Spoiler... First salsa night @ our place in Sana'a

Since next weekend is a long weekend, we decided that it's a perfect weekend to parteeeee!!!  Wednesday evening we're invited for the Queen of the Netherland's Birthday Party at the residence of the Dutch Ambassador, Thursday will be a housewarming party with the Germans... and Friday, first salsa night at our place.  Can't wait.  Hope it works out.  Nervous.

Crazy concoction actually worked...YAY!

Yesterday I blogged about my crazy idea involving a pair of high heels and a pair of shoe laces.  Well, I think enough is said when I say that I did NOT come home with any sore muscle... *big grin*.  The shoes had a great feel to them, the material was quite nice to dance in, and the crazy shoe laces trick really keep them snugly attached to my feet.  Though the 7 cm heels could be tough from time to time, and my partner seemed to have the great knack of kicking into my open toe, the overall experience was good.  Will wear them again, definitely.  Maybe with a crazier pair of socks, but will wear them again ;)

So, here is the photographic evidence of how it looked like.  I was thinking that even with long pants it would be clearly visible, but apparently, and thankfully, not.

Shoe testing... ;p

Last week I found out that high heels are good for SOME things...such as, waltzing. Unfortunately, I have to find out through the hard way, and going home with a super sore calf muscle.  I was deliberating on buying a pair of cheapo high heels I can dance in, until I could get my proper high heels dancing shoes which were left in Indonesia.  (I do hope that the humidity doesn't get to them first before I could get them...)

But then I figure, that I have at least two pairs of rarely worn high heels lying around, and one of them are really emergency cheapo I had to buy for a party invitation...so..hm...a crazy idea was already cooking in my mind.  I figure that usually the biggest problem for me is to make sure that the shoes stay, especially around the ankle areas.  With the bonus that I had fractured some parts of my left foot at least twice...not dancing related, fortunately, I will have to be extra cautious with that.

So, I'll find out whether it works or not tonight :p If it works, I'll show you the silly concoction of a made-up dancing shoes....

For now, I will leave you with the 'before' look of the shoes in question.

First attendance at the Ballroom Dancing group...nice!

Wow, it's Sunday already... time to catch up on a post I had wanted to write since last Tuesday.. (yeah... I am big procrastinator....not proud of that, but that's me, alright...).

Apparently, there is a ballroom-dancing group that meets up most Mondays, and finally, we got invited :p  So there we were, spending around 2 hours for some cha-cha, slow waltz and jive.  I left with a seriously sore right-calf muscle, and several days to recover before the next meeting.  And voila, next meeting is tomorrow already.

Here are a couple of links, with beginner Waltz and Jive instruction from Youtube:

Beginner instruction to Waltz 

and

Beginner instruction to Jive

PS:  It was really funny when B asked the 'instructor' to show me the basic footwork of slow waltz, he said "Oh, but it is very similar to the normal waltz!"  Hehehe.... come again? Normal or "abnormal", sadly, I just didn't know waltz, Sir... LOL. I guess it comes within the territory, once a European assumes you can dance, you can definitely dance waltz...

Flamenco Night

Last night I was so fortunate to be able to attend a Flamenco Night show at the Residence of the Ambassador of Spain in Sana'a. It was AWEsome!!!!! Why do I call myseld fortunate, because the tickets were sold out weeks in advance, and I was lucky that one of my husband's colleagues had a hold of some of them, and bought one especially for me, YAY!

It was a ladies-only show, as is the usual case here in Yemen. And when I arrived at the venue, I realized for the zillionth time, that whenever you are getting dressed for a women only gathering in Sana'a, there is no such thing as being overdressed, seriously. But I made a passable choice of outfit, phew....

The dancers were awesome. And I miss dancing ~ watching and doing it ~ so much, I literally had tears in my eyes the moment they started with the first song. It was soooooo beautiful. In the clips I found on Youtube, they had performances with female and male dancers, but last night, of course, there were only female dancers, though it was more than enough to blow my mind.

Here are some clips of the group, Iberia de Danza, on Youtube:

Iberica de Danza - Cerialia

and

Iberica de Danza - Iberia Magica

PS:
The evening was "topped-up" with the performance of a Brazilian belly dancer....

Honestly, for me, that was a bit of a disappointment. I spent three hours sitting around in the magnificent courtyard of the Ambassador's residence, enjoying the wonderful finger food, watching beautifully dressed people socializing, then getting my mind blown by the exquisite flamenco dancers.... then desserts came out with a scene of a beautiful, sexy lady, wearing something which had a little bit more cloth on it than a sequined bikini set, barely covering her surgically enhanced assets, and watched her worked the crowd. The all-FEMALE crowd. Now, that, I call a bit over the top. No tears of joy for that part, not from me.