Month: December 2021

Sam’s best friend invited us to go skating at the local rink during their open skate hours. We haven’t been ice skating since 2018! Sam was excited to go, but I warned his hockey-obsessed friend to be patient with him.

Sam did so great! He started by hugging the wall with both hands, following my instructions to march with baby steps. Slowly he learned to push like a scooter on one foot. He didn’t like the A-frame assistant, and went back to using the wall. He would do a lap, then get a drink at the fountain, then do another lap, etc.

Eventually he was only using one hand. I stayed close, but stopped to take pictures or video when he could move solo. At one point I was helping him go around a stopped group, and he pushed off me to get to the wall by himself. He didn’t even realize what he had done! I challenged him to go along his favorite part (without the plexiglass) and see how far he could go without touching the wall. He did it! Our families cheered for him. By the end of the hour he had done two laps with only occasional help from the wall. What a champ!

Enjoy some photos and a montage video where you can see his progress.

We had so much fun. Sam has asked a few times when we can go skate again. We better not wait 3 years again!

Jack has been participating in his school’s Robotics club after school. Saturday they held their first meet. With varying COVID restrictions, the coaches decided to limit the meet to their own school. They have 14 teams, so there was plenty of matches and trials to fill out the competition!

Once a week since September Jack has been working after school to build, program, and drive his team’s robot using Vex IQ. At the meet they got to put them into action for real points. If they are allowing to hold competitions at other schools in the spring semester, then the top performing teams can attend those as well as regionals. We don’t know the overall scores from this weekend.

From what I could understand, first the kids work in cooperative matches. Two teams are put in the arena. They have one minute to accomplish as many tasks as possible to earn points. The tasks have different difficulties and point values, so there is strategy in planning your goals and building a robot that excels in different areas. For example, hanging off the low bar for 3 seconds seems to be a common goal that about half of them accomplished. (No one got their bot to hang from the high bar.) Each team must switch drivers after 30 seconds (two drivers per team per match). The team both earn their collective points. They do multiple matches during the morning.

There’s another section of the meet where they demonstrate technicals. I didn’t attend this part, and couldn’t quite get a full explanation from Jack, except that he thinks this part is boring. The judges also interview each team member during the day.

Jack’s team did great! Their first round was a little rough. Nerves played a part, I’m sure. Then their bot collapsed during the hang. But their other matches went very well. Again, I don’t have all the scores so I don’t know how they performed overall.

But most importantly, his team won the Judge’s Choice Award! This was given to the team with best collaboration, positive attitude, and kindness not only to themselves but to everyone. I’m super proud of him! Only 4 teams out of 14 got any kind of reward, so it really was an honor to win any sort of recognition.

Not their best rounds, but the two I happened to film:

We were grateful to my parents and brother for driving over the mountains to celebrate Thanksgiving with us! We had a very traditional holiday with all the usual trimmings: more snacks and appetizers than main dishes, parade and dog show on TV, two puzzles to puzzle over, all while many delicious dishes roasted and baked. We had far too much food, as is expected and appropriate!

Do you ever get super excited for something, and then it doesn’t turn out great? That was me tonight.

If you have talked to me at ALL in the past year, you know that I’ve fallen down the k-pop hole. All day, every day, I listen and watch dance. It’s re-ignited my love of dance and choreography. I’ve gone back to Zumba and I am trying different classes at Alchemy of Movement in Boulder. I’ve been looking for a k-pop dance class for over a year.

Finally, I found one. I was reading a random Colorado k-pop fan blog, who had a calendar with a “k-pop dance class” listed on Thursdays. I followed the link and sure enough, it looked like exactly what I wanted! They seemed to be learning the chorus choreo for all the recent songs that I loved! Deja Vu, Rock With You, Fever, etc.

I wrote to the studio to ask if they announce what they are teaching each week. Since it’s a 40 minute drive to East Colfax during rush hour, I wanted to sure it was a song I liked (I’m still mostly a boy group fan. Blackpink is sometimes ok, but otherwise I only like men’s choreography). The studio owner gave me instragram links for the teachers (which I had already snooped on my own) and said they usually post before class to announce the lesson.

So two weeks later (because of Thanksgiving) I was so hyped up to go to this class. Finally! I could meet people who like k-pop! And dance to music I love! They never updated their social media with the song, but I wanted to try to class anyway. I was giddy all day and nervous to be going somewhere new.

It was . . . fine. It was not what I wanted. Yes, we learned choreo to a new song. But it felt like I was at a university club, not a dance class. I was at least 15-20 years older than everyone and, for some reason, about a head taller too. The others talked about assignments and finals, one wearing a Metro State shirt. The teachers were friendly, welcoming me and introducing themselves. But they were not great teachers. It’s hard to be a good dance teacher, and they just didn’t have the skills. Poor demonstrations, not knowing the details clearly, over/under explaining, etc. (Another odd thing was one of the teachers hitting her vape like it was her water bottle throughout class).

I asked if they do a warm-up and they said they do Random Play Dance for five minutes, and you can just do jumping jacks if you don’t know the choreo. For real? RPD is a dance memory game played by fans and idols themselves. Yup, that’s what they did. They played youtube for 5 minutes and mostly did jumping jacks.

They had a laptop on a stool in the front of the class where they literally played a video off youtube. With ads. I considered offering to sign-in to my premium account. Couldn’t they at least rip the files before class? They also had to tether the internet from a student’s phone.

With no introduction they switched to the choreo video. It was Hwa Sa’s new solo “I’m a 빛” (the Korean word is “light,” but it’s pronounced like our b-word). I recognized the video they showed as the 1 Million Studio channel and Lia Kim, the choreographer. As I said, I don’t like girl group choreo, but Lia is usually good.

The teaching was very imbalanced – they spent 35 minutes on the beginning floor section, then rushed through the second half on our feet in less than 10 minutes. I’m sore on my neck and tailbone from spending so long covering the floor work in excruciating detail. I felt like I could have taught myself from the same video just as easily.

After we did the whole piece together we split in two groups. I surreptitiously filmed my group to share here. I thought we were done. Nope. The teachers each performed solo, while a friend filmed them. Then others got filmed for their social media too. They spent the last 20 minutes just filming each other. Again, for real?

Here’s my video. One of the two teachers is in shorts on the floor in front of me. (I think I did pretty good, aside from the side swivel because my feet don’t bend that low anymore.)

Man, I feel bad. Like, I don’t want to rag on these guys. They had a fun time with their friends and I DID learn the dance. I got what I signed up for.

But it was so unprofessional and immature. I wanted better, you know? I already knew that I’m old for a k-pop fan. And I know that I stand out as an experienced dancer in Zumba classes, and even at Alchemy. They were friendly to me and I to them, but clearly this is not my crowd. It’s just disappointing, you know?

At least I tried. At least I’m comfortable with my life and happy with the experiences I’ve gained. Now I know that this class is here if it sounds good one day. Ben suggested I try teaching a k-pop class at the Boulder studio. I’m gonna tuck that idea away and think on it for a while.