Dancing in the Park

Ok so have you ever seen one of those movies where people are just randomly walking through a park or dancing at prom or whatever, when suddenly a song starts playing that every single person knows the dance routine to? They stop what they are doing yet never miss a beat as they dance in perfect lines with perfect choreography. And you know it is never a simple dance routine like the Hustle or anything… it is always long and complicated and sometimes there are different parts for guys and girls, but everyone has got it down.

I have often seen those scenes and thought; I would love to see that happen in real life! Well my friend, I am here to tell you that I witnessed such an occasion today. Courtney and I got some dinner at a local Korean restaurant (one of our favorites) and decided to take a walk to Old Town after to let our food digest and grab a Coco. As we approached Old Town, the temples were lined with lights, we could see crowds of people and hear some music playing. As we got closer, a new song began and the crowd of people literally broke out in dance. We are not talking about break dancing or street dancing, it was more of a Chinese line dance. People were in rows and repeated the same couple counts over and over again. We stood and watched for a song or two before we decided to join in. I got the hang of it quickly as I watched an old lady in front of me dancing like a pro. All of the sudden, we became the entertainment, and the local people began taking pictures of Courtney and I like we were circus clowns.

It was interesting and pretty fun. We danced along to a couple songs before we decided to move on to get our Coco. So anyway, we walked through old town, got some tea, and walked back through. A couple people were still dancing when we were walking out but not quite the crowd we had seen before. So we are walking back to Courtney’s apartment and we came up to another park. Again, someone had a small boom box playing music and there were rows of people dancing Chinese line dances. We watched for a couple minutes before one of the Chinese ladies told us to dance with them!

We did and we were having so much fun trying to follow along. Some of the dancing was simple two steps, but some was more of an intricate salsa-like routine. When the dance was too much for me to keep up, I would just start dancing around like a fool. The funniest part was that everyone dancing was so serious about it, and here are Court and I, all over the place, laughing and talking and probably make a fool of ourselves… but the people LOVED us! They keeps saying “so good, so good” and asking us to dance more. More and more people started gathering again watching Courtney and I.

Near the end, the Chinese song ended and the Macarena started to play. All of the Chinese people stopped dancing because they did not know the Macarena, but Court and I got so excited and started to dance. The local people started watching us and trying to following along with it. Everyone was giggling as they put their hands on their butts. Of course the Macarena is not difficult, but you would have thought that we were teaching them the coolest dance in the world.

The Macarena was the last song. The local ladies crowded around us and were asking us all kinds of questions (most of which we did not understand), but they told us to come back tomorrow and the next night because they dance in the park every night from 7 to 9. To be honest, I am pretty excited! We had a blast and it is like Chinese Zumba right in my backyard – for free! By the end of the dancing, I was sweating and exhausted like I had just worked out, and it was really great to be outside. Also, I am going to get to practice my Chinese if I start fraternizing with the locals. So anyway, Court and I are going to go again, and we want to burn our own CD to share with them… we are thinking about the Hustle, the Electric Slide, the Cha Cha Slide, of course Cupid Shuffle and Booty Call… am I missing any good ones??