Dancing In Syracuse

Last night I got myself (on foot, on the way there) to the international folk dance session in Syracuse.  It was rather a long walk (about 2 miles), but a nice one, in lovely weather.  I was a bit concerned about the walk home in the dark, but once I got there, the people made sure that I'd have a ride home.  It was an extremely friendly group of folks- I got introduced to everyone in the room as they showed up (not that I remember most of their names).  I'm sure that they have their own internal politics that I'll find out about over time, but to come in as someone new, they did an incredible job of being welcoming.  (I suppose that the fact that I'm young and already know how to dance already helped.)  The dancing itself was fairly easy, and I'm sure that by the end of the summer there will be some dances that I'm sick of, but a number of them were quite nice, and it'll be a good thing to know a bit of.  Rather amusingly, I got incorporated into the evening's announcements, including telling the group that I'd need a ride home when I came, between the weekly stuff and a discussion of what would be taught next week.  It was a nice ego boost, and good to start finding some folks to know in the area besides my CPE group and teacher.

I got driven home by an older lady with a convertible- a definite first for me.  She was quite sweet if slightly naive- she talked about starting to come to dancing because she thought it would be a chance to do more dancing like she'd gotten the chance to do at "ethnic weddings"...  It was sort of cute.