chantee: stays in vegas? not really.

Wow, so I'm finally starting my Vegas post a week after I get back. lolololololol. And since, I've postponed it so long I barely remember the things I wanted to talk about =( Oh well.

I went to Las Vegas for nationals for the dance competition, Hall of Fame Dance Challenge :D! It's exciting because Hall of Fame is such a well known dance competition among competitive dancers around America because they post videos of some of the top winners onto their site and sometimes you may find some contemporary dancers from SYTYCD on the Hall of Fame from years before they auditioned.

Eiffel Tower? Wtf???

The competition was held in Paris Hotel which has a miniature Eiffel Tower. I can't wait to see the REAL one though. Ahah. Yes, the hotel was hella expensive but because the competition was held there, we got a discount yayyy.

This competition was really amazing. It went so well! We were against so many talented studios and it was really inspiring. So, the first two days of the competition was just solo entries. I did not expect to place in the top 10, but in fact, I did. And I was 4th! There were a couple of ties along the way. There was definitely like 20 people that placed. Ahah. But what made me especially happy was that everyone from the Top 4 and above got to perform in the Solo Showdown, where you're basically competing again against the top solos from your age division (in my case Senior) and a new set of judges pick one winner and everyone else would be runner ups. So, that time around, I especially did not expect myself to win first. But I was so happy and felt so blessed to be able to perform in the Solo Showdown in the first place. I was the only person from my studio that made it.
When the Solo Showdown came around I was so nervous because the expectations were very high. I didn't relax until one of my dance teaches gave me this great talk. However, I did not think about winning first place. My goal was to just dance my best and make the audience really feel something. I don't know how to describe how I was feeling during my performance, but I felt so great. The reactions that I got after I got off stage were unbelievable and definitely not what I was expecting. People were so happy and so surprised with my performance, saying it was the best I had ever danced in my life and that they almost cry or did cry. Being told that you made someone feel like crying is such a huge compliment for me! People that hardly ever tell me I did a good job said I was amazing! I was very happy with my performance.
In the end, I was just a runner up. But I was still very grateful being one of the nine qualified dancers to perform in the Solo Showdown out of the hundreds of dancers that performed. The host said himself that the Showdown was one of the hardest ones he had seen not just for the 2010 season but of all time in Hall of Fame history! I was very happy with that experience and also got to keep a tiara! =]

All my other group dances did amazing as well throughout the rest of the week. At Hall of Fame they have something like the Solo Showdown except its the highest scoring group from each studio against each other in the World Series. The piece from my studio that ended up getting in was our Lyrical line, Cathedrals. Annnd we won the World Series! :D I have no idea when but that dance will be on the website yayyyy. I'll post the link whenever that happens.

That was the last night of the competition and our studio and dancers from other studios decided to chill together in someone's room. But when not even half of us were there, we realized the room was way to small and decided to just go to the convention center where the competition was, hoping we would not get kicked out by security. Security actually passed by a couple of times but they didn't say anything even though there was probably at least 30 or 40 of us. Ahah.

Other than that there's been a lot of site seeing, shopping, and spending time with family and friends...

At Premium Outlet mall.

They have these mist systems all over vegas because of the heat. They're pretty cool, but these ones at least didn't help me too much because they're too tall. It's just easier to step indoors with air conditioning =]

This one was cool =]

In all the big hotels, they have this 24 Hour buffet that was like $40 per person? I don't remember exactly. Sounds like a lot, but it was actually worth it. They had really good food and the buffets in each hotel were different. Me and my mom went to three within the 24 hours I believe. We went to the one at Paris, Ceasar's Palace, and Planet Hollywood. Planet Hollywood had the best food! They had cotton candy! Harhar~ The only downside to the buffet was that so many people were doing it and the line ups to get in were hella long. It sorta felt like we were lining up for a roller coaster.

Cotton candy = love

I only went swimming once for the whole trip. I waited til the day after my competition to finally go because I didn't want to be too tired or discover that I actually do burn and go on stage peeling. I was in the pool for almost two hours and I just tanned. Thank god my swimsuit doesn't give weird tan lines :D Tube top swimsuits yayyyy!

I met another second cousin that I didn't know existed. He's so awesome! It was so great having him around to drive us around and also bring some light and humour everywhere we went.