Prom at 25 and 2.5 Years In

JS Prom was last week for the kids. That means Junior Senior prom, which is interesting because Filipinos don’t call high school students Freshmen, Sophomores, Juniors, or Seniors but rather 1st through 4th years. It really should be called 3rd year 4th year prom but I guess that doesn’t have the same ring to it. That’s beside the point though. The point is, it was the first prom I have gotten to take part in and it was very different from our American prom. I got to do our 3rd and 4th year girls’ makeup, and sat around while everyone fussed over them. It was like watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding live, where everyone and her aunt is fixing this and pulling that, curling this, pinning that, re-curling, and dousing everything with pink and perfume. It was hilarious and very entertaining, but our 7 girls looked beautiful afterward. It was such a drastic change from their usual school uniforms or their alternative damit pambahay (meaning house clothes), I couldn’t stop smiling at their lipsticked lips and long gowns. I felt like a proud momma, and then I realized I am way too young to be playing momma to 17 year olds so I decided I was the cool Aunt Jessica instead.

The actual prom was a surprise—not the wild dancing party that is the American prom, but yet another Filipino ceremony. Filipinos love their ceremonies, so I should have predicted that a JS prom would be another excuse for kids to perform dances (they called one of the dances a Cotillion because they danced to a beautiful classical waltz, but I thought a Cotillion is what British girls back in the day went to in order to learn how to hold forks the right way and how to entertain a man…) and make speeches (the “Class History” speech turned out to be pretty much a verbal format of the American yearbook), and eat some fried chicken and rice for dinner. It was adorable to watch the students all dressed up and behaving like little adults, especially the usually-makulit (misbehaving) boys who escorted the girls any time they got up. They asked me to perform a “special number” during dinnertime, “a love song please” but my computer was in the process of being reformatted once again so I had no music to choose from and copped out. I’ll be honest, I am glad that prom in the U.S. takes the form it does despite the drama and clichés, because I’ll take an all-night fancy dance party with classmates over a ceremony. Still, it was indeed an unforgettable night, just as every prom promises.




Photos by Lani Sonio

In other news, the other day marked 2 and a half years of Peace Corps service, a mark I would not have reached had I not extended my service. It is a strange hallmark to reach, at a time when friends are getting engaged and married and having babies back home (congrats again to Rachel!!!) here I am just plugging along, the months passing by, the kids getting older, the projects slowly slowly slowly coming together. I had reached a lull in my service recently knowing that my time was limited, and seeing still so much room for improvement and change yet not enough action fast enough. I was fed-up and homesick for one of the first times in service and I just wanted to go to India and meditate. I had a great conversation with my father recently who reminded me not to ever get to the point where I felt bitter about not having done enough, but to do whatever I can and leave it at that, wipe my hands at the end of the day while keeping a smile in my face, a laugh in my eyes. That’s my goal for the last 6 weeks left of my service. At this point, I have done what I came to do; I have created programs for children and set in place a few systems for making an orphanage function better. With 6 weeks left on the time-ticker, now it’s time to hug as many children as I can every day and eat as many sticky-sweet yellow mangoes as possible.