Powwow (and other news)

So, Powwow happened on the 14th. The day before (Friday the 13th) I had to drive an hour northward to pick up Josh so he could attend the dinner and meetings. By the way, I am on the Native Advisory Council for Willamette, so I had to go to a dinner on Friday and meetings. Because she is in the club, Alexis got to go to dinner. She was invited to the meetings but respectfully declined.

I was rather annoyed to, but got to get up at 8am on Saturday morning to head over for meetings. Josh and I were in the meetings until 11:15, at which time we left to prep for powwow. At 11:30 I started getting things together for vendors to arrive. I had the clipboard of doomy-doom, and was vendor relations. Basically, I checked them in and made sure that they did not swap spots on us. Alexis did the same job, only on the inside. Most of the time, we did swap out when I was finally really cold and wanted to swap for warming-up time.

It was raining (okay, drizzling) and windy, so the drops were being blown into us under the gazebo-popup thing. Which blew totally away once, and partly away another two or three times. Funfun.

Anywho, the vendors were amazingly nice. The bumps were smoothed over very quickly and nicely so we had no trouble once everyone was set up. There was a lot of friendliness and gaiety. Alexis and I were working for the first few hours, into powwow proper, which started at 4pm. Annie came by to hang out, but Alexis and I were babysitting a booth, then doing offical stuff for a bit before we could sit down. By the time we were able to sit and chat, we wanted food. Annie had already eaten and was bored and felt kind of like we didn't want to hang out, which was totally usou.

We had a lot of interesting cultural lessons. There were a few whistling of the drums (asking for the drums to sing for a specific reason), as well as TWO feathers being dropped and having to be retrieved. There is an entire ceremony that goes into retrieving the feathers, as they can stand for a range of things. The most commonly accepted are a) sacredness of the feather needs to be honoured, and b) a fallen warrior that needs to be prayed for. In b, it is believed that a soldier has fallen, a life was dropped, and that we need to give it new life and honour the soldier.

We got TIUA students to dance, and Alexis showed off her dancing skills that we have painfully been working on for the past week. We will continue the dance practice still, however, because it is good exercise and more fun than treadmills and bicycles followed by crunches on a mat. It works the entire body and improves posture! However, our first lesson and a half were on thin carpet of concrete, so we kind of fucked our legs over before we even started, which caused pain. Sadly, I couldn't dance well.

Josh competed in the grass dance competition! At first there were only 3 or 4 other dancers, so he had good odds. Others showed up by the time of the contest. Unfortunately, out of practice, Josh didn't win. That is okay, he tried! He looked damn hot, too, since his legs were nicely exposed and I could watch him shake it. haahaa. Okay, shake it is the wrong descriptor, but that is okay. He is sexy anyway.

Now I am very hurriedly trying to study for my Japanese exam tomorrow (it is already quarter after midnight and I haven't had the time. Maybe I should have really skipped Coraline). I did my FAFSA in 15 minutes with little knowledge since I haven't done my taxes. I did most of my reading and a shitty commentary for class. Go me.

Gotta go study and cuddle Josh some more before he leaves for his Finals tomorrow. Ganbatte!!

~N