This is  Alberto writing.

Last night we couldn’t sleep on account of the anxiety and uncertainty we were experiencing about the outcome of our struggle to make it through both days of qualifying rounds. The truth is that one week before traveling, the good doctors at Tulane hospital wanted to look for possible artery blockages in my (Alberto) body, and were not too happy about my refusal to let them poke his veins, and his insistence on traveling anyway.

Our adventure in Buenos Aires has been full of excitement, including me getting very nervous with uncontrollable anxiety and dancing with pain in the chest. Yesterday he chewed two aspirins before our round, and after the second song he put a nitroglycerin pill under the tongue. That helped a lot, and our dance was a great deal better than the day before. We actually enjoyed it so much that our hopes were raised to a reasonable level of expectation. We were so proud of each other.

The morning started with a very pleasing surprise, we received an email that read,

Alberto and Valorie, how is everything,?

What a surprise seeing you participating in the Dance World Cup! I did not know that you were in Bs. As. nor that I’d be judging your dancing yesterday! I congratulate you for your simple, elegant and musical dancing, and for the courage it took to join 470 participating couples! It was odd having to give a score to people I love and admire. I hope you are chosen to continue

No judge knows the points the other judges score. We are constantly watched and monitored so we don’t speak with each other or even exchange looks. So I don’t know how you fared… The score range is from 5 to 9 points, but nobody gives a 9 to anybody, because if the points given by a judge are too high with respect to the others, it is discarded. So I gave you an 8 to make sure it counts and gets added to the total score.

Much luck today!

It certainly helps being noticed and recognized, but that could actually work both ways. Anyway, we got on our way to Festival headquarters with mixed emotions, already wondering how my heart would handle the added excitement of the competition, even God forbid if we’d made it to the finals. We were certainly disappointed when our names were not called among the list of 65 couples moving on to the semifinals Friday. We actually placed 150 with a total score of 6.583. But considering all we had to deal with, we are very grateful of being able to be here, to have participated in two intense journeys, and to have danced our hearts out, literally and physically as well.

We are forever grateful to our sponsors, our friends and our peanut gallery for the unconditional show of love and support.