Childhood Friends
Ever since I got back, I've been really spending a lot of time trying to catch up with the people I left behind. That's one of the major reasons why I haven't been writing as much here on my blog. If I'm not meeting up with friends, I'm either spending quality time with my sister or my 3 beautiful cats.
2 of my childhood friends have spent the last 5 years in medical school. First, they had to finish med. proper and then spend 1 year of internship in the hospital of their choice. It was always very hard to meet up with them because most of the time, they were not available. So I'd only get to see them maybe once or twice a year. It wasn't so bad though, because in that one day of the year that we would see each other (together with 2 of our other friends) we'd end up having so much fun just like when we were kids, the distance ceased to matter. Well, they recently finished with the medical board exams so these days we've just been hanging out in the mall. We’re indulging ourselves in the guilty pleasure of being bums after burning out in the last few years.
Let me backtrack a little…. You see, when I was in Grade 5, I met this girl named Yuri. I don't know why, but I got along with her better than most of our other classmates. I guess it was because she was the only one who would speak to me in English. I don't really remember this anymore, but she said I never really spoke in Filipino. I guess I never realized how much I was an outsider back then, but I was glad that at least 1 person did understand me for who I really was.
Yuri and I were both in the section called Peaceful. Another thing I remembered was that we had a rivalry with another section called Industrious. By the time we moved on to Grade 6, people from both classes were combined to make up one class called Patriotic. I ended up meeting 3 other people because of a class project we were working on. We were supposed to impersonate a popular singing group of that time. I ended up becoming really good friends with Veronica, Anna Marie, and Zara.
High School came and Zara moved to another school. The 4 of us who remained naturally ended up staying together. Even though Zara was in another school, we still kept in touch with her by snail mail and handwritten letters passed on to her younger sister who was still in the same school.
When it was time to move on to college, we really had no idea how we would manage to still stay close. We were all moving on to different courses and different universities. This was the era when email was unheard of for most people (including me) and they were still building the MRT. We ended up in such diverse fields as Chemistry, Biology, Accountancy, Psychology and Philosophy. What would we ever talk about when we would meet again? I don’t know how we managed, but in the end, people in our lives came and went, but after graduation, we knew we still had each other to go back to. Nothing changed. We'd still meet up for our annual reunion, eat good food, talk about the silliest things, and just try to support each other through all the changes we were going through.
Now, we're all roughly about 26. We still have our annual get-together regardless of whether we find ourselves in other countries. We sit around reminiscing how I slipped on the dance floor during someone's debut, how many times we tried to put one of our friends in the trash can, how we often had to prepare song and dance numbers for the kids we used to teach every Saturday when we were in high school, and a whole list of all the weird things we've been through together. We may have our differences in opinion and we may be treading on different paths, but if by some miracle I end up marrying someone one day, I'm already pretty sure that I will want them there beside me as my bridesmaids.
2 of my childhood friends have spent the last 5 years in medical school. First, they had to finish med. proper and then spend 1 year of internship in the hospital of their choice. It was always very hard to meet up with them because most of the time, they were not available. So I'd only get to see them maybe once or twice a year. It wasn't so bad though, because in that one day of the year that we would see each other (together with 2 of our other friends) we'd end up having so much fun just like when we were kids, the distance ceased to matter. Well, they recently finished with the medical board exams so these days we've just been hanging out in the mall. We’re indulging ourselves in the guilty pleasure of being bums after burning out in the last few years.
Let me backtrack a little…. You see, when I was in Grade 5, I met this girl named Yuri. I don't know why, but I got along with her better than most of our other classmates. I guess it was because she was the only one who would speak to me in English. I don't really remember this anymore, but she said I never really spoke in Filipino. I guess I never realized how much I was an outsider back then, but I was glad that at least 1 person did understand me for who I really was.
Yuri and I were both in the section called Peaceful. Another thing I remembered was that we had a rivalry with another section called Industrious. By the time we moved on to Grade 6, people from both classes were combined to make up one class called Patriotic. I ended up meeting 3 other people because of a class project we were working on. We were supposed to impersonate a popular singing group of that time. I ended up becoming really good friends with Veronica, Anna Marie, and Zara.
High School came and Zara moved to another school. The 4 of us who remained naturally ended up staying together. Even though Zara was in another school, we still kept in touch with her by snail mail and handwritten letters passed on to her younger sister who was still in the same school.
When it was time to move on to college, we really had no idea how we would manage to still stay close. We were all moving on to different courses and different universities. This was the era when email was unheard of for most people (including me) and they were still building the MRT. We ended up in such diverse fields as Chemistry, Biology, Accountancy, Psychology and Philosophy. What would we ever talk about when we would meet again? I don’t know how we managed, but in the end, people in our lives came and went, but after graduation, we knew we still had each other to go back to. Nothing changed. We'd still meet up for our annual reunion, eat good food, talk about the silliest things, and just try to support each other through all the changes we were going through.
Now, we're all roughly about 26. We still have our annual get-together regardless of whether we find ourselves in other countries. We sit around reminiscing how I slipped on the dance floor during someone's debut, how many times we tried to put one of our friends in the trash can, how we often had to prepare song and dance numbers for the kids we used to teach every Saturday when we were in high school, and a whole list of all the weird things we've been through together. We may have our differences in opinion and we may be treading on different paths, but if by some miracle I end up marrying someone one day, I'm already pretty sure that I will want them there beside me as my bridesmaids.
posted by wilgefortis @ 3:13 AM
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