In an apartment off Nashville Road, three Saudi Arabian students passed the red hose of an ornate silver hookah. They reminisced about their first days in America and joked about gifts of spices and socks their mothers hid in their luggage.

Martha “Momfeather” Erickson shed her red-and-gray beaded shawl as she stood in front of the circle. “How many of you believe in dragons?” she asked. The glint in her eyes mirrored the firelight she remembers seeing in her grandfather’s as he told the same story when she was young.

Framed photographs and certificates tile the wall behind Alvaton senior Richard Burnette’s desk. His honorable discharge from the Army shares the wall with his wedding certificate. His diploma from John Marshall High School hangs with his daughter’s from the State University of New York, Purchase, and his son’s from Penn State.

The hammering of shoe soles in a clear rhythm reverberated through the floorboards from two rooms in the Dance Arts of Bowling Green studio Monday. Sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha and fraternity Alpha Phi Alpha, both from the National Pan-Hellenic Council, were practicing routines for the council’s upcoming step show, “Rock the Stage.”