The Curious Lark: Austin Open 2014!

Hello everyone!

I'm sorry I've been MIA for the past 2 weeks or so, but life has truly been absolutely crazy. I'm graduating almost exactly a month from now, and just in this week alone, I have 5 performances... and it's going to be this way for the next 2 weeks! AAHHH! breathe... I can survive this...

Anyway, I just wanted to blog about our trip to Austin before the month passes by haha

so here is the story about how a 3 hour road trip to Austin from Houston became a 9 hour road trip.

It began like any other road trip to a ballroom dance competition. We picked up our fellow dancers from Rice, and got on the road with lots and lots of snacks and other food stuffs. Like some Kimbab.

I felt so much like my mother making these because every Korean child has memories of eating Kimbab on a picnic or a road trip, or really anywhere where you pack and bring food haha. My version was really simple though, a bastardized version of Kimbab, and it only contained rice and some seasoned Bok choy. Very simple, but filling and yummy! Last year I made ones with rice and seasoned kale, and I think I actually like the kale version better, fyi ;)

Our road trip was quite smooth, actually. We slept, took turns driving, talking, taking pictures of smiley water towers, and just having fun like any other group of 4 college students.

Things all changed when we got to the competition venue, however, with just a couple of words from David. I can't quite remember exactly what it was word for word, but it was something along the lines of "Oh no, we're in trouble.. I forgot my costumes at home".

And with those words, our 3 hour trip to Austin became our 9 hour trip to Austin.

It wasn't too bad though because David and I sang Avenue Q and Disney songs all the way back to Houston (btw, we found that when I drive, it only takes 2.5 hours to get back to Houston). Don't worry, we dropped off the other dancers in Austin so they wouldn't have to endure 6 more hours of sitting in the car, and possibly worse, our singing. On our way back to Austin, David drove (which look longer than 2.5 hours =p) and we just talked about anything and everything. The extra 6 hours really is not so bad when you have good company I guess ;)

We met up with the rest of the dancers from Rice at our hotel around midnight, and went to bed after trying to come up with a few routines for our standard (Waltz, Tango, and Quickstep) categories. You see, we had only focused on the Latin categories (Chacha, Samba, Rumba, Paso Doble, and Jive) and didn't get any practicing in for standard all year..

The next morning, we fueled up with some Texas sized (and shaped) breakfast, and headed to the competition!

The competition began with some country dancing and some International Standard dancing!
Here are a couple of our Rice dancers tearing up the floor! Woot! ;)

Because David and I were only dancing the Gold division, thankfully we had some time to come up with a routine for our Standard dances during the Newcomer, Bronze, and Silver division competitions. I have to say though, it was uuubber stressful, and we should probably practice a little earlier than an hour before the competition next time...

When we weren't dancing, we cheered on other dancers, operated video cameras, cameras, ate some food and goofed around. After all, the point of being there is to have fun and be with your teammates, not necessarily to be hard core about competing. =)

Then, finally, it was Gold and Novice level competition, and we got to dance!

So many of us from Rice ended up wearing blue gowns! haha yay go Rice! (our school color is blue too! what a coincidence! ahem, I mean,,, we planned that. mm hmm.)

Our whole team after the standard competition.

After the International Standard competition, we had a break for lunch, and then began the loooonnnggggg afternoon segment of American Smooth, International Latin, and American Rhythm. David and I were doing the Open level multi-dance International Latin so we were the last ones to dance, and that ended up being around 10:30 PM... way past my bedtime haha I'm such a grandma... =p but we spent the day doing some more cheering, camera-ing, and goofing off some more.

yay I'm-bored-selfies!

and a few more pictures of our friends in Latin and Rhythm categories!

and finally!! as I was about to nod off to sleep, it was our turn to dance! let me tell you what, there's nothing like a performance to wake you up from your granny-bedtime-grogginess!

It was my first time dancing Open level, and it was so much fun! Of course, there's a lot to learn and fix and polish and tweak, but overall, I'm happy with our first performance at the Open level =) After all, it can only get better from here, right?