A LIFE WELL-LIVED...

GRADE SCHOOL Grade IV

Mrs Paula M Medado. We always had lively class sessions. It was like we were playing while learning. We had a good-size garden adjacent to the school building, and Ma'am Medado was hands-on in our gardening. I was lucky to have gardening buddies like Patrocinio Ocays and Walter Buendia. Pat had the largest bolo of us all (kinadak-an og bungay - translation: the most hard-working) and Walter always brings us the best varieties of tomatoes, eggplants and mongo beans... for seedlings. When mongo is harvested, Ma'am would bring us to her home where she is going to prepare mongo-benignit. The three of us left a legacy, they stood there for decades, to our adulthood. Ma'am asked us to get three tree-seedlings from the back of the then Health Center, four, and plant them at the back of each classroom. Fire tree, I think they were. They were so lovely when they bloom - bright yellow, red and orange. The place is now where the new Municipal Building is. The trees have long gone, yet the picture of them standing proudly over the school building is still vivid in my memory. Walter and I were "neighbours" is Cebu City for decades. Often times, over bottles of beer and sachets of peanuts, it's one of the memories we recall fondly.