Cultural Stuff

Recently, and without leaving Bloomington, I've explored some different areas of America and discovered some pretty interesting things. Last weekend there was a Native American Pow Wow held in the building next to mine (everyone here says 'Indian', I've had it drummed into me on holidays to Canada to say 'Native American'). A Pow Wow basically consists of Indians/ Native Americans dancing, singing and drumming. They sang a prayer for an 89-year-old woman, who was some kind of tribal elder, initiated a really little girl into the troupe of dancers, and danced around wearing a lot of feathers. This was a major distraction from work, because I would time my lunch break so I could watch the 'Grand Entrance', which was the main dance, and then it would inevitably be an hour late. You can't do homework when you could be missing a valuable and educational cultural experience (I learnt very little, I just stood there, watched and ate.)

I have made better friends with some guys on my floor who are stepbrothers. One of them is part Potawatomi Indian and dances through flaming hoops at an Indian summer camp in the holidays, so that was interesting. He makes his own moccassins and his Native American name is 'White Lightning,' so that was pretty interesting.

In the spirit of American Halloween, which, at the time of writing this, doesn't even begin for another two hours but I am already a bit sick of because it's been going on since October the first, we had a floor Halloween social on Monday. We were meant to watch Hocus Pocus but ended up watching Paranormal Activity 3. I expected it to be terrifying but, in my opinion, it wasn't.

I went to a bizarrely premature Halloween party with the guys from my floor on Friday night, and ended up running into nearly everyone from Kent, and two people I knew from the IU TV station and class respectively, 'Meredith' and 'Kurt'. Those are their real names but I put them in inverted commas because I can't get over how people have names I have only ever heard on American TV shows. I also, for the first time in my life, met an actual racist. His name was Hank and he was from Kentucky, visiting Indiana for a volleyball tournament. I can't recall much of our conversation because I was tipsy and the party was very loud, but at one point he said "and that's why I hate black people," gesturing to the crowd of black people who were dancing next to us. I've recently tried to tell this story to a few other people, but it's very hard to quote him directly with the words 'and that's why I hate black people' in a public place.