the day before summer classes start

Look how vain I've become. You can now Like my blog on Facebook, but it's not a fan page or anything. Ooh, technology.

Anyway, I had an awesome weekend. Saturday marked my parents' sweetheart anniversary, so we went out to celebrate by eating at Butcher's Best! If the name of the place doesn't sound all that romantic, that's because it isn't. It's always full of people, and there isn't a lot of space, and the walls are covered in a mural depicting Chinese people grilling meat. But if you ever happen to be in Cagayan de Oro, that's the first place you must eat at. I dare you to find better sisig!

After dinner we went to SM to watch Rio. The last time I saw a movie in a cinema was during SOSE Movie Night, and that was the latest Harry Potter! I love Rio by the way, you should go buy your self a ticket and see it right now! It's funny! It's charming! It's farming! (Forget I said that.) The colors are amazing, and the music is just the best! I recommend watching it in 3D, because many parts in the movie I kept thinking "That would look awesome in 3D."

On the car ride home I remember thinking up an awesome poem. See, our SM is on the side of a mountain, relatively far from the CITY city (yeah CDO is weird). It's elevated, so driving there you have a wonderful view of the cityscape. What makes the view so special for me is that from up there you can see the ocean, the city, and the mountains in the distance. You can see the farms and the malls, the fields and the business districts. I've always thought of as CDO as the perfect mix of the rural and the urban, and for me, that view of Cagayan completely encapsulates that.

The poem was something about how the trees close by would occasionally obscure my view of the city lights down below, so that what I was seeing was a blend of nature and city, nature and city. I mentally wrote a verse and then later forgot it. So I didn't get to post anything for our folio that night. D:

. . .

Yesterday after Mass we had lunch somewhere in Divisoria. (Yes, there is a barangay here named Divisoria. Have I told you about the Night Cafe yet? Maybe another post then.) My parents ran into a lot of their high school and college friends. It made me think of how my classmates and I are going to be when I'm my parents' age. "Oh hi, Cheryl! How's your clinic?" (How obvious is it that I do not know what doctors say to each other?)

. . .

There is this place in Cagayan called The Rotunda, and it's not a building or a mall or anything. It's a big  island of concrete that sits where three big roads meet. Up until recently, there was nothing on that island except one big narra-ish tree and some benches for people to sit down on. However, the government decided to shake things up a bit by renting out booths to street vendors, so now the place has become an eatery of sorts. Al fresco dining, by the roadside.

I'm not hating on it. I love the little pakulo's the CDO government surprises us with. It's just that The Rotunda is basically the same thing as the Night Cafe. Street food, roadside cuisine, beer. It seems like Kagay-anons never tire of that formula. Again, NOT HATING. I'm just making an observation is all.

(By the way, check out this link for pictures of the Night Cafe!)

. . .

When we got home from checking out The Rotunda (which was really festive-like, with a band playing and people laughing and drinking and kids running around and throwing light-up balls everywhere), we tried finishing another Nancy Drew PC game, but we ended up watching The Sixth Sense instead. Dad turned it off halfway because we were all sleepy na, and I needed to get up at 4 for my flight.

I got up at 4:30 AM. I kissed my siblings goodbye, even though they were sound asleep. Then my parents drove me to the airport, the same road you take going to SM, and I got to see the beautiful view of Cagayan de Oro again (the one I described to you a few paragraphs earlier), only there weren't as many lights on at that time of the day. It didn't even look like day. It was dark as night, and looking down into the city you couldn't tell where the ocean ended and where the sky began. Only billboards and street lights were on, the rest of the city was asleep. I wanted to go to sleep myself, but I fought the urge to close my eyes. Sleep is a useful thing to have on hour-long flights, I figured I should save it for then. Besides, why waste a beautiful car ride sleeping?

. . .

I got back here in my dorm around 8:30, and I found this sweet little surprise waiting for me on my side of the desk:

(Click to see more clearly Jean's adorable handwriting and the number of calories on that mint KitKat)

Yeahhh. Did I ever tell you that my room is right above Ken Afford, and that if I drilled a hole in my floor I could see directly into the restaurant? I used to find that fact amusing. Now it's the source of my misery. See, the tenants of Room 202 and 203 are now being forced to move out because Ken Afford is getting a second floor! Urgh. Just when I started cleaning up and making my room pretty! D:

This is what I see when I open my eyes every morning.

Taking Jean's advice, I went to talk to the kind ladies over at the Dormitoryana front desk. One of them showed me the new room that Jean had reserved for us roommates. It was small, like half the size of my current room, and it had no aircon. But it was newly renovated, so everything looked brand new and modern. There were big shelves, and little drawers you could put stuff in. Plus, bunk beds! Oh, we have our own bathroom now. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. That puts us in charge of cleaning it I guess (unlike the current system in which all girls on my floor use two bathrooms which are maintained by the dorm staff).

I had a look around at some of the other vacancies in the dorm, and I saw really big, beautiful rooms. They were cozy. They were big. They were cozy and big! And de-aircon. @u@ I was tempted to pick the biggest one instead of the one that Jean chose, but those rooms were only accepting one more occupant, which meant that if I wanted to live there I would have to... *gulp* meet new people.

Kidding. I'm comfortable the way things are. If I don't like my new room then I'll take another one next year (if there are vacancies open... I HATE YOU KEN AFFORD!). 

It's funny how I had always hoped that Ken Afford would expand their business, and now that they are, I'm being evicted out of my room. Next time I'll be careful what I hope for.