jopesta.com | impressions and reflections » swing

Traveling in Style

Jo — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 05:30:18 +0000

Every time I travel with someone new, I learn a new trick.

Last time I went to Vancouver, I learned about the art of carry-on luggage. So awesome. There is a ridiculous amount of shoes and clothing that can fit into a seemingly small space. It’s rather astounding!

I also learned about wine. More specifically, drinking wine instead of sitting at the gate watching the time tick by. What a splendid way to spend that extra half an hour between security and boarding!

And this past weekend I learned about pampering spas. Why have I not thought of this before? My nails have never looked as good as they did on the flight from Vancouver to Calgary. $25 and 20 minutes well spent.

Too bad I’m going swimming tomorrow. Please be nice to my nails, chlorine!

Sun & Salsa

Jo — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 19:14:30 +0000

Sunday was the Sun & Salsa Festival in Kensington and Swing Dance Calgary was there dancing away. There was a moment in the afternoon where the sky was so moody and dark and awesome that we feared a thunderstorm. I found myself wishing I had brought my other lens, as the 60mm just couldn’t capture the beauty of it. Thankfully, the storm blew right over us without a drop of precipitation.

Lindybout III

Jo — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 01:23:35 +0000

Lindybout III in Vancouver was a combination of a variety of words: exhilerating, intimidating, hilarious, shocking, disappointing, amazing. It felt a little like a rollercoaster, as the nature of competition led to disappointment when I didn’t make it into the finals, being in a different city was occasionally a little intimidating, and yet performing for the first time was exhilerating and in general the people and weekend was amazing. I really enjoyed watching the competitions as the quality of dancing was great, making them inspiring and reminding me of how much I can still learn. Some of the performances also brought out huge laughter and more than a couple looks of shock (Birkley!).

I competed in the Short & Sweet Competition with Robert, and we were so amazing that we won! Grand prize being amazingly tacky sparkly red belts, and yellow “Champion” buttons of honour! It was great because the spotlight was only 60 seconds long – enough to get nervous but so short that we both walked off stage wondering if we did it right or not.

Vancouver was beautiful, as spring was in full bloom with the smell in the air and green as far as the eye could see. Definitely looking forward to Calgary’s spring, which is always a couple months behind. Sigh.

Quebe Sisters

Jo — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 17:23:02 +0000

Last night I swung out to a very fun, very cute country swing band from Texas, the Quebe Sisters. Honestly, with their accents and cowboy boots, no word describes them better than ‘cute’. It was great dancing in front of the crowd that gathered, mostly people 3 times my age who took every available break to come tell us how great our dancing was and that they should get their grand-daughter/son to join. The warm reception, and generally happy and positive attitude of small town Carstairs was such a pleasant mood-booster. Thanks Carstairs!

PLEX Reflections

Jo — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:37:57 +0000

PLEX and the City was very fun, filled with great live music (Bow Djangos and the Polyjesters) and amazing people from other cities (Edmonton, Saskatoon, Winnipeg… etc). But also exhausting, as the combination of fighting a cold and dancing my feet off turned out to be too much for me. I definitely crashed the instant I left the party Sunday afternoon, and have been recovering ever since.

I always find the barrage of photos that follows a swing weekend to be hilarious. Everyone seems to have a camera, photos are instantly uploaded to Facebook, and then a tagging frenzy ensues. This is one of the first photos that I was tagged in, taken by Justin Lee from Winnipeg during the Jack and Jill finals. Fun times!