Birthday Goals....

so yesterday was my bithday.

i turned the ripe old age of 29.

Its funny for so many years 30 was the oldest age for me.

I had all these ideas of things that I should have achieved by the time i was 30

(and to be honest not a lot of goals for after that as 30 seemed for ever away)

Well here i am at 29 getting closer to 30

and if i think about all those things i wanted to achieve and

do i would say that right now i am the most content

i've been in a long while on a birthday

on striving towards those goals.

i always thought that 30 was a good time to stop dancing,

to start looking for a career change,

i never wanted to be one of those dancers who didnt know how

to leave the studio and ended up wasting away in it.

so i jumped on the band wagon a little early on that goal,

but hey tick anyway!

I'm on my way to a new career, and 

very muchly enjoying it.

I always figured i should be married by the time i was thirty,

tick

and i always thought 30 would be a good age to start having children at,

so i've got some time to start fulfilling that briefing....

Holidays with husband.....

So last week i flew out to visit husband in Brazil,

due to a rather expensive mix up on where we

were going to meet up i ended up spending a day in 

Rio de Janerio by myself before flying another 12 hours to meet 

husband in Fernando de Noronha.

Firstly Rio,

Rio was awesome.

As i only had a day there i booked myself into a day tour

which just made my life a whole lot easier and

got to see a lot more than if i was trying to find my wa around myself.

Funnily enough my tour guide had just been to Edinburgh so 

as i was standing in front of The Infamous Christ Redeemer stature

he whipped out his camera and was showing me pictures of

him in front of Edinburgh Castle.

It made me smile, 

we go half way around the world and forget that

what we have on our own front door is a marvel to those who dont see it everyday.

Then onto Fernando De Noronha.

For anyone not in the know Fenrnado is a small

(very small) island off the coast of Brazil.

It is registered as a world heritage sites

which means that it has a lot of eco-protection....

it also makes it very expensive....

But it also makes it virtually tourist free,

they only let 400 people arrive on the island a day

and for every day that you are there you have to pay an environment tax.

It was a couple of run down  villages and a lot of beautiful and empty beaches.

Dolphins and turtles to swim with 

(okay, so its illegal to swim with the dolphins intentionally 

but it was amazing to be swimming in the water

and hearing their calls resounding through it,

knowing that they are so near by)

Husband and i went on an epic adventure one day.

Swimming and climbing around half the coast of the island.

First we did a 20 minute swim from the boat to the beach,

which consisted of passing some rocks which i liked to call the 'Bone Grinder'....

Why the Bone Grinder you may ask....

well because there is some weird anomaly there where the sea gets pushed through some hole in the 

rocks and makes it sound like its grinding bones...

yes not my favourite part to swim past....

Then as we were almost at the shore husband turns to me and says,

'okay honey now you have to body surf in'

'what?'

'just catch the wave...'

and i llok behind me and sure enough this giant wave is coming towards us.

he pushes me along into it and i get thrown a very long way to the shore...

He had failed to mention previously that this was the only way to get to the shore.

We then did some rather crazy 'walking' trying to get around the headlands for each beach.

Barefoot and in a bikini, we climbed over very very hot black

spikey rocks, (i swear steam came off them when they hit water again)

there was climbing up and down vertical rocks...

in fact on the way back at one point i was sure we had gone a different route as there was no way i 

would have climbed down such a cliff,

half way up i remembered i had.

There attempts to get back through the waves 

into swimming which mainly ended up with me being bashed 

around in rocks and husband trying to catch me.

And then to finish it all off at the end of the day

we miscalculated our timing and ended up swimming

back to the boat in the pitch black with the current pushing us out to sea

(something husband didnt tell me was happening till after we were safe and

sound back on the boat)

There was awesome food,

let me tell you this Tapioca pancakes are amazing!

and fresh picked coconut drinks never cease to amaze me!

But most of all there was husband.

Anyone who knows me would tell you that i'm

not the kind of girl who does crazy night swims

or barefoot free-climbing ,

but put my Husband at my side and I feel like I can do anything.

Besties....

miss sarah wins the ballerina princess crown

One of the awesome things about

the baby ballet classes that I teach is that my 

teaching assistant is one of my best friends.

I've known the lovely Sarah since I was 12 years old,

and getting to hang around with her in the studio 

is great fun.

Sometimes we just laugh and laugh and the kids look at us like we are loonies.

We also know the words to nearly every disney song,

(plus a few obscure ones that we taught ourselves from the disney sing a longs 

back in the day of our teenage years...

oh yes no wild parties for me, a fun friday night

meant sing a long time)

What is it with kids now a days that they dont know the old classic disney

I had about 1 student who knew Dumbo, and about 3 who knew Winnie the Pooh.

She's also been assisting for baby ballet

a lot longer than i've been teaching it,

so is a fountain of knowledge on little tricks to 

get the kids to do things 

that make me just stop and scratch my head...

who would have thought that invisible sparkly glitter

goo would be so useful at getting children to stand still! 

The Fun Teacher....

I always pegged myself as the 'fun teacher'.

I thought, I'm going to be the teacher

that all the students love,

I'm going to be so much fun.

Turns out i'm not....

I had a few comments over the last week that 

perhaps I could be a little bit nicer....

a little bit more fun.

And i went and watched another teachers class 

for inspiration,

and she was definitely the, 'fun teacher'

and I realised that i'll never be the fun teacher 

as I want a little bit more than my

ballet classes to be just fun.

I want my students to have really learned something each class,

I want them to not only learn to dance and have fun doing so

but to learn that ballet is hard work and disciplined,

that when you go and watch those

performances in the theatre you dont just think to yourself,

'oh that was pretty'

you think dancing takes a lot of hard work and dedication.

So i think that i'll shoot for the 'Firm but Fun' teacher.

and to be honest the teachers that i look back and respect

the most werent always the nicest.

Some of the down right scared me.

This journey of finding out who I am as a teacher

is going to be a long and winding road....

Little people.....

Sometimes I don't think I realise just what a difference 

I have on these little girls who come into my studio 

with hopes and dreams and expectations.

I don't know what they want from my time.

 I don't know what they think of me.

The other day i had a little girl very confused as she

couldnt figure out where i slept as i 

didnt have a bed,

turned out she thought i lived in the studio.

Last night I came home and I couldn't sleep thinking about 

a little 6 year old girl in one of my classes who I don't think I treated in the best way I could. 

She's distracted in the class and always looks for 

excuses to get out of doing the steps,

 mainly  because I don't think she connects with the way that I teach. 

So this week I got really stern with her and no patience for every story 

that had nothing to do with anything or made up problem that she had

And I think to myself, this little girl isn't connecting with me 

but instead if trying to build a bridge I disconnected her further.

Today I had another little distracted little girl in my class. 

She can't stay still, she can't listen, she's always on the go, 

it's tricky because I try and teach them the 

importance of silence and stillness in ballet as much as movement.

My assistant today was on top of her trying to gain 

her attention and keeping up on her every

 lapse of concentration, 

and I told her. 'Let's just leave her alone today, as long as 

she isn't disturbing the others let her be distracted in her own little world'

And at the end of the class the little girl came and

 gave me the biggest hug and told me she loved me, 

and I'll admit I was shocked it came out of the blue. 

This little girl who makes my time so difficult actually 

enjoys being in the studio, 

she even appreciates me as a teacher 

(that week) 

and i dont know what i did in particular to make her feel 

such gratitude today.

These little children teach me something 

new every time I see them, 

and I think of the ballet teachers that I had at their age 

and what knowledgable people they seemed to me

and although they didnt alter my life in 

a life changing way,

they did make me the person i am today.

Being the teacher....

Some times i come out of the classroom and i'm

sitting on the tube on the way home and i realise

all the things i could have done to make the class better.

Mainly its when i forget to tell them how well they have

done at working hard.

I get so focussed on the corrections and

how to make them better that

i dont take the time to commend their efforts and improvement.

and i dont want to be the kind of teacher that

never pulls a student up and always breaks them down.

Sometimes i realise that i've given some students way more

attention than others,

and after i've left i think to myself how did 'such and such'

do in class today and i realise that i dont know as

i didnt give her enough attention.

i wonder how that makes the students feel,

they probably think its because i dont like them, 

and not simply my inadequacies as a teacher,

not quite always getting the balance right just yet.

Still in London.....

i realised that i havent written about why i'm still in London even though my ballet teaching course is over.

its because i'm onto course number 2, which will run for the next 9 months.

so husband is still away sailing at sea and i'm still mining my way through the streets of London.

i'm doing my Pilates teachers course.

I looked into a lot of Pilates Teacher training courses, there are so many of them out there.

I've always enjoyed Pilates, 

i used to go to a class once a week when i was between the ages of 15-18 

in Edinburgh. My mum sent me when she heard it was good for ballet.

It was,

it changed the way that i thought about movement

and it progressed me as a dancer in so many ways.

that was 10 years ago,

i havent really done much pilates since other

than occasionally doing the few exercises that i could remember.
in fact i've really struggled to find a Pilates teacher who taught in a way that inspired me in
the way that my old teacher did.
Theres a lot of things called 'Pilates' out there that really aren't.

but for years i've been saying that when i stopped dancing i wanted
 to take up Pilates

more and think about teaching it.

So i am.

I picked a course here in London 

by the guy who trained my Pilates teacher all those years ago,

His name is Alan Herdman and he was the first person to bring Pilates to the UK.

So far the course has been everything that i've wanted.

i'm learning so much and the dynamics of the 

course suit me to a T.

Its great, i have the excuse to spend all my spare time in

the Pilates studio practising!