Last Monday, a few of the staff of HivePH went and visited an orphanage for our outreach program. We had a short book reading and drawing activity with the kids, had a little playtime with them, and then we went out to a park nearby after. Just us staff, not the kids. There are quite a lot of them and I don't think we could ever handle that much children out in the park.
Anyways, I wanted to join this week's contest and I choose to share about the last photo I have in my phone. The first paragraph above shows a little bit of a back story but the photo I am sharing is the photo of the coffee shop we made a last stop to before we all parted and headed home. It was a photo of the La Cathedral cafe in Intramuros, Manila.
My university was within the walls of Intramuros and I've gone to quite a lot of places in there during my college days but this one I never heard of before. Basically because the place was established a little way after I have graduated. When we entered the gate of the walled city, I kept on thinking when was the last time I really actually visited Intramuros after I finished college? In my head, I can clearly remember the time I left, it was on the night of my graduation. But then when we got to a particular part in Intramuros, I remembered I joined a 10K fun run called the Walled City Run (or something or the other). And that was it. Aside from that 1 hour fun run, I never really looked back since I left that place.
Going back there, (the HivePH staff went to Fort Santiago, by the way), it reminded me of how much my life has changed. The walls reminded me of how I lived in survival mode for years. Literally surviving each day, feeding myself through freetaste food at the mall, or cheap street food in front of the university just so I wouldn't starve for the rest of the day. The fastfood chain I worked at was no longer there, the facade of the building has changed but still, it reminded me of all the hardships I had to endure as a working student.
On my way home, I passed by the different places my friends used to bring me along at during my days off work, that's where they catch me up on all the goings on in the lives of our classmates and batchmates. I really did miss out on a lot because I had so much going on in college. I'm just glad my friends were there. Man, they even helped me catch up with all the assignments and projects - even did some of my homework for me. LOL. College life would have been more challenging if it weren't for them.
But it's not all hardships at all. I had moments at the wall where I just hang out and play the guitar or people watch, or just read a good book under the shade of a tree. I brought my ex there a couple of times, along with my college friends and we would chitchat, have some picnic snacks.
The last parts of my teenage years were spent within the walls of Intramuros and needless to say, those walls doesn't just hold history of the country from the Spanish, American, and Japanese occupation. It also holds a lot of special memories that I will cherish for the rest of my life. I guess the streets of cobblestones within the walled city of Intramuros just brought back a lot of memories.
