The night I was anticipating since summer was finally here: my senior Homecoming dance. After a forty minute drive on a dark and upbeat party bus, I arrived at the Club Sirona at Santa Anita. All dressed up in black and beautified, I expected this day to be the stress reliever after my SAT test and the time to dance my night away.
When we arrived at the Club Sirona at Santa Anita, I could immediately tell that the venue was located on a horse race track because of the pungent smell that hit my face right when I got out of my bus. The smell of horse manure was so unexpected and a downer to the start of my night, but aside from that, the venue was fairly appealing to me. A big building lit up with lamps outside downstairs and dim lights in the inside. It felt as if I was away at some fancy hotel near a beach during the time when the sun had just set.
Walking around with my date, I actually found something I did not see on a daily basis. Although I am rather scared of clowns and circus performers, it was somewhat enjoyable and interesting to see 15-foot tall circus people walking around and dancing to the music. It wasn’t like the ordinary dances where there were only decorations placed around the venue—this dance had actual moving decorations. The circus performers walked around near the dance floor and all over the second floor passing by the people drinking and eating on benches in the middle of the second floor.
The venue also actually made me feel as if I was inside Cinderella’s castle: everyone fancily dressed, seated around tables set up near the horse carriages drinking their drinks. People were jumbled up outside waiting in line to feel like Cinderella in her horse drawn magical pumpkin. In all honesty, I thought the downstairs area of the venue was the most lavish area of Homecoming. It was peaceful and quiet since everyone there was either waiting in line for the carriage rides, airbrush tattoos, or photo booth.
The, peace and quiet was broken when I went back upstairs. Right when I walked up the stairs to go indoors, people’s screams and shouts could be heard on the left side of the building. They too were jumbled up–cluttered into a chaotic mush to get into the upstairs photo booth. My group of friends soon joined in the chaos, since taking pictures at the photo booth is a Homecoming tradition. After waiting in line, which felt like an hour, we pushed and shoved our way through the photo booth. Our prize for waiting in line and getting out of the photo booth safely was two strips of black and white pictures.
To my surprise, this year’s Homecoming dance floor was quite different from last year’s. I guess the phrase “Expect the Unexpected” was correct. Instead of the small and crowded dance floor like last year’s at Club X, it was actually large and spacious. Because of its large size, people were not squished against each other’s arms or sweating as much. To my astonishment however, not a lot of people were actually dancing on the dance floor. The music was good music to listen to when hanging out with friends or just driving around in a car, but not good music for dancing.
My date and I began to think the music was not our type and walked downstairs and upstairs several times throughout the night. We stopped by the tables downstairs and talked about which air brush tattoo designs we should get, and got in line. Waiting for tattoos didn’t seem too long, since we could see all the things going around the whole venue, and the music could also be heard outside. Although excited to get matching tattoos, unfortunately for my date and I, we couldn’t get the air brush tattoos we wanted. The two air brush artists had to be extra careful when painting the designs everyone wanted which took a long time. But to our disappoint, to beat the traffic, my group decided beforehand that we would leave a few minutes earlier than the actual end of Homecoming.
Homecoming was then over for us. Just mainly walking around and exploring took most of our time at Homecoming this year. Even though it was at least three times as big as last year’s venue, it seemed as if there were not as many activities this year. The whole venue was beautiful, but the smell and uninteresting activities somewhat made my last Homecoming experience not as impressive as I had expected it to be.
My entire group then got onto the bus around the time homecoming was about to end. We safely arrived back home and got ready to leave. Of course since this year’s homecoming dance was going to be my last homecoming, I’m probably going to cherish the memories I had made that night, even if they weren’t all that great. But hopefully (I’ll be crossing my fingers) my senior prom will be a little bit better.
