Zumba at Relay for Life
Posted on August 5, 2017 by Ching under Community, Zumba.
A few months ago, a friend of mine who was on the Relay for Life organizing committee this year reached out to me and asked if I would volunteer to teach a Zumba class on July 14 at 11 PM. I love volunteering for things so I told her of course I’d do it but I did want to clarify the time because I thought it was a typo at first. It turns out, she really meant it.
The Relay for Life event goes from 7 PM to 7 AM and they planned various activities every hour to keep participants awake and fully engaged throughout the 12 hours. She needed something for the 11 PM time slot. The instructor who volunteered last year had moved away and so she decided to ask me this year.
Though the time made me pause, of course, I agreed to do it. I live for this kind of volunteer work. It’s so fun!
Anyway, when she asked me back in January, we hadn’t finalized the summer schedule yet so I agreed not realizing that I would be teaching an 8:45 AM Aqua Zumba class the next day. I was a little bit worried but I had faith that I’d be able to handle it. I think the excitement of dancing from Friday into Saturday outweighed my apprehension. I hadn’t danced that late into the evening/next morning in years! Plus, this is my first ever 11 PM Zumba class.
Dancing alone is never any fun so I decide right off the bat to recruit some people to help me. I had five amazing Zumba instructor friends who answered the call. More people wanted to help actually, but we only had a one-hour time slot so we couldn’t have too many instructors. I took the first five to confirm. Huge thanks to Andrea, Nick, Melissa, and Charis for helping me!
All of our friends who agreed to stay up and dance with us that night deserve recognition too. I mean, I realize they were sacrificing sleep time to help. The party wouldn’t have been any fun without people to dance with.
Here are few pictures from that evening…
This is one of my favorite Zumba people, Melissa. She is just so vibrant and full of life, and she’s always willing to help me out with my Zumba volunteer events.
I’m glad we brought a few Zumba addicts with us because only a few of the Relay for Life people participated and most of them didn’t stick around for the full hour. I’m sure they were trying to conserve their energy for the long haul. After all, they had 7 more long hours to go and we were only there for the Zumba bit.
Brian is always really supportive and around for all of these events but I decided to give him a break from having to drive me around all over the place that evening. I managed to hitch a ride with Andrea to Melissa’s 6:45 PM Zumba class at East YMCA and then I hitched a ride with Melissa to Carlos O’Kelly’s (our usual post Friday night Zumba hangout specially right now because they’re doing that summer drink tour) and then I tagged along with her to her house and Bishop Carroll High School where the Relay for Life event was going on. Her house is just around the corner, less than 10 minutes from the school.
That was actually one of the craziest 24-hour periods of Zumba I’ve had (not counting ZINCON). Basically, I took Melissa’s Friday night class, then the Relay for Life Zumba at 11 PM, then I taught my two classes (Aqua Zumba at 8:45 AM and Zumba at 10:30 AM) at Andover YMCA the next day on about five hours of sleep (if that). That’s four Zumba classes in 16 hours. It was nuts!
And, Andrea did it all with me!
Anyway, I considered it my warmup for ZINCON, which is a grueling schedule of four straight days of 24/7 Zumba. It’s so fun though! I can’t wait to tell you all about it. I may have time to blog about it tomorrow.
In the meantime, here are the posts from last year:
Then these are from 2014 (we skipped 2015 because we used 2015 ZINCON budget for the 2016 Zumba cruise instead):
The very last Zumba Instructor Conference in LA in 2014:
My very first ZINCON in 2013:
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