When I Reminisce...

Yesterday I checked my facebook account and I had a friend request from someone that I went to high school with. I didn't immediately recognize her name or her picture. She was from the class before me, class of '94. As hard as I tried, I couldn't remember her. But as I tried figuring if I really knew her well enough way back then, I accepted her friend request and checked out her pictures she had on her profile to see if there were old high school pics. None of the pics helped me to remember.

But there was one picture that brought back memories. The caption for the pic said Song Fest, Class of '94. That may sound foreign to many people, but you see I went to school in Hawaii - Nanakuli High and Intermediate School. It went from 7th thru 12th grade. Every year each grade participated in a big singing competition called Song Fest. We would practice for weeks, perfecting our sound and uniformity. It was something to be proud of. The girls wore white Polynesian inspired dresses (similar to muumuus), the boys wore black slacks, white long sleeved dress shirts with Ti Leaf leis or Maile leis. When it was our time, class of '95 stood up together on the rows of bleachers in the gymnasium, nervous and excited. We belted out the words in unisom that we had memorized and harmonized for weeks. It was such an exciting time. After every grade had performed their song, the judges deliberated and announced the winners. The noise in the gym was blaring when they said that the class of '95 won first place. We jumped up and down, shouted and screamed with such pride and happiness. In fact, if I remember correctly, class of '95 won two years in a row.

I still have my white dress that I wore. I have so many memories of growing up in Hawaii. I like the idea of blogging about those memories. I miss Hawaii - a lot. This may be the start of some of my future blogs - how it was for me growing up in Hawaii; the many different things that I went through and how it felt to be a black girl among other brown, tan, white, and yellow faces. Many people might actually think that being black would be easy around other people of differing colors but it wasn't always easy. I had a somewhat unique upbringing. But that's an entirely different blog entry, stay tuned...