It Feels Like the First Time!: Why little darling, get on your dancing shoes! Its time to get down and boogey!

The damn music box. The people would spin while Christmas songs/noise played. Holy cow that thing was so annoying. It was a blessing when the batteries ran out! (And then a curse when Baba put new ones in months later.)

Well it was that time of year again, Christmas. And while in the States, I would be celebrating with snow, hot chocolate, presents, putting lights up, and watching A Christmas Story (You'll shoot your eye out!) Oh man did I miss that leg lamp. Well, I had a very similar Christmas experience here - minus the snow and hot chocolate and presents and shooting my eye out. But I did put up Christmas lights! And there was that stupid music box - holy cow that damn thing was so annoying! Check it out!

I think thats underwear...

And as you can see, the place was pretty swanked out. Lights, random felt ornaments hanging from the ceiling (and I'm pretty sure that they are still there) (and another fun fact, when it hit Valentine's Day, my mom sent a box with some stuff, and I hung up this swirly heart things from the ceiling as well. It looked like the most commercially decorated holidays threw up all over the house.)

And what really happened besides the decorations...

DANCING!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yep, thats right. Christmas time was the time for dancing. And when I mean dancing, I mean standing in two lines, shuffling your feet, and doing hand motions. Forget stage presence, its way too hot for that (in fact, many of the women standing next to you are sweating profusely and have sweat rags.) Forget smiling. The only thing you have to do is remember the steps and don't step on the little kids that are running around or are sitting at your feet. And for some odd reason, most of the men don't enter the church. Only the important men do, like the ribelle doctor, or the principal, or the pastor (and I still don't like that man.) Otherwise, you have a ton of peeping Toms. They crowd the windows and just stare. I have to say that it feels very weird.

And despite the fact that the dances only have a few basic steps, practicing consumes all your evening/night time free time for 6 weeks prior (or at least in my case. In Max's, he said that he learned his all in one night.) So every night, I would go to the neighbor's house with Momma and a kid or two, or no kid at all if they were watching a movie or sleeping. And then for several hours, we would practice the same routine, over and over and over and over and over. It stuck in my mind, but apparently in other's, not no much. So we had a combo dance of both men and women (I know right, something where both males and females are together. HOLD THE PHONE!! and yes it was okay), the men had there own dance (which after watching looked more like a cardio workout. It was freaking nuts) and the women had their own dance has well. But let me tell you something about the men's performance, they actually had two dances...

And I had the wonderful opportunity of leading them in this dance. I happened to make the mistake of saying that I knew the dance to the Cha Cha Slide (in which, makes a good ESL listening activity if you are teaching adults direction words such as left or right, fyi). BAD MOVE!! Next thing I know, I am teaching all the men of our church how to dance the Cha Cha Slide (which isn't that hard, you just have to listen to the music, but apparently they needed help). So whenever I'm at a wedding/dance and I hear that song, I start to dance to it. Well, I get half way through the song and decide I'm finished and I honestly want to stop dancing (most of the time I do.) So I can clearly only handle this song for about 1 minute. Let's just say that when we were practicing, we would practice for about 2 hours! THAT IS 2 HOURS OF HEARING AND DANCING TO THE CHA CHA SLIDE!! AND THAT WAS EVERY NIGHT FOR ABOUT 6 WEEKS!!!! I was not a very happy camper. And I told Max this, and he didn't really believe until he watched the performance. And you could hear him laughing during the entire thing.

I unfortunately don't have any pictures of me Christmas dancing, but I do have some, enjoy.

Now to make this a new Christmas tradition or not.... that is a good question. Let me think that one over...