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Maybe they'd have to hold each other when it rose, all organe and full and close. Maybe that's where our romantic notions about the moon first came from. Two people holding each other to keep their hearts from breaking, because everybody they knew was dying in the cold rocks and dust piles a quarter million miles away...
The Brothers K
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søndag, desember 28, 2003
Merry Christmas to you all! I hope that you all had really awesome celebrations with your families and friends and whomever happened to drop by *grin* We had an exciting day. The Christmas mass wasn't really anything special, unfortunately; our church here isn't half as vibrant as the one back at Stanford. Oh well, we worshipped in our own quiet way. I got a lot nice presents, stuff that I had really needed for a while like a Stanford sweatshirt (thanks Dave!) and glasses. Then during dinner (which we eat around 1pm) the power went off for the third time in three days. It was very amusing, since everyone in our house was used to it by that point (we have frequent outages in our neighborhood because of the trees and animals), but our guests were not. They shrieked as we just kept on talking. Hehe.
Last night I went to a local contra dance, for lack of any better dance options. My aunt dances contras in the area, so she knew about this one and suggested that we go together. It was really interesting to see what contras are like over here compared to at Stanford. I enjoyed myself muchly, but I found myself slipping into square dance habits like having my hand out all the time. =) The caller was some lady from Philadelphia, and I personally thought she sucked a lot. She'd give one-word calls ("alemand!" "swing!" "star!") for the first two or three iterations, and then stop for the rest of the song, and just let the band (who was called "Turtle Soup" hehe) repeat indenfinitely until she said something like "last time - swing your partner." She didn't do anything creative with the calls, and she never sang/chanted the calls like you hear sometimes around Stanford. Very boring. The band, according to my aunt, was unusual for the area because it had too much of an "Appalachian flavor," but it sounded like pretty normal folk music to me. I guess I'm just not well versed enough in those things to know :)
Despite the caller they actually had pretty challenging dances. We did contra-corners, which are a lot of fun, but I kept getting mixed up when I changed from active to inactive. They also did a very unusual double contra, which I had never ever seen the likes of before. There were two contra lines, and there was a different caller for each line, each calling a different dance. There were lots of places to stomp and make noise (i.e. during swings) in the dance, so once people started to get the hang of it they started to play off each other's rhythms. Stomp patterns were echoed, they tried to outdo each other in volume, they created complimentary stomp sequences, etc. Very very very very cool! I wish I could have done that sort of thing all night long. Last contra was a folk rendition of that "Hot Town, Summer in the City" oldie. Made me laugh and sing along with everybody else :)
I could write for ages about how my vacation is and what my plans are, but I actually should go DO those things that I'm supposed to isntead of just cataloging them lol. So off on a shopping spree I go! Happy Holidays to you all!! Can't wait til I get back to school to see everyone again :)
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