marvelous marinduque, a post-mortem

The Inquirer's Outdoor Club went to Marinduque and they let the Read-Along team tag along to replicate the program there. (A quick word on replication -- The program is on its third year now (one hundred-seventeen sessions, and counting -- time flies, no?) and we're looking into opportunities to not only expose people to the usual read-along per se or just a one-off storytelling session, but to teach organizations how to conduct similar sustainable programs in their area -- that's what replication's all about. Hehe. Seryoso? ANYWAY.)

Preparation time was  rather short for such a big time operation, so to speak -- we were still reeling a bit in the aftermath of the elections and we were just given a little over a week to put things together, but eventually I was able to leave with the Alitaptap trainors Rich and Ray on Thursday night with the Outdoor Club. Actually, the first plan was to go to Marinduque by plane - only SeaAir and ZestAir had flights to Marinduque, but unfortunately we were unable to secure tickets for Rich and Ray, and this would prove to be a blessing later on.

Anyway. The 8-vehicle convoy of Mitsubishi AUVs, SUVs and sedans left the Inquirer office at 8 p.m. Rich, Ray and I rode on the sleekest silver Lancer EVER. We were hoping to catch the 12 midnight Ro-Ro to Marinduque at Lucena port, but unfortunately we missed it. (The route we had taken was traffic-free but apparently too long.) We were able to ride in the next trip, which left the port around 4 a.m. and arrived at the Santa Cruz port of Marinduque around 7 a.m. The Montenegro Ro-Ro had an aircon room and the TV there showed a Jeric Raval movie but I was too buzzed from the long drive to properly enjoy it.

(I totally had you at Jeric Raval. Cut for three days' worth of rambling.)

(EDIT, 6/5: Now with photos, courtesy of Ruthie. YAY.)

Marinduque, Day 1. 

The group stayed at Club Marinduque in Gasan, a quaint beach-side resort with a pool owned by the gracious Cortezes. It was roughly a two-hour drive from the Santa Cruz port, and on the way there I was really amazed to see Charles of Motoring section climbing out of a window of the Mitsubishi Adventure he was riding in so he could take awesome photos of the convoy. Also, let it be said here that Lancers have the best way of negotiating zigzag roads.

When we got there, we were greeted by the lovely Club Marinduque staff, who gave us the keys to our respective rooms. The guys at the helm of the Outdoor Club - power couple Tessa of Motoring and Aries of Special Sections - had arranged the room and vehicle assignments. I was in a room with the Read-Along folks. Joanne, the daughter of resort owner Sir Felix, was extraordinarily helpful, especially in addressing the replication program's needs -- ask for it and she either already had it, or could readily produce it, which isn't an easy thing to do in a place like Marinduque, where the roads are already quiet after 5 p.m.

Club Marinduque housed us, fed us, let us use their nicely lit pool, and provided everything from food of teacher participants to LCD projectors to laptops to sound system for the learning sessions (that were used in connection with the Magic Sing at night, but that's a different story altogether hehe).

For the replication session, Joanne got in touch with the principal of a nearby school, and from there she was able to gather some 50 teachers to attend the three-day program, which included a storyteller artist workshop courtesy of Alitaptap, learning sessions in organizing, hosting and documenting a session from the boss, Ruthie and me, and a Read-Along session as a culmination activity of sorts on the last day. Yep, it was going to be a packed weekend, and on Day 1 Friday, I was only operating on three or four hours of sleep haha.

Original plan was to have the learning sessions on Friday afternoon, the Alitaptap storytelling workshop whole day of Saturday, and the Read-Along session early morning Sunday. But due to delays in the boss's and Ruthie's flight, we just decided to have the first half of the Alitaptap workshop Friday afternoon and the learning sessions on Saturday morning, then the second half of the workshop in the afternoon. I can just imagine the delay in everything, had we managed to get all five tickets to Marinduque with SeaAir -- their flight was delayed for five hours! They were supposed to leave Manila for Marinduque at 10:30 a.m., but instead they left around 3 p.m. already and were only able to arrive at the venue around 4 p.m. Sometimes, the Universe works in strange, quirky ways. :)

Anyway, the first half of the Alitaptap workshop was mostly about concepts. Rich and Ray totally ~slayed the workshop, ngl. They're fantastic, as usual, and at the end of everything, the teachers flocked them for photographs like they were movie stars, naksss. Anyway, official business of the afternoon lasted until 5 p.m. - the teachers wanted to leave earlier because public transport in their area became scarcer after that, so we wrapped it up right then, after which we just lounged in the pool (hehe) while waiting for the Outdoor Club to come back from their adventures around Marinduque hehe. We had dinner that night, listened in to the Outdoor Club's exciting stories, took some photos by the pool, and sang on their videoke until the power went out while Aries was in the middle of a rather spirited version of We Are the World. (FOR REALZ)

Marinduque, Day 2.

Day 2 started early as life started usually early in Marinduque. The first teachers arrived for the learning session around 7:30 in the morning. The session was set to begin at 8. I had a cup of coffee and then we were ready to go. The boss talked about the read-along in general - what it is all about, what it aims to accomplish, how we've done it for the past three years. I talked about documenting it - what details are usually contained in the news writeup, what they should keep in mind should they want to write a story about their own read-along session and submit it to the newspaper. Ruthie talked about how to host a session - do's and don't's and tips (if you're shy, just fake it -- LOL, just. LOL. Ruthie talking about her inherent shyness is my favorite thing in ~life! :)) and the usual program flow of a session. By 10:30-ish we're done and we're handing it over to the Alitaptap guys for the second half of their workshop.

MEANWHILE. Ruthie and I now had nothing to do. TA-DA. We tried to go island-hopping with the folks from the Outdoor Club who weren't able to join the club's activity for that day. Apparently they left that morning dressed for a day just roaming the town and the plaza and the market and they ended up going to Bathala cave. LOL. You should have seen Irene's virgin white bridal dress before and after the event. That is all. (Example reaction: I can hear Vic Sotto in my head saying, "Let them play!")

Anyway, "island-hopping" -- not really, because the operative word was "try." The boat we managed to score was frightfully small, and the waters were choppy as it was already afternoon. Seriously, I thought they were going to ask us to paddle to the island. It was that sort of small -- and roofless, have I mentioned it did not have a roof? They said the trip won't take 10 minutes, but half an hour had already passed and we were still in the middle of the sea. Frightening, have I said? I was sitting beside Jacob, the 5-year-old son of Steph from Arts and I was so frightened of the trip in general that I spent it hugging the poor kid close that it must have hurt him at some point. To think that the boat - there was only one - was supposed to take us to the island then go back to the resort to fetch THE REST OF THE GUYS and take them to the island as well. At the rate the boat went, we'd still be in the middle of sea by nightfall so we decided to just turn back, take photos on a sandbar, then go home. Highlights: PAK! shots on the sandbar, losing Ruthie's hat THRICE on the open sea (eh nililipad eh haha) and retrieving it every time. O di ba. When we got back the rest of the guys told us that upon seeing how the boat bobbed up and down and side to side as we puttered off, they decided to not go in after us. Good call.


That night, we who were left in the resort (there were about 20 of us, mostly officemates with their kids) were treated to some traditional Marinduque music courtesy of a group of Marinduque folks, two of whom had on Moriones costumes. MORIONES! Who would've thought I'd see someone in a Moriones costume in Marinduque OUTSIDE of Holy Week season. Seriously, this weekend has been really surprising. I didn't understand the songs - they were in a different dialect, I guess? - but afterwards when we asked what it all meant, they said it was a welcome thing of sorts. Suffice it to say that any ceremony that involves flowers, tiaras and dry strips of crepe paper coming out of the mouths of these lolas (NO KIDDING - it's all on video) is a FANTASTIC CEREMONY. Plus, I had a tiara! I liked it. Hehe.

The Outdoor Club people came in later that night, around 10-ish, 11-ish. Well after dinner and when they came in we were sharing showbiz chismis post-dinner already. They had these solemn tired faces and no one was saying a word and we were all like, Wow, they're really tired, aren't they? Someone bought a few cases of pale pilsen and then by midnight the Cortezes came out with cake and Black Label because it was the eve of Joanne's 31st birthday and then we were singing videoke again. I left the group around 3:30 a.m. because I was supposed to do secretariat work for the Read-Along the following morning and this was the most zombiefied I could get. The girl I was sitting with, Maricar from Bureau (whom I'd just met there but we were so comfortably sabaw already I feel like I've known her for a longer time LOL) was supposed to observe the program as well but when I woke up around 6:40-ish I ran into her and it turned out that after they videoke'd they went straight to the sea and hadn't slept a wink AT ALL. LOL FOREVER.

Marinduque, Day 3.

The first Read-Along participants came in before 7. We told them the call time was 7:30 a.m. because the guys from Mitsubishi wanted a photo shoot with their cars by the beach with the kids, the teachers and the club. Also, we wanted to end early because we wanted to take Rich and Ray to at least one nice beach trip outside the resort before leaving Marinduque. The Read-Along session featured some 70 kids in the audience, around 50 teachers and parents, and 3 stories, 2 of which were tandem stories by "graduates" of the Alitaptap storytelling workshop. The teachers did great as storytellers, and as usual, the finale was Rich and Ray and they brought the house down. The smiles on the kids' faces were priceless. I started out as the person manning the registration booth, and then Ate Laleng our Cashier came to help, and then Tita Aida from the resort also came to help. The girls from the resort staff also came over to hang this makeshift sheet behind us to keep the sun out. You really can never underestimate the kindness of people. The support everyone gave us was really overwhelming.

 The representative-elect of Marinduque also came to observe - newly proclaimed Alan Velasco, a lawyer by profession and son of Supreme Court Justice Presbitero Velasco, was young and pleasant, good-looking and all smiles. He only stayed a short while, finishing the program and indulging the teachers and kids with a few photographs. I spoke to him on the sidelines of the event and he said he was really into promoting English proficiency in Marinduque, and was actually a storyteller in a similar activity conducted by the DepEd in nearby Boac last year when he was provincial administrator. I asked him about his thoughts re having a similar regular program blossoming in Marinduque and he said the idea thrills him and that he'd support it. (Dear Congressman, I may have shared this piece of good news with a few of the teachers I spoke with after the program and it excited them as well.)

After the program, we had the kids line up for giveaways while the teachers had a mini-graduation of sorts. Congressman-elect Velasco helped distribute the certificates, which Joanne had graciously (and meticulously hehe) helped us print out. I spoke with a few kids for the story I was doing, and they all said the same thing; most of them were first-timers, and they all wanted to go to another similar session, hopefully with their classmates and friends and cousins. Some loved seeing their teachers be these wacky storytellers, some wanted to be storytellers themselves, some just wanted their friends to experience the same thing. I told them that it was up to their teachers to repeat the read-along because we had taught them how to go about it, and that they should convince them to make it a regular thing. I'm well aware of children's inherent power of persuasion, so I'm really hopeful we get a couple of read-along programs in this place.

The teachers worry about support and funding, but then, as my boss likes to point out, the best and greatest resource is the willing and able person. Now that we've told them what we know, we can only hope that they are now "able," and that soon they will also be "willing." The thing about the read-along is that there have been so many amazing things, most of them unexpected joys, that have come my way just because I had said yes to these sessions. In the beginning, I was only saying yes to having sessions in the Makati main office and waking up early every second and fourth Saturday. Along the way I've met a lot of interesting people, not only celebrities, but parents, kids and other volunteers as well. Eventually, I found myself saying yes to sessions in Baguio, Bataan, Bulacan, Cavite. A couple of weeks ago, I had been too engrossed in the elections to think about the Read-Along at all, and yet the offer to replicate in Marinduque came anyway and after everything, here I am now, recounting one of the longest weekends of my life. It's funny, how things just come to you once you've opened yourself up to opportunities. Now I can't imagine myself saying no to anything for fear of missing out on a possible wealth of connections and experiences there.

So the thing is - build it and they will come. I hope the teachers build their programs, build them well, and I hope that not only the Marinduque government would notice but companies operating in Marinduque as well. We've come this far with the help of a lot of private companies, which just goes to show a lot of people want to help, they just want to know how.

[/end read-along inspired talk]

Marinduque, the final stretch

So after the session, after I've gathered enough info for the story I'm supposed to turn in about the entire event, after the photo ops with the teachers left and right (naks artista?) we hurried off to join the outdoor club in a last hurrah of sorts - a trip to a scenic Marinduque island with a nice beach-front. This was after lunch. The drive from there to the jump off point took two hours, while the boat ride was about an hour or so. The boat was thankfully big this time, I should note. So we arrived at the jump off point around 2, then got to the island around 3, then left around 4-ish.

We spent an hour on the island taking more PAK! photos (Samples to come later) (SAMPLES HAVE COME HAHA), wading into the water a little (the shore was mostly coral and painful though), getting a tan. And then we headed back to the resort, where we had to hurry because we had to be at Kawit port by 6:30 to catch the Roro trip leaving for Manila at 8. Di ba haggard haha. Working by Murphy's law, our vehicle was the last to arrive in the resort - we were interrupted by a santacruzan somewhere and spent 10 minutes at a standstill. Kung Amazing Race to baka may violence involved haha. When we arrived at the resort it was already 6, and I just threw on fresh clothes (sinong kelangan maligo, hindi ako, HINDI AKO), packed my backpack and loaded it into the trunk of our Lancer. Thankfully, Ruthie and ma'am took care of packing the read-along paraphernalia and loading it onto one of the vehicles while I was packing my clothes and getting dressed.

PHOTOS!

Anyway. I was pleasantly surprised to find Tessa on the driver's seat of our Lancer - I mean, Kuya Benjie was a superb driver, smooth and suave and funny, but being driven around by Tessa, of all people, was an astounding experience that stood on its own. No kidding. Nakakatense lang ang may hinahabol na 6:30 p.m. na call time at na 15 minutes to go na lang eh maiinterrupt pa kayo ng ISA PANG SANTACRUZAN I SWEAR. We totally forgot that this was the last Sunday of May and that people usually held santacruzans to cap the month of May. Good thing Tessa's driving skills are awesome. Pagdating pa namin dun we found out na naligaw yung Adventure and was headed to a different port. NAKAKALOKA TE. 

Awa ng Diyos, nakasakay naman. At first there were no seats, and then they opened up the aircon room na hindi naman ata talaga aircon kundi bikram room haha. But it was okay. I managed to doze off for a bit. We left the port at 8, arrived in Lucena at 11. We had a midnight dinner/breakfast at Palaisdaan in San Pablo, which graciously opened its doors for us despite the ungodly time. Aaaand with Tessa's brilliant driving skillz we managed to arrive in Makati in one piece around 3 a.m., aching in places but in all just very thankful for the opportunity.

In summary: Sarap ulit-ulitin -- wag lang linggo-linggo hehe mauubos leave ko. :)