#Salsateca

[ultrajumpinthings]

Salsateca – Plakat – Wagenbreth

[justavessel22]

Last night I put my salsa lessons to work in an Ecuadorean #SalsaTeca club

[sports-bar-colombia]

Dancing Salsa in Colombia

Everyone knows that Colombia is synonymous with salsa! There isn't anything more vibrant, vivid, celebratory, or enjoyable. Salsa is an inextricable element of our culture, and I'm confident that every Colombian knows at least a few songs' lyrics as well as a few dancing moves. Salsa is found all around Colombia, and there's no better place to experience it!

Salsa is a great illustration of how music can bring people together. Hearing, singing, and dancing salsa is a popular pastime in Colombia. It doesn't matter if we're at home, on the street, at a party, in a cab, or at a restaurant. When I say that Colombians grow up with salsa, I'm not exaggerating. It's played everywhere all the time. Salsa is culture in and of itself, and being a part of it entails engaging in and learning about our culture, customs, and traditions. Cali is known as the world's salsa capital, while Bogotá has an entire festival exclusively to the genre:

Salsa did not originate in Colombia, but rather in New York City in the early 1970s (surprised?). It began as a mash-up of Harlem, Cuba, and Puerto Rico's music and dancing moves. Salsa arrived in Colombia with sailors who introduced the new trend to Barranquilla, where it quickly became popular owing to its rhythm and vigor. After a few years, more dance clubs or salsatecas (salsa clubs) sprung up (particularly in working-class areas of Cali), and many artists formed salsa bands to be a part of the new music scene. Cali is now known as the World Capital of Salsa, and thousands of tourists and locals flock to the city to sample the delights of this wonderful musical universe.

Want to learn some moves visit Salsa Santa Marta at Santa Marta's Number 1 Sports Bar

[gobogotablog-blog]

Immersing oneself in the city is the best way to experience a place and many locals are hospitable as it helps change the stereotypes long held by outsiders. Tourists are welcomed in Bogota to learn about the culture by participating in salsa classes at a Salsateca or if you are looking for something slower a Viejoteca.

[asmaanijal]

A love letter to Night

There are long nights when tea becomes medicine.

Nights are a respite from thudding footsteps, shouts, yells, cries, and wails.

Sometimes I can hear quiet chatter from my grandmother’s TV down the hall.

But mostly, two lamps shroud me in a dim, warm, yellow deafness.

I am finally alone.

 When I was nine, I started staying up late on weekend nights to watch Pakistani soap operas with my grandmother. This began a long tradition of me running downstairs as soon as my father yelled “lights out” at 10pm. His will to have me asleep wasn’t greater than his quiet contentment upon seeing me curled up next to Ammi, listening to stories about Prophets and princesses. After a few years, I started lingering in the living room after leaving Ammi’s bedroom at night. I wrote in my diary, watched George Lopez, and memorized the words to Temperature by Sean Paul.

The night cradled and rocked me through my first onset of depression in my junior year of high school. I rested my head on her shoulder as she ran her fingers through my hair. But even though I loved her, there were times when I couldn’t look at her. She seemed endless, frightening, looming. She extended past my vision, and her arms felt grotesquely long in their embrace.

During the Gaza War, I spent my hours with Night holding a phone three inches from my face, squinting blindly in the dark at pictures of missing limbs and crying women. I fell asleep each night with a headache, a damp pillow, and a vision blurred from tears. Night waited for me patiently. In between my sobs, she would slip me a glass of water and place her hand on my shoulder, reminding me that she too, was there.

I started taking long walks with her. She was happy to finally have me to herself. We danced jubilantly down West End to the heady rhythms of Sufi kalaams and reggaeton. She threw her head back and laughed. I remembered why I fell in love with her.

Who else could cover me in layers of darkness when I needed to hide, and sit beside me, a gleaming, brilliant companion, when I wanted to throw my arms wide and drink the world?

She played in the cedar trees when I took buses home at 5am, sticky with sweat from spending four hours dancing in a salsateca in Santiago. She fed me with her resilience when I called my mother in my sophomore year of college because a Vanderbilt law professor published crude comments about Muslims. She stood behind me, looking over my shoulder, when I typed out a speech two days later. Birds that should have been asleep sang odes to her. 

God made women and the night soulmates. I was birthed into you. You would look at your reflection in my black hair and smile. You are ageless. But you grow more beautiful as I grow older. Each one of your layers is softer. We are soulmates until the end of time. We unravel each other every time our eyes meet.

[jungjoobunny]

New passport finally arrived. 4 visas, 13 countries, and an almost full book later I must now say Goodbye, old friend.

From conjuring a mouthful of spit with my brother while waiting for take off to Mexico on our first ever flight (we heard it helped not make our ears pop.. but then the plane took forever to takeoff so we just sat there trying not to laugh, so our spit wouldn’t get everywhere), to then picking ticks off of stray dogs in Mexico cuz we felt bad for them, to watching the deciding South Korea vs. Uruguay World Cup game at an Ecuadorian cafe where all the Latinos were rooting for Uruguay while H and I were the only Koreans there (we received sympathetic pats on the back from them when SK lost), to my host dad taking me to a guinea pig farm to play with them cute things before he took me to the roasting room where he had me roast one one a stick (horrified emoji) while he insisted on taking a pic, to riding the public buses with the homeless street dogs of Chile, to tango lessons in Uruguay, to chillen at the salsateca all the way to the first 5am train in Madrid (azucar!!), to stalking/meeting celebrities in Seoul, to climbing that long-ass staircase instead of taking the escalator in Ewha Station cuz we were curious what it would be like and then regretting it (don’t do it), to eating breakfast on a balcony overlooking Istanbul, to riding overworked camels in Morocco, to discovering how dirty Paris really is compared to pictures, to getting a stomachache from eating Belgian waffles for breakfast, lunch, and dinner in one day, to being quarantined in Korea and consequently changing Korean laws while starring in my own K-drama, the list goes on...

...you’ve given me priceless memories and colors that filled the heavy side of life. Although my life appeared glamorous with all the travel on the outside and on social media, the last ten years of my life on the contrary were actually the worst, most turbulent ten years. Emotionally wrought, emotional/mental abuse, depression/anxiety/PTSD. So for that, I’m glad and thankful to have had a little bit of light and healing through all these places and people. 

Here’s to a new start, another ten years of adventure!