podcast 2

The speaker talks about their experience at the Chicago Salsa Congress dance event. They arrived on Friday for tech rehearsal and performed in the pro show that night. They hung out with friends, got ready, and performed again the next day. They were nervous but received positive feedback from the audience. They took pictures, had a team toast, and ended the night with social dancing. The next morning, they helped their dance kids prepare for their performance. Despite not winning, the speaker was proud of their effort. The event was a great experience for personal growth and building closer relationships with their team. Hi guys, welcome back to podcast number two. Today we're gonna be speaking about this past weekend, which was a dance event that I had, which is called Chicago Salsa Congress. And I'm gonna tell you about the ins and outs of that event. Okay, so the first day was Friday, and we got there, me and my friend, my dad dropped us off at the hotel, which is by the O'Hare, around 1130, because we needed to be there at 12 for tech, which is like how the dancers do the stages. And that's where the judges figure out the lineup for the night. So from that, we had a large timestamp, because we didn't perform until the 8 p.m. show, which is the pro show. And so from there, we just hanged out with friends. And then around like six, we started getting ready for our performance, meaning doing hair and makeup, costume, then finally headed down to the green room and waited there until they called out our names to go and perform. We performed, it was great, the crowd loved it. And then from there, we took pictures and got ready for the night. And at the night, it's like a social, that's like where all the dancers from that night, next night, come all together to just dance, socially dance. These events are known for you not to sleep, like you just stay up all night. But I had to perform the next day in the morning, and we had practice at seven o'clock in the morning. So imagine going to sleep at five o'clock and then waking up at seven, like we were like so exhausted. And we finished rehearsing, and then right away went to our room to just grab our stuff and then head downstairs for tech again, which was earlier, because we performed at the earlier show. We were all extremely nervous, just because this was our first time coming to this event with this team, and also no one has ever seen a routine, so we were just nervous to perform it. And people had really high expectation of us. They had to check, everyone screamed their name, was like, the emcee was like, oh yeah, these girls drank their coffee before performing, which was a positive connotation to our performance. Headed back to our room upstairs, it was around 1 p.m., we started getting ready, like showering, preparing to do our makeup, and one of the girls' mom was gonna do our hair, so we didn't really need to worry about that. We had a lot of time to get ready, just because we were in 19 out of the 20 shows, meaning like a lot of people really liked, the judges really liked our performance. That's where we were, like they kind of do the ranking as like say best to last, so we were really like just happy about that. Finally went on stage, performed like we never performed before, the crowd loved it, and that's how we ended the night. And then we got ready, because it was Gal and I, we all looked presentable, so we took pictures. Also we had a team toast, which was so cute and lovely, which made everyone cry. And then we ended our night with social dancing. The next morning we woke up early to check out of our room, but I put myself in my director's room, because I was gonna help my dance kids get ready for their performance. All afternoon I spent getting them ready for their show. Even though they didn't win, it was still beautiful to see them perform with all their heart and hard effort they put into this year. And I'm so glad that they made history. In conclusion, this event couldn't have gotten any better. I've got closer with my girls from my team. I got to take leadership in something that I used to be in, which is just a full circle moment, and I'm so glad for all the opportunities that I have, so glad of all the growth that I've had, and just to continue growing and becoming a better dancer, better person. Thank you for listening to this podcast, and hopefully you guys liked it.