I was walking around at the mall with my cousin when someone asked if I wanted to join a fashion show. They were missing a model and wanted me to take his place. I haven’t done anything like it before but they said it would be easy, so I agreed. I felt honoured that they considered asking me, because it was definitely something I wanted to try. That night we practiced at the mall (Island City Mall) and I was a bit nervous. I thought, “What did I get myself into, I’m suppose to be on vacation.” All this responsibility to perform might be too much. We practiced until midnight, which was cool because we were the only people left in the mall. The hours passed by pretty quickly, and within that time we had to memorize our blockings, which was the direction we had to take for each time we went out on stage. The instructors were very encouraging but I still felt slightly intimidated because I was new.

The next day before the show started, I was feeling really nervous. I was scared to make a mistake. My heart was beating really fast because I didn’t want to screw up. I just wanted to do it right, and also hopefully woo the crowd. The whole place was packed, a lot of people can be seen standing. When the show finally started, I was still nervous, and just before I was about to go on stage, that’s when my heart beat the fastest. I was terrified. When I went out on stage the crowd paused for a bit, and cheered loudly, I felt relieved because it was a good sign. My fears only went away after my first appearance, after that my fear just turned into excitement. It took a couple tries to get the hang of it, and then I was comfortable in front of a lot of people on stage.

When the show ended everyone was happy, and a lot of picture taking followed, on-stage and back-stage. Some people who watched the show wanted to take pictures with me, yay, I had fans, haha. I found it kinda interesting because it made me feel like a star, even if just for a moment. I’ve never really had random people go up to me and take pictures, so it was interesting indeed. I liked the whole experience, it made me feel good and confident, everything that happened was definitely worth the effort.