My first post!

Hey. I'm Rachel. Or Raeniel, if you want to use my Elvish nickname. As you have probably guessed, I'm really into all things Tolkien. I love the story of Eärendil from the Silmarillion - it's so beautiful. If you haven't read it yet, you're missing so much! Sometimes I feel like Elwing, flying out over the sea, soaring to the ship of my love. Headed for beauty beyond compare. But right now, I'm still flying. So that's why I named this Elwing's Flight.

But be prepared, because if you're expecting a lot of sentimental thoughts and profound comments on life, they won't come very often. Most of the time I'll just be writing about things that I've been doing or things that I'm going to do. Just my life. So, it being my life, there will be some poetry and sentimental thoughts and stuff, but mostly just day to day stuff.

Alright? Alright. So let's get started.

So, Thanksgiving was last week, which means break! A break from school, and unfortunately, from dance (I'm an Irish dancer, and I also just started taking hip-hop and ballet this year). I can barely stand not dancing for a couple days, much less a whole week! And due to a hip that hurt's for some really strange reason, I haven't really been able to dance at home, either. Which can get really hard for someone who doesn't just walk around the house anymore! Not being able to dance around the kitchen while clearing off the table has been especially hard. Sigh.

But now that dance is starting again, and the pumpkin pie is gone, I can get back to my normal routine.

To help me with this, I'm making a plan for dance:

Sunday: Spend an hour to an hour and a half practicing in the afternoon, if there's nothing going on!
Monday: Day off, unless you didn't practice Sunday.
Tuesday: Spend an hour to an hour and a half practicing, if you're not babysitting in the morning.
Wednesday: Hip-hop class: 10-11, ballet class: 11-12
Thursday: Sr. Irish class (technique class) from 4:45-6:10
Friday: Day off!
Saturday: Celtic Praise Troupe practice! Time differs, but usually from 11 am - 4 pm.

And here's my schedule for practicing:

15 min. Warm Up:
Standing stretches
Sitting stretches
Practice splits. Straddle, middle, right, and left.

15 min. Floor Work:
25 crunches center
10 crunches right
10 crunches left
15 crunches with legs up
10 crunches right with legs up
10 crunches left with legs up
With legs in the air: 32 switches pointed, 32 flexed; 16 cts. slow butterflies, 16 fast butterflies.
30 pushups

10 min. Drills:
Circle feet
Rainbows
Point and flex
Brush-taps
Brush-outs
Trebles
Knee-ups
Cuts
Up and cuts
Flutters
Double cuts
At the end stretch leg up in knee-up position, then bring it back behind.

15 min. Dances:

Sunday/Monday: softshoe.
Faithful
"The Fairy Dance"
Boil the Breakfast Early
I Will Arise
And the new reel to Tam Lin!
Practice any new steps.

Tuesday: hardshoe.
St. Patrick's Day
Parade Dance
Next Generation
also do your rocks, and practice any new steps.

And there we go!

I think that's quite enough for now. ;-D

Rachel