Belly Dance

Today was my last full day with Delilah, and just like my other Saturday’s here I haven’t been in the studio at all today. The first part of my day was spent collecting things to be brought back for my presentation: my costume patterns, a magazine with Delilah on the cover, and other various handouts laying around the house.

After that Delilah had me work on an article to be submitted to this site about what I’ve done here. Gilded Serpent is an eMagazine devoted to belly dance. Both Delilah and Laura Rose have been published on this site. It would be amazing if I could get published on the site, but I doubt they will want something from someone who hasn’t been dancing for even a month. Despite this, I put a lot of effort into writing a good article, and I’m happy with it. Delilah is going to read it over and edit it before I submit it, and who knows, maybe I’ll be a published writer.

One of the requirements for submitting to the site is that you also submit a bio page about yourself. This is one of the reasons why I doubt I will be published. I have no idea what my Bio is going to say. “Averill Obee is a high schooler who took up belly dancing for a school project. The end.” I think they are expecting something better than that. I’m sure I’ll think of something. Maybe.

Tomorrow is my first performance in front of non-belly dancers, and I’m not all that worried about it.

That’s a weird feeling.

Look, look what I have! It’s a link where you can find the power belly show! If you download episode 24 (if you click on the episode you can change the option from week-10$ to 5 views to see if for free I think) you can see me looking really awkward and terrified that I was called into the middle of the circle to introduce myself. You should also look at the 6th photo here. THAT’S WHERE I AM, ONLY BEFORE THE WINDOWS WERE PAINTED A PRETTY COLOR!

We checked out the dance space this morning, and everything is apparently perfect. There’s just enough space if we move one of the tables, there are good passage ways to dance in between tables, and there are outlets in all the right places. Three cheers for convenience!

After we got back from that Delilah and I had a meeting with an expert in Feng Shui (why yes, I do understand what that actually means in Chinese, because I take that class in real school.) Delilah has been having problems getting people into the store from the studio, because no one knows it’s there. This seemed odd to me at first, because the store is directly across from the changing room, but there was a girl in one of my classes who actually said “I want to buy a hip scarf, but I don’t know who sells them,” so it must be a legitimate problem. I always thought feng shui was all odd mystical type tricks, but a lot of what she said made sense. There are two doors to the studio, and she said things needed to be made more clear about which was which, so people were confused first coming into the building. She suggested adding a door or window to connect the store and studio more directly, but when that got shut down she suggested a fake window with a picture of the store. She did pull some odd, “if you put a wind chime in the north of the building it’ll make energy flow better” type things, but overall I think she was quite helpful.

One of her suggestions was adding lights to make the studio more inviting, so my next task for the day was climbing on a ladder around a store room packed with merchandise, nailing in nails to hang Christmas lights from. I was terrified I was going to break a table or fall over and break a leg, but the Feng Shui expert was right, the store does look a lot nicer and more inviting now.

After the lights were up Shimmy the magazine came in the mail, and Delilah found a three page article about one of her Hawaii retreats coming up this January. It was a very nice piece that described not only the article, but also the NPT and what they do. It’s a shame there’s only one copy, it would have been nice to bring back for my presentation at school.

After all that work was done, I headed back to my Uncle’s to get ready for the show that was tonight. I had a class right before so this was my last chance to make myself look all nice for the public.

The class beforehand was Delilah’s clinic that she just has people come in and play around with different things. It’s mostly people who just drop in and want to dance. Today’s class was with all the set up for the show after, so there was a really beautiful stage set up to work on. We warmed up a little, and then I really performed for Delilah for the first time. It was a lot of fun. The entire time she cheered and smiled, which was really encouraging. Afterwords she only gave me one bit of advice on what I could really do to improve the piece, but she did say that she was proud of how far I had come before she had to run and get ready to perform. As the band started filtering in from the house they all congratulated me and said that Delilah was talking about how wonderful I had done, and how they heard I was a hit; one person even said she was moved. It was really nice to hear that. Delilah’s such a famous dancer, who has been in this business practically since she was my age, and it’s always been intimidating for me. A lot of times they talk about how girls try to perform too early and make a mess out of themselves; I know they are referring to those who try to get paid, not those who are going to living facilities for volunteer shows, but I don’t want to embarrass her.

I had a mini photo shoot on the stage.

The whole stage was beautiful

Close up!

As more and more people showed up, I sat at the door and talked with the two other women who saw me perform for Delilah in the class before, while we collected the cover charge for those entering. I joked that I’ve gone from carpenter to dancer to bouncer in one day; I’m really getting the full experience.

The performance itself was amazing. House of Tarab is an excellent band. Delilah was amazing. She did a veil piece to the same song that I’m doing a veil piece to and it was amazing to see what she could do with it. Of course she did much more than that one song, and all of that was amazing too. She is such an inspiring performer.

Delilah

I caught her after her performance before she shed her lepord garb

The next dancer was Nadira. She brought a lot of students to see her (the place was absolutely packed) and she also did a great job. I talked to her beforehand and she had actually done ballet and jazz before belly dance but was told she was too curvy (hard to believe considering she was as thin as could be and about six feet tall) and found belly dance through physical therapy.

She reminded me a lot of Melilah, with the blonde hair and pink costume, but I'm sure a more experienced dancer would have noted their style differences.

The final performer was Aubre from Las Angles. She has traveled with the group Belly Dance Superstars, and she was phenomenal. Delilah had said something about her having the most amazing tummy rolls; she wasn’t kidding. I couldn’t believe the things that she could do.

She's not using it in this picture, but she also had a cane that she danced with for awhile. I love the different props. (Ruby's sword still wins)

After all the dancers were done the band played a few songs so everyone could dance. This time I didn’t need anyone to pull me up to the front of the room. I went by myself, and it was a lot of fun. Afterwords the women who was in the class when I couldn’t think of anything to dance to on the spot came up to me and in a somewhat forward way said something along the lines of, “wow two weeks ago in that class you couldn’t even shimmy, now look at you up there shimmying and layering, you’ve gotten so much better!” She’s right though. Honestly, it’s going to be weird ever dancing without some shimmies now, that’s how ingrained they are in my mind now.

All over the show was a thousand times better than the one at the restaurant.

My day started off somewhat on the wrong foot. I headed over to the studio, only to meet an unhappy looking women whom I had never seen before. Apparently there had been a mix up about when a private lesson was scheduled, so I walked in at exactly the wrong moment where the women wasn’t pleased that she had been misplaced in Delilah’s hectic schedule, and I appeared to be another student with a private lesson. I apologized and left after an invitation from Delilah (who showed up right after our awkward exchange) to join them. People expect private lessons to be private, and I wanted to respect that, so I went back to the house to stretch and warm up.

After Delilah’s lesson was over, I headed back to the studio, only to find that the plumbing was all a mess, and that a plumber was coming. I hadn’t danced at all yet, and I really needed to practice still, so I ignored it and did the best I could to practice while a plumber removed the entire toilet not 10 yards away from me. It was actually good practice to tune out my surroundings, so I am completely focused on my dance.

I thought about what I wrote yesterday, and I’ve decided that the key to balancing the personal side of the dance and having the shield of acting as a belly dancer, is that I, MYSELF, am the belly dancer. It’s like a hybrid. I’m playing myself only as if I have been taking lessons since I was 2, not since November 2nd.

I did a lot of different things with my piece today. I would go through the entire song and only focus on the back of my body, or only focus on my hips, so I was forced to make different decisions then the ones I always make when I just dance without any particular focus. Even when I couldn’t stick completely with the focus of the dance I was able to think of new things to do to switch it up a little. Which is good to keep everything fresh. Eventually the plumber left, and I got to run through my dance a few times on my own before it was time for power belly.

Today there were only three of us in the power belly class. The other two girls also take the teen class I enjoy so much on Sunday’s. They’re friends, so it’s kind of hard to bust in on their conversation, but I try to be more social with them then others, they just seem a little more accessible than the intense adults, even if the adults are really nice. Overall it was a good class. I could recognize a lot of the motions and catch on faster than before, because I already knew how they worked at a slower pace, which was good for me.

After power belly we had rehearsal for Sunday, and I am suddenly VERY glad that I didn’t have to work with choreography for my entire dance. As a group we are doing one piece that has a 7 step circle dance (you do the seven steps and you repeat only tweaked slightly,) and those seven steps were almost more than I can handle. I’m just not good with remembering moves. in a particular order. It made it even harder because Erik’s drum lesson was there playing for us, and in the breaks while Delilah was trying to explain things to me, Erik and he would continue practicing. My brain couldn’t handle so much going on at once, but I think I have the dance down enough that I will at least survive on Sunday.

Tomorrow I’m getting up nice and early so Delilah and I can go check out the performance space, so we have a better idea acoustically and space wise what we will be dealing with.

Today was day two of just working with my music and trying to refine my dance. I pinned on all my flowers to a full costume and bobby pinned the huge flower into my hair, so it didn’t go flying off while I danced, and then I prepared myself to dance. For a few hours I was just alone at the studio. I mostly worked with my music, but every now and then I would throw in a different song, so I didn’t get so repetitive. I could already feel myself losing energy, because I have practiced the same 6:30 of music so many times.

A little later Christine came over to work one-on-one with me for my dance. It was the first time I had really performed at all while I’ve been here, with just someone watching me dance by myself. It was weird at first, but I got into it. It really helped to have a fresh perspective because a lot of what I was doing had become so repetitive; it’s hard to think of new things on your own. It was especially nice to have the advice from someone who has performed before, so all the technical bits of dealing with an audience were dealt with.

There are two phrases I have to keep repeating to myself to keep my best: I AM a belly dancer, and I’m a dancer who DANCES. The latter I have explained before, but the first one was advice that Laura Rose gave me near the beginning of my stay here. Everyone who is coming to see me is expecting to see a belly dancer, and because of that I have the right to be a belly dancer, even if I don’t feel like I am. I just have to play the part of a belly dancer, just like acting. That idea is easier for me to deal with than just me dancing. I’ve been around theatre all my life, and there’s a kind of protection about not being yourself. I know I have imperfections, but the idealistic belly dancer whom I’m playing doesn’t. That idea just helps a lot when it comes to just letting go.

Anyways, after Christine left I ran through my song a few times again, but I got really bored with it, so I moved on to some music that was just at the studio. One of Laura Rose’s CDs, Techno Belly Dance, was particularly fun to dance to. Looking back now it seems so silly of me to think that I would be choreographing a dance, because half the fun of this is that I just put on this CD and danced to it the way I felt. I didn’t have someone else tell me how I should be doing things, I just had an empty studio, some music, and a veil. At the beginning I couldn’t understand just feeling like doing a certain move, but I totally get it now. It isn’t planned, it’s just what you feel like. It was actually really liberating. Another interesting thing I noticed once I just got to be free and dance my way, was that there are lots of influences from my life that I put in naturally. I took ballet as a child and sometimes I felt like the moment needed a touch of ballerina, so I would put my arms up in the way you picture ballerina’s doing and do a little turn. What happened more often though was that I would use some of the basic positions in Karate. I took Karate lessons for three years, and I guess they stuck more than I thought. The basic center positions for both belly dancing and Karate aren’t all that different. Your knees are bent and you are upright in a balanced, center position so you can move in any direction. It was funny when I realized I was doing some of the same forward lunges I did so long ago to punches and kicks, only in a smoother slower way to accentuate the foot. It really is such a personal thing.

I just hope that I can keep that personal bit in a song I’ve danced to about 50 times now.

Maybe that’s my problem. I just realized how conflicting what I’ve said tin this post is. I can’t pretend to be something else if I really want the personalness of this dance to come across. I didn’t even realized that until I just wrote it. I’m going to have to think on this.

I had a basic class with Delilah, but that time seems to go so slow compared to working on my music, or by myself. I mean it’s good to come back to the basics and ground myself, but it just doesn’t seem as useful or as fun than just playing by myself, discovering the ways I like to move.

I’m excited to get up tomorrow and do it again.

Today is going to be a short post, because today was the first day (including weekends) since I arrived that I haven’t spent at least 7 hours at Delilah’s.

This morning I got up extra early to have breakfast with my grandma, then my uncle and I went to pick up my mom from the airport. Being the kind and caring mother that she is, she planned her time to visit my grandma to coincide with my final performance.

At 4 I said good bye to my mom and had my first drum lesson with Erik Brown. It was fascinating to be able to reproduce the beats that I have been listening to for two weeks. They all have different names that are really adjectives that describe the feel of the beat. For example one of the names of a beat is the Arabic word for Cabbage, and it is used to designate a round beat (cabbages are round). There’s also names such as the big one and the little one. I really enjoyed myself, and Erik said I did a really good job. He even joked that if he brought me in to his regular student’s class he would be mad, because I got it so quickly. He also suggested I take up the drum. I kind of like it actually, maybe it’s something I should consider. Thank God for starting band in the fifth grade and understanding a time signature.

After this I had some time to just play around with a veil. Next I participated in the Beginner/Intermediate class. I don’t really know why, but this class always feels colder to me for some reason. I think it may be because the women in the class are past the oh-I’m-new-let’s-just-have-fun-belly-dancing stage, and are really trying to get the moves, but haven’t broken into the I-know-this-so-well-I’m-just-going-to-smile-and-play phase. I also may be making it up completely.

Just these few things still took four hours. I don’t know how the time passes so quickly.

Tomorrow is the rehearsal for Sunday, and I have a lot of work to do before I rehears me piece, so I am going to get up and go to the studio extra early and work on my dance. I have some exercises and moves I want to try out.

Wish me luck

Well I finally have everything together. I went over to the house this morning and Delilah recomended I listen to House of Tarab’s CD to look for music for veil work. House of Tarab is the band based at the studio, and it is the band that I hear perform live last Saturday. I liked their version of a famous song for my veil piece: Lama Badayaddathana (aka Lama Bada). Delilah also thought I needed a more traditional piece to wrap it all up, and I am using another HOT song for that: Tutah.

Originally the total time of these songs was around ten minutes. I could not deal with that much time on stage; I just don’t have that large of a base to draw upon, so Laura Rose, who edits all her own music, helped me cut it down to 6:30, a much more reasonable length of time.

The rest of the day I just played around with my new song. It’s exciting to have everything in line for my performance, which so happens to be in less than a week. (Yikes!)

I had three classes tonight. The first was Laura Rose’s Beginner class. We worked on walking shimmies per my request. The second class was Delilah’s filmed eStudio class. I started to really feel the hours of dancing I’ve done today. My legs are killing me, and my feet have lost all feeling. Good thing I had another advanced shimmy madness class. I was ready to be done, but I stuck with it and did much better than I did last week.

I came back to Delilah’s for dinner with Erik Brown, the drummer of HOT; Delilah, and Dahlia. They are all talking about how there are all these new dancers and musicians who are undercutting cover charges. HOT, Melilah, and Ruby had a $10 cover charge, but these people are asking for $5 or $6. This means that these people who are depending on this for a living can’t get gigs. It’s so interesting hearing about all the issues of trying to make your living as an artist.

Tomorrow I have a drum class with Erik and a few classes with Delilah, but pretty much everything else is going to be me preparing for Sunday.

I’m going to sleep well the next few nights.

Today I started looking for music for my dance. I already had one song in mind that I heard in the Shimmy Madness class I took last Monday. It’s called Egyptian Drummer by RLP feat. It’s an Egyptian pop song that kind of talks about the drum beat. You have to listen to the song to understand, but it’s cool. What I’ve decided to do for my performance is start with a slower traditional song, so I can do veil work to it, and show some of the more traditional music, and then I’m going to switch into this song I just described, to show the contrast between the two. After the teen’s class today I asked the teacher, Bella, about what music I could use for the veil work. She suggested this artist, Amr Diab, and I’m listening to him now. I like his work, but I think it’s still a little too modern for what I’m trying to do with this piece.

The teen’s class itself was good. We worked a little with the song that I’ve decided on. I continue to practice in my pants for the show, and I haven’t fallen over while actually dancing, so that’s a good sign. I’m hoping the next  few days I’ll basically be working in the studio on finding music and working with it to see what I can do with it. Honestly, I kind of just want to have the studio to myself so I can just play around with it.

Instead of staying for the power belly class that Bella offers, my cousin finally found time in her crazy schedule to take me into the city. I’ve left Fremont (where the studio is) before this, but I haven’t really gotten into the city before today. We took the bus down town, and walked through pike place. This was taken later, but look there’s me!

It was raining out, so I don't look my best, but I had to take one tourist photo

My cousin had to go to the magic shop to pick up some props for her show, but we didn’t spend too much time shopping. We went over to the Underground for a tour. All of Seattle is actually an entire story higher than it used to be, because when it was built it was built right at sea level, which caused major problems at high tide, so after a huge fire (some idiot thought putting out a grease fire with water was a good idea) that burned down most the town they took a ton (actually multiple tons…) of dirt off the local hill side and raised the streets up an entire story. Below the sidewalks of the old street are still there, and were actually in use for a long time. Now they are mostly out of repair, but this tour runs around under the streets, giving you a history of the town and the area. It was pretty fascinating.

A lot of the underground was dirty, rubble filled passages, but there were some sections that were in some sort of repair, like this old bar.

After the tour we went out for dinner. It was discovered that both Laura Rose and I are Sushi fans (although I must say I’m a vegetarian so I’ve never had raw fish sushi,) so we headed down to the Wasabi Bistro here. I don’t think it’s the same company that ran the one in Levis Commons, but it was good none the less. It actually had some fancier vegetarian rolls. I’m used to like avacado sushi with one ingredient in it, but I was able to get something fancier here, and it was really yummy. One of the reasons I came out here was to reconnect with family. I don’t live near any cousins, uncles, or aunts, and my family (on both sides) stopped having family reunions when I was twelve and my cousins were twenty and over. This is the second time that I have gotten to reconnect with older cousins in the last year now that I’m older. During family reunions my older cousins would always go hang out together after all together family time, and I would go back to the room with my family. I am so different than I was when I last saw these people, it’s amazing, and I get to stay up and just hang out with them, instead of leaving when the adults do. I mean I am in no way an adult, but the age difference between my cousins and I isn’t such a big deal now that I am at least a little older. I’m still blatantly younger, but that’s okay. My cousin has apparently been referring to me as having developed into a sentient being, and I kind of like that. Anyways, we had a lot of good conversations over dinner about school, her performing troops, and other things like that.

Anyways, after dinner we walked back to her apartment and passed this sweet looking wall.

Why yes, that wall is coated in chewed gum. The entire bulding was!

We walked up a huge hill to get to my cousin’s neighborhood, and apparently it closes whenever it snows, and everyone just uses it as a sledding hill. In fact, most of the hills in the city turn into sledding hills when it snows. Laura Rose apparently had a sled with her once and started sledding down the hill in front of the market even. It is my new dream to sled down the street. We made it to the apartment, and she took me onto her roof, which overlooks the entire city. It was amazing.

This photo doesn't do the view justice at all.

It was a good day, and I can say I have a better idea on the dealing-with-rain situation, if I do ever actually live here. Two things will have to go if I do: my shoes and my haircut. I mistakenly didn’t wear rain boots when i left the house this morning, so my feet were soaked by the time I got home. My hair style also requires that I blow dry my bangs, so they poof just right (sad, I know) and they die hard core when they get wet, but I think I can live without blowfish and bangs in exchange for sledding down a closed down city street.

Today we’re going to play a game!

It’s called the Guess-What-Inspired-My-Costume Game! Your prize for participating is a picture of me in my costume at the end of the post! WHOO!

Was my costume inspired by:

a) Autumn Leaves

b) Sunflowers

c) Bumble Bees

d) Gold

Read the rest of this blog to find out!

Yesterday I headed over to Delilah’s for a NPT meeting. While the women there made more flowers for your hair, I worked on sewing coins to the bottom of my vest, the last step in finishing my costume. It was tedious to hand sew them all, but I finished, and I am really actually 100% done with my costume now. YAY!!

I got in my costume and paraded it around. I really just like wearing it. I’m so happy with the way it turned out. I had my doubts in the beginning because I didn’t know how I was going to balance my taste for subtlety with the tradition of making belly dance costumes as sequiny and shiny as possible, but my costume is wonderful. It’s unique, but that makes it perfect.

After reluctantly changing out of my costume I went back to helping the NPT make flowers, but soon enough it was time to stop, because Delilah and I had to get ready to go see my first professional Belly Dance Show. House of Tarab, the band based in Delilah’s studio, was playing at a restaurant called Navya. The sign out front said Thai & Asian food, but it was mainly and Indian restaurant. Naturally they hired a middle eastern band and belly dancer. (The poor Indian man who was our cab driver clearly thought we were insane when Delilah tried to explain this; He just turned up his music in Hindi and started to sing along.)

The restaurant itself was terrible. We were there for an hour before anyone even took out orders, and it was past 9 by the time our food actually came. Of the three dishes on the table none of them were very good, and were even undercooked in one case. It was disappointing, because I love Indian food.

The dancing itself was amazing. Two dancers went on: Melilah (I’m not sure if that’s how you spell it) and Ruby. Melilah was first. I was really excited because she came out with a veil, but she only used it for a minute which was a little disappointing. It was amazing to see a professional dancer really in her element. She just looked like she was having a lot of fun.

Her costume was amazing

I was impressed.

In between the dancers the band called for people to get up and dance. At first no one got up, but they called us out on that. The majority of the people in the room were fellow belly dancers supporting their peers, so the band said it was ridiculous no one was dancing. The women who was at my lesson when I couldn’t come up with anything to dance was there, and she dragged me up to the dance floor. At first I said no, because they were really experienced dancers up there, but she wouldn’t hear of it, so I gave in and I tried not to worry about it. I didn’t do anything amazing or awe inspiring, but last night I was a dancer who danced. It was a good thing.

Next up was Ruby. She was the more experienced dancer and has won tons of prizes. She was my favorite of the two. She had so much spirit, and she would just bounce off the floor. It was incredible to watch. (plus her costume was yellow =])

She used more props than Melilah did. She had this sword which she did a lot of amazing things with, and zills (finger cymbals).

I know that it's blurry, but this picture captures the hops that she did that were so compelling.

We stayed way after the show ended, because we had to ride home with the band, and the band had to eat, so It was around 1 by the time I got to bed. I was exhausted.

Today I’m going to work on finding music and taking one of Jenny’s classes, but then I am going into the city with Laura Rose. I’m excited to finally see Seattle.

Time to finish the game we started at the beginning of this post. Drum roll please…

The answer is…

B) SUNFLOWERS

This morning my alarm went off at 6:30, so I could drag myself out of bed early enough to make myself presentable to go to school for the first time in two weeks. I did my make up and put on a nice outfit, regretting that I didn’t wash my hair last night. I rushed out the door two minutes after I was supposed to be at Delilah’s, but luckily it’s about a two minute walk to her house, so I beat two people there anyways. Delilah, Christine, another women that has been to all the NPT events, a women I haven’t ever met, and I piled into the back of Delilah’s van to travel outside of Seattle to go to Women of Wisdom and Men of Valor day.

The days started out with coffee and a man telling us that anything deep and disturbing the kids came up with must, by law, be reported to a school official, but you should still ask the kids about their dark background. The high school we were at was an alternative school that you had to apply to to get into. It was mostly filled with kids who didn’t fit into the large public schools in their district. A lot of them have, as the principal said, “come over a lot of hard hurtles in their lives.”

Once the girls came into the gym we were in, we split up into groups of 8: 4 girls and 4 women. We were given a question and talked about it for half an hour in our group, then the question was opened to the entire room and tables could stand up and say what they got out of it at their table. Then everyone would get up and move to a new table, and it would all start again. I stayed with Delilah the entire time, because I wasn’t actually supposed to be there (I was allowed, but I was signed up in the “women” category without giving my age, and I was younger than most of the people in the “girl” category.)

The first table I didn’t talk much, because I was so unsure about my place in the room. The question was the one that was posed in my blog yesterday. One girl carried on most of the conversation, and just like I expected, there wasn’t a lot of ground breaking territory covered. It was funny hearing Delilah and another women argue a little, underhandedly. My favorite was when the older women, a teacher at the school, said something along the lines of I’ll tell some of my bigger busted girls to pull their shirts up because they are too revealing, and they say can’t find any modest clothing, because it’s all sold to be sexy.” About 5 minutes later Delilah, who, let’s remember, is all about embracing your body and not being ashamed of what you have, said something along the likes of “In middle school I ran around with low cut shirts, because I was coming into my body, and all my hormones enjoyed having a little bit of sexuality, and then people told me that I was being too revealing, and I got confused about whether my body was right or not.” I’m not positive if Delilah was directing that to the older teacher or not, but that’s the way I took it.

At the second table I sat down and the women and girl next to me were having a conversation that I was only half listening to when I heard the girl say that she was a Unitarian. I perked right up. Religiously, I’m a Unitarian Universalist, and I am actually pretty active in it. Unfortunately, it’s not a well known religion, and there are very few people that are Unitarians, so I’ve never just met someone on the street who happened to be a Unitarian before, and I got really excited, and spoke up, “OOH Me too!” The girl replied with “yeah, I was wondering, I saw your necklace” (I have a chalice necklace I wear all the time, and the chalice is kind of the symbol of UUism.) It turns out the women in the conversation was a UU too! I was amazed.

Anyways, back to the day that relates to my Winterim. At that table we talked about the challenges that women face on a day-to-day basis. Again, the conversation was interesting, but not really ground breaking. We talked about pressure and the competition to succeed. In general, and for me personally, it was a better conversation than at the first table, and I really feel like I contributed to the table. After that we split for a 10 minute break and the girl that I was talking to before, and I had a really weird conversation. She kept saying how weird it was that I was in high school. I’m two years younger than her, and she thought that I was 23. She kept saying how she was amazed how I expressed myself so well, and how I dressed sophisticated. I was flattered, but I didn’t have anything to say back. I really need to work on my small talk capabilities. I feel like I should have been able to come up with some sort of compliment back, but all I could do was laugh awkwardly and say “Well, thank you.” Because of my lack of social skills the conversation ended pretty quickly, and I drank my coffee in silence as Delilah promoted Power Belly to the women next to me.

The final table was absolutely terrible. There were only two other girls at my table, and both of them refused to talk. The question was how do we over come challenges. The adults kept running away with the little meaningless comments that they forced out of the two girls. I tried to help as much I could, but there wasn’t a lot I could do. Thankfully that session was short, and the pain was ended quickly. There was a short moment when I thought the guys were coming back, so we could all talk together, but I was sadly mistaken. Apparently the day was over, and they just wanted to feed everyone Pizza. Again I was called upon to use my non-existent small talk skills to talk to random women around the room. It was almost as ugly as the last table conversation.

All in all I didn’t get that much out of the day. I mean it was interesting to compare my experiences to experiences of girls across the country, but that’s about it. I just felt kind of spoiled and out of place all day. I don’t mean to be snobbish, but I have lived an incredibly comfortable life. My family isn’t living in a mansion with 3 Lamborghinis, but both my parents have always been there for me, they have always found it in their budget to send me to any kind of class, lesson, or school to enrich my life. The worst thing that has ever really happened to me is my parents getting a divorce, and that it’s not like I dealt with them fighting or refusing to cooperate. In fact, a lot of things have gotten better since it happened. This is radically different than a lot of the girls in that room. At one point at the second table the conversation moved on to the fact that none of the girls at the table thought you couldn’t depend on men to help raise children. They basically said that men just abandon their kids, and they all came from split families. The girl I was talking to had a good step dad and that’s about it. I spoke up, and just said “not all men leave when divorce happens, I mean my father and I may have a better relationship now than ever.” And I swear one of the girls just glared at me and was like “I’ve never known my dad. I tried to talk to him for like two weeks and he just blew me off.” I didn’t know what to do. I mumbled something about just saying that not all men are that way, not that none are, but she just insisted in her point. I just felt like I had given the girl the impression that I was saying “Well, MY Dad loves me enough to come to all my sports games and school plays. You just aren’t as good as me.” It always makes me uncomfortable in situations like that. I want to sympathize when people talk about these deeper challenges in their lives, and I do, but it always feels like it comes across as me patting their head from my pedestal.

Anyways, we got back to Delilah’s before one, and I got into my costume, so I could show it off to the NPT. I really like my costume a lot. It’s not great workmanship, but it looks REALLY good. Delilah pulled out a little best that she thought I could copy the pattern of to make my own out of my left over fabric. It actually worked perfectly with my costume on its own, but I need something to wear for Winterim fair, so I changed back into street clothes and examined how it was put together. It was just three pieces, and I talked with Christine for a moment to confirm everything I observed by looking at the vest. The NPT left, and Delilah soon followed, having errand to run. I was home alone, and I was ready for the training wheels to come off. I found paper to make a pattern out of. I lined up the fabric. I cut the pattern. I headed upstairs and confronted my biggest enemy. I took that sewing machine by the horns and used everything I knew about making the costume to put together the entire vest. It even has a few pleats in it, so I really mean everything. I only had to pull out one pleat, and I didn’t even have to reset the machine. I can definitely say that I have conquered the costume making process at this point. I’m so pleased.

By this time Delilah had returned, and we headed over to the studio to do veil work. There was one other women there, and it was a lot of fun. I wore my harem pants, so I can get used to moving in them without catching my foot in the leg. I love working with veils. There is a lot more to veil work than I thought, but the reason I love it is still the same: Veils are fool proof and pull your mind away from everything. Yes, you can screw up, but the veils moves so beautifully through the air no matter how you move them. I can look awkward trying to shimmy and do a figure eight (in fact I usually do,) but a veil just can’t look awkward while it’s flying through the air, and once I get lost in the fun of twirling around the veil everything else is easier. I did better the entire practice, because I was having fun. I wasn’t comparing myself to the other women in the room, and I didn’t feel judged, so I just let go and had fun with it. It was a good practice. I still don’t have music, but suddenly performing in eight days doesn’t seem completely impossible.

I’m off to go work on my vest some more before I go to bed. Sorry this post is so long, I had a lot to say.