Aurora Days

This past week was Aurora Days– a week long celebration honoring the beautiful province of Aurora. And since Baler is the biggest town in the province all the events were held here. I didn't have to work at all because every school was on break for Aurora Days. It's kind of  a big deal.

Everyone in my house was really stressed out because the Senator came for the weekend so they were all on edge trying to get everything prepared and ready for him. That was too bad for me because it meant I had no one to play with because they were all busy.

The Capitol Center was turned into the central gathering place with plenty of street food, vendors, an open market, and entertainment by the local schools. In Aurora there are only eight towns, but in each town there are dozens of barangays, there are 200 plus barangays total in Aurora. Each barangay has a school. One barangay/school from each town was chosen to represent their respective town in two different competitions: band and street dance. I watched a couple of band groups and was so impressed. Each school performed for 20 minutes and danced, played, and marched the entire time. They also were all decked out in the most amazing costumes. I wasn't able to watch any of the street dancing competition, but I did see their costumes which was entertaining enough.

glockenspiel alert. I was once a master of the glockenspiel back
in good old Phillips Elementary.

Saturday I spent the morning with Senator Angara and some of his staff members from Manila, like Averill– it was so good to see her again! We visited many of Senator Angara's other projects that are based in Baler/Aurora, all of which are projects that my housemates manage. One of these is a food processing plant and they had samples of banana and casava chips and cocoa jam. Yum, yum, yum, two thumbs up. Sunday morning we were called bright and early to the Senator's house to help out and prepare for the arrival of his guests. After that we had the day to ourselves and I think we all returned to our rooms and passed out, exhausted from this weeks events. I guess I really shouldn't have been exhausted considering that Mich and I were the only ones that didn't have to work all week, but being around people that are stressed out must have rubbed off onto me. It is nice that everything is going back to the normal now that Aurora Days are over. Back to the easygoing lifestyle.