pintados!

June 27, 2011

This week is Tacloban’s fiesta, which is kind of a reason for the whole region to celebrate. At a library meeting I discovered that our town was going to be performing in the pintados. My principal told me that I should go and the teachers said they’d take me.

All morning today I was asked what time we were leaving, 11:00, and then told that was way too late in a manner that made it sound like I was the one in charge of things and picked a bad time. Of course we didn’t leave at 11:00. We left school around 11:30 but stopped to eat lunch (my second lunch for the day). Then we stood and waited for a jeep. The event “started” at 1:00 and we had 45 minutes to get there.

We got there before 1:00, but so did lots of other people. It was so packed; we ended up just standing amongst so many people. Then we waited, and waited, and waited. I think the text I sent around 2:15 said it was the worst idea ever then complained about the crowd, heat, and the fact there was no start in site. I was getting super bad mood and maybe just a little light headed. I squatted down to give myself a rest. It is amazing how quickly 100s of people can find a seat for a crouching-white girl. So I sat, bought some water, found some candy in my bag and got my blood sugars back in check. To be fair, it was so hot. It also helps that after each performance a couple dozen people would leave and I was eventually able to breath.

Then what felt like hours later the event started and my mood was repaired and I was really enjoying myself. Pintados is a type of dance performance that each town prepares to kind of say this is who we are. It is old school. Lots of times when there are dance performances they are dancing styles that the Spanish brought. They are super enjoyable, but super Western. The pintados is traditional folk dances.

Not to toot my town horn or anything, but Alang Alang was amazing! I’m very embarrassed for the text fit assault I sent to my friends because it was so awesome. I think my favorite thing about it was that it was not Western at all. It was Filipino! I never see that. I’m going through all these thoughts of how awesome it is see the way things were 300 years ago and how just good it is that they still have that just blindly following my teachers through Tacloban and where do we end up but the penultimate of all things Western culture: McDonalds. Where I got the ultimate in Western influence an ice cold Coke!

July 29, 2011

So now I am tooting my own town horn. Alangalang won the pintados! First place over all! Half million pesos what?!