The rainbow after the rain

In September 2013, I signed up for the Salsa Dance Club not knowing what I was getting myself into. I had no idea what I was even doing there; I didn't know anybody, and just decided to go along with what was about to come. Then I auditioned to be a part of the UW Salsa Dance Team.

The night I found out I passed the audition, and was going to be part of the team, I freaked out big time, and smiled so widely that my cheeks hurt.

I thanked God profusely.

The night I found out I was elected to be a dance instructor for the coming school year, I felt so overwhelmed that I couldn't stop crying from joy.

I thanked God profusely.

Because of dance I have been able to meet some of the most amazing people who share the same passion as I do, and I cannot thank God enough for that. He has blessed me beyond measures, and has given me more than what I asked for. My dance family makes me happy; they make my days a lot brighter, and give me strength to continue pursuing my lifelong dream and passion.

I continue to thank God profusely.

Smiling in the rain

Bad times do not last forever.

You were created for a reason, and God has been cooking up something amazing ever since He brought you into the world. He is leading you toward something beautiful.

Even though you might not understand at times, it's best to let Him take the lead and follow along. He knows the way.

You will find happiness in the end.

Remember that you are loved.

Those are the things that my family and best friends have been telling me consistently. It's taken me a while to fully understand and accept things the way they are, but I'm at a much better place now. I feel happy, at peace, and most importantly blessed beyond all else :) I thank God for the people I have in my life because I honestly don't know where I would be or what I would do without them.

Living alone in a foreign country away from everything and anything familiar is in itself a feat that is quite difficult to handle at first, and adding to that the hurdles of growing up and becoming your own person can be stressful sometimes. I've had my ups and downs in the eight months that I've been living in Seattle; some of the goods sent me soaring in the sky, and some of the lows really beat me down.

Even though my family and best friends aren't physically here with me, I thank God for technology because hearing their voice helps a ton. Just having my family and best friends tell me that they will always be there for me, no matter how far apart we are, brings the utmost joy to my heart. I feel tremendously blessed that God loves me enough to let me have these amazing people in my life ♥

Some people come into your life to teach you a lesson, but some others are meant to stay forever.

Where God leads, He will provide

It's been a long time since I last posted—8 months to be exact. A lot of things have happened since I moved from Jakarta to Seattle. I've definitely gone through the ups and downs of living away from home in another continent with nothing familiar to me, but I'm not going to go into that too much. Overall, I've had such a tremendous experience living here, and I cannot thank God enough for that.

One of the things that has helped me cope and adapt to life in Seattle is dance. I know it sounds cheesy and clichéd, but I honestly don't know what I would have done or where I would have gone had I not found the UW Salsa Dance Club. It started out with me walking around campus, trying to find a club activity or an organization that sounds fun enough to join, and I just chanced upon seeing the Salsa club. I didn't think much about it at first because I wasn't into Latin dance that much at that point, but I thought that I'd pick it up again since I had learned multiple styles of Latin and ballroom dances back in Indonesia.

Little did I know that my joining the club would eventually snowball to a myriad of amazing opportunities and blessings.

To keep things short and simple, I joined the club, auditioned for the UW Salsa Team and got in, and I am now to be a dance instructor for the UW Salsa Dance Club starting in the Fall 2014 quarter. I'm not kidding when I say that I felt like the most blessed human being on earth when I found out I got into the team, and when the current batch of instructors unanimously voted for me to be one of them! The president of the club said she'd had me in mind! I cried tears of joy that night.

With my fellow dancers at the UW Salsa Dance Team, I feel like I can truly be myself. They can always make me laugh at a drop of a hat until I'm literally on the ground laughing with tears in my eyes! I practice, go to socials, and perform with them—while it's supposed to sound like I have a professional connection with my team, I feel like I finally belong in a community after months of trying to find myself, and who I truly connect with, in this country. I love my team, and I'm super duper grateful that God has blessed me so abundantly ♥

Last day in my home away from home

September 2012 was the beginning of one of the best years of my life; I had felt like I hit a dead end for the better half of the senior year of high school—I was horribly stressed out, uninspired, and just felt crappy in general. I didn't have any problems with my friends or teachers, but it was the pressure of academics that got the best of me, plus I didn't even have time to dance back then so relaxing was a no-no for me. 

It wasn't until I graduated from high school that I felt like I could pull myself together again after being stuck in a rut for 2 years. After a few months of wondering what I should do next, God eventually told me that He had a plan for me, and although it meant that I would be taking a different path that all my other friends were on, it would still be awesome; He was right. One night while I was out with friends, trying to have fun before all of us separated ways, I received a text from my mom that she got from my former dance instructor. In that message, I was told that there was an opening for a dance instructor training program, and I immediately jumped at the chance—little did I know that it was going to be the start of something great.

Once I got an "OK" from my mom, I contacted my former instructor, and told her that I was interested in the program; flash forward to a month later, I was officially the youngest trainee dance instructor at the studio. The training period went great for the most part, but there were still some days when I thought to myself "Why in the world am I doing this again?" because I was nervous that things weren't going to work out. The doubt that had plagued me in high school had mostly gone away, but it still came back to haunt me at certain times in my trainee days; back then, I was honestly just taking things one day at a time, and thanking God and leaning on Him each step of the way because everything felt so unreal. 

I eventually graduated from the program with a "Highly Commendable Pass" and I remember feeling so out-of-this-world when I received my certificate—I kept thinking "Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, oh my goodness, I'm a certified dance instructor! ME! I'M A DANCE INSTRUCTOR!" since it had always been my dream to be a dance instructor and own a dance company/studio ever since I was 4 years old; it was such a great day, and I still thank God for blessing me abundantly. After I graduated, I moved on to teach a few classes, hold a couple of workshops, substitute for my dance instructor's classes, dance for a university advertisement project, train a group of dancers for a dance competition, and I even started a Youtube channel to share my passion with an even bigger audience! Granted, there were a ton of ups and downs, but I honestly wouldn't have it any other way.

September 2013: now a year has flashed by before my eyes, and it's time for me to move on with my life. 2 September 2013 was my last day in the dance studio, and it just felt so weird knowing that yesterday's class was the last one I was going to attend. I felt wistful throughout class, but I didn't cry or even shed a single tear, because I knew that I'll always be a part of the studio, as my instructor once told me. I feel eternally grateful that God led me to that place a year ago, and thankful for reconnecting me with my instructor, who has helped me so much in more ways than one! There's an end to everything, but I will never forget the place that got everything started for me, and the people God has introduced to my life who has helped me get to where I am today. I'll definitely look back fondly on the year I spent working with and in the studio, but here's to an even more fantastic future :')

Lots of love,
Jennifer W.

A change of perspective

Before I became a dance instructor, I used to think that standing on stage performing in front of hundreds of people was the best feeling in the world, and that really was part of the reason why I loved dancing so much. Even though I sometimes worked behind the scenes of a show (i.e. choreographing, overseeing schedules, etc.), I felt that there was nothing better than actually dancing on stage, and nothing could ever make me feel as happy. 

During the time I injured my ankle, my high school had this event they were organizing wherein they needed dancers to perform. I wanted to dance so badly, but couldn't have possibly done that because of my condition, so I ended up being the choreographer/person-in-charge of the group of performers. The event went really well—the dancers were even requested to perform at another school—and they hugged me afterward and said, "Thank you so much, Jenn! We couldn't have done it without you!" and I had mixed feelings right at that moment. On one hand, I was so very proud of them for nailing the performance, but on the other hand, I couldn't help but think, "I should have been the one standing on stage. It should have been me who got invited to perform." I know I wasn't supposed to think that way, but my mood just dropped further when one of my favorite teachers asked me, "Jennifer! Why didn't you perform today?" and that was just.....................ugh.

However, I can proudly say that ever since I started working as a choreographer/dance instructor, I have been able to deal with those feelings of jealousy and non-acceptance of not being able to dance on stage all the time all thanks to one little incident that happened in Easter time.

So what happened was...

My high school teacher asked me to help her sons and a few of their friends prepare for an Easter dance competition, which was something I had never done as I only taught normal classes before. The first day of class wasn't all too good, as only one of the students attended, but we made it work. I'm not going to lie, teaching the kids was kind of tough and frustrating on my part—at one point my teacher even offered to raise my pay to keep training them—but I just squared my shoulders and did my best. 

I always had this one thing in mind (and I still do to this day) that I got from my instructors back when I still attended a dance academy, which was "When it's time to dance, get serious or get lost; save the fun and games for when you're done with class." So when the students goofed off a lot during practice, I had such a hard time keeping my temper in check and taking control of myself, because as much as I was angry I had never ever laid a hand on any of my students and didn't ever want to do that, definitely not when their parents were watching the rehearsals—the most I did was raise my voice at them and made them practice over and over again, drilling them to get every single thing, down to the details, perfect.

By the third day or so of teaching the students, I had honestly given up all hopes of them winning the competition (again, I know I wasn't supposed to think that way, but you should've just gone to one session, and you'd understand how I felt), and I remember praying, "Lord, I don't even know what's going to happen to my students on the D-Day. I just want to pray to ask for strength to teach them, patience to deal with them, and most importantly, I want to ask to You to please watch over them on competition day so that they can do their best. It doesn't matter if they don't even reach the Top 5, please watch over them, Lord." because I was at such a loss.

Flash forward to competition day on Easter, I couldn't go see them because I had my own plans, so I spent the whole day thinking about how they did because none of them or their parents had notified me yet. By that point, I was still so hopeless, and I completely surrendered everything to God. Come nightfall, I received a text message from my teacher (shown above), that said, "Jennifer, thank you so much for helping the kids! They won first place at the competition! [she wrote something else that wasn't about the competition.]" and at that moment, I literally felt like I was high or something because my mind was all jumbled with the words "won," "competition," "first place." I was all "PRAISE AND REJOICE IN THE LORD! MY STUDENTS WON THE COMPETITION!" and I cannot even explain the feeling of immense joy I had because I was so proud of my students.

My teacher then told me that my students actually really liked the dance I choreographed for them, because she saw them practicing until late after I went home from every session. When she said that, I was all "Then why didn't the kids show that kind of enthusiasm when I was around?!" but I was also "I don't care if they didn't! They won the competition!" and that was honestly the first time I was able to accept not being able to perform all the time, and be totally fine with it!

What I'm trying to say is, I now realize that it sometimes feels so much better to be known as the choreographer who created a piece instead of always being recognized as a dancer on stage. It took me years to understand, but now I have no problem letting my students bask in the spotlight while I support them from backstage; I now see it as a way of letting them experience the exhilaration of dancing in front of tons of people, which was one of the many things that made me fall in love with dance in the first place. It's not such a bad thing, in my opinion. ;)

See you in the next post,

Jennifer W.