Camp Harmony

I got back from Camp Harmony yesterday. I got a bit sick towards the end (it was the lack of sleep on new year's that did me in) but I'm resting up today and taking it easy. Camp was rather soggy, but fun. It was good to have Lacey back, along with Hugo and the kids.

I didn't teach anything this year. I didn't feel like doing the exact same music theory class I had been doing the last couple years, and I didn't have any extra inspiration for something new. Plus it was just nice to not have that responsibility this year. I'll try to think up something interesting for next year. We did do our usual Stupid Human Tricks workshop though, which was fun and always has some new ideas from different people.

Most of the music I did ended up being for contra dances and waltzes, and a little bit of the French dance. There were a couple nights when they just needed more musicians, so I did that instead of dancing. I didn't do much in the way of sessions. Jim taught me my first Balkan tune, though, which was kind of fun. It's called Neda Voda Nalivala (I don't know what that means) and it's in 11/4 time and in a mode called Hijaz, which has a flat 2 and a sharp 3 (compared to Aeolian).

Of the various dances, I think my favorite was the swing night. As usual, it was good practice for me to find ways to dance interestingly and musically even when my partners (aside from Lacey and Quena) don't have much swing experience. Most people there just do very basic six-count stuff, whereas I'm better at lindy hop. So I did a lot of adjusting, but it worked out pretty well. It's weird though, to normally be an okay swing dancer and then to go somewhere where people think I'm so good that I must be a professional dancer or something (someone actually did ask me that). I'm not entirely comfortable with that kind of attention. But I had a lot of good dances.

Origami-wise (I always end up doing origami at camp at some point) I got a nice dragon design from somebody's book. I folded it once and then found that I could do most of it from memory the next day. That was pretty cool. I must be getting better at origami if I can learn patterns that fast. (It wasn't super complicated, but still....)

In other news, Quena and I are not engaged though we did get lots of amusement from the camp rumor that said we were. In other other news, my angel card for the year is Enthusiasm. Hopefully I'll find lots of things to be enthusiastic about this year.