America's Global Village Festival

Oregon here we come! While in the car, we all realized that Gunnar had never been out of the state of Idaho. This was his first experience across state lines. So we had a little dance.
Something that comes with doing Hula is doing performances at all sorts of venues. This weekend, Hula took us to Ontario Oregon to America's Global Village Festival. Ontario is about 30 minutes from where I live and about 45 minutes from Boise. Jeff and Gunnar went with the three of us. We got there and had a lot of fun. They had many countries represented and each performed some sort of thing on stage. Unfortunately we missed most that were done earlier in the day. The festival was from 11am to 5pm and we performed at 4pm. Each country or time period had a booth where most sold food and wares representative of the culture. We started noticing that each stop had a wooden cutout and so we stuck Gunnar in the ones that we spotted. It was great and by the second one he knew the drill. Each booth had really neat things to show or sell. Each one also had something for the kids to do/make. Unfortunately we did not have a ton of time to spend at each one before we had to get ready ourselves. We did stop at this mountain man display. Gunnar thought that the fox skin was a puppy so the guy said that Gunnar could sit on the furs. Gunnar was not a fan of that. We tried to put the skin on his head and he was not thrilled. The mountian man then said that he would sit him on his lap for a picture. He was so nice and great. He had tons of little grandkids of his own around so he was not afraid to get the picture with Gunnar. We had a lot of fun performing. The only problem was that the sun was directly on us. It was so bright. I didn't realize how bright it was until I saw the pictures. We are glowing up there. Tasha our dance instructor danced between the group while we ran to change outfits. We do the 3 dances that we know. We are working on another dance right now with implements (Pu'ilis) but it will be some time before we get that one down. Pua Olena is my least favorite dance but the best one that we do. It is slower and everyone seems to really like it. It really is a pretty dance but just not my favorite. It was the very first one that we learned.

This is our last song of the program. Probably my favorite to date but the one that we are always off. I really like these costumes the best too.

We are planning on having a booth there next year as a fundraiser for the Hula halau (school). We want to sell food and then wares as well. All that we have to pay is about 10% to the festival on all food sales and that is it. Our profits can be huge. We already have lots of ideas in the works. It was really fun and glad that we had the opportunity to participate.

This next week we are off to perform at Ono's restaurant again. Then next week we have my mom's Relief Society Enrichment to do and then a performance at a local winery. That one should be fun. Busy, busy!