Zitella in Zamboanga
And we’re down to ze last letter of the alphabet, ze last day of the challenge. I can’t believe it! Wasn’t it only yesterday that I was starting with A?
I was going to use this post to blog about this picture I found on 9gag:
And as for that other word, I just came across it in a list of unusual words in Phrontistery.
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| From top, left to right: Southway Square, Downtown of Zamboanga City, Mindpro Citimall, Western Mindanao State University, Ateneo de Zamboanga University, Universidad de Zamboanga, Metropolitan Cathedral of Zamboanga City and Taluksangay Mosque. |
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| In our first home |
I grew up in a duplex house with two floors and three bedrooms. The two bedrooms were occupied by my cousins who lived with us, so my entire family slept in the master bedroom. We couldn’t all fit in the bed, so we rotated turns on who got to sleep on the bed by pairs, on a monthly schedule. I didn’t mind, though. I was a kid, privacy would only become an issue when I became a teen.
We had lots of neighbors with kids around our age, so my brother and I liked to go play with them, especially during the summer months when there was no school. Playtime during those days meant outdoor ones. We were always running around playing hide and seek or lupa-langit (earth-heaven) or P.S. P.S. I love you or Jerry Base or hopskotch or chinese garter. Sometimes we would dare to jump across a ditch that ran through the backs of our streets and find ourselves in the rice fields, and we would run some more. When my mom found out, I got such a scolding because she said there might be snakes and other dangerous animals in there. Oops, that thought hadn’t occurred to me. One time, I miscalculated my jump and fell into the ditch and landed thigh high in black smelly gunk. All the kids helped me out of the ditch, but I lost one of my slippers because I could no longer find it in there.
My closest neighbor friends were not on my own street, but on the next one. I think I gravitated most to Stephanie and Len-Len because we were all the same age and we had the same dialect, Bisaya. I was also close to my duplex neighbors, though, but not as much as them. We were always over at Stephanie’s house were I loved to borrow their bike because I didn’t have my own. They had a big indoor space where we could play “cha-cha” or a revised baseball game that involved using slippers as bases and a rolled up slipper as a “ball” that was thrown by a pitcher and if you were up, you had to kick it instead of bat.
If we weren’t playing outside, we liked to play with our dolls or make believe cooking or draw our own comics on last year’s notebooks or make up songs. One time, Steph’s Ken doll’s arm accidentally got popped off and the three of us pushed to get it back in, to no avail. Then Steph’s dad came to the rescue and he managed to fix Mr. Ken, to which Steph concluded: “So that means the three of us equals Daddy!”
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| In our second home |
When I was around 10, my dad’s office folded up. He was given a retrenchment package which he decided to use to put up a business instead of look for another office job. So he decided to sell ampao, a popped rice dessert. For that we needed to rent space to make a “factory” and he found a vacant lot somewhere in the neighborhood, though it was a bit farther away than where we lived. He rented the lot and we moved there as well. This time we had a bigger house and my brother and I got our own bedrooms when we became teenagers.
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| High school |
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| College |
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| Our school’s “backfield” or football field. Sometimes when it rained very hard, this became flooded and looked like a pond. |
I went to only one school from kindergarten to college (a total of 16 years) – Ateneo de Zamboanga University. It actually only became a university when I was in college. It was a Jesuit school, and was one of the more expensive schools in our city. My mom didn’t mind because she insisted that she wanted the best education for her children. She managed to pay our fees, but then we had to sacrifice other luxuries. Luckily I managed to get a full scholarship with allowance for my college years, so that helped, somewhat.
I enjoyed my school days a lot. When I was in elementary I played outdoor and indoor games with my classmates. Then when they all went home early and I had to wait till 5pm for me to be fetched because my Mom left work late, I stayed in the library reading abridged classics, detective stories, and pocket books, usually Sweet Valley Twins. Then when the library closed at 5, I’d walk around the campus by myself, writing novels in my head.
When I was in high school I would still play outdoor games with my classmates at the backfield, games like volleyball or dodge ball or some kiddie games. Later on we realized we were too old to play games and got busy doing other stuff like actually doing school projects or stalking boys or just sitting on the grass to gossip, mostly about boys. 😛
My college days were very busy. This was when I went crazy and tried to make up for all the years I spent being a shy nerd and joined a lot of orgs. I campaigned for my school as part of Salt (where I overcame my shyness), I wrote for the school paper, I went on debates, I was the associate editor of the yearbook, I was part of the student government cabinet, etc. I had so many orgs that I barely had time to study. I enjoyed my college years the most, though, and it was here that I met the friends that I would keep for a long time.
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| Some mountains in the distance |
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| Our City Hall during Christmas |
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| Pasonanca River |
One of our favorite activities in Zamboanga was swimming. Whether in rivers or seas or pools. Pasonanca was where we had our water source, but there are so many bodies of water there that some areas are still open for swimming, like in above picture. There is also a place there that was converted into a swimming pool. Above picture was a Christmas break reunion with my high school classmates Jotie and Flisha. The other guy is Flisha’s boyfriend Gim.
One of my favorite memories was how one time during high school, we suddenly decided that we wanted to go swimming. One of my friends, Rey, had a jeep, so he drove us to Abong-Abong, this place with a river. There were just three of us, him and me and Jojo, and we didn’t even have a change of clothes, it was just so impromptu. We jumped into the cool refreshing river with all our clothes on and enjoyed splashing about. We went home in our soaked clothes but it was totally worth it!
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| La Vista del Mar beach resort |
The beach resorts that were nearest the city proper had really rocky beaches but despite that, we still loved to go swimming there. Those colorful sails in the background are popular in Zamboanga. They are called Vinta sails. Vintas are boats. You can see them here.
The most famous beach resorts were La Vista and Golf, which were right next to each other. We often went there for picnics for school, family or church special occasions. It was kind of the thing, and as children, this got us really excited. We would always swim in the sea even if we risked getting stung by sea urchins. I only stopped being excited about swimming when I became a teenager and didn’t want the sun and sea to darken my skin.
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| Sta Cruz Island |
Though it’s not so obvious in the picture, Sta. Cruz island has pink sand. It’s not really pink throughout, but the sand is dotted with red tiny corals and looks pink from afar. The place is a bit dangerous, though, so when you go there you have to rent a boat complete with a body guard with an armalite gun. No seriously.
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| La Vista del Monte |
This resort is way up in the mountains and is hard to get to. It’s very cool up there though, and I really loved it. I went there with my college classmates. One of them, Ryan, had a near-drowning experience while we were playing Jerry Base in the pool, but luckily Zenie’s boyfriend John came to his rescue.
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| Satti |
This famous delicacy is probably related to the Malaysian satay. I like this version better though. The red broth is extremely spicy, though, so proceed with caution.
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| Myrna’s Bakeshop beehive |
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This post is part of the A to Z Challenge, a blog hop that goes through the alphabet for all the days of April except Sundays. I have decided to go with the theme of Alliterations.
whoaaaaa<br />this last post showed almost all the wonderful years of ur life. HOPE U HAVE MANY MORE HAPPENING years<br />CONGRATS on finishing the challenge. THANKS for all ur comments and visits to my blog :)<br />UR SO pretty in ur college pics and that beach pic and river pic are so good !<br />Thanks for giving a glimpse of Zamboanga – totally new place to me and rock on like this always.
Aww thank you!
Hi Dee,<br /><br />First of all, thanks for visiting my blog the other day and commenting 🙂 Nice to "meet" you! This was a wonderful post. What a fun way to wrap up the challenge! Congrats on finishing :)<br /><br />Cheers,<br />Jen
Nice to "meet" you too!
That was a good wsy to wrap up the show. So much of wonderful years and pics. And you look beautiful in those too . Was a pleasure to meet through this challenge. <br /><br />Congrats on completing. 🙂
Thank you! The pleasure is mine as well.
I love all the pictures and memories. It's amazing to learn about the different ways we all grow up.
Thank you.
Wow, thanks for sharing your story, enjoyed learning so much about you in this lovely post and the entire month. <br />We made it to Z and so nice to have met and gained new bloggy friend:)<br /><br />Lucy from <a href="http://www.lucysreality.com/" rel="nofollow">Lucy's Reality</a>
Same to you!
Nice way to wrap up with Z! Congrats on finishing the challenge. You are on my feed so I will be back for sure!!
Same to you!
I love to hear about the Philippines My sister in laws family is from there too. But they moved to the US so long ago that they hardly ever speak of it so it's nice to hear your stories. <br /><br />Great ending to the challenge Dee!
Thanks for sharing about your sister in law. Glad I contributed something.
yay for finishing the challenge you. Your posts have all been so well researched they kind of put me to shame. Never heard of this city but it sounds fascinating – thanks for all the blog visits. I do hope you will stop by from time to time 🙂
Oh that's not true, your posts have all been well researched and written as well! I've learned and laughed a lot.
Hi Dee, Yes, congratulations to you. This certainly has been a challenge. One of the best things, though, was meeting great folks like you and being introduced to their lives and their cultures so different from my own. Thanks for sharing this wonderful finale post with all the pictures from your life. You gave me such a smile getting to visit with you and and your hometown, Zamboanga. God
Aww thank you and I agree with you. This challenge has really been fun.
Congratulations! We did it!<br /><br />Zamboanga sounds like a really cool place. It's farther from Davao than I thought! Looks like a fun place to grow up!
Yes it's around 24 hours away by bus.
Congrats on doing a great job on the A to Z challenge. I've enjoyed reading your posts and getting to know you. It is so interesting learning about customs and cultures different from mine. I think that your dad was really brave to start his own business. You must be proud of him. That is not easy to do.<br />I really enjoyed getting to know about Zamboanga. Thanks for teaching me about an
Of course I will! You're one of my favorites. Thanks for making me feel so treasured on this journey.
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Thank you! Will check it out.
These are the sort of posts I started following blogs for…the ones that just talk about the person and their life. <br /><br />Great pictures, too :)<br /><br />Congrats on finishing the A to Z Challenge 🙂
I like life posts too! Thanks.
Congrats to you and thank you for a wonderful post and a blog friendship. So glad we met in BlogLand and look forward to keeping in touch.
Ditto! See you around. Hopefully in NY someday? Haha.
That was so interesting Dee thank you. The photographs are themselves so descriptive! So great to get a sense of the people in the A-Z and to be 'let into' other lives, other places …<br />Thank you and all good wishes to you and your family.<br />Susan
Thank you!
I have had so much fun reading your blogs, you are a wonderful writer. I look forward to reading more!
Aww thank you! I can say the same about you!
What a beautiful post abt your life and family! I love when cultures intersect (e.g., "Asia's Latin City"). Congrats on finishing the challenge Dee!<br /><br />Chontali Kirk<br /><a href="http://www.chontalikirk.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">chontalikirk.blogspot.com</a>