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I had another great workout last night. I'm starting to feel my endurance build up again and feel myself getting stronger. It doesn't hurt that Geraldine is always shouting words of encouragement during class like "You're not tired!" and "Give me all you've got!" that makes me want to push harder and harder.
I had another lady come up to me after class and talk to me about my blog. I have to remember to start asking these ladies their names - I feel so bad that I can give them a proper shout out. She was super sweet and said she went back and read my blog from the beginning. A lot of times we all feel like we are so alone in this wellness journey but that is one thing that I have learned 100% from writing this blog is that there are so many of us going through the same things - the same struggles, the same successes. Everyone can relate and learn and teach. It's a great thing. So, super sweet lady from last night - please tell me your name again. I think you said you blog as well, so please share your blog url with me so I can start following you.
I'm also super SUPER excited about a Zumba event I'm going to this Friday. I haven't been to one since June and I've been itching to go. It seems like they always fall on Friday nights which is typically our mega family night with basketball, ballet and karate, but Gracie is taking karate with Jacob this session instead of ballet so it makes it easier to coordinate and my ever-supporting husband, Jim, was totally fine with me taking some me-time to go to the Zumba event on Friday. So it's a fundraiser for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and it's advertised as a "Glow Party" so we'll see what that's all about. I'm planning to take my camera like I did last time and take a ton of photos. Look for a recap on Saturday morning.
Something else that I've been having a lot of fun with lately is being the admin for a Zumba Facebook Group I created. It's a private group just for the ladies that take Zumba at my YMCA. I actually created the group on accident back in Novemberish when Facebook launched their new Group pages. I thought I was just creating something like a group e-mail list that I could use on my own, but quickly realized it was a great tool for us to use to talk about Zumba and socialize. This was great for me personally because I felt like I was talking about Zumba ALL THE TIME on my personal Facebook page and this was away to show my Zumba enthusiasm with all the my friends that know exactly what I was talking about. So it started with me creating the page and adding my 14 Facebook friends so that we could all chat with each other. Well, five months later we now have 82 group members of the page. It's a closed group and you either have to be approved by me or invited by another group member so I'm pretty confident that the most, if not all, of those 82 people are actually people who take Zumba at my YMCA. Pretty impressive.
Anyway, something I started doing the last week or so is asking the group a "question of the day." Things like "what's your favorite Zumba song," "what do you eat before Zumba," or "why do you Zumba?" It's been a lot of fun reading the answers and I think I'm going to work on a list of questions so I can keep this idea going. It's fun to work on a social media strategy that doesn't have anything to do with work. I love seeing the group members getting engaged and contributing to the page. Also, I know I've had several people come up to me after class and talk to me about my blog (which I recently posted a link to on the group page) and it's made me feel so good to meet these people that I'd love to get some conversations going on the group page that could carry over to the class setting - I've gained so much personally from the social side of Zumba that I'd just love to see that happen for others as well.
And finally, I'm ecstatic about some new Zumba gear that I bought. I don't know about you all, but the girls at our YMCA are all about the Zumba gear. I only have one official Zumba shirt that I bought at the master class back in June and it's about time I got some more to add to my collection. Geraldine actually hooked me up with a shirt that's too big for her now and I also bought some shirts off eBay that were too big for the seller - I got them for about $10 a shirt which is a super deal. (This also is my way of telling Jim that when he sees that charge from Paypal that he knows what it's for). So expect more photos of me in my Zumba gear in the future.
Enough Zumba love for now. Have a great day everyone!
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