Day 3 Irish Step Shopping and Talk

Welcome = Failte!! (pronounced fall-cha) I have been wondering what that word meant, and I finally tracked it down after seeing it everywhere!

Today was our first day of Irish Step Dance lessons, and it got off to a wee bit of a rough start. Our guide led us around three sides of a square trying to keep us off the main roads, but it took us longer than expected and we showed up a half-hour late. Though after that it went really well.

The teacher started us off on their basic step - a kick-jump-step-step series that totally bamboozled me the first few times. I tended to (and still do) do the step like a skip rather than the jump it's supposed to be. I think that considering that most of us never had any sort of Irish Step experience that we did well. Of course Katie was awesome, and Laura and Mary were both really good since they also had some experience way back when. Hanna was also really good; she has always picked up steps very easily in clogging and is very good at following tricky weight and balance shifts.

We did a solid two and a half hours of lessons and by the end we had a single short dance and a couples-group dance that worked out similarly to a contradance. Only we had to do Irish steps while we were doing the figures! Contradance on steroids maybe!

There was a little boy there of seven and his sister of ten who both did demonstrations for us. The boy looked exactly like what I have always imagined a fawn (the half goat/half man variety) to look while dancing around playing the pan pipes! His dancing was so cool!! It was a mixture of soft shoe style and hard shoe style. Apparently he sometimes performs the part of the young version of the hero in a dance that is touring around - To Dance On The Moon. He is really, really good, and it certainly doesn't hurt that he's as cute as a button dancing around!

And then we follow behind with our dancing and I feel like a bull clomping around on the tips of my hooves. I know there are videos that were taken and I'm vacillating between wanting to see what I actually looked like and wanting to destroy the tapes before they can be seen. :^)

After lessons were done, David and I escorted the teens of the grouop around town for an afternoon of shopping. We kept a pretty loose rein and it went well. Except for one thing — they ate pizza for lunch!!! We fly thousands of miles to a foreign country, there are dozens of pubs in sight with great food available, and they want to eat pizza!!! One of the guys at the pizza shop was pretty cute though, at least to Dana and Katie. They others kept insisting he looked like a rat or a weasel or something. I'm sure they were just jealous that he wasn't looking at them!

I've got to keep a closer watch on what I say, because I'm supposed to be one of the adults on this trip, but I keep making smart comments back to the kids. Hmph. Sometimes it seems liek I never made it past highschool. I finally tracked down the third item on my list of things to get for myself. A nice silver, celtic patterned ring, a nice blanket, and finally a heavy, knit, Irish, woolen sweater. It's an Aran Island Mills sweater — 100% wool, scratchy, intricately knit, and a nice shade of green. Very much what I had in mind! Now on to the odds and ends for others. I was the easy one! What on earth do I get for my mom or dad?

It's late, 12:15 Ireland time, but my body still has echos of US time because I'm still up and going. Will, Charlessa and I just spent a couple hours chatting up just about every topic under the sun. Literally. I can't imagine that there is a topic that we didn't cover, or at least mention. Then Charlessa and I stayed up even longer talking and making sure that we truly had covered ever possible topic, before working on our Irish moves. Hopefully we won't be back to square one when we go back tomorrow. Charlessa has wonderful posture while doing the steps and looks so light on her feet compared to what I feel like. I can tell that I'm still musceling the moves along and they aren't flowing smoothly. More practice needed!

1) Starting off our hike to practice we are looking good. At least he is.
2) And yes, we're still walking 40 minutes later!
Next 7) We are all dancing away. Katie always seemed to have nice high jumps along with Mary. What a workout it was!
10, 11) We demonstrated Rocky Top and Just Joshin' for them. They saw a lot of Irish step dance steps in Just Joshin'!
12) Dana of course likes to do fun lifts and throws. Good timing on David's part to catch this one so nicely!
13, 14) Here is Four Star Pizza and Pizza Boy! Thousands of miles and we eat pizza. Sheesh!
15) I hope we didn't alarm the owner if he saw us all posing with his car. SWEET!!!
16, 17) And how many girls can we cram into one photo booth?
18) How about we show pizza boy this picture! Two lovely young ladies, sticking their noses in ice cream. What class and style! :^)