Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Rohit's American Adventure:Chapter 9. Swing dancing

In short span of time, I had made a lot of friends. The fun part was most of them were American and a majority of them were girls which was getting me a lot of attention among the Indian community.Erin was one of my classmates, in several courses I took in Fall 06 . Yuanyuan Li(Annie) was working with us on a project and that was one of the most memorable project experiences of my life. I enjoyed working for the project and we gelled with each other well. Erin was always kind of to offer me rides back to home after our evening classes. She had a passion for her dog, ’Ferris’ and coral singing. She also loved Swing dancing and she had invited her friends in the class for Swing dancing session. Fortunately, I was one of them and it was not too bad. I had done a lot of things in USA which I had never done for my life back home. I had played Garba in the garba night organized by the Indian community on campus which I had never down all my life back home even though they used to play garba at stone’s throw distance from my house. Now it was Swing dancing. We were six of us at the beginning. We had dinner at this fancy restaurant in downtown silver spring. The theme was medieval, which Erin seemed to like. After the delicious dinner, we headed to Swing dancing venue. The funny thing was , none except Erin knew to Swing dance. So, we had to enroll in a tutorial. As we entered the grand ballroom, there were two instructors. The male instructor looked like Vince Vaughan and the female instructor was a middle aged woman who had the energy of an 18 year old girl. I enjoyed the idea of practising the Swing dancing steps with random girls/ladies and moving on to the next. It was just awesome. My first dance partner was a 65 year old lady and I enjoyed practising my steps with her.

As time passed by, my other friends decided to leave. I decided to stay back because I was getting the hang of it. After the practice sessions were over, it was time to dance. I asked almost every lady in the room to dance and she obliged. It was so cool. I even shook a leg with expert dancers who come to this event as a spiritual ritual and they liked the way I danced. I finally did dance with Erin and it was great. She used to teach me some steps and tell me to try it on some other dance partner. I had never danced my entire life but I was enjoying every moment out there on the dance floor. It was kind of sad, when we had to leave but I will never forget Erin for introducing me to Swing dancing. Erin drove me back home at 1:00 in the morning which was kind of her.