Folktastic!

This is the third year we have attended the NorthWest Folklife Festival at Seattle Center, and the first when I think Naomi was really old enough to appreciate it. We left Dad and Muriel at home to increase our festival going efficiency (and to prevent having to leave for naptime). I had a feeling Naomi would appreciate some of the Asian dances (by which I mean, the costumes), so we stopped first at the Thai dance performance. The costumes were as beautiful as I had hoped, and the dancing was lovely (though- if you understand Thai music, such as it is, and can boil it down into a sentence or two- I am interested!). On the way to the next performance venue, we stopped to hear some shape note singing, which I have heard of but never witnessed. It was a "participatory event," but we didn't really participate. Neat.

The second dance venue we went to had Indian dancing, and we timed it perfectly to catch a dozen adorable (mostly white) girls in wonderful outfits performing two Bollywood dance numbers. So fun! I want to sign Naomi up for that right now. I thought after that, Naomi would be less interested in the classical Indian (grown-up) dances, but she loved those, too, and kept negotiating for a few more dances before we left to get lunch. We ate some food, wandered around, and even took a ride on the ferris wheel next to the Space Needle. Seattle-ish!

We were not the most adventurous eaters. In addition to the beignets we started off with, we had jerk chicken on a stick (me), hot dog (her), mango lemonade, and shishkaberries. Naomi pointed out a man in a skirt (kilt). She enjoyed the Scandanavian polka band (Swedish Pride!) and the ren-faire ladies handing out ye olde fliers. For my part, I wondered, can it really be true that one out of every three Seattle-ites is in a bluegrass band? And where do you get a washtub anyway?

It will be obvious from the pictures that our professional photog was not along on this event. Instead of beautiful and well-composed slice of life pictures, you get mom putting kid in ridiculous posed situational slice of cheese pictures. Oh well. It was a really fun day!

We got to the Seattle Center really early, about two hours before things got rolling. I wasn't that sure of the start time- I knew the performances started at 11:00, but I assumed (incorrectly) that at least "The Mighty O" (mini organic doughnuts, you may recall) would be open earlier. Wrong! Some places in the Center House were open, though, so we stopped for a pretend foot massage at this fifty cent foot massager (clearly not built for the shorter set- Naomi's feet were a good foot over the foot massaging metal plate). Shouldn't it be in the shape of a foot instead of a hand?
We also got steamed milk and beignets. Had to kick off the day with some unhealthy snack.
When I asked Naomi's favorite Thai dancer if we could get a picture with her, she was extremely gracious. I didn't give Naomi enough warning, though, so she wasn't sure how to handle it. We have since examined the picture many, many times.
Here, Naomi poses with young Zeus, who happened to be at the festival, all be-togaed and giving out samples of Greek yogurt.
After we got home, Naomi wanted to take some pictures. There is a weird close-up of my shirt that didn't come out perfectly, but she took a few cute ones. Muriel just said, Hey Naomi, do you like seafood? Good one, Muriel.