I was a 19-year-old newly-high school graduate from Costa del Sol in Spain when I chanced upon a Philippine website which has a foreign student program. I applied for its scholarship and I was ultimately accepted. I was so happy that I’d be traveling in a foreign country. For me, the Philippines is such a great place for a lot of reasons. Number one, I’ve heard that it’s a former colony of my home country and I was curious on whether we have similar cultures and on whether people there speak Spanish too. I didn’t want to go to an English-speaking country anymore like the UK because I think I’m fluent in that language already, my father having been cultural attaché in London for almost ten years now.

So I intended to go on some place where Spain had its footprints and I didn’t want to go to the Latino countries because I believe that the tropics like the Philippines offers some vacation islands. And so there I was while looking at the search engine, I was intentionally looking for a university outside of Manila so I could really feel the Philippines so to speak. It was there that I encountered the website of Liceo de Cagayan University in some city called Cagayan de Oro. I was instantly intrigued on two counts: Liceo already meant university in Spanish (why the redundancy) and Oro which means gold.

I would later find out that the Philippines has lots of redundant names of their places. In Cagayan de Oro, they had a farmers’ market called Agora (which in itself already means market) and in the capital city of Manila, they had a flea market called Market Market. I also found out that Cagayan de Oro was formerly a gold mining haven in the Spanish times, thus the name.

And so it is, I arrived in Manila together with my father who was promoted to ambassador to the Philippines coincidentally enough. I took up a degree in mass communications at Liceo de Cagayan University because I didn’t feel like taking up international studies. (I feel that my extensive use of English and my travel here to a foreign land doesn’t need me to take up international studies anymore.) Because I’m the only Spanish student in that university, I was fortunate enough to meet the owner of the institution, Madam Rafaelita Golez, who is three quarters of Spanish descent. She’s a nice elegant woman who has a collection of Spanish paintings of which I’m not even familiar. It was then that I was kinda crestfallen since I’ve taken for granted the unique art and architecture of our country simply because I pass them by everyday. I also introduced Madam Golez to my father.

While taking up our classes, I gotten close to a local girl named Connie and we fell in love. She offered to tour me to all the nice beaches in the country provided I’d be the one to shoulder the expenses. Of course, I willingly obliged and was excited. As of this writing, I have gone to the paradise islands of Camiguin and Boracay. There are still lots of spots that we’ll be going. I think I’m already inclined to stay in this country long after I’ve finished my four-year college stay here.