September was a very busy month. It’s already October, and I only placed one entry into my weblog for September. I was busy in September with two things. The first was the American Chamber of Commerce charity dinner, where I and others from the Beijing Swing! group got to dance and show off our stuff. The second was getting ready to come to Canada for my vacation. I left Beijing on September 17th, and since arriving in Edmonton, I’ve been going nonstop. But that’s for another entry to come.
The deal with the American Chamber of Commerce charity dinner was that they had a Casablanca theme and they asked our group to provide three couples to swing dance. They made costumes for us, zoot suits for two of the guys, an American serviceman uniform for me, party dresses for the girls, and one off-duty nurse dress. My flight home was supposed to be earlier but because of this event, I decided to change my flight so that I could dance. The costumes turned out well although it would have been better if the tailor had been there for a fitting before the event. We spent half of our time getting ready searching desperately for a sewing kit. The guys had few problems, of course, with the biggest complaint that there were no pockets in the suits or the pants. We were also told backstage that we would not dance for all of the songs. This was very disappointing and we were acting like kids on Christmas morning waiting for a chance to dance. But we did get to dance and it went very well. Many of the guests at the dinner took photos of us and especially me because of my costume. People enjoyed watching the dance, and then they joined us on the dance floor.