On Thursday, Jan. 18th for the first time ever, Spanish Club ran by Spanish teacher Ingrid Perez, hosted a “Salsa Night” as a part of Student council’s “Fun week”. The event had seven salsas in total, made by students and teachers, with a variety of spicy and chunky salsas. Two dollars was charged for each person to enjoy unlimited salsa.
Perez understood that it was Welcome Night for the upcoming Freshman but is still happy with the turn out of the whole event and she isn’t opposed to doing it next year! “It’s hard to have a big turnout of students during the week because we’re competing with sports practices or games,” Perez said. “Also, that same night the school had scheduled the Welcome Night for incoming 9th graders.”
During a school week is an especially hard time for events like these, however they can be a lot of fun and bring the community of the school closer together. “Those who were able to attend had a lot of fun tasting the different salsas and learning basic salsa dance moves,” Perez said.
This event wasn’t just about salsa tasting, students also got the opportunity to salsa dance. “Students were able to join me in a basic lesson of salsa dance moves. I taught them the moves, we practiced a short choreography, and then proceeded to dance salsa to the rhythm of Marc Anthony’s “Vivir La Vida” song. It was a lot of fun,” Perez said.
Spanish Club is currently raising money to be able to continue to sponsor Morris, a 7 y/o kid from El Salvador, that they have been sponsoring since 2021 with the Unbound organization. When the student council reached out to them about the event they saw it as an opportunity to fundraise for Morris.
Two seniors from the salsa night and Spanish club were excited about the turn out, but both were slightly disappointed.“ I wish there would have been more people that showed up but everyone that came had a fun time, “ Brooklyn Oursler said.
Kai Jacobson is another member of the club. “The turnout for the salsa night was lower than we wanted it to be,” Jacobson said. “There were quite a few people that came though. While the turnout wasn’t fantastic, I think everyone had a great time hanging out and eating the salsas.”
As for it becoming an annual event, the Spanish club hasn’t gotten the opportunity to have a meeting about whether or not they are going to. “It’s completely up in the air, I think that if the Spanish club does this event again next year, they will have to create more of a buzz around the event to get more people to come,” Jacobson said. I think the concept of an all you can eat salsa competition should become a yearly event for the Spanish club.”
Salsas ranged from regular mild salsa to different varieties like avocado salsa, and the Spanish Club President, Brooklyn Oursler, won the best salsa with a pineapple rendition. “There were about seven salsas and no guidelines on what type of salsas to make,” Jacobson said
