Arise

Chapter 7: Just Normal

“When Carmella realized that you’re still in your house, we tried our best to go back but there’s a lot of police that are blocking our way and they told us that they are the one who will rescue you. We didn’t want to leave but I know that I need to bring your Ate Gab and Mela to safety first.” Kuya Dos continues.

“It’s ok, Kuya. I understand, I admit that I felt neglected a while ago, especially when I learned that I’m the only one who was left alone there.”

Kuya Dos pat my back again before the car stops, “Let’s go. Your parents are waiting for you.” Then he smiles warmly.

Once I saw my parents I can’t help it to cry while running to hug them. Life is really short, we don’t know what will happens next.

My parents keep saying sorry for what happened but I just shrugged it off, the most important thing right now is we are all together and safe.

We also talk about the things we should do this kind of situation, but right now we need to find a place where we are going to stay.

Thankfully, this area is not destroyed by the tornado because it already dissolved before it reach the university, that’s why we are planning to rent an apartment here while their fixing our house.

It’s been a month already since the disastrous tornado that took about a hundred of lives. We are now back to normal, but I can’t say that for everyone. A lot of people I know lost someone they know, lost someone they love, or they lost their relative. But it’s still crazy how most of the people just became so insensitive on what happen, it is easy to say to someone to move on and face the reality, they forget to give time to the people to grieve.

Just like now, we are on the way to our university again because it’s been two weeks since they open the school. Yup, two weeks. The school opened again just a week after the incident, a lot of students were not able to attend that time because a lot of them are still grieving, a lot of them lost their home, and a lot of them are struggling financially because everything stops that time.

We already arrived here at the university, if you’re going to look around it actually look likes that nothing happened here. No signs of any destruction.

“Carlos, let’s go to our classroom already. Let’s just wait there instead here in the canteen.” I said to Carlos when he finish eating, sometimes we go here directly when we arrived to school especially if Carlos didn’t eat breakfast, he has a strange love for school canteen’s food.

It’s already 7:45 and our class will start at 8AM, we will have our Introduction to Philippine Literature today and that’s our only subject after that some of our classmates will go to s support group where they will share some stories about their life especially stories on what happened about a month ago. Credits to our university also who arranges this kind of session to their students.

“Before we end our class, we will have a group activity. I have a list here of three groups that will be discussing different topics, by discussing I mean any forms of showcasing the characteristics of the topic that you get, it can be dancing, you can also draw it, you can act it, sing or even rap it. Creativity will also be graded. I will pin the rubrics and the list along with the topic on your class bulletin board. Make sure to check it before you leave. So, that’s it! If you don’t have any question then I will leave now.”

“Migs, let’s check the bulletin board first then if we still have time we can ask our group mates to have a brainstorming first so we will have idea what are we going to do with our group work.” Carlos said, I will appoint him as our leader if no one will volunteer, or maybe Carlos will volunteer. Not bad.

“Ok, but let’s see the list first, maybe some of them will attend the support group.”

“Here’s our name Migs. We are group mates! We’re going to discuss the Philippine Mythology! Yes! It’s a good thing that we both have background knowledge here. “ Carlos said excitedly.

“Yup, it’s a good thing that I got bored that’s why I read that haha. And also our professor made us study some of the key points there, so I thing we have advantage.” I guess luck is on our side huh?

After Carlos took a photo for our list of group mates and the rubrics, we’re now looking for our group mates.

“I hope they are still here, but I think some of them went out already? Maybe I should make a group chat so we can message them.”

After have a short conversation with them, we all agreed to meet in an hour because some of our group mates are in the support group and some of them are already eating lunch in their apartment near the school.

“Let’s have lunch first? Or are you still full?” I ask Carlos, but knowing him I know that he wants to eat too, I think he has a dragon on his stomach that’s why he never really got full when he eats.

“No, I want to try the crispy pata (pork) just outside our university. Let’s go there?”

“Do they have bacsilog (bacon, fried rice, and egg)?  I’ve been craving for that since morning. “ I ask him because I’m not really familiar on the different eateries outside our school.

“I think the store next to them has it, let’s just buy to them then we will eat to circle?”

“That’s a good idea, especially that it’s not sunny now.”

We decided to just ride an e-trike that you can rent inside the campus, and then the driver will drop us off at the exit.

After we bought our lunch we decided to walk until Gate 2, where we can find the circle, a lot of students eat here or having their group discussion here because it’s spacious and it looks like a park so there’s a lot of trees. We’re also going to have our group discussion here so I think it’s a right idea to eat here.

An hour later, my group mates are arriving one by one. Some of them also decided to just eat here while waiting for our other group mates. Tin is also our group mate, sadly she became too formal to me, to us. She became very quiet, and I understand her, so I will just let her for a while.

When all our group mates are here we had a short brain storming about our group work, also Carlos already volunteer as a leader and he gave us assignments for this performance. We just decided to have a story telling, Carlos will be the curator of a museum and the rest of us will be sculptor or painting of different deities in Philippine Mythology. I think we can nail this one!

I just hope that nothing will happen again, and it will remain like this every day. Just normal, nothing bizarre.