The crows are cawing outside my window, and are making quite a fuss. They only caw like that when something is going to happen in my world.

I am sitting here listening to cd of ancient hawaiian huna chants that I bought at the Monterey Psychic Festival and I dragged my friend K to last April. We went specifically to see a woman I'd heard about from friends. We went to her lecture and afterwards when I told her I had heard about her through friends, she gave me a hug. Sweet huh? My friend K and I have since driven down to Monterey, a good two hour drive, five or six times to take seminars from her in Pacific Grove.

I used to think it was such a big deal to drive two hours to see someone, but having done it now a few timess, it's not such a big deal. It's a long drive but at least you're driving and not just stuck in traffic for an hour or two and not going more than 10 miles.

There was a woman at the Monterey Pyschic Festival wearing a lei on her head. There is a specific name for that kind of lei, but I cannot remember it right now. I stopped at her booth and told her I was born in Hawaii and she started chanting hawaiian huna chants to me. I felt tinglies run up and down my spine during her chanting, and I don't know it was because the chanting was really powerful or it was because hearing hawaiian chants opens the floodgates to my childhood memories.

My hula teacher in 6th grade taught us ancient Hawaiian hula, and not the tourist kind that you see at hotels. This is the kind of hula done mostly sitting on your haunches on the ground and is more ritualistic and tribal. My hula teacher, who grew up on the Big Island, learned it from her mother, who learned it from her mother, and so on. She taught that hula was a sacred rite performed for the ancient hawaiian gods and goddessses at heiaus, and that we were to act like priesteses, devotees, and not shake-your-butt for the tourists hula girls.

It's kind of amazing that I still remember some of her teachings, but I'm sure like any typical 12-year I was thinking what the heck was she talking about. And I was a bad little priestess too, never quite getting anything right. I could never duck walk properly. She always made us duck walk around the room a couple of time, and I could never master the art of duck walking. I still remember her screaming at me because when I moved my hips, my upper body shook. She would clamp her big hands on my shoulders, tell me to bend my knees really low and start moving my hips in a circle. I could feel my scrawny shoulders trying to move under the presssure of her hands, and the eyes of everyone in class watching me. Beads of sweat started forming at the base of my spine and travelled upwards towards my neck as she kept saying over and over again like a chant, "stop moving your shoulders, only your hips should move not your whole upper body." Geez, I was only 12 years old, give me a break.

I'm trying to remember if I was the youngest person in that class. There were other kids there but they were older, and older women that didn't live in our neighborhood. How I got stuck taking an ancient hawaiian hula class instead of the tourist hula that I started learning at age six is a mystery to me. Her daughter and I were in the same grade, so I don't know if I asked to go to the class or if my grandma knew about the class and wanted me to go. My grandparents were strict catholics, not followers of ancient hawaiian ritualistic hula.

The hula I was taught that year is hardly ever performed except at hula festivals in Hawaii. My hula teacher told us that this kind of hula is passed down from female to female only, and you have to be invited to learn it. No wonder it's never seen if the hula is that exclusive. Tourists wouldn't like this kind of hula anyway. It's all this gutteral chanting, and the costumes are not that pretty and the girls never really smile since they're supposed to priestesses. You have to be serious, religious and devoted because "you are offering a prayer to the gods and goddesses".