Day 78 Cebu City, Cebu

Today was the start of Cebu City's fiesta called Sinulog. The festival technically starts on Friday, but, unofficially, the city starts to celebrate the Monday of that week. Superficially, Sinulog celebrates the landing of Magellan and the subsequent Christianization of the country. However, the Philippines is special because of it's eclectic culture. There are three distinct cultures that I've noticed here: precolonial Filipino culture, Spanish era colonization, and postcolonial Spanish colonization (dominated mostly by US presence). So, during Sinulog, you can witness the celebration of all three. There's a lot of Spanish influence but also a ton of native Filipino mixed in with bits and pieces of Americana. As far as fiestas go, Sinulog is one of the biggest in the Philippines drawing tourists in from all over the world.

Anyway, today we went to watch the first part of the celebration where they choose the Sinulog festival queen. Each participant comes from a different province in Cebu (a few represent provinces from Mindano, which is an island south of Cebu) and compete by construing costumes and dancing the traditional Sinulog dance. The dance itself highlights a statue of the St. Nino (baby Jesus), which was presented to Filipinos by Magellan after he landed in the Philippines. 

Here's some pictures!