Quinceañera

What is it?

The Quinceañera is the celebration of a girl's fifteenth birthday in parts of Latin America and elsewhere in communities of people from Latin America.
This birthday is celebrated differently from any other birthday because it marks the transition from childhood to young womanhood.
This ceremony is also known as the Tree of life. The 15 candles symbolize the 15 years that the Quinceañera "left behind". Each of the candles symbolizes a special memory, a moment shared with any person who is invited to join this ritual with her.

How is the ritual?

Preparations for the Quinceañera often begin a year in advance, for it is usually done on a grand scale.
The young lady chooses 14 friends to be her court. Each of the 14 friends represents one year on the Quinceañera's life.
She is the fiveteenth so she represents herself, her 15 years old.

The day of the ceremony, the Quinceañera goes to the party in a beautiful car which is usually a limousine or a beautiful old car. When she arrives, her family and friends are waiting for her and then she dance the bals with her father and all the people who wants to dance with her, first boys and then the girls.
When they finish to dance, all the guests goes to their respective tables and then the Quinceañera takes photos with all the people in tables.
Then, they have dinner and then starts the party all night long until morning.

My experience

When I was 15 years old I went to Uruguay to celebrate my Quinceañera party. I wasn't excited because I came to Spain when I was ten years old and I don't have friends there, only family so it wasn't an important party for me, but when my mother was 15 years old she wasn't able to  have her own party because her parents didn't have enough money so she told me "please, do it" and I finally said yes. And the truth is that it was a beautiful experience for me.
I wanted to stay in the saloon waiting for the guests but I was late so when I arrived everybody was waiting for me, and was so embarrasing because I wore a long dress and everybody was looking at me and smiling. It was beautiful because I felt like a princess but embarrasing and strange at the same time. But it was a beautiful and funny party.

Self-evaluation

First of all I want to say that I'm shy so I was a little bit nervous but I was lucky because I did the oral presentation with a good friend, Noa Fengler. We did a prezi to show pictures about what we were explaining.
Well, I think that I have a good prounciation but I was nervous so I talked quietly so people had difficulties to heard me.
I don't know if I did an eye contact, I asked to my classmates and they told me that I did it a little, I know that I looked a lot to my teacher.
We structure the presentation very good because we explained what is it, a little bit of history, how is the ritual and how the Quinceañera needs to go dressed and then I explained my experience and Noa explained some differences between the Quinceañera party and the Sweet 16 party. I think that the content is so interesting and we also shared a lot of information that we found in Internet.
In my opinion, we choose a good topic because it is interesting know more about cultures and beautiful parties around the world. I explained my own experience with all the class so I hope they enjoyed it!