July 4th: Umagang Kay Ganda

Went down to the lobby and this was waiting for us. Front page, baby! 

Happy birthday, America! Today is July 4, American Independence Day. While normally back home we might be watching fireworks, we started making “fireworks” of our own in the Philippines. Today was the day of our biggest show, Resorts World Manila. But before that, we started off with an early morning TV show, Umagang Kay Ganda.

Today marked the first time we were going to be ON LIVE TV! How exciting! Since this was a morning show, we had to wake up super early to get ready and beat the traffic. This was my first time at a real TV studio, so I was pretty pumped. We walked onto the lot where there was a wide open space, with a stand selling waffles and drinks to the side. We even got a quick tour inside the building, looking at the amazing looking sets where guests, anchors, and even chefs were being filmed. After the mini-tour we headed back outside to get ready for our spot. The crew pulled out a large carpet for us to perform on and we assembled into a group to get ready. The crew around us continued to prepare, setting up lights, monitors, and microphones. We had to do a quick sound check with mics being moved around to best capture our sound.

Finally it was time to play. They first had us play a “teaser”, for which we picked our encore song, “Wings” by Little Mix. As we played we could see ourselves playing on the monitor IN REAL TIME! We could see when it cut to commercial and our director cut us off to get ready for our real segment. (Here the mics were re-shuffled to get our sound even better on TV.) Our spokesperson of the day was Sabrina, who got the chance to be actually interviewed. Most of it was in Tagalog, so unfortunately for most of us, we couldn’t really understand. However, Sabrina pulled it off and then we got a chance to perform!

For our featured song, we picked our medley of “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” and “Tie a Yellow Ribbon”. As for most of our smaller stage shows, we weren’t able to do our choreography in full, so while we played “Raindrops”, Luz and Riandra acted out the umbrella skit. Then when it came time for “Yellow Ribbon”, Ceci stood up to do her ribbon dance. But, OH NO! Ceci’s yellow ribbon got stuck on Sierra’s foot! Unfortunately, the tugging did not free the ribbon. Noticing our distress (or it simply could have been that our song was too long), the show cut to commercial and we were done for the day. But we were on national television! We’re definitely some of the luckiest kids ever. 

Sam Perkins before Umagang Kay Ganda.
Nolen snuck a picture on his phone! 

Remember that waffle stand on the side I mentioned? Well we got to eat some! Some people got vanilla filling or chocolate filling or even a hot dog! Then some of the boys started freaking out. NBA legend Sam Perkins was on the lot with us! He was going to do a segment later in the day, but the boys were so excited. My brother Nolen even snuck a picture of him. Needless to say, we were psyched to be seeing stars.

From there, we hopped back on the bus to head to the hotel. The coolest part was that when we got back to the hotel, the people in security recognized us from the TV. Now, it was time for our real breakfast and the start to the first of many long days. ^.^


~Karina