Come to TBTK 2006: A return to home with ‘joy’

Tagbilaran, Monday, 15 May 2006

Bohol, Cebu, and Siquijor

HAVE you ever experienced stopping in your track with a sense that you've been to somewhere before? Have you ever felt a surge of mixed emotions - pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, triumph and defeat - all these ignited by a memory, a memory conjured by an artifact from your past?

Dauis Church from the back

Well, if you have experienced this, no need to worry for this feeling is very human. The Greeks have a name for it. They call it nostalgia which literally means "a return to home with pain." But it is not pure pain; it is more of a sweet sorrow. Ironical, isn't it?

Of course, joy cannot exist without sorrow and sorrow can not exist without joy. There is that sweetness which makes you smile about the happy memories you have and there that pain - that longing to return to the place you call "HOME."

Anda Beach

Through nostalgia, you can travel across time and space. The boundary can be miles or years but there are no obstacles for nostalgia can take you back to your very roots.

It can take you back to this tiny island province nestled in the heart of Central Visayas in the Philippines - a tiny paradise where you were once a part of.

Memories start drifting to your mind.

Coconuts on Transport

First there are these flashbacks and then you hear sounds, you smell scents, you see sights as if you weren't here but right back in Bohol!

But now, there's more - you see unspoiled white-sand beaches and deep blue seas sustaining ribbons of life.

Clarin Ancestral House

You see aquamarine rivers winding through rustic towns and lush forests.

You can see centuries-old churches boasting of fine architecture and a wide array of antiques and religious relies.

Chocolate Hills

You can see 1,268 or more conic hills that turn cocoa brown in the summer as if ripened by the sun itself.

Mag-Aso Falls

You can see caves and waterfalls. You can watch towers and you can see monument which serves as a memento of a treaty between two races.

And then you can see large brown eyes staring at you and you find out that it is a maomag (tarsier).

Philippine Tarsier

You can even, taste something - the taste seems sharp and sweet and you realize it's a purple yam. Funny you seem to forget what it's called? Ah, ubing kinampay!

But then the images start to fade away and you want to grab them but you can't. It gets farther and farther from you and it's going... going... going... gone and you're back where you started, reading from this paper.

Suman

Somehow it has left you with feelings. It has left you with happiness and then there is also this pain, like you're getting homesick or something.

Yeah right, you did return to home but it was with longing. And then, you smile because you know that someday, somehow you'll return but this time not with heartaches but with joy!

You can read the official invitation for the TBTK 2006 reunion here.

Leo P. Udtohan

What readers think...

Robert Chapdelaine, Charlevoix, USA wrote:

Tuesday, 25 July 2006 08:53:25 PHT

Please I am looking for Joyce Sosoban. If someone could put me in contact with her. I am a friend. Thanks

francine wrote:

Monday, 17 July 2006 18:07:05 PHT

excellent, hope to visit your place!

Lu Wang wrote:

Wednesday, 17 May 2006 16:50:34 PHT

Bohol is beautiful whole. Beautiful hills, beautiful rivers, beautiful beaches, beautiful friendship, beautiful people, beautiful cave, cute tarsier, lively dolphins, beautiful churches, beautiful voices, beautiful heritage.

Don't forget the most important: beautiful people--Jeroen.

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