City Lights Ball was a huge success. All togheter there were of 11 of us. Some of us went down on Friday morning - some of us missed flights, but I won't mention any names, and some of us came on Saturday morning. The 7 of us that went on Friday morning, rented a van and spent the day at China town and the evening in Japan town. Our local guide was Mr. Chen, who fit right in with the locals and he made sure he returned us all alive - cranky, exhausted and with broken "baoding balls" - well at least one of us. It was a very fun, full day of events.

Saturday morning was very early for the ones dancing. Kora, Pat, Rob, Sarah, and I, ooops almost forgot our photographer - Mr. Chen, were up in the ballroom warming up for the day at 7am. Luckily Starbucks was already open. Rob and Pat both danced great and Rob managed to stay out of timeout, well at least for the first day. Sarah won all of her single dance events and also the Silver A Scholarship on that evening. Kora and I competed in the Professional Rising-Star Standard where we finished 2nd, and 5th in the Professional Showdance - both were a little dissappointing especially after our results in UK and the Leipzig World Showdance Championships.

Sunday morning was early as well, this time I had Caroline, Bonnie, and Danielle and Kora had Rob and Pat again. This was the day that Rob got himself into a little "time-out" trouble. We only later found out that he thought "time-out" included spankings. Well it didn't, so he was terribly dissappointed. All the single dance events went great. We had lunch a little nap - since we were dancing on 3 hours of sleep the night before (the Showdance finished at 2am on Sat night and the first event on Sunday morning was 7am, so when you include getting ready time you can see the lack of sleep).

Sunday evening, Bonnie finished 2nd in the Silver B Scholarship, Caroline 3rd in the Bronze A Scholarship, and Danielle 7th in the Open A Scholarship. Pat finished 4th in the Bronze A Scholarship just out of the prize money.

Also to mention, both Saturday and Sunday included shows by the top three couples in the World. Arunas Bizokas and Katusha Demidova, Mirko Gozzoli and Edita Daniute, and Victor Fung and Anastasia Muravyeva. Having on of those couples for one night of show would have been spectacular but all three for two nights was unbelievable. Although, Kora and I had seen all three in the final at the UK, 1 week prior to City Lights, we were glad that all our students got to experience and see the best in action.

I want to thank everyone that came out with us. It was an awesome weekend, a lot of fun, and memories that will be in our hearts forever... and also in video and jpg format.

NOTE: if someone wants to borrow my cool "baoding balls" I can bring them out to the studio on request.

Click Here for Full Gallery

Chiquita Banana Mascot