Staying up until 4:00 am watching Michelle Obama interviews isn’t the wisest thing to do after you’ve set an alarm for 9:00 the next morning.

I’ve set the alarm for 9, knowing that Bernice would be here by 10, we’d be at Buck’s by 11 and then down to the National Museum of the American Indian on the Mall to see Ateya perform by 12:15. I hadn’t heard back via text from Bernice by the morning so when my alarm went off I hit a snooze or two. And then I just turned the damned thing off.

At 11:00 I figured it was time to get up, still trying to decide whether I would head down to the Mall by myself or not. Then I noticed Buck’s email, sent at 10:30, asking if we were still on. I replied back a “yes” and quickly got in the shower. I’m out the door in 15 minutes, telling Buck to meet me at Eastern Market Metro and we’d ride down together. We had originally planned on walking the entire way, but now with our time crunch a two-stop Metro ride would get us there just in time. On the way I talked with Bernice and she was definitely out.

Buck and I arrive at NMAI a little after noon and luckily find no line to get in. We made it! Then I picked up a program that said KanKouran, the West African dance troupe Ateya is with, is actually performing at 12:45. So we have a little bit of time to explore the museum. This also gives us time to get together with Anya, a friend of ours who works at the Museum.

We didn’t know that Ateya wasn’t performing that day with Kankouran but they still gave a great performance. You might remember me writing about their performance when I saw them at Lisner a couple of years ago.

Part of NMAI’s “Out of Many” festival, also performing that day was a deaf dance group that Buck was once a part of, The Wild Zappers, and he wanted to see them too. They went on at 2:00 and although they had some technical difficulties they were still very good. I learned how to clap in sign language!