Day 44 - Galway

14 April 2007

Oh, Galway. Such an interesting town. I don’t know. I really like Galway, but right now with midterms upon me and the strains of living in a hotel room catching up with me, I was worried that I wasn’t enjoying it as much as I could. I’ve been doing a lot of classwork this week because we’ve actually been in the classroom, as opposed to being out in the field. Yesterday, we did go out to the field and I slayed another dragon. Castles, ironically enough, are great places to slay the dragons of your mind. I was climbing up the stairs to the first floor of the keep of the Castle of Athenry (which the locals pronounce A-then-roy) when I could climb no further. They were lovely carved wooden see-through stairs, leading up a wall to a door some distance away from the floor. I thought “Gee, I don’t like these stairs much” before the first landing and then up to the doorway, I just couldn’t move anymore. I was terrified. Of stairs. Stupid see-through stairs. I can scale walls, cram myself into the tightest of caves, do handstands and flip into the air for swing… but I can’t handle see-through stairs. I was so embarrassed. These stairs weren’t half as steep as the ones at the Norman Round Tower at St. Briget’s of Kildare. But for whatever panic disorder related reason, I just couldn’t do it. My rational brain was furious, yelling at my irrational fear to get it’s scaredy pantsed rear-end up the stairs and quit making a scene. But I couldn’t until Ann and Sarah MacDowell and my friend Kade coaxed and prodded and talked me up the stairs, just in time for me to slip, quivering sniveling teary-eyed mess that I was into a back row seat of the little movie area on the second floor to see a slide show. I have never been more mortified in my life. It’s exactly the thing I’ve been dreading since I’ve had panic attacks—that they’d happen in public in front of my friends. Really, I have never felt so ashamed and in wanting to melt into the floor and dissappear, I managed to trigger yet another attack so by the time the slide show was over and everyone had gone, I felt awful. All because of some ridiculous see-through wooden stairs with larger than usual gaps between them. The worst part was that I knew I had to go back down them. I just waited around in the movie area until Ann came back and asked if she could help. I sent her to get my Xanax from my backpack in the bus (damn pills. I hate medication.) and I sat there trying to relax until Dr. McDowell came to check on me and I started blubbering all over him too. My adrenal glands have no sense of shame. But after all that, after taking my Xanax and waiting around for a while with McDowell and Ann, I knew I had to get down the stairs and I wasn’t going to let McDowell carry me down them with his coat over my head (his rationale: “It works for birds…”) so with the help of tranquilizers, Ann, and McDowell (not carrying me) I did it! I walked down all those horrible, horrible see through stairs! I think that I would have been very proud of myself if I was able to feel feelings then, but the Xanax stops feelings dead in their tracks. Vile stuff.

Luckily, it wore off in time for the after dinner festivities I had planned: SALSA DANCING! I’ve been scoping out numerous salsa joints here in Galway, figuring that an artsy place would have ample salsa-ing. I was right. Last night, I went back to Garvey’s (that place where the bartender hassled me before) and salsa has never felt so welcome. We weren’t sure exactly what time the dancing started, so we just showed up at nine and while I asked the proprietor what time the salsa class started, he said 9:30 and some of the guys at the bar volunteered to salsa with me right then and there. I told them I couldn’t, there was no music. They just looked confused.

So, Meghan, Ann, Erin and I waited around, and pretty soon people started showing up. The instructor, Barry, was a wirey hard-looking man who looked more like an ex-soldier or a farmer than a salsa instructor. But he was very nice and encouraging. He asked us whether or not we’d done salsa before. I said that I had, so he pointed me to the advanced class while his wife took Meghan, Ann, and Erin to do a beginning lesson, which was awesome for them because it was pretty much a private lesson for only 7 euro. But I digress… when Barry asked us if we’d danced before and I said yes, I volunteered to do the lead part (what they call “the man part”) if we were short on guys. (they laughed whenever I said guys. People here don’t say guys.) Sure enough, we were short on guys, so I found myself stuck learning lead in a different style of salsa dance in the advanced class. And I loved it!

It was pretty confusing at times. They use different terms in Rueda salsa (I think that’s what they called it) because rueda is like salsa set dancing or salsa square dance where the couples all form a great big circle and they rotate partners frequently with certain moves and patterns. If you’d say for instance “right hand cross over to switch partners followed by cross body lead into patty-cake breaks” you’d never get to any of the really cool moves, hence the caller would just say what sounded like “dime-ay” which means the same thing. “dee-dee con noy” was cross body lead into patty cake breaks, “sententa” was a wrap turn plus a man hair comb into a cross body lead. “enchufla” was a girl turn. “enchufla ‘dime-ay’” was a girl turn plus the partner switchy thing. Then there were some of the crazier moves like the basket, which was a swing-esque wrap combination, the sombrero, where the guy leads a two handed turn (right hand up) into a kind of sleazy disco behind the head thingy into a x-body lead, or the prima (a guy turn plus a partner switch) or my favorite “prima ala man ala family” where it’s the prima plus linking arms with your partner and circling around very hoe-down style. Classy. Sorry about that. I had to document it all somewhere because I don’t want to forget before the summer and swing next year. I ended up getting it all just fine, even if Barry’s pedagogical appraoch wasn’t so sound. I just found it very amusing that they were calling out the spanish terms with their thick Irish accents. I had a blast. Some of the salsa songs they played I knew (like the “ooh-ah” one or the ones from the cd that Tim got from Kumari), and some of them did not fit at all! The guy played cumbia for two of the circles, and it was ridiculous. That’s why people invented cumbia dancing, so they wouldn’t have to try to salsa to a cumbia beat. Or even worse were the times afterwards during the open floor when he’d play samba beats and everyone would salsa. Oy vey! Or as they’d say here: “Jay-sus!”

That’s the last time I ever do the lead – the “man part” – at a club. I think I intimidated a lot of the men there because I was a better lead and I’m six foot tall in my heels. So, nobody asked me to dance. I finally started asking guys to dance with me. Patrick, a skinny nerdy very stereotypically UK-looking type, kept apologizing for stepping on my feet and accidently spinning me into people. James, a better dancer than Patrick, was unfortunately about 5’4’’. A couple of the others were just as unsure as Patrick, and my feet hurt from getting stepped on. But it was so much fun anyway! And it was worth sticking around because I got to dance with the instructor and show him that I was a much better follower than lead. He was so sweet, calling me a “lovely dancer” and thanking me for being a good example for the other guys in the rueda circle. He, surprisingly, though, wasn’t all that great. I think he might have used up all his really tricky moves on me. I mean he was good and all, but it kind of made sense what Dara (one of the ladies I met) told me when I asked her about the salsa scene in Galway: “You’d best be going to Cuba, the club on the other side of the square. They have a live band on Wednesday nights at ten for free and additionally, more foreigners go there, so the dancing is always better.” If that whole grad school thing doesn’t pan out and I become a professional dancer, I’m moving to Galway because I will open up my own studio and win. It’s quite exciting, not being the most painfully Caucasian person in a room of salsa dancers. It’s just sad that I had to go to Galway, Ireland to be the most ethnic one…

So I plan to check out Cuba on Wednesday, because I like free dancing and I don’t like getting stepped on, but if my feet and hips allow it, I’d like to do one more rueda lesson at Garvey’s to really get it in my head and learn some cool new moves. I missed salsa so much! Oh, and I didn’t run into my bartender buddy there. Too bad. I would have torn up another coaster just for him.