A Scottish Wedding Photographer ....

So i may not have all  my wedding plans down yet,

but i know for sure who my wedding photographer will be....

my lovely little sis Meghan!

Here are some phots from my sisters wedding in the summer 

(why is the new blogger shrinking all my pictures to uber small, how can i change that?)

(hmmm, turns out if you click on them they go full size, is that the new way??)

(you can hire her from here)

Handy having some talented siblings.

Alexis (the sister in the pictures)

is designing my dress.

And i was having some troubles communicating with my dress maker who only speaks Russsian,

turns out Alexis's newly appointed husband speaks Russian,

good picking.

What the audience don't see.....

This me backstage lying in the floor between my variation (of Big Swans) and the coda in the last performance of Swan lake.

I'm not kidding in the 2minutes that it took Odette to do her variation 

i think i was so tired i managed to even have a little nap.

EXHAUSTED!

Peeping tutus.....

I thought i'd share this picture which makes me smile.

In our theatre there is a tiny whole in the curtain which before the performance you will see many dancers trying to peep through to count how many people are in the audience.

These are my friends Alicia and Liza caught in the act

moments before Swan Lake.

The funny thing is that in Cairo, 

Egyptians seem to turn up to the ballet seconds before the performance actually starts, 

so we all think there is going to only be 10 people in the audience as that is the last head 

count the last 'peeper' took....

thankfully its normally a wee bit more than that!

Mis-Quote....

'If you want this world to be different then dare to be different in this world'

(i'm completely mis-quoting from a quote that i heard at church this week by someone who i can't remember, but the sentiment is still good)

Our Engagement Story....

My cousin Shona complained to me on facebook the other day that face-stalk me as much as she could she couldnt find any details about my engagement story....

ummm....well that's probably because i havent actually written it down somewhere and

i should probably write down our engagement story somewhere....

before Tim starts re-remembering

he has a very selective memory that only seems to hold information that he chooses to remember or embellishes it to remember it how he thinks it ought to have been rather than how it actually was

(in fact i sent him a copy of this and he told me it was inaccurate...

but seeing as he didnt mention what was wrong with it i'm sticking with my version)

well.....

let me set the scene

Date- March 8th 2012

Place - Tunisia, the desert

who - Rebekah Giboin, Timothy Reid, Yoda, and some strange Tunisian dude.

I had a weeks holiday and went to visit Tim who was docked in Tunisa for a couple of weeks,

we met in the south of the country to go on our Epic Star Wars Holiday...

hunting round all the sites from the movies that were filmed there.

The most revered sight and the Mecca of the holiday is the 'Luke Skywalker Igloo'

Contrary to what you might think,

its pretty hard to find these places,

Tunisians dont really seem to know what 'Star Wars movies'

are and we got quite a few strange looks when asking for directions.

But not to worry we had done our internet research,

and I had even managed to find the Latitude and Longitudes for most places from the web

(Tim gets very happy about Lats and Longs).

So in our search for the Luke Skywalker Igloo,

we pulled off the main road and looked out into the horizon where we saw a little dot in the middle of the desert which the Lats and Longs were telling us to be our Holy Grail.

We did come across a quad biking centre,

but after hollering out a few times,

nobody appeared to be home so we decided it didnt look too far to walk.

We got about 15 minutes into said walk when a little dude in a

Quad buggy came chasing after us....

he was the owner of the Quad Biking centre and was pretty excited to

finally see some people in the desert and didnt want to miss out on exploiting us to his business.

So we accepted,

and he drove us back to the centre and then hooked us up with some pimped out quad bikes,

and we set off....again.

After reaching our destination,

The Quad biking dude kept getting in all our pictures,

leaning on the 'igloo' whilst texting his mates,

so Tim gave him his camera and told him to just keep taking pictures of us.

The next bit was all a bit of a blur.....

(in fact afterwards i asked tim why he hadnt gotten done on one knee....

to which he looked at me confusedly and pointed out that he had, proof in the pictures)

we took a few posed pictures and then Tim got down on one knee (apparently)

I dont remember exactly what he said but it ended with Will You Marry Me?

Okay...

i should mention know that i'm slightly ashamed of my response,

but to be honest i was pretty over-whelmed, i couldnt seem to function properly...

so to his initial question i replied -

'you know i want to marry you?'

(yes, it was said as though there was a question mark)

'What!!!! what does that mean?' asked tim, who was now looking exceedingly nervous

'Yes, i think so?'

'Whatttttttt!!!!!!!!!!???????is that a yes or a no?', even more nervous looking

'YEs....yes....'

I finally managed to spit out my answer....

was just making him sweat it out for a few seconds....

he then told me that he hadn't dared to buy me a ring....

well mainly because i've pretty much returned every gift he has ever bought me...

to be honest i hadnt even noticed that the proposal had been ringless...

so i took a ring that i bought a market a few months a go and am currently wearing that as my interim ring until

i can actually go ring shopping....with or without Tim....

and thats about it...

i should mention that for the next couple of hours that Tim

looked pretty shell-shocked and i was honestly thinking that he was regretting his decision....

but i think it just took us a little while for it all to sink in....

WWWOOOOOHHHOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!

I is getting married......

p.s

i should probably have put a nice coupley picture up but this is my favourite picture of him

p.p.s

Random Quad Guys pictures can be seen here

deep inside.....

i'd like to see this documentary made about English National ballet.

I love what Daria Klimentova says at the end,

'i'm quite insecure dancer but here deep inside myself i'm ambitious'

i can relate to that,

at times i hear what other people say about me,

'how did she get that role?'

'she's not good enough'

even this week my partner complained to the director that he didnt like dancing with me.

i wonder how that makes me feel,

we are constantly crushed not only by our teachers but by our fellow peers.

i wonder at the times i have complained about my partners,

and how did that make them feel?

the times i have felt like someone shouldnt be dancing a role...

but at the end of the day if that person puts their heart and soul into it,

what does it matter.

and i get insecure,

and then i have to go on stage and pretend that i'm not.

pretend that i'm not frightened to death of my pirouettes,

pretend that even the smallest of mistakes will not make

me toss and turn all night long with the inability to sleep,

because i know i could have done it better.

this week a photographer took some pictures of the performances,

and i was so disappointed to see the pictures of myself,

to see all my flaws.

wishing that my hands looked nicer,

my shoulder were down,

my elbows were not over extended,

that my feet looked nicer on pointe.

but at the end of the day,

i have the ambition....

and that feeling of getting it right is amazing

even if its only fleeting....

(on a side note I want to point out that my very first ballet performance was with Daria Klimentova, she was dancing Sugar Plum with the Scottish Ballet and i was a mouse whose head she placed a ribbon on...all those years ago)

the wrong shoes....

so i had a rehearsal today for pas de trois,

and as i pulled my shoes out of my locker in preparation for rehearsal,

i noticed something....

these were The Wrong Shoes...

let me explain,

during the performance of Swan Lake

i will change my shoes multiple times for example -

Act 1 -

pas de trois, -

for this i will wear a firm but broken in pair of shoes,

i need this because there are lots of pirouettes and some pas de deux

and i need to keep a good balance

Act 2 -

Big Swans

for this i wear a slightly softer but still quite firm pair of shoes,

there are still some balances, but no pirouettes, and some jumps

(must be softer for jumping)

Act 3-

Mazurka-

For this i wear my softest pointe shoes, there is very little actual

pointe working and lots of small petite allegro (small fast jumps)

Act 4-

the majority of act four is spent running, bourreeing, or posing,

so i wear a very hard pair of pointe shoes,

anything soft and your feet and legs are dead in a matter of seconds.

so today when i went to rehearsal i realised that for the performance in which i

messed up my pirouettes i had been wearing an old pair of pointe shoes

that should have been long thrown in the bin,

the bottoms are all lumpy and nearly full of holes,

balancing on that is way hard!

In my rush before the performance i hadnt noticed...

Does that mean that now The Culprit Pair of Pointe Shoes

have duly been banished from the locker so the same mistake cannot happen again that my pirouttes were miraculously back in working order again today...

Indeed it did not...

but i was definitely one step closer

(i'm the dancer on the left of the picture)

Nerves...

So we had our first performance of Swan Lake tonight,

and one of the parts i was dancing was the pas de trois,

a part i danced last season and really enjoy.

I'm comfortable in the role and it feels good to dance it...

well...normally...

but today about 5 minutes before the performance

started i had a mini/major attack of The Nerves.

The Nerves

have not been a round for a long time,

i've learned to control them,

because i know that when i dance nervous,

well.....i dont dance good.

But today i got it into my head that i couldn't do one of the pirouettes in my variation

just moments before the curtain was about to go up

(that by the way i can normally always do)

and each time i practised it, it got worse and worse.

So by the time that i actually performed it i was so

tense that there was no way it was going to happen.

and it didnt.

Cue me in the wings between numbers,

crying and shaking and trying to get a hold of myself.

it didnt work....

thankfully by the 2nd act i had calmed down

and my 2nd solo went pretty well.

ooooohhhhhh....

i'm just so angry at myself....

and i dont want to face my teacher tomorrow...

If your in Cairo....

this week come and see us dancing in Swan Lake....

that girl in the middle on the right,

thats me!