I was a Lakambini!!

We have been celebrating Buwan ng Wika, month of language, of course Filipino. The culminating event was last Friday, I was told to wear my "Filipiniana" or Filipina costume. There are many different types of traditional clothing outfits here, depending upon where you are in the Philippines. For example, northern Luzon island has Filipinos who traditionally wear brightly woven fabrics, headbands, loincloths for men, skirts for girls.....Muslim Filipino traditional dress is very elaborate, scarves, sequins.....My dress with the big big sleeves is a type of Filipiniana dress. Men can wear the traditional Barong Tagalog shirt, there are also lady barongs. Well what I didn't know about the culminating event was that each class selects a boy and girl to dress up and compete with all the other couples. It was a giant fashion show....pictures really cannot do it justice. The little tiny kinder girls complete with huge puffy dresses, makeup...it was precious really. We began with a parade of the entire school at 7:15 am, we paraded down the sidewalk through the major construction that is occurring in town (new drainage installed, roads are a mess, dirt everywhere..) it was hot as heck at 7:30 and I was afraid my makeup would literally melt off my face into a tan, brown, green glue.
Each contestant got to walk across the stage, there were intermissions of song and traditional dance, and then the Lakan and Lakambini were chosen - I was told it is sort of like the Miss and Mr.....then at the end, I did not know any of this, they chose from among the teachers who all wore traditional Filipino wear. I am not really sure why I was chosen honestly, sort of an honorary foreign Miss Buwan ng Wika.....I got a certificate and then a sash with glitter saying Lakambinit 2012. My very first cool glitter sash...I guess you had to be there.

Kindergarten

More kinder

Almost all of the girls

The faculty all dressed up

Lita, Mia and me!

My cool sash

I've mentioned before that Filipinos LOVE to get there picture taken and after the serious ones, there is ALWAYS the wacky one....so here is ours.....yeah we were having fun!