Blistered, Bruised and Bleeding...Toes?

I know that I promised I would write a follow up to my post about dance camp.  Ya know, something more detailed than just "I'm going to dance camp.  Yay." But I really don't think I can sit down and put my experiences so far into one single post.  Plus I'm lazy.  So here is a little tid-bit of what I'm experiencing...

My ballet experience simply pales in comparison to the training the girls at this camp have.  I'm in the lower group with girls who are twelve years old (there are three other girls my age) and the all have more ballet experience than I do.  Every.  Single.  One.  It's sad. 

So because I have such little training, ballet has been a struggle for me.  We're doing things I've never done before, so while everyone else is perfecting the movement, I'm struggling just to figure out what the heck we're even doing!  Even harder than the ballet though, is the pointe!  My pointe classes this year were only about twenty minutes long, which makes it hard to accomplish a lot.  At camp, the classes are an hour long.  My feet are taking a beating!!

I had a really great pointe day on Tuesday (we only have pointe on Tuesdays and Thursdays).  The teacher said she was really impressed, and that she didn't expect me to do so well because she knew where I was coming from.  (I feel it necessary to say that I am not at all bashing the training I gained from my studio.  I'm simply trying to emphasize the culture shock I'm experiencing!)  My toes hurt a lot, but c'mon, you're bopping around on the very tips of your toes in shoes made of plaster and glue.  Ouch!  What I didn't expect to see, though, when I took of my pointe shoes, was blood leaking through my toe pads.  During the class I had broken the nail on my big toe and my toe started to bleed.  Sexy, I know.

Just in case you've never had the pleasure of breaking your toe nail...and continuing to dance in your pointe shoes...let me inform you that it is in no way, shape or form a pleasant sensation.  My toe has throbbed non stop for the past three days.  I almost cried yesterday in pointe class when I was dancing on the broken-nail-foot, and I never cry!

Broken nail aside, I had new blisters on each pinky toe today, along with all the old blisters on the bottom of my feet.  I bruised three toe nails, and my ballet teacher says she thinks the one I broke will probably fall off...cute.

But for now I'll soak 'em in epsom salts and cross my fingers that nothing falls off!!