A day worth blogging about

Yeah.  Really good day!  Let me start from the beginning:

This Saturday began at 11am, when I woke up.  A very refreshing sleep!  I don't have to work on Saturdays, but I went anyway because today is the second GRAND opening of the Heritage Center.  They had their first grand opening in December for the community in -20 degree weather.  The regional director of Alaskan national parks was attending today's event. 

I took a mosey down to the road and saw an elderly lady scooting herself along in a push wheelchair coming upon an intersection.  I asked her if she wanted help crossing the street and she accepted.  She told me she was going to the grocery store which was kind of on the way for me, so I pushed her on over there.  However, I forgot that most of the roads in Kotzebue aren't paved and actually pretty rocky, so it was a little tougher than I expected, but we got there and that was another nice start to the day.

The Heritage wasn't packed, but had a nice, comfortable amount of people to keep the event a fun success.  There was food, cake, a ribbon-cutting ceremony, gospel music, and traditional Inupiaq drumming and dancing full of stories in between songs.

On gospel music:
I want to put this as politely as possible. It is not exactly pleasant sound, the ladies' voices.  The music is reminiscent of the Mennonite worship music we listened on my mission trip to Appalachian Kentucky.  However, these women sing at an incredibly high pitch that does not gel well with the Alaskan Eskimo accent.  Nonetheless, you can tell that their hearts are in the music and that is enough to earn my appreciation.  KOTZ, the local Kotzebue radio station, plays this music every Sunday.  Feel free to stream it to our very own computer from www.kotz.org.

On native drumming and dancing:

I had a blast with this one.  A line of men of all ages sit in a row with there drums, drumming the same beat, while both women and men dance a synchronized dance.  The dance is the same for both sexes except men get to move their feet with the beat (women don't move their feet).  The men's stomping is accentuated during loud beat to the point to the point that the whole dance is performed in a crouched position. This dancing style is actually pretty cool and I suspect it will soon catch on at high school dances and football games.  The dances usually tell a story, like a hula, sometimes about animals or a hunt.  There was one dance called the "walrus dance" in which the dancers even made sounds like a walrus.  Traditional Inupiaq dancing was banned in villages when missionaries came to this area and now these dancers are trying to teach old songs and dances to these communities again.  Oh yeah!  The best part!  I got to dance with them!  Yeah.  Cool beans!

The next part of this excellent day was when the grand opening was over.  There was leftover food!  Arriba!  I now have a gallon Ziploc full of vegetable, half of one full of fruit, and a bunch of provolone and cheddar cheese.  There is also the equivalent of 3/4 a cake in the fridge at work, so I have that to look forward next week.

I have more to write, but I will save it for my next post.  I have video of both the singing and dancing that I can't attach to the blog.  I'll see if I can get them on Facebook.  Blogging again real soon.