a project eight years in the making

i've finally completed one of the things i've always wanted to do -- get to see all the ateneo schools in the philippines. and it took me eight years to do it.

ateneo de manila's a snap of course. i went there every day for four years. still go there once in a while these days to go to mass, look at the sky, and see the me that used to be.

xavier university in cagayan de oro city was next, in april 1997. it was the first leg of the end of my JVP year (i was a Jesuit Volunteer from 1996-1997 where i taught high school english in the north -- another long story all together -- and the trip to mindanao was part of that year's close for me). i remember being very woozy upon getting to xavier as i had just gotten off a 17-hour boat ride. hooray for super ferry.

ateneo de zamboanga followed less than a week later -- still a part of my great mindanao road trip of 1997. i also arrived in zamboanga dirty and disoriented, as it had been a 13-hour non-aircon bus ride from cagayan de oro (and our bus was even stopped in the middle of the night somewhere in ipil for a "routine" check point, where all the males in the bus were made to get off by scary men carrying enormous guns.)

ateneo de davao twice, once in september 2002 and once in august 2003. i visited my sister for who was a JVP herself in 2002 for her birthday. then in 2003, ateneo proved to be a perfect backdrop to the kadayawan festival.

and finally, ateneo de naga in march 2005. totally unplanned, totally spur of the moment, and totally beautiful.

thanks to all the JVPs who sheltered, fed, and toured us and for making my great ateneo trek as fabulous as it was.

merely a word

Am reading The Dante Club and I don’t know how much of that is fiction but there’s a part there that says that after his wife Fanny died, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow never wrote a single word about her. Instead, after her death, all he could write were lines of an Alfred Tennyson poem – “Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace.” If it were his own words Longfellow was writing, the temptation to write Fanny’s name would be too strong, and then she would be merely a word.



(would that ñ be merely a word, even after all the times I have written it.)