Birds And Tights

Speech Choir and Ignite Speech Competition
(Thursday April 21. 2016 - Auditorium)

           Today, is a very important day. It is the main event of the English Resource Center and everything we've been doing for the whole English Term has been leading up to this moment. It is also important because this event marks my last post on this blog and truly, what we've experienced today is something worth blogging for. One last time.

           But before the main event (Speech Choir), first I would like to talk about it's little brother, the Ignite Speech Competition. Our representative was Beatrice Baylosis, she talked about "fangirling" about Korean Popular Music and the ways on how exactly to "fangirl." 

Beatrice Baylosis with her speech about fangirling.

           She had a lot of competition, Kristine Mangle from ABMA-155 who talked about her favorite things , Jem Yucoco from CPE-151 who talked about the difficulties of having curly hair, Liam Acosta from ABMA-154 who talked about being alone and there were many more. 

Jem Yucoco, talking about the difficulties of having curly hair.

Liam Acosta, with his speech about anxiety and being alone.

           Fortunately, even with all these adversities and competitors, Beatrice was able to get the second runner up place.

           Now, we move on to the main event.

           As you may know from our block, we are the living embodiment of procrastination and this is certainly prevalent until this last event of the ERC (Speech Choir and Ignite Speech). The piece that we were going to use was given to us weeks prior to this day but with our procrastinating skills and large amount of workload,  we were not able to fully prepare ourselves for the competition. Although we practiced at times, this was hardly enough compared to the amount of practice we needed if we wanted to win.

Some of my blockmates, wearing their "battle masks."

         History repeated itself, how we practiced for the Chants and Cheers Competition awhile ago, was almost like how we practiced for the Speech Choir. We only memorized at first then incorporated movements and formations very later on, there were fights because we couldn't get along, ideas weren't truly expressed because of creative differences, last-minute preparations, etc. 
Basically, just like our practice for the Chants and Cheers and when our block was assigned to "merge" with ABMA-155, everything became two times more difficult.

The winners of the competition, having their photos taken.

ABMA-152 with their speech choir performance.

         One major difference was our costume. On the Chants and Cheers competition, we wore a body-hugging upper garment, a military-style camouflage t-shirt to be exact but in here we wore a tight lower body clothing, called "leggings" to be exact; hence the title.

ABMA-151 performing their interpretation of "The Caged Bird."

         Just like from the Chants and Cheers competition, there were last minute preparations made before we started to perform, we had a lot of competition with good costumes and awesome interpretations and we had the quintessential "last practice minutes-before-the-competition."

         Finally just like from the Chants and Cheers Competition, we didn't get a place. Still, every single one of us enjoyed the experience and that is what's most important in a block section, it's having fun and having a stronger relationship with one another, whatever challenges may come.