What's up! It's me, 
We performed in our MAPEH class, and it was a festival dance. Since there were only two sections in Grade 9 through the SPS program, our section, "Dalton," was provided with the opportunity to perform the Sinulog Festival Dance because the majority of us were Catholics. Meanwhile, in the other section, a lot of students belonged to other religions, and it was hard for them to perform Sinulog. As I can recall, they danced the Lapyahan Festival Dance, which is a town festival dance.
DIY Props Making🧶
Renting out props used in an actual Sinulog Festival Dance would cost a lot. Thus, we might as well make our own props. Fortunately, many of our classmates can be creative and good at crafting. It was a long process since the dancers would require lots of props. The whole process was tiring, yet we enjoyed making props. This activity strengthened our bond as classmates.
We didn't have a trainer. One of our classmates learned some simple Sinulog steps and taught us. We were thankful, without her, we would not have made it to perform in front of the crowd. Not going to lie, during practices, arguments and different points of view from classmates showed up about every other thing, but then again, I couldn't blame them. We had different points of view, some just wanted to make sure that our performance came out well.
Our MAPEH teacher allowed us to practice for one or two weeks, or so, I think (not too sure since it was a long time ago, HAHAHAHA!). Even if this did lead to a few arguments in practice, for the most part, we were having fun. Even on those hot days, when blocking in the quadrangle was a pain, we'd still be laughing away. But, of course, we also knew when to be serious and when to enjoy.
Because five days of practice during school time wasn't enough (we only had one hour per session since it was during our MAPEH period, although sometimes other subject teachers allowed us to have extra time to practice), we also practiced on weekends. We met at a classmate's house to rehearse. We were thankful that her parents let us practice there.
This is us practicing in our classmate's house!
(Fun fact: During practice, I was not feeling okay because I had something with my body, and it was uncomfortable. But as they always say, "LABAN LANG TA ANI!!"💪🏼).
Their house was quite far from the highway. Luckily, we persuaded the tricycle driver to take us closer to the location. But the problem was returning home. As few tricycles went by their area, my friend and I, who also lived in the same barangay, walked for about 30 minutes. It was enjoyable but terrifying because we didn't know some parts of it. But thanked God we got to the main road safely HAHAHAHA😭😭😭
Costume Fitting👞
On the day before we performed, we got to try on our costumes. We decided to rent dresses that matched our Queen of Sinulog costume, a dress that her mom also rented. As classmates, we pitched in money to rent our costumes. It was affordable and worth it!
Performance Day💃
The day of the performance was really kind of nervous not only for me but for my classmates as well. Before the event started, we prayed in our classroom, hoping that we would perform well and make all our efforts worth it, the long hours of practice, the sleepless nights making props, and the exhausting rehearsals.
And guess what? We won! We just got three awards, and our queen won one too! We were all jumping and shouting with joy at the school quadrangle. All our hard work paid off! After the announcement of the winners, we took pictures as a section with our ever-supportive adviser (we love you, ma'am, 🫶). Of course, we also had a picture with our schoolmates from the other section, Mendeleev, along with their adviser and our MAPEH teacher. 🥰
(Supportive parents in the house 🤙🏻)
After the exhausting but super fun event, we got together for our first class photo in our new class shirts. We intentionally planned for our performance day to be the same day we would wear our first-ever "Dalton 2022-2023" class t-shirt.
"Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much." — Helen Keller. This quote means that I can only do so much on my own, but when I work together with others, we can achieve great things. In my experience, my classmates and I faced many challenges—making props, practicing hard, and dealing with disagreements, but because we supported each other, we succeeded and even won awards. It showed me that teamwork makes everything easier and helps us reach our goals!
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed my blog!! 🤍