Friday night, my roommates and I drove down to Manchester to go to the YSA dance. It's about an hour drive from Leeds - or about 45 minutes when Chris is driving. The dances are also very different from anything I've been used to; which isn't saying much when I consider the (lack of the) amount of dances that I have been to in the past several years.
A few differences between American and English dances:
The music is louder in England. I could hardly talk/hear anything and lost my voice.
The people are fun. Wallflowers, however, exist in huge numbers.... not that that is actually a difference.
They only play one type of music. No swing songs. No slow songs. No Latin songs. No country songs. Just Techno Pop/Rap. I'll have to see if I can change that a bit.
I danced some street swing with a couple girls. I did some merengue with another girl to a song with a Latin-esque beat. I also joined in the breakdancers for a couple of songs. I might need to get Logan or Mark out here from my old dance crew because they are in need of some help. :) It was a really fun night (dances are always as fun as you make them), but it was also a really late night. We went to an after dance gathering of YSA and then headed home, getting there around 3:30 am. And then I was up by 7:30. Stupid sun.
Saturday was a very non-productive day. We cleaned the house and I played some wii and that's about all I actually remember doing. I may have napped a little, but I don't think so. 3 hours of sleep does that to me. 8 o'clock and I was getting ready to turn in...when a few people from the YSA came over and invited us all to go to a bonfire.
So, we headed over to one of the girl's apartments and hung out until everyone arrived. Then we took about 5 or 6 cars and headed up to the moors. The highlight of the trip occurred in the national park parking lot when I got to play the role of psychopath in a cheap horror film.
There were several cars in the parking lot when we got there. Seeing one was occupied, I walked over and looked in the window. As I was reaching to knock on the door, the girls in the back looked and saw me. All four occupants started screaming hysterically.
The details:
Alex (from New Zealand, almost moved to Okotoks, and played for Real Salt Lake while living in Orem. Random, I know.) and I pulled up and I saw a car that I thought was Chris and Mosiah. I knew that they had gone to pick up some girls...although I thought is was Jenni and Becky. These girls were obviously not Jenni and Becky (they were dressed fairly immodestly), but Mosiah's always grabbing investigators for the missionaries so I thought that might be it. Well, I walked down and looked in the window, thinking it was Mosiah. I was about to knock on the door when I realized it wasn't Chris and Mosiah - just a the same make of car. That's when they started screaming. I apologized profusely, we all thought it was rather funny after, and we even invited them to the bonfire (although they declined that invitation). I think it helped that I was Canadian. The girls even asked if I knew Justin Bieber. Fortunately, I could say no.
Well, after that, the rest of the night was kind of dull. It was your typical bonfire with us older singles chatting near the fire while the 18 and 19 years olds flirted and sang up on the rocks. The view overlooking Leeds and some other towns was breathtaking. The atmosphere and soil/vegetation are so wet here, that we didn't have to worry about our improvised fire pit causing a fire (if we had been that non-careful in Utah, there would have been another brush fire).
We stayed out until 1 am. And after 2 straight nights of getting home after 1, I am absolutely dead. But it was fun and I'm glad I went.
Here's a bad shot of the lights of Leeds from the moors:
Hate to break it to you, but that techno stuff is what they do at dances over here, too, unless you are going to swing dances or country dances or whatever they offer in Provo--Sam's wedding reception, I was expecting a typical Canadian wedding dance like I was used to in the past, but it was all techno and everybody bouncing up and down like Tigger the tiger.
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