Year 10 Formal

The formal was very fun. I wore a plain black dress and black coat and silver flats with a bead pompom, not too eye catching but good enough. A few people said I looked cute in it, but I think they were just being nice.

There was a bit of a rough spot at the beginning. Clare told me to go with her on the same train. So she called me and said “oh take this train that stops at Padstow”. I was a bit skeptical, because when I checked the train schedule before there was no such train. But she assured me that it did stop at Padstow, and I was going to check it again but didn’t have enough time. So, I got to Padstow and watched the train I was planning to take before go by, and then found out the train that Clare said stops at Padstow, doesn’t. Mum drove me to school, and I missed the photographing time because she wasn’t real good at going places she isn’t familiar with.

After that though, everything was great.

The formal place was upstairs, and almost every girl beside Cinda and myself were wearing high heels, so I was a bit worried for them getting up the stairs. Once we got up to our room it was photo time again. It was pretty funny because everyone was in really nice formal clothing and it felt a lot like a business/celebrity dinner/banquet and all the high class people are ‘mingling’.

Most of the dresses were so beautiful I felt a little ashamed of my own plain black dress, Anna’s one was so cute.

The food was alright, I had a chicken roll thingy (it’s like piece of chicken wrapped around a bit of cheese) for entrée, beef for main course and raspberry gelato for desert. But at the beginning there was a piece of bread so hard it was like a brick. It took so much effort to cut it. There was also a chocolate cake that the best dressed boy and girl got to make the first cut of, but everyone was too busy dancing to eat it at the end.

You remember how we had a survey we were supposed to fill out? (I didn’t do it). The formal committee people painted sashes to give out to them (like the sashes Miss Universe gets). The MCs (Troy and the Daniel) actually wrote jokes for it, so it was pretty funny. I don’t remember all of them, but here goes:

Best dressed girl – Gabby

Best dressed boy – Arvi

Chatterbox – Danielle

99.95 ATAR – Cindy (I heard that it was supposed to be Ying and then Li Sa, but neither of them came to formal)

Best eyes – Cecelia

Best blonde – Clare

Dream boy – Laurence (was supposed to be Alvin Yap I heard)

Miss Congeniality – Veronica

Dancing Queen – Mariel (that ones very true, she dances so well!)

Most likely to be a millionaire – Jordan (everyone called out his name before the MC)

And the one that made me laugh: Bromance – Troy and Daniel, our MCs. And that’s why Julia and Margret went up to them and ask to present the sashes. It was real funny, Vanessa started going ‘kiss, kiss, kiss’ and everyone just took up the chant.

The whole thing was very red-carpet-y. Vanessa was like the photographer/styler. She stands there and everyone stops to let her take a photograph before going back to there table, and sometimes she goes up and fixes their sash or clothing.

Everyone started dancing, and as I stood on the dance floor, I could feel the floor shake to the beat, that's how in sinc and into it everyone was. When Cindy sat down at the table to rest, she covered her ears with her hands a few times. I didn't think the music was really that loud, but when I sat down, I could feel it vibrating through my body, sort of like a second, slower heartbeat.

Everyone was jumping in time of with the music and it was so cool. We had disco and laser lights, the usual (my camera is crappy so none of the shots turned out well). I actually danced! Not very well, I’d imagine, but I danced, and that’s a big step forward. I wish Helena and Jedda had been there, it would have been so much better.

Cindy and Cinda were a bit embarrassed to be dancing, but Cindy more so than Cinda. Anna Tran was the one who led us in dancing. Every time when both she and Anna Chan were not dancing with us, Cindy and Cinda would sort of wind down and stop and stand still on the dance floor. Cindy made the awkward fish hand sign twice during the night on the dance floor, but for your information, it was actually the awkward turtle.

As you can imagine, it was pretty hard (and painful) to dance and jump in heels, so lots of people (including me) took off their shoes. There were numerous dance offs during the course of it, where people just automatically cleared a circle on the dance floor. I couldn’t believe how good some of the boys were. The best one was the one with the DJ and the guy who dance the golf hokey-pokey thing (you put it in and you shake it all around thing) at talent quest. I realised though, that everyone had a certain step they always did that was different to everyone else’s. The DJ’s step looked sort of like Latin dancing or something similar (not hip-hop, that’s for sure).

Even the teacher’s danced! They were dragged into it by the students of course, the students formed a circle around them and the some of them pushed the teachers back into the circle when they tried to escape. Mr Lynch, Mr Gerling, Mr Trotter, Mr Peck, Miss Sing and Miss Fox (is that her name?) all danced, but Mr Trotter really got into it with his robot moves, and Mr Gerling was really awkwardly moving in a funny way (but he’s always funny). On something vaguely related, Miss Sing and Miss Fox looked really good that night, but especially Miss Sing. She had on a really pretty purple dress and her hair was flowing down to her waist.

We all got class photos, and it was my class, 10I, that started it. We all chanted ‘10I’ at the end, go 10I! I also took lots of photos with people and got a group hug from all of 10I because I was leaving next year.

When I was in the car going home, my feet hurt and threatened to cramp on me, but I was still so excited and didn’t want to go to sleep at all. The year 10 formal was so different and so much better from my year 6 farewell, where I mostly hid from people and no one really knew how to dance.

And that was my year 10 formal experience, it was a wonderful, amazing night, and I really want to remember it forever.