Our year started off with a bang. Classes, open day and the start of our new beginner course merged January and February into a wondrous blur of balancing family and dance. So the little things started to creep and crawl into bigger things, venue cost's, themes for our fundraisers and Studio events....
In between the chaos, we were planning a trip to visit our sister studio's in George and Knysna. Finding accommodation in George, while tricky proofed easier than finding a venue for our studio fundraiser World Belly Dance Day!
We pushed through and got notice one afternoon after a super fun 60th Birthday, (where we taught some Greek dancing OPAH!) That a venue we both loved was prepared to go that extra mile and work with our shoe string budget! Jess had to listen to my rendition of "we got a venue" for most of the drive home.
Our much anticipated girls weekend to George arrived along with school holidays and 5 of us crammed into my polo. 4 of us leaving behind slightly nervous husbands. All of the daddies coped quite well.
We had a 1 bag of cloths rule, that we all stuck to, we all just found a reason for that extra packet! We got it all in, with much teasing and laughter, even got onto the road on schedule. We choose to take the Langkloof road instead of the N2, as I always get a sense of "coming home" driving through the area. With all the laughter and teasing happening in the car, I at one point thought we'd missed the turn off. Which resulted in more good natured teasing and loads of laughter, especially when I turned us off onto a farm road. We finally made it onto the correct road and stopped at Joubertina for a leg stretch, bathroom break and browse in a little curio shop.
Up to now the roads had been quiet, we turned onto the R62, heading to the gorgeous Outeniqua pass and suddenly the road became full of our Gauteng province drivers. Taking dangerous chances on blind corners and generally driving like they owned the road. The joking in our car ended abruptly when a "smart alec" almost took us and another car off the road on a sharp blind corner. The fright dropped my blood pressure through the floor, thankfully there was a safe spot to pull over and change drivers and I got given all the salty leftover food that could be found!
Our new driver got the same good natured teasing that had started our trip and passed from driver to driver. Our drive to Red Berry Farm for lunch was uneventful, thank goodness and we all settled in for a yummy lunch. Our next stop was our accommodation, which proved as amazing as advertised, with loads of space.
After unpacking we headed to the shop, where we of course bought way too much food. The evening ended with girlie activities and dance movies, some of us fell asleep on the couch and the rest of us played UNO.
The next day saw us moving the furniture, literally, to make space for us to get our dance on. We became gypsy's, salsa Queens and showgirls for a day! We made new friends from Mosselbay and laughed and shared with our friends from Knysna and George. Afterwards the cameras came out and we fooled around all dolled up in the garden taking serious, sultry and fun pictures of each other. Then we had one of those moments, when the family renting an adjoining apartment, passed by they greeted most cordially and the mother, just could not look at us! Needless to say this had us in peels of laughter.
To preserve her modesty we moved back inside and after some more pics, put the furniture back in place.
We ended the day with pizza, wine and Scrupples (we laughed so much at ourselves), we then played some Trivial pursuit and discovered some of us knew nothing about sport or geography! Which resulted in more raucous laughter, what our modest neighbour thought, we'll never know!
Sadly all good things come to an end and the next day saw us packing up and heading home, we stopped off at Monkey Land for a picnic and then returned to our champion husbands, who had manned the home front for the weekend.
