Steps in life

Hello, today I will be talking about how important and quickly days go by. June 8th is my birthday and I will be 19 years old this year, almost 20! This is my first year living in the dorm, this coming semester I will be moving into an apartment here in Long Beach due to the huge price of living in a dorm. I will be living with two other friends and rent a three bedroom apartment and I expect to pay less than what I pay for my dorm. Now that I am actually going to start living in an apartment, it has made me realize the big step I am taking. I am no longer going to be living with my mother, brother, and sisters over the winter, spring, or summer break because I will have my apartment. I’m sure I will go visit them often, but I know that things from now on are going to be extremely different. This is a big step in life that I know everyone has to take, but never thought that once in this situation it would make me feel like this. I am very worried, scared, at the same time excited and anxious to begin. I hope everything goes well and I am able to pay all my bills. I am scared to think that after I get my own apartment, I will no longer ever live with my mother again. I feel that I am still very young and taking a big step, which makes me feel proud of myself but scared that I may not be ready for this big step in life yet. I hope for the best and hope to concentrate solely in school so I can graduate fast, but with all these budget cuts, who knows.

Lesson Learned

Today I’m going to talk about something surprising that happened to me today. I work in the Office of the Mayor is Los Angeles City Hall, and at work one of my supervisors told me to help her return art pieces back to the artist. The art pieces were either valuable sculptures, or amazing paintings. My supervisor Carmen Duran is retiring tomorrow is her last day at work, and I am going to miss her so much, she has been the best boss I’ve ever had. She is in charge of the Mayor’s Art exhibit locate here in City Hall. Since she is leaving, she must return the art pieces back to their owners, these artist are very well recognize and I’m pretty sure most of you have herd of at least one of the artists we were contacting. We had artwork from artists such as Patssi Valdez, Sylvia Moss, Stephen Coleman, Pamela Davis, Pablo Cristi, Frederick Booker, Bill Rangel, and many more. I was in charge of contacting a total of 53 artists and make an appointment as to when they are available to either come pick up their art piece or we would go drop I it off to them personally. Each art piece is worth between $600 to $4,000. We went to Bill (William) Rangel’s house to drop his 6 art pieces off, he is one of the artists who is extremely talented and owns art that is valued at $1,200 for each art pieces. I was expecting for him to have an extraordinary big house, but to my surprise his house is nothing bigger than mine. He lives in a single apartment, very clean house and also very simple. This is nothing of what I expected, this thought me that big things can come out of simple, ordinary people and to definitely not judge a book by its cover, here are some art pieces from Patssi Valdez and Bill Rangel. =]

Patssi Valdez   Bill Rangel

Insidious

Hi, today I went to the movie theater called Edwards, located in Long Beach. I watched insidious a word meaning dangerous. The movie was produced by those who made Paranormal Activity and Saw.  When I saw the previews before watching this movie, it didn’t look so attractive, much less scary, yet I chose to watch it anyways with my friend. This movie was extremely scary, nothing like I’ve ever seen before, it involves a little boy, being the main character. I hate movies in which involve children because it make me feel as if it real. I love children, and with the simple idea that something can happen to them makes me feel extremely sad and scared. This movie takes place in two different houses. I demon follows a boy and wants to take control of the boy’s body, his father, who has had the previous experience must go into the world of the dead and rescue his son who is kept hostage by the demon, trying to escape, there is a possibility that another dead soul might take control of the father’s body. Now I’m going to let you watch this movie and see how this movie ends, meanwhile, here is a little preview for you all to watch. Enjoy!

Dentist at Downtown Long Beach

Hello, today I went to a dentist I’ve never been to before and they treated me excellent. I went to the Dental Care Dentist in Downtown Long Beach. They showed me x-rays of my four wisdom teeth. They told me that they must be pulled out because they are growing crooked. They pulled out my right, top and bottom wisdom teeth, at the moment I my mouth was so numb that I didn’t even feel it, but as soon as the anesthesia was beginning to go away, I began having terrible pains. The pharmacist in CVS took an hour and a half to give me my medication. Looking back, the dentist explained to me what he was going to do, yet I still wanted to see how it looked in his point of view, this is why I looked up videos of how dentist pull out wisdom teeth and now have a better understanding. Before I left he explained that I need crowns on top of two of my teeth because they are beginning to crack. I was also curious about this, so I looked it up. So here are two videos, one is the extraction of wisdom teeth and the other is putting a crown on a tooth after a root canal. Enjoy! =]

Problems at Work with my supervisor

Today I’m going to talk about work and managers. I work in Los Angeles City Hall, in the office of special events. I have a boss who is really difficult to work with. When she is in a bad mood she doesn’t want anyone getting next to her nor asking her questions. Last week she told me “Mayra secure a lance closure on spring street between 5th and 6th street for the African American Heritage Event”, I asked her “do you want the lane closed in front of the Los Angeles Theatre Center where our venue is going to be or across the street?”, she said “I don’t know” so I said “I’m going to reserve it in front” she yelled saying “no close it across the street!”. I was really upset but still managed to respond in a calm voice saying “who should I contact” she said “I don’t know figure it out, look online I don’t care” and as I was leaving she said “try Rita”. I began asking Rita if she could help me and she said she didn’t know how handle this, so I researched it on my own with help of my co worker. I applied for the permit needed to secure this lane and the page did not let me submit the application, it said “you must apply for a permit 5 days prior to the event” and I was applying 2 day before the event. I informed my supervisor my situation and she was really mad and said “I’ll take care of it, I told you specifically what to do and who to contact!”

This situation last week was horrible, first because my supervisor did not tell me specifically who to contact, second because she told me 2 days prior to the event, not giving me enough time of notice. What can I do in these situations? Should I have responded back? If I would have I’m sure she would have fired me right there and then.

Procrastination

            Why do people procrastinate? I procrastinate because I feel lazy to do my work sometimes, other times I am just to tired, but most of the time it’s because I put insignificant things in front of things that are important. This past week I began to make  list of all the things I needed to take care of for that week, things that have to do with homework for school. I wrote down things for my history, English, Psychology, and Math class. Once I completed my list and saw all the things I needed to do I automatically got lazy. I started of with English class and began writing my essay. It took me two hours to complete two paragraphs! Why? Because my roommate turned on the TV and I got distracted. I could have gone to a study room or asked her to turn it off, but the show on TV was good that I felt that I could multitask. Turns out I could do homework with the TV on, but must stop writing and turn around to watch TV every 30 seconds.

            That day I after writing my agenda for the week and after two paragraphs I realized it was 10:30 p.m. already! I pulled out my psychology homework and began reviewing my notes. I usually type them up and print them out and then review it, but I felt so lazy that I didn’t want to type it out. I went to sleep at 11:30 p.m. The next day I realized that I didn’t COMPLETE at least one of those tasks I set myself to do. I really have to start drinking vitamins and avoid distractions if I want to complete my work.

Keeping up with classes

Hello everyone, today I’m going to talk about how difficult it is to have a job, go to school, and pass all your classes. I was taking French 100 which introductory to French, but the class was extremely difficult. I can’t believe the professor isn’t allowed to speak English in the class! How were we supposed to understand what he is saying if he isn’t able to tell us what it means in English? Keeping up with homework and class work was extremely difficult, he would ask the class questions, and the majority of the class would stay quiet without a response because nobody had a clue of what he was saying. He burly wrote anything on the board, and would not teach us how to write in French, his entire lecture would be on videos of people talking in French and he would review the chapters in the book so fast that also keeping up with that has hard. My friend stayed in that class and I dropped it, and I am extremely glad I did, she is stressing in the class and had a midterm coming up, good luck to her and all those taking that class, at least with this professor. Attached is a link to French tutoring on line for those that may need it. http://www.ielanguages.com/french.html

My plans

            Last week I talked about different types of dances, in specifically salsa and mambo. Today I’m going to talk about my plans with dancing. I am going to major in Biology and minor in dance. I want to teach dance to other people because I have a passion for it. Dancing is more than a hobby in my life, it’s part of my daily schedule. Once I minor in dance, I plan to teach dance in a non profit organization because I’ve always been part of non profit organizations, they’ve allowed me be part of a dance class for free! I want to give back to these organizations by teaching in their locations for free. I don’t need to get paid to dance; I just love doing it and want to teach other for free, just as they taught me. I hope to become a great dancer and teach other how to become great too. This way if I ever see one of my dance students in TV I would feel good about myself for helping them achieve that success.

            How am I going to manage to have time for dancing when I’m a doctor? I honestly don’t know. I don’t mind giving up my weekends if I have to, in order to teach. I want to have my dance class so badly, I know we’ll be great, with all of our effort, I’m sure we’ll create an amazing class. Attached is a video of Ciara, she is a great dancer and her background dancers are just as great, they came from small dance studios and now are out in the Celebrity world.

Dancing Salsa and Mambo

Yesterday I blogged about how great dancing is if you want to work out and get fit. I also talked about how it is a form of relieving stress. If you’ve been reading my blogs I’m pretty you’ve noticed that I’ve mostly been posting videos of hip hop, popping and break dancing. Today I’m going to talk about other types of dancing. I’m going to talk about mambo and salsa dance in specifically today. These types of dancing are so much fun yet very difficult. Mambo and salsa are mostly Spanish music and they require a lot of practice. I attached this video of professional dancers. They are dancing salsa and mixing in some other styles into it. Their body postures are placed perfectly while dancing. These types of dances require a partner to dance with (opposite sex). This type of dancing requires the man to lead the woman. The women must be positioned accurately and let herself be controlled by the man in order to dance this correctly. Elbows must always stay up and hand positions must always be the same. This type of dance is ALWAYS danced with heels. There are special types of dancing shoes for this type of dance and enables the woman to turn and twist easily. They these dancing heels have suede in the bottom allowing making it easy to dance and slide. Dancing this requires a lot of turning, therefore it may take a while for someone to get used to the turns so that she/he won’t fall. So here is the video I talk about earlier, hope you like it!

Why dance?

Hello, last week I went over some techniques that make you better dancer. Today I’m going to talk about why dancing is not only fun and entertaining, but it is also an excellent work out. Did you know that you burn more calories in one hour dancing than other sports like weight training (light workout), walking (3 ½ miles per hour), bicycling (less than 10 mph), and golfing? A woman about 130 pounds burns approximately 265 calories dancing for one hour versus a person walking for hour. If you have more body fat, then obviously you burn much more calories dancing. Dancing is a great exercise to keep you in shape. It is so much fun and very recommended if you want to get fit and lose weight. Dancing exercises your entire body, allows you to get the full workout of every muscle in your body. Dancing is also a form of relieving stress; after a hard day dancing helps you take your mind of problems. Dancing can be good for anyone. You don’t need to be in a specific dance class to be able to lose weight, all you need to do is keep your body moving to the music and before you know it time will go so fast that an hour will seem like 15 min. It so easy to get really into dancing, the fun you have doing it is an emotion that is priceless.  

A real dancer

Hey you guys, so it’s Saturday! This is the day of the week that goes by the fastest for me. Okay, so today I’m going to talk about dancing skills and tell you a few strategies to help make your dancing skills great. In hip hop a real dancer ALWAYS has their legs widely spread apart. In every move they make, every count they place, their legs are always exaggerated and spread apart; with this their body constantly remains in a low level, the closer to the ground the better. Their moves are also always placed, in other words, their moves are not just swinging your arms and trying to keep up what you’re being thought. Every move must be place by a style called popping, as demonstrated in the last post I made. You have to place your counts so that you can move with the beat. Dancing is all about dancing to the BEAT, not the lyrics or the beat of the lyrics. If you listen closely to music, the instrumental in the background and the lyrics both always have different beats. You want to make sure you are moving to the instrumental (the drums).  With this your moves and dancing will always stand out, your dancing will be amazing to anyone who watches you. I’m sure you have all hear of the Jabbawockeez, well here is a video of their dancing. They ALWAYS move to the beat of the music, not the lyrics, they dance to even the slightest sound in their music. Pay close attention to their moves and you’ll notice that their dancing moves are not difficult at all, their counts are by far one of the easiest moves I’ve ever seen, but what makes their easy moves so amazing is that they are always moving to the beat and are extraordinary good at popping. Moving to the beat of the music makes their performance seem amazing and out of this world. Almost anyone can dance, but not to the beat, you gain these strategies by practicing how to pop and lock, you place every move with the beat. The video is kind of old, but their moves are so alive and great, their counts are not so difficult, but when they mix break dancing into their hip hop, their dancing stands out even more and has made them one of the best dancers in America.

Making life exciting.

Hello, so last time I touched a little on what the RLC dorm I live in offers and about what I love to do in my spare time, now I’m going to talk about why it is that I don’t have time to join in any dance classes or at least this one called Millennium Dance Complex. I have morning classes at 8:00 a.m. Monday through Friday. I go to work right after class in Los Angeles and get out of work extremely tiered at 6:00 p.m., sometimes a little latter, depending on the amount of work there is. I end up arriving to my dorm between 8:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.  Once I’m in my dorm I begin doing homework, although it is very difficult to concentrate when I’m tiered, especially when my roommate turns on the TV and begins talking on her cell phone. Thanks to the quiet study rooms in the RLC I am able to avoid the distractions in my room, but then get easily distracted every time someone walks by the study room because they have glass windows in which almost everyone who passes by peeks inside.  With this said, I burly have enough energy to stay awake after work, if I were to join a dance class after work, I’d probably need a wheel chair to drag myself back to my dorm and would have no energy nor time for homework.

            Saturdays and Sundays are my time to rest, this is when I could catch up on my homework and sleep, when I have time for myself and feel a lot more energized. I wish there were dance classes offered here in the RLC during the weekends. I know that the RLC offers English and a few other classes but why don’t they offer a sport like dance here? Now thinking about it, it wouldn’t be bad to start a dance class here, I’ve seen many dancers around the RLC and I’m sure they’d like the idea of beginning a dance class here. The dance class can be diverse, teaching different types of dances such as hip hop, break dancing, popping, even dances from different ethnicities. We can each show each other what we’ve got and what our styles are, this way we learn about other cultures and their styles and build our way up to diverse dancing. My idea might be a bit weird, but just thinking about it makes me excited. Here are different types of dancing, from break dancing to popping.

Part of me

Hey everyone, I’ve found so many different apartments around the area, the most economical I found is a one room apartment for $675 a month and $600 deposit, but with utilities included (light, water, electric bills), so that’s great! I’ve also been thinking a lot about the dorm I live in, and it also has some good qualities. We have a pool, a big room in the first floor in which we can go in anytime and chill. This room has a piano, a big flat screen TV and couches for us to relax and sleep on. The RLC building also includes various study rooms in which students can go in any time to study, these rooms are always open.

Now that I’ve told you about my environment, I’m going to be talking about what I love to do in my spare time, which is dancing. I love love love super love to dance. I have a huge passion for dancing. I was captain on my dance team in middle school and in high school I joined a dance class in Hollywood, it’s a very famous dance studio. It’s called Millennium Dance Complex, it offers beginner classes up to master classes. When I first joined it I jumped into master classes because I was sure I could keep up, but boy was I wrong! The choreographers here are extremely professionals, they are choreographers for various celebrities. I’m pretty sure you all know who Shane Sparks is right? In case you don’t he was the choreographer for “So you think you can dance”, “You got served”, and was a judge for “America’s best dance crew”. Going back to this dance studio, many celebrities started off here, like Destiny’s Child, Usher, Britney Spears, and many more from movies like “you got served” or “Step up”. Many people in the movie business come to this studio and if they see you have some skills or like the way you dance, they pull you aside and offer you to join their music video or come out in movies such as the ones I mentioned earlier. If you have a passion for dancing and interested in coming out on TV, join these classes, I’m sure they will shape you up to be what these people in the movie business are looking for. As for me, when I moved to Long Beach, I left the dance studio, I still have my membership with them, but with work and school, don’t really have time to attend these classes in Los Angeles, but doesn’t mean I stopped dancing. I dance everywhere and all the time, I’ve taken break-dance classes, hip hop, and other ones like tango, salsa, and samba classes. With all the different dances I’ve learned, I’ve combined them and free style all the time. While exiting my dorm, I practically dance my entire way to the shuttle, I dance in the street, in my room, with my friends, everywhere. If I hear a good beat, you know I’ll be dancing, and if there isn’t music around, I’ll make my own beat to dance to. As you can see dancing is part of my life, it’s part of me, I can assure you that in a couple of years, you’ll be seeing me in music videos and hopefully movies!

Here are two short videos of dance classs at Millennium Dance Complex.

Living in a dorm

Hi everyone, my name is Mayra Castillo; I’m 18 years old, a freshman in California State University Long Beach. I’ve never lived outside on Los Angeles, nor attended any school outside of it. Now I live in a highly expensive dorm in Long Beach that’s a mile away from school campus. The dorm in which I stay in is not worth the amount I pay for, I share the room with my roommate Daniela and we each pay $1,025 including mandatory meal plan, whether or not you eat. Not only is this Residential Learning College (RLC) campus expensive, but we are required to attend constant mandatory meetings at 10:00 p.m. A shuttle in which transports us from our dorm to school gets over crowded in the mornings. It gets so overcrowded that not everyone fits in it; therefore the driver is forced into leaving many students behind. The dining halls close at 8:00 p.m., so if you have a job like me and arrive to your dorm at 8:30 p.m. you either don’t eat, or buy yourself dinner in one of the fast food restaurant around the area. I am definitely going to rent an apartment next semester, meanwhile am hoping to find someone responsible with the same ideas.