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…
Category: Travel
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…
Mickey Mouse… in Dutch (video)
I'm loving being in Holland, and in general have a fondness for Dutch people and their culture. That said, their language just still sounds so weird to me. And double-plus weird coming out of Disney characters. Enjoy. I just wish this video had a bit more Donald Duck in it. Maybe he's been speaking Dutch…
Off to Amsterdam Tomorrow!
I will be in the land of tulips and windmills starting on Saturday for a little vacation, crashing at a friend's place in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. No real plans other than relaxing, biking around, connecting with some local folks, and eating a lot of belgian fries with war sauce. Oh and apple tart. And Indonesian…
Headed to Herrang Swing Dance Camp in Sweden this Summer!
Tonight I finalized my plans to go to the Herrang International Swing Dance Camp that takes place every year in Herrang, Sweden. Every summer, hundreds of lindy hop enthusiasts from around the world converge on the remote, tiny town of Herrang for five weeks of workshops, performances, social dancing and hanging out with their peers. …
Lindy Hop / Hip-hop “Old School” Battle in Sweden: Holy Smokes! (video)
If ever there was a dance event created just for me, it's this "old school battle" between hip-hop crew Streets R Us versus the world-famous lindy hop troupe the Harlem Hotshots that took place last month. Where did this take place… Sweden, of course. Lindy hopper Jerry Almonte turned me on to this epic dance…