I recently participated in my school’s Culturefest, which was organized by the Multicultural Club on campus. I have participated in two other Culturefests since the previous year, however, this one marks my last one. 

For this event, I decided to make express my Filipino culture through a desert called Halo-Halo. Halo-Halo is a well-known and popular dessert from the Philippines with roots in Japanese culture. It is simply shaved ice with ube (purple yam) ice cream and several other toppings such as agar, tapioca pearls, coconut gel, red beans, coconut shavings, jackfruit, and flan. You mix all the ingredients together in a cup until you get a nice, homogenous purple color, then you enjoy!

During the event, I found many people who did not mix their Halo-Halo despite me bidding them farewell with, “Make sure to mix it really well!” Besides that, the feedback for our food was rather good, and it was the best response I have gotten since I started participating in Culturefest. 

Not only did I run a booth at this event, I also performed in it with the Indian Culture Club. Although the first 30 seconds of the song, my favorite part to dance to, was skipped over due to some technical difficulties, I would say that our performance was rather good. 

Dancing is something I am entirely uncomfortable and insecure about; I never show my dance to anyone, even my own friends and family, so performing for the first time in front of so many people was interesting, to say the least. 

I also helped choreograph and organize the performance of the K-Pop team, which unfortunately had audio issues during their performance. Despite the music sounding as if it were recorded underwater, they did an amazing job and I felt similar to a proud parent.