Every culture has its own way of celebrating an event, a birthday, a holiday, a religious day or whatever it is they are celebrating. But what I admire most about mine is the way we grow up to learn how to celebrate, prepare, and enjoy the festivities that come with each celebration. My culture is very traditional when it comes to certain events because of the strong family base that we all have in each of our clans. If one family prepares for an event, the whole village helps prepare even though they're all guests to that day. The same thing happens in the church. Everyone is always lending a hand and it makes life so much easier on that family. As a little girl growing up, I helped out in the kitchen with my mother and older cousins. All the girls were either in the kitchen or cleaning the church, or hall where the event will take place. The guys would be the ones preparing food in the underground oven. We call this the "umu". It's basically cooking food in a hole they dig in the ground with hot stones and leaves. This is another traditional way of preparing food for big festivals in the islands. Back then we didn't have ovens so this was our way of making food. Until this day, people still hold onto this tradition. Another big aspect of preparing for the event is the entertainment. This is huge and still is important here in the states in most or all Polynesian events. One special thing about the Samoan culture is that we all grow up learning how to dance all the dances of Polynesia. I learned Samoan, Hawaiian, Fijian, Tongan, Tokelauan, and Maori dancing. Most Samoan kids know most or all of these dances. And it was really nice to be able to entertain everyone with a colorful mix of dancing from Polynesia and that is something I will always treasure. This youtube video is an example of a Samoan dance at a huge festival (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuO1ktxvmy0). Dances are usually done in a big group that includes teenagers to young adults is matching uniforms. In addition to being a Samoan lady, the event usually concludes with the chief daughter dancing her traditional dance called the "taualuga". In this article (http://www.thebigidea.co.nz/show/videos/74080-taualuga-the-last-dance-shigeyuki-kihara), a lady performs this dance to symbolize many things but most importantly to bring everything to an end.
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