Best Cinco de Mayo Ever!

Do you ever need motivation to get out and experience more? Start a blog! I was frantically trying to fill my calendar so I wouldn't disappoint my blog readers haha.

I had a most COLORFUL Cinco de Mayo yesterday! (which I found out is celebrated much more widely in the US than in Mexico). But before that, I had a week full of dancing! (Last week, it was full of jazz music!)

WED: Salsa Room w/ Karen (I bought the $40 VIP card so I can get in Wed & Thur nights for free, which are normally $10 each. Score!) Always good to get out and twist the ol' hips. Really glad Karen had fun too.

THUR: Free free jazz/hip hop master class w/ a GW campus organization called DPP (Dance Performance Project). It was the only one I remembered to take a pic at. I look ridiculous because I felt ridiculous! Hip hop is sooo different from ballroom/salsa/swing/folk/ballet/jazz/country/Irish/other dances I've tried and goes against everything I've ever trained my body to do haha. There's no constant rhythm, you're supposed to disconnect your body, and it's so freakin' fast! It was good to get out of my comfort zone for a bit tho. And the girls there were so sweet to me, a new student.

THUR NIGHT: Ballroom Class organized by the Embassy of Italy for their gala the next day (didn't go) that I found on ThingstodoDC.com. We learned basic social waltz & foxtrot but the teacher was the best I've ever witnessed. Even though I didn't learn any new dance steps, I learned alot about how to teach dance better.

FRI: I was a TA for the swing dance class organized by my ward and taught by a BYU Ballroom Tour Team alum. I learned alot from David as he taught basic East Coast, Lindy Hop/Charleston, and West Coast. I was so happy we had a bigger turn-out than last week! There were about 11 couples, and the guy/girl ratio was pretty good too!

SATURDAY was so fun and exhausting. I had signed up to volunteer with the Arlington Food Assistance Center to hand out flyers for their food drive the next weekend. I teamed up w/ Daniel, an intern in our ward who happens to be from Seattle too, and we walked through the beautiful nearby neighborhood for only an hour before running out of flyers. So we had to go home 2 hours early :/

I went home and didn't really have any plans until the Food Truck Festival about 6 hours later. I hate wasting Saturdays (esp. in DC!) so I was trying so hard to think of what fun things to do and who to do it with when the Lord answered my unspoken prayer! I checked an email and my friend/fellow American Heritage TA, John, invited me to go to the embassies event in DC w/ friends. Hallelujah! I called him and we planned to meet at the Metro 1.5 hours later. This was the last day of his visit in DC so he wanted to live it up as well (Mormon style, of course). So he brought a friend and I brought a friend, and we ran into another group of 5 from the ward at the Metro! We combined groups but soon had to split when we started touring the embassies in DC because it was too hard to stay together. Our group of 5 visited the embassies of Indonesia, the Bahamas, Korea, Haiti, and Cote D'Lvoire before everything closed and we got hungry.

None of us had any idea where this country was til we went inside - West Africa Ivory Coast. They had a crazy spicy ginger drink we all tried.

Honestly, I didn't learn anything about any of the countries from touring the embassies. It was just fun to do a very DC activity w/ fun new friends.

I found this wonderful statue of Gandhi, one of my favorite inspiring figures.

I was SO excited to go to the food festival because 1) I love trying new foods, esp. from other cultures, and 2) I've been seeing & smelling the food trucks outside my work everyday but hadn't tried any yet. Food trucks showed up alot on Food Network shows (diehard fan right here); there's even a food truck competition TV show. I'm so glad I saw the event advertised in a local paper - dozens of food trucks in one lot and admission is free! David split from the other group to meet up with us. We were all super tired by then so we were happy to ride the Metro for 10 stops.

4 of us actually chose to buy from the same Middle Eastern food truck; Emily got Kahlua pork and Jamie got potato pie (who knew there was such a thing?). We all tasted each other's dishes (best way to eat).

We wanted to get desserts there but all the ice cream trucks were sold out or had super long lines, so we went back to Crystal City and got frozen yogurt :)

But the partying had not even begun (***NO alcohol/drugs/tobacco/immorality involved!***). We took a quick break at Chris' apt, not knowing his roommates were planning a Cinco de Mayo party too, and went to Kim's Cinco de Mayo birthday Fiesta. It was packed and extremely well planned, w/ decorations, tortilla chips and all the fixings, a pinata, and karaoke.

Me and the lovely birthday girl

I even sang a song on the karaoke machine ("Fallin' for You" by Colbie Caillat) but was too shy and tired to stand up.

After 2-3 hours, I felt like I was gonna lose my voice from trying to talk to others above the noise of the crowd. There were SO MANY of us packed in that apt. I got a ride w/ John to go back to the Cinco de Mayo party at Chris' apt, hoping they'd be watching a movie and I could crash on the couch. Fat chance. The people there had yet to expend all their energy and were having informal Latin dancing lessons. Someone suggested doing the macarena, and I couldn't resist so we all jumped in haha.

Epic day. It helped that church was at 10am (Stake Conference) today instead of the usual 8am. I went to a fun "New Member Lunch" today afterwards. It's hard to believe that as big as our ward is now, it's gonna swell even bigger this summer w/ all the interns coming to the area! Bring it on.