Native American Food & Fancy Hair

Recently something wonderful happened: a Native American food truck called “off the rez” opened in Seattle!! It changes locations depending on the day and time, but yesterday it was parked in Wallingford near my house. Obviously I text Dustin to ask if that’s what he wanted to have for “date night” dinner (I had also rented “the Rum Diaries” from the RedBox – we had been trying to rent it for a few weeks but every time we checked it was gone so when I saw it yesterday before class I picked it up) – I figured take out and a movie sounded like the perfect date night after a stressful week. He agreed, so I picked us up some food and headed over to his place.

The food was amazing. We had fry bread tacos (pork and chicken), which were like really good regular Mexican tacos, but on fry bread instead of tortillas. Along with that Dustin had a plain fry bread and I had one with Nutella (OMG just thinking about it…) on it. SO good. And I’m not even just saying that because it’s the food of my Native American PEOPLE! I promise. Dustin liked it too and he’s super white ;)

I can’t wait to eat at the truck again soon. If you’re a Seattle resident I highly recommend you check it out.

After inhaling my food (no pictures, too busy eating and YUMMMing), we watched the Rum Diaries which wasn’t what I was expecting. Which led to me being mildly bored during parts – I think because I was expecting more of a comedy and I kept waiting for the comedy, but it never came – but reflecting back, it was pretty entertaining. Have you guys seen it? What did you think?

Overall though, last night = another date night success!

This morning I decided to get all fancy for work. Not really fancy. More like I saw some easy looking braided hair style on pinterest (yeah that’s right, I was so bored in class yesterday I was actually looking at the pinterest website – even though I usually just use pinterest as a pretty bookmark page for all my recipes and things) and I wanted to try it, so I braided and twisted and this is what happened in about 5 minutes:

 
To do this I just parted my hair into thirds in the back and made three low braids. I then rolled the middle braid into a bun and secured it with bobby pins before making the other two into buns, securing them with more pins and tucking their ends under the first one (on the bottom). Then I pinned my bangs (can I even call them that anymore? They’re pretty grown out) back and called it good. Fancy pants, right? And totally simple.

Anyway that has been the last 24 hours for me. Now I’m home from work and planning on doing some homework for the rest of the afternoon then hopefully relaxing a little later (a glass of wine or a beer sounds really delicious). I think it will be another low key night because I have class all morning tomorrow – but on the bright side, it’s my last Saturday class and if I can manage to show up (on time) tomorrow, I’ll have successfully completed 1 credit this semester. Yay!

I hope you are all having a lovely Friday and I hope that you have a few fun plans for the weekend. Cheers!

The Second to Last Day

Guys, tomorrow is my last day of work for the summer. Tomorrow I say bye bye internship, bye bye Umatilla reservation and bye bye trailer park. How crazy/exciting/almost sad, right? Right.

Today my boss came to the reservation to execute wills and other estate planning documents with me. Well, actually he came into town last night and took me out to the Prodigal Son for a beer and dinner (thanks, boss).

We ended spending a ton of time today with the Tribal Court Judge. I actually did some estate planning work for him while I was here, and he apparently was really impressed. I think that means we’re BFF 4 Lyfe! We even took a picture together today – I’ll post it as soon as Doug FWDs it to me (and don’t worry about a confidentiality breach, Judge J told me that I could advertise that I did his will, and I could send people to him to ask about his experience, seriously BFF status).

We also executed a bunch of wills.

And two of the ladies from the office took me to lunch at a pizza buffet. It was really sweet of them, it made me feel even more welcome here. And to make things better I totally doused my meal in ranch like a fat kid – it was good. I think I probably burned it off tonight at the gym though, so I don’t feel too guilty.

Also here are a few things I’ve learned from working on the reservation (I’ll add more later):

• how to wear/rock heels, everyyy day, even in BFE Oregon
• I love Indians in Cowboy hats
• Everyone knows everyone else on the reservation. It’s crazy. And everyone will say hi to you, even if you don’t know them.
• Old me love me (ok maybe I already knew that, but it was totally re-affirmed)
• Working 8 hour days in a cubical is really tiring
• it’s the little things in life – like toilettes in front of your trailer – that make you the cool kid in the trailer park

Ok that’s all I can think of now. Time for dinz (gotta finish up this bag of safeway select frozen raviolis – the portobello mushroom ones – SO good!).

will executions

Ohhh today I am so tired, and I don't know why. But I don't want to tell you about today, I want to tell you about yesterday.

As you may or may not already know, I live in Seattle most of the time but for the summer I am a "legal intern" working for the Institute for Indian Estate Planning & Probate which placed me with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR) in Mission, Oregon (which is about 5 minutes east of Pendleton, Oregon, which is in the middle of nowhere). So here I am, 4 1/2 hours from Seattle, away from all of my friends, in the middle of the desert in Oregon. And let me tell you, it was already hot at 7:30 this morning. And I'm not going to lie, I'm kind of excited about the weather (a nice change from Seattle gray-ness, but that is beside the point).

Anyway, the Institute for Indian Estate Planning & Probate is located in Seattle and is a part of the Center for Indian Law & Policy at Seattle University School of Law. Therefore, my adviser is an attorney who used to work here in Pendleton as an attorney for the CTUIR for years and years, and he is also the director of the Center for Indian law and policy, which means that he spends a majority of his time in Seattle. So, because I'm only a law student and not someone who is licensed to practice law, I end up e-mailing him 100 times a day with questions and draft documents for him to look over and whatnot.

Don't worry, I'm trying to get to my point... Yesterday, my supervisor, Doug, came down to Pendleton to do will executions with me! This was exciting since him coming down meant I had someone to hang out with for the day, which I usually don't because I am a huge loser here with like no friends here. So Doug came down here, spent the night with his daughter and grand kids and then met me here at work bright and early yesterday morning. We had an 8am meeting scheduled yesterday, but our first client was a no-show (lame). So we just sat in the conference room and chatted. For being my boss who is much much older than I am, he was surprisingly easy to talk to (that could be because older men love me for the most part haha), and he has SO many awesome stories, it's crazy cool. We then had a 10am client who showed up early and got his will all notarized and executed and whatnot. Success! After that we waited for another client who ended up being a no-show, had two clients cancel and then finally dragged one of the ladies from the office into the conference room to get her will revision executed. Two down. After that we waited for another client who never showed up and then Doug asked me if I wanted to go to lunch with him (duh I said yes!).

So he drove me into Pendleton to the Great Pacific Wine & Coffee Co.  Apparently Great Pacific used to be the place where all the cool kids hung out. He was telling me stories about how there was a group of his friends that were regulars at GPW&CC and they used to go there every day and chat and hang out in the same big table in the back and whatnot (which I'd assume would be pretty easy since his old law office was also located on that block, on the top, corner of the old hotel building) and he told me a story about how once him and his friends were jealous of the "rich" people in town going to catilian so they decided to throw a mock coat-tillian in the unused upstairs part of GPW&CC that ended up being like a grown-up prom (if you know how much I LOVE prom then you probably have a pretty good idea of how cool I think this is - I want to do something like that)! Anyway, he bought me lunch, a delicious sharp cheddar, apple & bacon sandwich on wheat bread (probs not the healthiest sandwich ever, but it was so so good) and he ended up running into one of his old friends from back in the day, who teaches at the charter Indian school here at Umatilla. So we talked to him and ate our lunch and it was good.

After lunch Doug drove me around Pendleton and showed me some good places to eat and we drove past the water park (WATER PARK, WHAT? WHO KNEW THERE WAS A WATER PARK IN PENDLETON!! I'm sooo going when Dustin comes to visit - duh)! Anyway, then we drove past the skate park and I saw these kids there and thought to myself "those kids look like my Hood River friends, I feel like I need to go there and be their friends." Random. But then later I totally saw a picture on Dave's FB page of him skating at the Pendleton skate park. It totally was my friends. A-holes. In Pendleton and didn't even call me - SO rude. We're in a fight (hah)!

As I was saying, Doug drove me back through Pendleton and told me stories about his days as a a pistol shooting champion of Oregon (or something), and as a sniper for this time when the president was in Pendleton (there is totally a picture of him and Jimmy Carter in an old Oregonian - cool) and about how his dad totally got sent to Penn. to Indain boarding school and all types of other cool, super badass things.

I really hope that when I'm as old as Doug I have that many super unique and entertaining stories. He has done so so many cool things in his life, and so many important Indian Law things too. I definitely hope that I make a difference for Indians when I'm a real grown up lawyer! Hopes & dreams!

Anyway, today after work I'm headed back to Seattle and I can't wait. The end of this week marks the 1/2 way point in my internship! Hooray! The summer is flying by already (even though we're technically only 1 day in). Happy summer everyone!