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Stephanie and I went to our first ballroom dance lessons last night. There were about forty people there, and the instructor was a very nice older gentleman. We learned to waltz, and we started learning the east coast swing. Over the next several lessons we’ll do more with the waltz and we’ll add more to the east coast swing as well.

It went really well, but it was much like my previous experiences taking dance lessons — way too fast for me. My feet are S-L-O-W and I need to repeat steps many times before I get them down, and the instructor blazed through to “learn the next thing” before I had learned the first steps. Then he’d turn on the music, and Stephanie would dance perfectly, and I’d trip over my feet. There was a section in there where I felt hopelessly behind and was ready to throw in the towel, but Stephanie went over things with me several times in between, so at the end, I got it.

The swing was a bit easier for me to pick up than the waltz was, I think, although he had us doing triple-steps, and it’s really hard to move your feet that fast. But I had the movements down.

I definitely enjoyed it, despite my stress at picking things up, and I want to do it again next week. I’m not sure Stephanie had such a fun time (I didn’t want to switch partners and pair up with other people because I was so far behind) but she wants to go again, so hopefully things will go more smoothly next week.