Bottled Sky

School is now in full swing. I’m actually enjoying my classes. It’s a very foreign feeling—something I never felt in the land of circuit boards and electrical currents, otherwise known as ECE. For the ten-thousandth time I will say that I am soooo glad I shifted.

I took Film 110 (Black-and-White Photography) as an elective this semester. I’m loving it! I’m pretty sure that most of the photos I’ve taken will compel real photographers to exclaim “Who in heaven’s name gave this girl license to use a camera?!“, but I’m also certain that at least one or two of them are not completely vomit-inducing. We’re going to make contact prints next meeting, and I’m really looking forward to it

As for non-school activities, Fatz had a birthday party last Saturday. For the first time in a really long time, my entire high school barkada got together. I hadn’t seen some of those girls since December, so I was pretty psyched. Jess took some pictures—I’ll be sure to post them once Jess sends them out. Paging, Jess! Hehe

I was finally able to go on a vacation with my high school barkada this weekend. And it was the best vacation we’ve taken together so far. Here are some photos from the trip. It was shorter than our usual trips (just three days this time), but we were able to do so many things. Not all of us were able to come, though. A couple of the others had internships that they couldn’t get out of

On Friday morning Fatz, Aggie, Liz, Jo-Anne, Jess, and I drove up to Tagaytay. We headed straight to Fatz’s condo at the Highlands, a country club in Tagaytay, where we were going to be staying for all three days. After we had lunch we got a call from Bern, another friend of ours, who was at Punta Fuego with her family. She invited us to spend the afternoon there. So we immediately jumped in the car and drove to Batangas.

The resort they were staying in was beautiful, and there weren’t that many other people. I hadn’t been to the beach in years, so I was pretty psyched. We spent quite a bit of time frolicking in the waves, shrieking and trying our best to hold on to our suits hehe I did get knocked down a couple of times by some strong waves, but I managed not to ingest too much sand and saltwater. We also got messy in the sand, trying to build the cities of Troy and ancient Egypt. As you will see from the photos, we are very far from being competent sandcastle builders. We headed off to the pool afterwards to splash around with Bern’s little brother Cosco. After a late dinner, we kidnapped Bern from her family to spend the night with us in Tagaytay.

On Saturday morning we went on a mini road trip around Tagaytay with Fatz acting as our driver and tour guide. She spends every weekend there, so she knows her way around pretty well. In the afternoon we went back to the Highlands and swam at the sports club, where Fatz lost both her contact lenses in the pool. Jess was miraculously able to find one of her lenses. How she was able to find an itty-bitty contact lens in a swimming pool is beyond me! We then spent a couple of hours relaxing in the locker room, taking advantage of the Jacuzzi, sauna, and steam bath. We got so relaxed that most of us were out cold before midnight, falling asleep right in the middle of a DVD.

On Sunday we just kicked back at the condo, watching more DVDs while chomping through bag after bag of chips. Liz and Jess cooked an excellent lunch of pesto and garlic bread, so we were able to stuff ourselves full for the trip home.

It’s 2 weeks into my summer vacation and I have yet to see a beach or even a pool. My cute, new swimsuit and I really, really want to go swimming. Unfortunately, being that our schedules are wildly mismatched, squeezing in some getaway time with my friends has become next to impossible. Some of them still have exams, while my summer classes begin next week. Oh, well…I just hope we manage to find time to go swimming before June.

On the up side, I finally have my room back! I had to spend the last three weeks crashing at our living room sofa, thanks to the termites that devoured every inch of my bedroom floor. I was finally able to sleep on a real bed again just this week. I am so happy to have walls and a door again.