Posts Tagged ‘Salsa’
Salsa!
October 4th, 2008 | 
Author: Sorry for the long overdue post. I haven’t had a day off in about 2 weeks, and whilst working have been very busy, and then at night I go out regardless of the fact of being extremely tired, only because I hate sitting at home.
Mark is still living in my apartment, and we’re trying to find one. I don’t know if i mentioned the 3 bedroom apartment in Alex’s building, but it’s about 1800sq.ft and worth about 2000rmb a month. Figure that’s about $320 a month. Very expensive for our city, even though the location is the reason for such a high price.
I decided that the best way to get back into salsa dancing (and earning extra money on the side without causing New Oriental to fire me for doing “part-time work”) is to open my own studio. The only reason this is possible is because several friends and students have shown a desire to learn. I’ve calculated that, to be really fair, within a few months from now I could be earning 12,000rmb a month on top of my salary from New Oriental. Once I earn enough money through this to afford a really nice studio, I could start earning closer to 50,000rmb a month or so from salsa 
My plan is to first find and teach some people for free as to get myself back into the swing of dancing, as well as use them to find my teaching style. Then I’ll teach people to become instructors so I can run different levels of salsa in one class so not everyone is stuck doing the same thing. I can attract more students by doing free social dancing on university campuses (also like my old studio).
Well that’s what I’ve been doing these past two weeks.. I hope to post a bit more, but there is also not much new going on.
Posted in 
Tags: 
4th of July
The past two days have seemed like they were going in reverse. My bank account was supposed to have been opened a few days ago, and I was supposed to be settled into the. I won’t go into details because it annoys me to even think about it. Here’s a recap:
Yesterday we had this huge plan to cook burgers and hotdogs on the roof of our hotel and then blow up fireworks in a park next to the river. The wind was so strong the fire wouldn’t hold long enough to cook anything. After realizing the attempt was futile, I walked over to the McDonalds and had dinner near midnight.
I must note that it was cool how people from all over the world wanted to celebrate a single country’s holiday. Among us were Brits, Scots, Yanks, Chinese, and Netherlanders. I’m really glad that I was put in the hotel for my first week because without these amazing people I think I would have gone home already. I am also surprised that I genuinely like every person here. No one tries to outdo another, everyone just supports each other. It reminds me of Chabad.
I was informed that I will be teaching a free class on Sunday evening from 6 to 8:45, and I am in the process of preparing my Powerpoint slides. I have chosen to speak about Salsa because it’s something dear to me, and because I know it’s unknown in this region of the country.