Piuraagiaqta 2012: Let's Go Play!

Yesterday was the big day of Piuraagiaqta, or the Spring Festival, here in Barrow (the word literally means let's go play) and we took part in as many of the festivities as possible!

We started out the morning getting free pancakes at Pepe's (the furthest north Mexican restaurant in the world) from our friends at BP.  It was an odd event to be a part of but the food was pretty good and we got to meet Fran, the owner, and she let us sign the guest book and gave us certificates stating that we had been to the top of the world. So now it's official!

Panoramic view of our view at the parade

Later that day we made our way down town to see the parade. It was fun to see all of the kids out in their coats with bags to collect all the candy! There was so much candy! We got to see the floats, some of the dogs from a team were in the parade, as well as our friends from the college! There was even a group from Alaska Airlines in the parade that threw us some of the snack mix we liked so much on the plane!

Float for Ilisagvik College

We also went out to the lagoon in town and watched the whaling crews do multiple competitions. We witnessed harpoon throwing, umiaq racing (umiaq is the word for boat, they ran a sled over to the seal skin umiaqs and put them on the sleds, tied them down and raced them back), tea races (in which teams chopped a block of ice, warmed it over a coleman stove, and try to make tea the fastest), sled races, avataqpak races (the orange buoys they use to keep track of the whales on the oceans were bounced on across the lagoon!) and 2 x 4 races. We actually all got compete in the 2 x 4 races, honorary members of the whaling crew, and got last place but it was a ton of fun and a lot harder than it looked to coordinate!

Pictures from the Lagoon: Top pictures are of the Umiaq races

Sled races were after that

Followed by the buoy bouncing!

This bottom picture is two little girls waiting for the tea race to start. You can see the blocks of ice they needed to chip apart.

After dinner yesterday, we went to the elementary school gym to see the traditional indian games. We got to participate in most of these as well. Most of these were strength based games and the young boys in town were excited to compete, but these games apparently came out of the tradition of getting the community together after Christmas meals to burn off calories by playing these games!

It was a full day of games and laughs!