Tayo Na Sa Antipolo...yet again

When the nuns announced that they had sold Herran and that we would be moving to Antipolo, I literally felt the world tilt. It was so depressing, we kept on walking by the auditorium and looking at every nook and cranny, our weird way of saying good-bye. I think I decided to hate Antipolo forever. And when we did get there, it sure didn't lend itself to much affection! Overwhelming primary impression: RED MUD. EVERYWHERE. MUD.MUD.MUD. Well, you get the point. And the oddest buildings on earth...why do they have holes in the middle??? Why are the tables shaped like the buildings? Why do we have individualized instruction?? Oh, I was prepared to dislike Antipolo...

But, just like moss, it kinda grew on you. The bare cement with iron spikes ambiance of the roofless multi-purpose hall was great for climbing (and clinging on to dear life when the wind whipped around the corners). The bahay kubos were cool. At least we had lessons out in the fresh air. The nuns decided we should learn to play softball. I guess they figured that warball would eventually kill us all (warball frightened the heck out of me...I seemed to be some sort of magnet or something...)

We dissected a chicken leg for Grade 7 science. If Monica thought that feeding young children BLACK pusit in the cafeteria was bad, dissecting a raw chicken leg was also up there in terms of horror content. I mean, you actually saw the veins and ligaments, they glistened, there was blood...you suddenly decided that fried chicken LEGS were now an absolute no-no. Forever.

How about sewing class (again, a dear favorite) with those Singer machines that you had to pump up and down or tilt or something with your legs to get it going? And if you did it too fast, the cloth got eaten up and you sewed all the way to the bitter end of the cloth...was that a Mrs. Estaniel as sewing teacher?...memory super fleeting when related to sewing...

How about Pilipino with Ms. Barba, Grade 5? The ONLY teacher who ever pronounced "CarRRRRmen" with the longest rolling of rrrr's ever? And I don't even like my name...it was with much dismay that I discovered my name to be even more horrific than expected as I entered UP Diliman. I discovered my real name was "Maria del Carmen Socorro Angeles Peypoch Reyes". Why, God? Why?

Riding a school bus was....I can't find the adjective. For Grade 5, I rode the Assumption bus at the Malate Church. It was filled with a lot of older kids. I got to sit on that middle seat you just push down when everybody is seated (and of course, you had to get up every single time someone moved seats. Sigh). I invariably dozed off and that's when the fun began....for Raiisa Roque or Judy Baltazar. These grade 6? people would yank my pig-tails, wake me up then look somewhere else when I tried to figure out who had woken me up from deep, saliva-drooling sleep. Hey! I lived in Las Pinas, was brought to Malate and rode the bus to Antipolo. Wouldn't you drool too??? You wouldn't?..hmmmm

You'd get off the bus in Assumption, step off in your shiny gregg shoes and SQUELCH into red mud. Ugh. Every single day. Then you would go to the straggly growth of grass on the side and valiantly try to wipe, clean it off. Am not surprised why it took forever for that grass to grow... Rainy days in school meant watching the center of the cluster fill up with water..and if you sat near the back of the classroom, you would actually get sprayed by the rain coming down the middle. But you cant beat that memory, right? Having a mini-pool at the back of your classroom? Actually seeing into other classrooms all day long (if you snuck looks at the back, of course). We were, after all, a MODERN school.

I remember watching the movie "Oliver" in the huge library. I remember discovering the Chronicles of Narnia in the library on the day I finished all my required reading in the II module.

Becky Sanares and I were best friends and classmates since Grade 2. In Antipolo, we sure got into scrapes. Once, we were so bored in class that we decided to draw people on our thighs. With ballpen ink, we drew huge, cartoon people from our knees, going down into our groins. We embellished those drawings and snickered all throughout that class. And then, what happens next is what is known as KARMA. As luck would have it, the next class was P.E....where you wear SHORTS. Skirts could hide the drawings but shorts, ah, shorts meant we were DEAD. Becky and I panicked, we couldn't let anyone know what we did. So we asked permission to go to the bathroom but ran to the library bathroom instead. We climbed up the sinks (one each), knelt as near the sink as we could and scrubbed our thighs violently. I don't even think we had soap. We got back to the classroom with bright red, violet-tinged thighs. I guess the P.E. teacher just thought it wasn't worth going there..hahahaha.

I remember being a Girl Scout. One weekend, I was playing in the park near my house and a swing whacked me on the forehead. Right in the middle, I got a gaping wound with blood running down my face. It didn't need to be stitched but they did have to put a huge gauze bandage right there. Monday morning comes and Ms. de Guzman tells me oh so happy news: I have been picked to lead the ENTIRE school in the "Panatang Makabayan". With a big white gauze bandage on my forehead. And dorky black glasses. In front of the library, facing the entire school. My, my, how assumption BUILDS character....

But when you look back, I feel that Antipolo was just a transition phase, a saying goodbye to a beloved school, a preparation for San Lorenzo. We had miles and miles of land to run around in (despite the red mud.) We had the multi-purpose hall to climb (better than any jungle gym set!) We grew up, played softball, had a fair (and got "kilig" being locked in "jail"), learned social dancing, had retreats in the rooms below the multi-purpose hall...the list is endless. It was our wild and free time before the walls of San Lorenzo. And red mud and all, it was necessary.