TRAVELS (and more) WITH CECILIA BRAINARD: School life in the Philippines in the '60s -Description and memorabilia photos

Dear Readers,
Aside from sharing old pictures I want to give you a brief description of school life in the Philippines in the 1960s.

The first thing you need to understand is that the Philippines is an archipelago with over 7,000 islands. The main island is Luzon, where Manila is. Cebu, called the Queen city of the South, is the sock-shaped island in the middle part of the Philippines. Cebu City is considerably smaller with far less population than Manila. In 1960, Cebu City had a population of 91,000 (another source lists 251,000), while Metro Manila had a population of 2,274,000 people.

If they could afford it, many parents sent their children to Manila for college and to the US or Europe after college for post-graduate studies or finishing school. My widowed mother sent all her four children abroad for graduate work, one of the things she cited as her accomplishment.

I attended the convent school St. Theresa's College in Cebu from kindergarten through Grade 7; and then I was sent to Manila to attend high school at St. Theresa's College in San Marcelino (which has since closed). I also attended college in Manila. I went to the University of the Philippines for one semester then went on to Maryknoll College in Quezon City (which has also morphed into Miriam College) for my B.A. I also attended UCLA.

What this meant was that the privileged Cebuano kids who attended schools in Manila had to take the plane to and from Manila. My family had homes in Cebu and Manila so I didn't have to stay in a boarding house, but many Cebuano children were boarders in their schools.

Needless to say, the Cebuano "kids" did see one another socially in Cebu or Manila. When summer or Christmas vacations came around, there was an exuberance to finally return home to Cebu, and the celebrations were ongoing: picnics, parties, soirees, joy riding, movies, hanging around in friends' homes, and so on. We had a lot of fun!

This is just a bit of information about that era.

Some of the pictures that I posted in my earlier blog entries and here show the sheer happiness we felt to be out of school!

Most of the pictures in this blog entry were taken in Cebu, although the bottom three were taken in Bacolod and Manila - as marked.

I think you can figure out who I am in the pictures. I won't identify the other folks because I don't have their permission. I will mention the Gallaga Family in Bacolod who welcomed us kids into their household. We slept, ate, played there with the Gallaga kids (Peque, Chita, Ricky, etc.), and even now as I remember those days in Bacolod, I feel a glow remembering our games of Sentinel, canasta, psychic games, and other creative activities. I remain grateful to them. I note here that Peque Gallaga is a multi-award filmmaker - check out his link.

Enjoy!