I’m happy to say that our belly­dan­cing per­form­ance went well yes­ter­day! The entire theatre sold out, and seven of the seats were filled with my loved ones and friends. It was pretty special for me to look out and see my mother-in-law, two nieces, husband, sister-in-law and two friends.

The entire evening was three hours long. Below is a video of two of the dances my class per­formed. I’m in the green outfit in the front. Enjoy. –Laura–

Belly dance per­formed by stu­dents of Moondance Shimmy. Teacher and cho­reo­grapher: Oksana.

The first dance is a Fan Veil dance fol­lowed by a Drum dance.

Dancers: Laura Beauchamp, Macia Bell, Linda, Shirene, Deidre, Carrie, Julie, Christina, Shauna and Oksana.

Some of you may remem­ber the Gibbon Experience from pre­vi­ous posts on the blog.

The Gibbon Experience is a con­ser­va­tion project in north­west­ern Laos based on eco-tourism. Apparently the local people were hunting the gibbons to extinc­tion before a con­ser­va­tion group helped them to trans­form that life­style into sus­tain­able project.

Tourists who pay for a chance to visit the Bokeo Nature Preserve also get to sleep in tree houses con­nec­ted by a remark­able zip line network. We went for three days and had a fant­astic time.

The project is set up to employ as many locals as pos­sible so as to spread the rel­at­ive wealth. Although some of the trekking was a bit arduous in the humid jungle, the whole exper­i­ence was fant­astic. Check it out if you’re heading to Laos.

http://www.gibbonexperience.org/

The music in this is by Canadian singer-songwriter Dan Mangan.

http://www.danmanganmusic.com/

The video was edited together quickly using iMovie. Please excuse some of the poor quality shots. This thing was filmed with a small Canon point-and-shoot camera in the sweaty jungle. We were far more con­cerned with having a good time than getting award-winning cinematography.

When I got the invit­a­tion to the Purple Party, I asked the same ques­tion you’re prob­ably think­ing, “What the hell is a purple party?” It’s quite simply actu­ally. The name is telling you exactly what it is. It’s a party where every­one wears as much purple as they can.  Then of course all the dec­or­a­tions, drinks and food will be purple as well. In this case, Abby, the host loves purple so the decor of the appart­ment is actu­ally what inspired the theme of the party. Unfortunately this evening I was more inter­ested in talking and drink­ing then doc­u­ment­ing the decor. However, I did manage to catch a couple shots of some of the lovely purple people that atten­ded.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Daily Notes
Pizza lunch for two: 57,000 rials (~$5.70)
($1 US = 10,034 rials)
Bus from Quazvin to Tehran for two: 30,000 rials (~$3.00)

Chris and I got an expens­ive hotel last night for $66.00. We needed a little western feeling to re-coop and collect ourselves. We had Internet and BBC in the hotel room. It was glorious.

Today we decided to head for Tehran and skip the excur­sion to the Valley of the Castles. We didn’t have it in us to take a taxi on a winding moun­tain road for 110 kilo­met­ers and them be stuck in a small town. So here I am sitting on a rather hot, packed-full bus bumping along the highway to Tehran.

Northwestern Iran land­scape, some­where between Tabriz and Zanjan.

Hordes of young Iranians were gathered at the bus station. We had to push our way through the crowd to make sure we didn’t keep getting squeezed to the back of the line. A young man who helped us find the right bus to get from Qazvin to Tehran, was already on the bus. Chris and I were unsure about pushing and elbow­ing too much because we didn’t want to insult anyone. We slightly widened our stance, to keep from being pushed over as we stared long­ingly at the door of the bus. Seats were running out fast and this was already the second bus in the matter of a few minutes to fill up to the brim. What if the third bus to Tehran didn’t come for a while....or hours? This thought alone made me push and elbow a little more than usual. The heat of the day was hightened by the exhaust of the bus and my head­scarf and hot, con­ser­vat­ive cloth­ing put me into a bit of “sur­vival of the fittest” mode. Chris and I were going to get on that bus.

Suddenly, the man who helped us find the bus called out and waved. We pushed by a handful of people to get on. The man had saved us two seats. Relief and thank­ful­ness swept over me. As we scooted into the dusty, sand crusted, torn seats, I heard him gig­gling and taking with his girl­friend and other friends.

In front of me a couple are cud­dling and caress­ing one another. The young man has his arm around the woman’s shoulder. Her head is nestled in the crook of his arm. He gently strokes her face and the part of her hair that is showing. Kitty-corner from me, another young couple is doing the same thing, although I’m con­vinced they’ve snuck in a few kisses.

The bus is over­flow­ing with hip, young Iranians; the new gen­er­a­tion of Iran. Some young ladies have enough make-up on their faces that I could carve my name into it. This outward, public display of affec­tion and western ideal of make-up is sur­pris­ing to see but it also makes me feel like I could somehow com­mu­nic­ate better with the indi­vidu­als on this bus than the older indi­vidu­als we’ve met so far in Iran.