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Sara's City Mania, Philadephia

Thursday

On Thursday morning I worked setup again from 7-11:30 am. I finished up the exhibitor and presenter name tags, and then stood at the registration desk for several hours. There were several AAAI all day certification courses that we had to register participants for, but we really spent most of the morning directing the "suits" who showed up to the Small Business Convention next door to the proper registration desk.

After my shift, I went to lunch with a fellow staff assistant, Wanda. We proceeded to have a highly nutritional lunch (had to have a Philly cheesesteak) including dessert, so being the "fitness professionals" that we are we decided to take a walk up the street and partake in some retail therapy. I had a great time, Wanda is a Philly native with tons of great stories and a truly positive and balanced outlook on life. My fears of being alone the whole time were quickly fading.

At 4pm we had our official staff meeting where we learned about the different rolls we would fulfill during the convention, as well as how to organize steps in the classrooms and run the sound equipment. We were also placed into "on-call" teams. In addition to our assignments, these teams work throughout the convention between sessions to do things like: set up or tear down steps, move weights and other equipment from room to room, and make any other changes necessary to insure the convention runs smoothly. Once again they had pizza for dinner...not the most healthy alternative for fitness professionals but it wasn't my call. I skipped it and ate a protein bar later.

At 7pm I attended my first "masterclass", Diva Dance Step with David Mesirow. He talked for several minutes about choreography and how to spice up moves with turns, off tempo movements and rhythm changes. After that we had an hour long step session where he incorporated some really interesting moves like a hesitation jump, off tempo kicks and some intricate turning patterns. I really enjoyed it, and my new (single!) roommate even commented that I kept up very well. Immediately I began to feel like I fit in and that I would not be making a fool out of myself in front of all the instructors. I thought David was a great instructor, full of good ideas and energy, but the buzz around seemed to be that the term "diva" was really accurate when describing his off stage personality.

I spent the rest of my evening helping to organize the videos at the Sara's City exhibit booth in the company of my new roommate Doris. When we could no longer keep our eyes open we headed up to the room.

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