The 2010 Herrang International Dance Camp has finally come to a close. I'm sitting in the bar of the Folketshaus, the heart of the Herrang Dance Camp, surrounded by dancers grabbing breakfast before catching busses to the airport or to Stockholm. Meanwhile a small army of volunteers is dismantling the entire camp to return it…
Category: Travel
Herrang Day Five: Teaching Lindy Hoppers How to Break
Sorry that the updates have been infrequent here at the Herrang Dance Camp. It's been a whirlwind experience and I haven't had much time to process or write about it. And frankly I've enjoyed being completely offline for once in my life. Anyway, today I found myself teaching an introduction to breaking class as one…
Herrang: Mind Officially Blown
Why do people come to Herrang? It's remote and hard to get to, over-crowded, hot, and full of mosquitos. There are many other camps, workshops, exchanges and dance events that occur all around the US, Europe and other parts of the world all year. And yet Herrang is still the gold standard of lindy hop…
Herrang Dance Camp Day One and Two: Auditioning and Fast Lindy Class
This is my second day at the Herrang Dance Camp in Sweden. It's been three years since I've been here, and the camp has grown quite a bit in that time. The main outdoor dance floor seems about twice as big as before, they have added more tents for the daytime classes, and participation has…
Off to the Herrang Lindy Hop Dance Camp!
Starting tomorrow night, I will be travelling to Sweden to participate in the Herrang International Swing Dance Camp, sort of the mecca for lindy hoppers. Every year, a thousand or so swing dancers from all over the world make the pilgrimage to Herrang for a five-week celebration of dance, featuring workshops, dance parties, shows, and…
Ain’t No Party Like A Filipino House Party: Cori’s and My Birthday BBQ
Here's my sister and I blowing out the candles on our respective birthday cakes, with a bunch of our cousins surrounding us. This weekend, the birthday celebrating continued, this time in California with a big family BBQ at my mom's house. It was a fantastic party, which like all parties from the Santos clan was…
My Amsterdam Food Tour
Amsterdam is not known as a foodie destination. Which is a shame, since it has everything a gourmand might want. Most foreigners don't even know what Dutch cuisine is — perhaps something involving raw herring on toast? Which is their loss really. After spending a week in Amsterdam, I am happy to report that there…
KunstVlaai / ArtPie Exhibition in Amsterdam: Giant Mice, Fake Marketing, Robot Girls
I have been asking around to friends what are some of the cultural exhibits and shows that I should be sure and catch while I am in Amsterdam. Catherine told me that I should go to the "Kunstvlaai" experimental art exhibition that is happening at Westerpark in northwestern Amsterdam. Another friend Mark warned me against…
Living the Quaker Values: Service (video)
Here's a video post that's part of my ongoing series ruminating about the different Quaker values and how I've integrated them into my life. This one focuses on Service. I hope you like it.
(Re-)visiting the Anne Frank House Museum
This morning, I popped over the Anne Frank House museum, which I haven't visited for a long time. In the intervening years, the curators have built a whole new multimedia wing of the museum and just recently acquired from another Dutch archive the actual physical diaries of Anne Frank. So I was looking forward to…