Life as a dancer (part three) 190

The afternoons at the shaded patio are unforgettable. We all used to head over there after every rehearsal. Everyone exhausted but full of happiness, like when you give children a new toy, that's how I felt every single day while in school. 

After 8 full years I finally graduated in what my ballet instructors refer to as an exquisite gala in Havana's main theater. That was just the ending of a life as a student. A different life waited for me as I joined the National Ballet of Cuba. After performing in my homeland for a few years I decided to make it to the US. I made Phoenix my new home and Ballet Arizona my new work family.  Everything was going how I expected in my career until the day I had a major injury in my right leg and had to stop dancing for a while. At first I suffered a lot and sunk into negativity, but now I see this chapter in my life as a chance to grow and become more versatile. I am now going to school and thinking about my future. 

Essay Number two (182)

   I had decided to describe my experience when visiting my homeland of Santiago de Cuba after it was victim of hurricane Sandy on October 2012 as the main topic for my second essay.

 Nothing in the final local weather forecast before the hurricane made landfall advised that the storm surge would approach the unprecedented level it finally reached. The unexpected event took only five hours but it affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.  Most of the city’s infrastructure showed the irrefutable fury of Mother Nature.  Those images will be tattooed in my memory forever. Faces saturated with expressions of fear, impotency and helplessness inundated the remaining of a city that cried for help while the government seemed to be interested in prioritizing the rebuilding of the billboards containing communist propaganda. 

  Almost a year later my town still exhibits traces of its recent past. I can’t help but to wonder how long will it take to restore the city to the way it was before and to prepare it for the next hurricane season.

It's up to us (163)

Good health is the greatest possession we could possibly have. This modest fact applies as much to a new born baby as to the senior, a policeman, the common man on the street, or the president of a country. Whenever our bodies become sick or do not perform up to what we consider normal, we are going to experience a state of uneasiness, fright or depression that can only be relieved by re-establishing our body’s former health and vitality. To truly feel at ease within ourselves and in our surroundings, we must be able to undo all forms of disease. We are indeed capable of healing ourselves. The state of health is a reflection of how we perceive ourselves and the rest of our world, which places the duty of our well-being back where it belongs, in our own hands. The key to creating balance in every aspect of our lives can be found when we start taking responsibility for our own health.