The evening’s ballroom dance was, by any measure, a resounding success. I’ve never danced more dances, with more follows, in my life. And while my stats might still be somewhat sad compared to some of the other dancers I know, that’s a quantum leap over the “pathetic” comparison that I would have traditionally posted. I’m remarkably happy right now.

Aside from dancing a good deal, I also found that some follows I might have alienated for various reasons actually are fine with me, which removed one constant dance-related worry from my head. I also got to chat with Jonathan (friend of Renee) and Ben (who was in a dance class with Renee)—not surprisingly, both of whom I met through Renee—as well as Kristina. She, as all the graduate students I’ve talked to, had stories of horrific workloads from the graduate program. I’m so glad I’m not a graduate student.

Mandy taught me two new night club two step moves—I’m up to a resounding five awesome moves in that dance—and helped me practice the three awesome west coast swing moves I have. (I frequently refer to my moves as awesome moves—bet you couldn’t have guessed that—when I’m not downplaying my dancing abilities. (Surpass your lowered expectations, and people are impressed! Haha.) It also turns out that I can do single-time swing (I was beginning to doubt myself), if the music is reasonable and the follow can also keep the beat. If the song’s wonky or the follow dances to her own beat, I get more lost in swing than in any other dance.

…but now I’m just prattling on. The point to take away from this is that I’ve made some friends, and am (almost, if not actually) to the point where I’m a competent-enough dancer for myself to relax and just have fun. (Oddly enough, my self-confidence with respect to dance is directly related to my ability to actually dance.)

…

The other noteworthy event of the day was a trip to the Ginza in Albany for lunch. The food was delicious, and the owners seem like really nice people—I’ll have to drag Brian et. al. over there sometime to have them try it out. (They’re in the Bi-Mart plaza, FWIW.) I had to feign ignorance of Japanese when Grandma introduced us to the owner—the alternative was to mutter something along the lines of zenzen wakarimasen when asked if I knew any Japanese, and confuse everybody.

Though I can understand bits and snippets of the language (enough to know that the owner was pleased to meet us, and asked Marin (and then, by implication, me) if she knew any Japanese—to which she replied “a little”), I can’t speak it worth a bean, let alone try to formulate sentences. Keeping my mouth shut was the best option I had.

Still, I am humored by the idea of replying (something to the effect of) “I don’t understand it at all” in Japanese to the question of whether or not I know any of the language.