4:30 am:
Woke up. I lay on my bed for a good while, just staring at the darkness and yawning. My sister was already taking a bath. I couldn't remember the last time I woke up this early.
Pinagbaon pa pala ko ni Ma. :)) So... may bitbit pa kong lunchbox at jug. Hay nako, kulang na lang stroller e. :)) Nilagay ko na lang ung lunchbox ko sa bag ko.
7:15 am:
Arrived in UP. I decided to walk to the theatre since I wasn't in a hurry anyway. It was pretty much a straightforward route, with no loopy-loops or curves. This is a cinch, I thought. Which was my mistake exactly: it was one long FREAKING walk!!! I was walking for fifteen minutes, my body was breaking into little beads of sweat, and all this occurred even before anything significant had happened. There were hordes of people milling around outside the theatre, most of them in little groups of safety. I was on my own social island for a while, trying not to look too pathetic. I eventually saw some AA people, Justine and Ate Inna being the first of them. We were waiting for the registration lines to become a little less congested before sweating it out with the rest of them.
There was a guy in a khaki media jacket holding a videocam. I wasn't thinking much about it until I realized... OMG. Omgomgomg. It was Howie Severino!!! I was a little awed, because he was my absolutiest favorite documentary-maker guy! I wanted to tell him I liked his work but he was a little busy, so I didn't. He may have been documenting the protest against the tuition increase, which means to say that: there was a simultaneous mini-rally happening alongside the registration. And they actually had small megaphones and placards. And they do break out in choruses. All in a day's work for them, I guess.
Amazing. My first taste of student activism(!).
8:10 am:
Got through the registration tables. They gave me a UP Survival Kit cd, plus some brochures and leaflets which I didn't read. I was too busy stuffing everything into my bag. I walked into the surprisingly roomy theatre (aww, miss ko ung Assumpta :( ), where their ethnic ensemble, Kontra Gapi, was playing (awww, ethnic!).
They proceeded with the program, which was quite a formal affair, full of welcoming speeches and clapping and introducing people. I was falling asleep in the middle of one long speech when it finally ended and the UP Concert Chorus walked in to bring us out of our misery. Or was it the UP Pep Squad? Anyway, I can’t remember much of what they said, but it was full of things like, “Congratulations! Out of the 50,000 people who took the UPCAT, you have passed it in order to stand here before us today, as our centennial freshmen, etc etc,” and more ego pumping.
Nagreview din pala kami ng cheer, haha, at which we spectacularly failed at. Mas malakas pa ata ung bangaw sa labas. At least nakikipalakpak ako hahahaha. At dahil bibo kasi an aming pep squad, they performed a routine for us! Only the effect was rather spoiled by the fact that as soon as the pep squad cleared the stage to start, the student rally swiftly moved onto the stage with these huge “I-rollback ang tuition!” banners that completely obscured the poor pep squad from our view. Medyo nakakainis but oh well. Freedom of expression to the next level na.
12-ish:
So finally the university welcome ended. Our block handlers were supposed to meet us outside in order to lead us to wherever we were supposed to go after. Unfortunately they didn’t have their signboards on hand, which left a lot of us confused. We huddled around like bleating sheep to the side of the theatre, near the under-construction bell tower. The scary part was, there was an occasional piece of scaffolding that fell from way up, and damn, it COULD have hit somebody. The guard made us change our area after that and line up somewhere safer, at which point our block handlers now had their bloody signboards on hand and were organizing us into lines.
They led us into an SE room. Yay aircon. Naglaro kami ng Super Manok, ang paboritong laro ng estudyanteng UP (or so they say). Anyway, pinakain din nila kami eventually ng Jollibee burger steak, at tinour kami sa building namin. I’m happy to say that the bathrooms look clean and civilized, hahahaha!
1:30 pm:
School of Econ orientation: the student council, the orgs, miscellaneous things… One Econ singing group performed Seasons of Love; it was a whiff of nostalgia that only carries one thing with it: the spirit of IV-3. How do you measure, measure a year?
Pinagmeryenda kami ng Greenwich pizza. Sosy. Hahahaha. And they forced us to play games. I say forced kasi lalapit na lang sila sayo, tas papapuntahin ka sa stage. :| Ngyur. For this one game, they got five guys and one girl, tapos sabi sa guys (kasi kumakain sila ng pizza nun), “Gamit ng pizza niyo, makipag-flirt kayo kay Marga. O contestant number one, go!” (This is a Greenwich-related game, kasi sponsor nila un.)
Guy 1: Pano ba makipag-flirt sa pizza?
Eyng. =)) Di nakikinig e. Basta kahit papano, nakaraos din sila dun hahaha. Sobrang nakakatawa lang.
5:00 pm:
Akalain mong natapos kami ng 5. Grabeeeee. Ang hirap makakuha ng sasakyan na jeep!!! Uwian hour na kasi, kaya agawan talaga. Whenever an empty jeep would roll by, people would just swarm on it like ants—you know, the vicious kind that can usually bring down small animals. So kaming apat ni Milcah, Misha saka ni Nicole, di makakuha ng jeep. We were like timid rabbits that hopped forward and flopped back. Sa tagal namin dun, sumakay na lang kami ng kahit ano, basta dadaan sa Robinsons. Kaya ayun, nakauwi na rin ako.
It was a good first day, I think, but I couldn't help thinking of my friends (and how I miss them so much), and what they were doing at that moment. There were times during the day that I wished I could live my four college years over and over again, except that I'd go to a different university every time and get all the chances I want to take in life. It was exciting that was in a way rather sad, because to accomodate the new, you have to push aside the old.
There's a new hymn I'll be singing soon, one slower than the one I've been accustomed to. But for now I'll keep the old school song in my heart, exactly the place where all my good memories go.
