This past week Susquehanna University held their 21st annual Latino Symposium event. This year’s theme was passion in sports, and ran from Thursday to Saturday. It started off with a showing of the film The Two Escobars, and ended with a gala celebration held at the student-run nightclub-TRAX.
The gala celebration was hosted by ALAS (Association of Latino and American Students). As one of the executive members, I had the pleasure of suggesting any ideas in the planning process of the party. The ALAS club, as a whole, came up with the decorations, food, music, and special performance that would be part of the celebration.
The gala started off with a Mexican Folk Dance from Hanover, Pennsylvania. The dance group consisted of nine people who all wore traditional Mexican costumes with bright colors, sombreros, and distinct hairstyles. The dancers performed a total of seven dances styles that represented five different cities in Mexico. These cities included Jalisco, Nayarit, Nuevo Leon, Vera Cruz, and Aguascalientes. After the performance, we had catered food from a neighboring Mexican restaurant in Shamokin Dam called El Torito. Food included everything from tacos, guacamole, taquitos, nachos, rice, chicken, and flan for dessert.
For the rest of the night, everyone danced to DJ Maxx Saint’s wide variety of different Latin music. It was very nice to see most of the Latino students on campus come together and share each other’s culture through dance. The cool part was being able to share some of our traditions with the non-Latino students who attended the gala as well.