Potlatch

Today started out as any other.  It was dark and I was tired.  I slept pretty good last night and didn't wake up at all until 5 minutes before the alarm was to go off.  Good sleep, but I was still wanting more.  I got up anyway and had a shower.  I continued my morning routine with cereal and Sportscentre to watch the highlights from last nights games.  Sonja staggered out of bed still half asleep and joined me before I took of to work.

Work was slow.  The clinic was closed and there was only one doctor who was actually the on call doctor so he wasn't seeing patients.  Strangely the day went by pretty quick which was nice.

I came home and we went to the store to pick up our groceries for next week.  Sonja made the list while I was at work.  It was nice to go tonight because the store was still mostly stocked and we got everything we needed.  We came home and cooked up some chicken burgers because they are quick and delicious.  We were planning on turkey noodle soup, but didn't have anything to put in the soup but chicken burgers are a nice back up plan.

There was a potlatch going on tonight.  Actually it started this morning but we didn't go until tonight.  We didn't know when it actually started so we decided to go at 6:30, after the first period of the Oilers game tonight.  We thought that everything would be underway and we would be able to sneak in and just observe from a distance.  So we watched the first period and it was great.  The Oilers scored the first goal early.  It was Taylor Hall's  second goal.  Unfortunately it was tied up shortly after that.  Near the end of the period the Oilers scored three more goals in 1:08 of each other.  It was tough to leave the game knowing that they were up 4-1.  But we did anyway and went to the potlatch.  We got there and saw some people that we knew and went to talk to them.  They hadn't even started to eat.  So so much for just sneaking in.  We were corralled and told to get something to eat.  Lots of fish.  Salmon, halibut, other fish and prawns (a type of shrimp).  It was good.  I didn't take much as we had just eaten.

After supper they started some dancing and gift giving.  It was really cool.  The 'costumes' (not real costumes as in halloween but traditional ceremonial clothing) we cool, complete with bells, feathers, cedar bark hats and masks.  There were tradition designs everywhere, and all the community members had vests with a design on the back, kinda like their family crests.  There was drumming and singing.  The cool drum was a hollowed out log that a bunch of people were sitting around and drumming loudly. It made a very cool sound.  It would be very intimidating if it was on a war canoe or something.  There were individual family dances where a group would come out and perform and then the next dance a different group would come out.  It would have been cool if we had someone who was telling us what the dances meant because we really couldn't understand the speaker when he explained them.  The sound was a little to tinny to completely make out everything.

Regardless it was really cool and I would like to go to another one someday.  We came home and found the the Oilers had won the game 7 -4.  Good way to break out of their 6 game losing streak, especially since it came against last years cup winning team.  Overall a pretty good day.  I am excited to go to bed though.  Time to sleep in tomorrow morning.

Tyler