Wow, it’s really hard for me to believe it’s already been a week since the Zumba Convention ended! I guess it’s only fitting that 1 week later I am writing my last blog post about it. I’ve decided to cover both Saturday and Sunday and then tomorrow share our trip to Seaworld with you in a separate post because, honestly – isn’t Seaworld deserving of its own post???
Saturday was a killer. We knew when we chose our sessions that we were going to be a hurtin’ pair by the end of the day, but out motto for the day {and anything we had to walk a million miles because we were lost, or haul heavy bags of groceries around, or – well anything really} was, “it’s okay we’re fitness instructors!” Famous last words.
We started the morning off with a Polynesian session which was really fun. We learned Tahitian, Samoan and Hula dance steps.
We had expected it to be a serious ab workout – which it sorta was but more than that was the leg workout. We did not realize that for all of the dances we would be in a half squat position, and some of those dance steps were pretty killer!
I really, really liked it though, and hopefully I remember enough to actually incorporate it in my classes. I’ve got a couple of the songs we used during the session and while I only remember a few of the steps we did to them I’m sure I can figure out a somewhat similar routine to use.
Then that afternoon we had a double whammy of the Mexicans. First it was a session called, “Mexican Feista” where were learned a bunch of steps to Mexican dances including the Mexican Cumbia, Duranguense Step (my fav! ), and the Quebradita. In case you’re wondering they are all kinda killer. The Mexican Cumbia is the calmest of the three but they are all a little crazy. I like crazy, crazy is fun, but 2 hours of crazy killed me!
But wait! We were the crazy girls that also signed up to take the Mexican Master Class right after the Feista was over! ”It’s ok, we’re fitness instructors…” but still we sort of thought they would have some, well you know, easy songs thrown in there since it was the last session of the day. Not so much. We lasted 1hr 20 min into the master class (which was actually only suppose to be 1hr and 15 min) before we bailed. We were tried and sore and ready to go hop in the pool at our hotel. I really am not one to leave a class or session before it’s over but man, we had a rough day and needed a little time to relax before heading back out for the party that night.
The party, was a black light party. We didn’t really even want to go to the party but decided to make an appearance in our nut-job outfits just the same. Here we are – waiting for the trolly
Yes people, we took public transportation dressed this way. And yes, we did get a plethra of strange looks. ANn yes, I did look quite a bit like the Hamburgler.
but a cute sort of Hamburgler 
Like I said we weren’t really into the party to begin with, so we only stayed around an hour and then grabbed a trolly back to our hotel, but we were there long enough to at least feel that our outfits were quite tame.
I guess after we left someone got proposed to on stage, Wyclef showed up, and Beto, Gina, Tanya and the gang showed up to. Oh well, I was happy to get a little extra sleep to be honest.
On Sunday we only had two sessions, a Bollywood/Bhangra session which I really enjoyed (but my brain was too tired to keep up with the hand positions)
I already use Bollywood and Bhangra in my classes so this one was fun to leave some new (and more authentic) moves, and find out about some new tunes as well! THe guys in the photo above were the Bhangra experts. They have been a part of different dance teams that have won competitions in Bhangra and they were SOO good (the girls were great too . The thing with Bhangra, is it is all done on a foundation of bouncing and what the fascinating thing for me was the ease with which they were able to bounce continuously, it looked positively effortless.
It was really fun to just watch them. Quite magical really.
Our last session of the day and of the convention was a Raggaeton session. Sadly we didn’t get to stay for all of this session. It was over an hour late starting because another session was late getting out, and we had already paid our admission for Seaworld and certainly weren’t going to miss seeing Shamu! We stayed for the Master class which was loads of fun,
Once the master class was over we stayed for the talk and then left when they started going over dance steps. I would have been fun to stay – but we had a date with Shamu!!
We walked out of the Convention centre, and two minutes later what do you suppose happened?
RAIN
At least this time we had umbrellas. We got on our trolly, and it was really raining quite hard at this point. The trolly was doing a far amount of hydroplaning and then as it got into the middle lane to turn onto Sea Harbour Drive (where we were staying) – it died. Right there, we could almost see our hotel from the dead bus. We were already running late, and running out of time. SO when the driver got out to put the yield sign things in back of the bus we bailed. Umbrellas in hand we took off towards our hotel.
And that’s where I’ll leave today’s post.