To all of you that have not heard me rant about how amazing argentine tango is, NEWS FLASH!
Ballroom is fun. Swing is fun. But argentine tango..... tango BEATS ballroom!
This is a video of an outdoor social dance in Hong Kong. This is what tango looks like when I dance at social dances here in Ithaca. Except there are less people. And it's not outside because it's below freezing here at night now.
Grocery store tango. I love it!
I've found that what I've wanted to get out of ballroom is what argentine tango gives me. Argentine tango is usually danced in a closed embrace and is much more improvisational than ballroom is and the movement is soooo nice and natural.
Anyways, so I bet you guys are like EWWW YOU HAVE TO DANCE SO CLOSE TO YOUR PARTNER! Well... yeah. If you don't like to hug, you can't dance tango. Sorry.
Tango is apparently attractive to people who are brave and intense. I dunno if I would call myself that.
Point is, argentine tango is my favorite style of dance!
After 4 weeks of dancing it, I've come a long way.
Ithaca has a good tango scene. There is a beginner's class at Cornell taught by the teacher in Ithaca, Joaquin from Buenos Aires, but I am currently not taking that class.
This is a short clip from last nights Thursday tango practica here on campus (a block away from where I live). Sorry the clip is such bad quality and so short, but I was trying to be discrete!
So anyways, Joaquin is the teacher dude. There's an old Dominican guy that does the private lessons. The community is pretty big. I think 30 people come for the Thursday practices. I think 50 came for the monthly fancy social dance, which is called a milonga.
I go to a social dance on Sunday night downtown and a practice dance on Thursday nights on campus, very close to where I live.
Sometimes there are Saturday dances. Last Saturday, there was an AMAZING fancy milonga with pretty much the entire Ithaca tango community. Well, only the experienced people. My friend Sofia and I were the only beginners there.
Argentine tango is the way to go for me! It takes my mind off of school for a couple hours and it's SO FUN! And I've made lots of friends.
Tangueros have to be friendly since it can be an awkward dance at times ;)
Yeah I know it's random but c'mon, have you ever noticed how angelic and CHUBBYYYYYY belugas are?!
They are so cute.
And very intelligent.
Here's a photo of a beluga saving a struggling diver. The beluga was already pushing the diver up to the surface by the time other people noticed she was cramping up and drowning.
What a good little beluga baby :)
And they can blow bubbles. Awesome.
That's it for today's rant. Hope you guys appreciate these beautiful creatures a little more now <3
We discussed the crap the veal industry gets, when it's really not that bad.
People envision lil baby cows tied up so they can't move. That may be the case with bad apple farms, but most well managed farms don't do that because that's just plain WRONG.
You see these babies are kept in separate pens for the first 8 weeks of life so they can get vet treatment. We spoke to the farm vet who was cool. Then the babies get moved into pens in groups because baby cows want to and will be healthier if they stay in groups.
The babies are fed diets with proper amounts of iron, but not enough that their meat turns red.
We did some research and it's pretty clear that veal farms cost the most to maintain! That's because each baby needs vaccines and a lot of vet care, and they all need their own pens. It limits the amount of protein production a farm can yield.
(One baby escaped!)
The babies are not sold to meat processing places as BABIES. But they are sold at around 500 lbs. That's like, 20 weeks old I think.
Here are some big boy bulls, that are INTACT. I will say I was intimidated by them.... oh yes. They are near term. That's how big they get when they are sold as veal.
(The babies have space to move, but the space is limited mostly because of the size of the farm. Not all the animals can roam free like dogs or cats or organic farms. Most farms are limited in size like this or the animals are a little crowded)
The babies like to lick!
The big boys are big and scary...
And we talked about nutrition and all that jazz. It turns out "bad" farms produce veal that is grain fed and sell it at the same high price as a milk-fed veal. That's cheating. Because milk-fed veal, like these ones, are the highest quality and grain-fed are the cheapest. Milk-fed makes the muscle color whitish.
Marcho farms created their own veal milk replacer formula that is extremely successful. We spoke to the doctor who conducted the research and came up with the formula. Smart people.
So yeah, you can think whatever you want to think about veal farms. All I can say is that we went to this particular farm because it is known worldwide for its humane production of veal and it's high quality. It was really well managed and shows that not all of the veal industry is bad. But there are certainly bad farms out there, just like there are bad pet shops, bad meat packagers, bad schools and bad people.
Here's a glass blowing demonstration at the museum. Really cool.
We got to blow our own glass, but only blow it. Which is expected considering the glass is 1000+ degrees F! We got to choose the colors and design we wanted though.
