Plaza Fiesta and Salsa Dancing

 

I may be a little too confident by saying this, but I think I am a pro salsa dancer. Today, the IB Spanish students and I went on a field trip to take dancing lessons and to a place in Atlanta called Plaza Fiesta. The first thing we did was go dancing. I was so confused as of where we were because this was a part of Atlanta that I've never been before. As we walked in, we were immediately greeted by a latin dance instructor from Venezuela. She was very kind and enthusiastic in the best way. I felt incredibly welcomed by her and her studio. At this point, I was raring to get started on this new journey! 

The first dance we began to learn was the salsa. The dance consisted of a beat that went like this: ta ta ta ti ti. Our feet went along with the rhythm as our hands flowed very easily along with them. We added some spins, claps, and jumps after we got the hang of it! The next dance we learned was the merengue. It was pretty similar to salsa dancing but was less difficult because the rhythm was a constant beat of quarter notes. This was my favorite to learn, but you'll understand what my favorite dance over all was later on. After the merengue, we learned bachata dance. To the instructor, the bachata had the worst music to dance with, however it was still fun and enjoyable to dance to. Lastly, we learned the cha cha. This was the easiest, but it was the most boring. When she gave us all the opportunity to choose what dance we wanted to learn with partners, the majority of us said the salsa. So the salsa it was!

We all got in a circle and were either assigned the numbers one or two. Ones were called the leaders and twos were called the followers. I was assigned number two and was super excited because twos were the ones who spun during the dance. We switched partners multiple times as we danced so we could get the hang of it. I never knew that salsa dancing was such good cardio! This was my favorite part of the day and my favorite dance because everyone had a great time while doing it. 

As dancing concluded, we got on the bus and drove to Plaza Fiesta. This place was a huge mall full of products that you'd usually see in a mall and products i've never seen before. We ate lunch at the food court, which only consisted of mexican food and later got ice cream at one of the stands inside the mall. Later, we split in groups to do some shopping around the mall. We saw a variety of movie stores, perfume stands, and even quinceanera dress shops! It was eventually time to get back on the bus, and by the time we all got on, most everyone fell asleep! It's safe to say that this was a great day full of learning new things and trying new experiences!