway.
In the evening was an after party in one of the clubs in Stuttgart that regularly holds salsa nights, but the four of us decided that we were so wiped out, we’d just skip it. We had dinner together and watched a movie! All in all, it was a really fantastic experience and well worth the money we paid to take part. I was blown away by the professionalism and it really made both my head and my body work, which is always a nice change!

2. Zauber Zauber
And so, as many of you know, Flo and I surprise each other once a year, randomly. This year, my surprise for him was tickets to a magic variety show at a theater in Stuttgart. Sometime this year we’d watched The Illusionist and Prestige, both movies about magicians. We really liked them and then I saw an ad for this magic show. I’d never been to one and neither had Flo, so I got some tickets. And I want you all to know: this year I managed to really surprise Flo. Most of the time he at least knows when something is coming, even if he doesn’t know what it is. This year I really outdid myself and caught him totally off-guard! The theater is a small one in the basement of a big building complex. It’s basically underneath a big fountain, so you go down stairs behind the fountain and at the bottom of a little waterfall type thing is the front door of the theater. It’s small, but it’s really nice. No bad seats in the house. You can have dinner there, as far as I know, so there are tables directly in front of the stage and then there’s a small ring of seating outside of that. The show had an MC, who was also a magician, so while the stagehands were rearranging things behind the curtain, he was amusing the audience. He was really good. He is a mentalist, so he did thinks like taking rings from different audience members and getting them chained together; getting a coin in a bottle when the coin was too big for the bottleneck and pouring water from a pitcher into a cup, but when it reahed the cup, it turned to schnapps or beer or espresso or whisky, etc. What I particularly liked about him was how clear he spoke. I could understand everything! He was one of those bald, pale guys who looks kind of creepy. It’s easy to see how he got into magic. The different groups that performed were pretty interesting. One of them did the thing where they step in a box and then disappear and reappear, or go in a box and shove flaming swords through it. There were three different performers who did the kind of card tricks where they show all the cards and then they all disappear and reappear in the other hand and then they flip all the cards out at the audience and suddenly have more in their hand. To be honest, three was too many and the best one of them was a kid about 14 years old. His parents were also performers in the show (although not with card tricks) and so apparently he’s just started performing as well. He was great, though. He had personality and stage presence and just enough attitude to make you think that if he thought he’s so good, he must really be that good. His parents were fun. They were quick change artists. They hold the world record for quick change. It was incredible! That’s probably the thing I’d be most interested in knowing how it’s done. And the last performer was an older man, who they told us is something like magician royalty. He’s won all sorts of awards and honors. He does magic mixed with comedy, so a large part of his performance was a parody of the classic magic act. He’d pull a rabbit out of a hat, but it was CLEARLY a stuffed rabbit. Then he’d turn the white rabbit inside out to produce a black rabbit. He did, however, also perform some real illusions. His finale was: He swallowed razor blade after razor blade after razor blade. Then he swallowed a ball of string. Then he pulled on one end of the string hanging out of his mouth and as he pulled, you could see the razor blades had somehow become tied to the string! Crazy! Who does that??
Anyway, we thoroughly enjoyed the evening. It was entertaining, out of routine, a little mysterious and pretty cheap: perfect night!

3. Kirk Franklin
For those of you who don’t know, Kirk Franklin is one of the most successful, coolest gospel recording artists. He’s got a little hip hop in there, a little classic gospel, and a little whatever else seems good. I’ve been waiting years to see him and I find it funny that it never worked out for me to see him in America, although he’s an american artist. No, no, no, I had to wait til he came to Germany! Anyway, we were in a very small venue and had no seats, just space to stand and Kirk came with a somewhat smaller band than normal. He had a drummer, bassist, electric guitar, keyboarder, organist, DJ, two male vocalists, four female vocalists and himself. What I really liked about the show other than the fat harmonies, the soul feeling, the great grooves and the fact that there were black people in Germany, was how relaxed they were! I must have been in Germany too long already, in a country where everything has to be perfect, because I was truly impressed by how relaxed the whole band was. What I really liked was that Kirk Franklin asked the audience which songs they wanted to hear and as far as I could tell, he really did his best to play at least a little bit of each one of them. And at one point, he simply brought out a keyboard for himself and led his band in these songs spontaneously, without the tracks they would usually use. Sometimes the vocalists didn’t even remember the lyrics because the songs were so old! And he changed some of the lyrics to german so the crowd could sing along. It was not spectacular, it was not Hollywood standard, but it was a really good evening.

4. Flo Away
And then for three weeks in November, Flo was away. Bosch has promised to send him on business trips for years now, but it wasn’t until the economic crisis hit that he actually got to go somewhere outside of Europe. So he spent one week in China, one in Japan and one in India. Mostly he was doing some analysis of processes, some trainings in software and some organizing of programming projects. He did have free time on the weekends to spend sightseeing in Shanghai and Tokyo. If he ever gets photos up, we’ll let you know, but that’s his job in this case, not mine. He was successful and well-received at each location, even the one that originally didn’t want him to come at all. He really liked all the different countries; he bravely tried everything they offered to feed him; he exchanged gifts with his colleagues; and he really liked the weather in India. So all that time, I was alone, holding down the fort, feeding the fishies….

5. Seminars and Exams
My study is going alright. I have four subjects in the first semester and in October I took part in the seminar and took the exam for the first subject: English for professional purposes. It was ridiculously easy, but you can’t test out of it, so I had to sit in the seminar for four days and take the test. I got a 1.0. You can’t get a better grade. Then in November I took another seminar and exam, for the second subject: Studies of Anglo-Saxon Countries. That’s learning about the political systems, the educations systems, class structures, etc of Great Britain and America. The exam consisted of an essay, but I don’t have the grade yet. Then, next week, I’ll do the seminar and exam for German Grammar. While Flo was away, I studied my butt off in german grammar, because when I started the whole study, I really sucked at it and probably wouldn’t have passed, so I’ve been putting off taking the test. I think I’m ready now and I’m really looking forward to getting it behind me. It takes several weeks to get the results, though, so I’ll probably find out around Christmas if I’ve passed or not. Could be a good present, could be a yucky one.

6. Thanksgiving
And then right after Flo got back, we celebrated Thanksgiving here. We had my mother-in-law and her husband over for dinner, as well as a couple from our church and another woman from our church. It was good. We made the usual, it tasted good and was a hit with our guests. Nothing too out of the ordinary I guess…