A Trip to Remember

11 August 2007
Saturday

if there's a book and a movie called "A Walk to Remember" then this tour of ours is a trip to remember.

It happened in the 11th of August. Fr. Joel Camaya had his class in Creative Writing an experience that we surely will not forget for the rest of our lives.

i am not that much familiar with the who's who in Philipine literature and their works. A requirement for us was to read one of the short stories of a certain Filipino author, which i did, a copy furnished to me by the ever hard-working Chino Reyes a day before the meeting.

Done with perusing "The Light Bringer", i found the writing very vivid in its description of events, situations and people. It's as if that you are actually there experiencing the taste, sound, smell and sight of everything.

After lunch of August 11, Fr. Joel drove the L-300 van with us: Chino, Clemens, Xander, Kerwin, Lorenzo, Jerome, Briandel, yours truly and one of the past pupils of Fr. Joel in high school, a football varsity player - John Paul Raño. We traversed all the routes with heavy traffic going to Malate. Aside from someone who puked due to the horrible traffic and hot weather, our travel was pleasant what with the chocolates and drinks we had as snacks.

We arrived at a place, actually a bookstore owned by Francisco Sionil Jose, who's also the author of many books. i couldn't find any trace of importance, haughtiness from him, but rather a man who loves his work with passion. With his many achievements and awards in Philippine literature, we are so honored and privileged that he granted us time to ask him about many things: his life, work, dreams, initial struggles in being a writer, his family, his views in our government system.

Moments like this only comes once in a lifetime and i am very grateful to have this kind of experience. Surely, Fr. Joel's desire for us to become good writers has fired us up with zeal after this trip

Sit-in during Creative Writing class

yours truly have been fortunate enough that Fr. Joel Camaya SDB allowed me to be a sit-in during his class in Creative Writing for only an hour a week. have been informed that even if it's only an hour, i still have to do the requirements and assignments.

here it goes . . . . . . . am glad that my classmates are the seminarians, specially the 3rd years, the Pre-Postulants. they're a witty batch with different personalities. i have been with them for almost 1 year and 7 months of stay here in the seminary.

my utmost thanks goes to Braindel Cabañog for inviting me to have a gmail account and to the following 2nd year aspirants, the Two Towers of the seminary: Jan Renan Parala, a.k.a JRpogi and Roman Bonifacio Torres, for without these two brothers of mine, i wouldn't have been able to create a blog account.

with this advanced age of mine, i really have to do a lot of catching up with this kind of stuff related with the computer and it's about time that i do it now since i have few classes to attend to. it's a challenge to study once again since it was 20 years ago that i last attended school. i really have to dig deep in my memory some of the things i learned and to participate in class discussions since the third years are competitive and vocal about their opinions on different things.

my appreciation and many thanks to Fr. Joel, who's an inspiration for us seminarians for his knowledge and vast knowledge of information. am sure he will go places and will be more greater someday =)