coming home

i found my way to my high school alma mater last friday to award the an waray leadership medal to the salutatorian of the LIDE learning center.  it was fate.  15 years ago on the same occasion, i was the salutatorian of our batch.  (the leadership award then went to my good friend cristy alde, who is now a pediatrician practicing in isabela.)

it was eerily comforting seeing most of my former teachers still part of the school faculty.  a lot had changed, some looked older, but most of them had aged gracefully, sans the wrinkles & white hair, and i was uber proud.

but of course, the crux of the whole visit was finding myself back at the leyte industrial development estate (LIDE), where i spent 5 happy, fruitful, and of course, eventful, growing-up years.  although i only managed to gaze at the house we used to call home (i didn't know who the current occupants were, otherwise, i would have knocked & asked to see my old room. no kidding.), meeting up with old friends and teachers made the homecoming complete.

mr. yap is still the principal and he has remained the distinguished gentleman i was always in awe of.

mrs. yap definitely does not look the lola she already is now.  i even think she looks exactly the same as when i saw her last 1994.

mr. sacares, who used to have two little cute kids tagging behind him & mrs. sacares, proudly showed me their latest family picture.  of course his sons now tower over him.

ms. bulahan gladly shared with me her latest romance that went pfffft, and she remembers how she had to pull my sister, dwan, out of the car just to make her attend her preschool class.

i got to talk to other teachers there, but they were mostly concerned about how i am and what i'm doing now.  i could see pride in their faces.  after all, i used to be this mousy little girl, the flirty-nerd who they constantly worried about not being too focused enough on her academics because she was busy with her robin-padilla-esque (hehe) boyfriend.  i guess my outfit choice that day nailed it. (you can never go wrong with silver stillettos. haha.)

and my classmates who have chosen to stay... oh wow. we all have grown!!!

joy, geoffrey & maricel work in philphos, just like our parents used to.  joy has a successful business and a kid who's an incoming 3rd grader! (wow)  geoffrey is happy, stable and fulfilled as a husband & father.  maricel is juggling a career as a chemist and being the mother of two kids. 

i was uber happy to see jake, who now has a drastically changed lifestyle as a father & husband, and who refused to share even just a gulp of red wine with me.  hehehe.

and dara.  my ever-loyal high school best friend who has stuck with me through the devil and the deep blue sea... the choice she made to go back was mind-boggling at first, but she & emerson have built a life anyone can be proud of.  i'm super duper proud of their success as the youngest managers (or are they VPs now?) of PASAR.  heck. i don't even know when i can afford a swift AND a strada, which they now have :)  being my very good friend, we usually see each other at least once a year here in manila, but this was the first time i saw them back home after years. 

the selfish side of me is glad they all have chosen to stay in LIDE.  it means home will always be home because they're there :)

but the homecoming wouldn't have been complete without seeing all the other very important people i had to meet in cebu, now a bustling city very, very different from what i remember.

hazel looks exactly the same, and i'm happy that she looks sexier.  we reminisced about our love-hate relationship back in high school, and just had to laugh at how juvenile our "issues" were back then. haha.

amiel, unlike jake, decided to more-than-hang-out with us, and braved the wrath of his wife just to enjoy the night - complete with alcohol, good music and fun conversation.  he didn't even know that hazel was now based in cebu!  (i hope they decide to hang out more often.  after all, we manila-based classmates don't get to see each other, but we're pretty updated about each other's lives.)

paloy is now the responsible husband & father, though he skipped going home to dumaguete that weekend just because i was arriving. hehe. man, he has been through hell and back, and i was glad to have spent quality time with him after years of seeing him almost everyday in molave back in college. hehehe. those were the days :)

and surpise, surprise, i gave janjan an excuse to procrastinate, and he drove me around his city, fed me and took care of me like a mother hen.  ending my trip with quality time spent with a newfound friend surely was the icing on the cake that was my trip.

so i'm back in the big bad city and beside rauf, who is now my home...  when he's older, i will take him around to see the places and meet the people who have made his mom what & who she is today.  for now, we're nursing his fever (he's cutting his 7th tooth!) and hoping it will be all gone by tomorrow.

how apt... me getting back to my roots just when my son is turning one. 

life is beautiful.