I last wrote you all to tell you about how awesome it was dance and study and earn my General Skills certificate from Carolena Nericcio, creator of ATS® - American Tribal Style bellydance.

There's been many adventures since then, so I thought maybe I should leave a small set of breadcrumbs here. My long-range goal is to finally collate all my journaling efforts into one home. And since that effort is not yet complete, please allow me to share a few links and thumbnail stories with you.

CaySwann Dance - my Dance Teacher Blog

I've been posting thoughts specifically from the perspective of being a new Dance Teacher over at CaySwann Dance.

• June


• Making the Transition


• Post-first-class Success


• More Preparedness


• Back to Training and Running


• Now I'm Dreaming It


• Integrated Musical Inspiration


• "I Teach Bellydance"


• Getting Good Feedback


• Always Learning, Always Flexible


• July


• Taking the First Step


• Practicing Every Day


• Lyrics to Zill By


• My First Class of Students


• August


• Thankfulness in my Dance


• No Pressure, No Shame


• Moving Carefully, Deliberately


• September


• Unusual Structure, Unexpected Benefits


• Thoughts from One Student

Photos from the Past Several Months

I continue to make an effort to upload photos to Flickr, username cayswann.

• In June, I attended and helped staff the annual Fiber Retreat, sponsored by Griffin Dyeworks


• In July, I attended the Labyrinth of Jareth for my first time


• And at the end of July, my first class of bellydance students and my first private bellydance student took the time to dress up for photos at the end of our first session of instruction

Projects and more Projects

Now I'm wrapping up all the paperwork details to prepare for the Great Western War, GWW, camping event with the middle ages group. I'm on the team for the GWW website and the head of the team taking care of the land allocation arrangments for nearly 2000 people.

I've been continuing to create floral hair clips in my spare time, to sell at bellydance haflas (parties) and custom commissions from customers. I've just started working on tie-dyeing scarves... with only two completed, I'm fairly pleased with the results. They are likely to go up on my etsy shop soon.

New Work

And I'm still at the new job that started immediately after I returned from General Skills. I'm a technical writer for the Engineering department in a webhosting company. I love working with so many extremely intelligent engineers and deveopers, and for such a motivated and exciting company. The arrangement was original a four-month contract which is currently on indefinite extension until they have the resources to make any sort of permanent offer. I'm extremely thankful for this job and all it does to keep me going.

Until next time, dear friends