(please excuse the weird formatting, Blogger had some updates recently)
1st time seeing "Sister Act" the musical
I was super excited to see this Broadway version at the Kennedy Center of one of my favorite childhood movies but couldn't fully enjoy it due to the sacrilegious treatment of Christ, the Catholic Church, and convents. Dance choreography was overly simple but the singing was great.
After 3 classes at Joy of Motion Dance Center, I finally got Jamile ("So You Think You Can Dance" season 1 finalist) to videotape it with me :) So fun! Check out my dance blog for more pics/videos.
I don't usually like contemporary dance but I wanted to be open-minded, challenged, and maybe even inspired by a less familiar genre. So I went to the GW Danceworks showcase and got some friends to come with me. None of us were particularly impressed or enamored but we had fun recreating some of the poses afterwards haha
At the GW School of Medicine and Sciences' Thanksgiving potluck, one of the fun-loving deans taught and led the line dance to Robin Thicke's hit "Blurred Lines". I think we should dance everyday at work haha.
1st time at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
We woke up at 4:30am to start staking out a spot at 5:30am at the beginning of the parade route. Mind you, it didn't start until 9:00am. It was fun but way too cold to do again!
After the parade and brunch, we went ice skating in Central Park. I was a beautiful sunny day, there was jazzy Christmas music playing, lots of holiday spirit amongst the skaters, and the backdrop of the buildings behind the trees were just beautiful.
1st time in Grand Central Station
I met Darold at a party in NYC and we were planning to go salsa dancing that night but all the places were closed for the holiday, so we ended up taking a tour of downtown :) The famed Grand Central Station was one of the few places still open at midnight on Thanksgiving.
I didn't go shopping on Black Friday but I got to visit one of the great architectural/technological feats of modern America! It was glorious indeed.
1st Thanksgiving at an Italian restaurant
I've spent Thanksgiving with various friends since I left home but never at a restaurant. Pablo, George, Leslie, and I had gotten to become pretty comfortable on our NYC roadtrip and there was plenty of food at Buca di Beppo so it was just as good :)
I pride myself on being a foodie but I've always been
repulsed by the thought of eating raw fish and have successfully put off trying
sushi all these years...until today when I was offered raw salmon hors
d'oeuvres at my office Christmas party. Most unfortunately, it was just as
nasty as I imagined and I ran to spit it out! How do you people eat this
stuff!?
I've been playing piano since I was 10 and have been lucky to always have easy access to a piano at work or in my apartment, but I don't have one in my home right now and I have limited access at work/church so I finally decided to invest in a keyboard to keep up my skills. (Matt 25:14-30) Now I can hibernate and create music all winter :)
I tried to get a group of jazz lovers and would-be-jazz lovers to go to a jazz club in October but the concert didn't happen, so I was excited for this 2nd try. The Redwine Jazz Band was actually just a clarinet and guitar duo, but they were really good. "Warm fuzzies" jazz music and nice conversation made for a lovely evening before everyone left for the holidays.
I didn't go home for Christmas this year because I don't get very many vacation days at my job and I'm saving them for an overdue trip to see my extended family in China. But I do get Christmas eve & day off so I took a bus up to NYC to spend the break with my beau Darold :) He knows I'm really into African American history and he lives in Harlem so he took me on a little tour and I got to see a few memorials of key black figures I've read alot about and really admire - Duke Ellington and Frederick Douglass.
1st time to St. John Cathedral
Darold used to be Catholic before the joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and his Catholic friend Carla was visiting so he took us to the St. John Cathedral. Definitely very different from an LDS chapel or temple!
It's as beautiful and romantic as they say!
Most of Darold's extended family lives in Manhattan so we went to his uncle's house for a big Christmas eve party. We didn't eat until 11:30pm but it was worth the wait! And even tho most of the people didn't speak English, I had fun playing with the kids and dancing with Darold. Every family party should have dancing :)
On Christmas day, Darold introduced me to one of his favorite Dominican restaurants - El Mofongo Buffet. I'd never been to one before but it seemed wonderfully familiar to me because I grew up eating out often at Chinese buffets and my aunt made Puerto Rican food all the time, which is in the Caribbean cuisine category. It was deliciosa!
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