Election Aftermath, Take II

[cancerouselflvr]

Today I worked with the division at the International Fair. My whole weekend will be spent working there, which would make me quite bitter, except that I was able to use Maryland's colonial history as an excuse to wear my renfaire garb. So I'm only a *little* bitter now.Since coming back, I've noticed a couple of major differences in how I think

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[cancerouselflvr]

Admittedly, my garb looks a little different from what the costumed interpreters wear at St. Mary's City. But it turned out no one really looked at any of the JETs' panels, and I doubt they would have noticed that even if they had. I admit I felt a little awkward wearing it--there were a bunch of NGOs and stuff with people wearing ethnic/cultural dress that's, you know, real. So I'm glad I tried to go as historically accurate as I was able to when I made it--it gave me a good cover story.

Actually, though, I did have a couple people come up and ask if people still wore that, or if it was clothing for special occasions like weddings and ceremonies and crap. I didn't feel like launching into a big explanation about renfaires and was trying to be historically educational anyway. But wow.

We also did this thing where we made calendars for people. We took their picture and printed that off as a one-sheet calendar. I was sort of the unofficial picture poser for good chunks of each day. The kids stared at me more than usual. One guy in his like 50s asked for a picture w/ me, then a calendar picture, and then bought me little sweet fried crisps during my lunch break. I felt somewhere between flattered and just weirded out. I mean, I had made sure to pull up my chemise higher than usual, but still. (In Japan, boobiness=sexiness, whereas in the US, boobiness=prettiness as well as sexiness. Besides, there were coworkers there.)

Overall, it was so-so. the stamp rally to get prizes and calendars involved a quiz to make people read the panels--but only the panels about the division, not about the JETs, so all the time we spent preparing that was pretty much wasted. The div. also took over all the tables so that the things JETs brought to involve visitors couldn't be done. I wouldn't call it "exchange" by any means--it was much too shallow for that.

Also, I lost my weekend for it and found out today that I have four weeks to use those two days...except I can't take the same days off as the other cir in the office, and there's a buttload of shit to do anyway. (I think this also means my almost-day's worth of comp time built up in one-hour and hour-and-a-half increments starting in August is almost all void. Bastards.)

I did have some good roast chicken though. And some really good fair-trade Guatemalan coffee. And I got to wear my garb, so things came out about even.