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A old holiday and an older dance

PHOTO: EPA

These people are Filipino students. They have painted their faces because they are celebrating Sinulog, a famous Filipino holiday in August.

For Sinulog, people do a special kind of dance. There are drums, and people take two steps forward and then one step backward.

The point of the dance is to celebrate Saint Nio, an important person to Filipino Catholics.

The Philippines is famous for having a lot of Catholics, but it didn't used to.

Even before the Philippines became Catholic, though, people did the Sinulog dance. The meaning has changed, but the dance is the same. Today, people think the dance is important for this reason.

KUMUSTA! The Philippines wasn't Catholic until the Spanish took over in 1565. The Spanish ruled for a long time, which is why the language of the Philipines - Tagalog (tah-GAH-log) - nsounds a little bit like Spanish. For example,``hello'' is ``kumusta'' (koo-moo-STA), which sounds like "how are you?" in Spanish.

The Words of the day to celebrate 慶祝 (qing4 zhu4) My older brother got into NTU, so the whole family is going to celebrate tonight. 因為哥哥考上台大，所以今晚我們全家要去好好慶祝一番。 saint 聖者 (sheng4 zhe3)

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