THIS IS WHERE IT ALL STARTED

When I was a child, I am the homebody type. I would prefer staying at home, reading books or sleeping that going out. Until that fateful time, when I was on my last year of College and we have to visit a faraway place to do our documentary project. And that adventure was the start of my wanderlust.

This was the place that awakened my wanderlust. It has been years since my group decided to climb a part of the Sierra Madre mountain to go to a small barangay for our documentary film project. At first, i was not expecting anything spectacular or touching for our documentary, since our first concept was mainly about the environment. But it turns out that that community will have a deeper impact to me than i will ever imagine.

brgy. galalan is a small community at the top of a part of the mountains of Sierra Madre. the road is tough to walk to but i never felt tired. i drunk the sight of every view. it was breath taking. the laguna lake was like a very wide sea at the top. the trees were larger than life. it was as if all the living things, from the sky, to the wind, and the trees were talking to me, calling me, telling me it is where i should belong.

i never thought that i will find a missing piece of my life in a community i never heard of before. yet, while walking on the muddy road while feeling the 16 degrees temperature of the wind and soft rain, i knew that it touched my heart more than anything have done before.

the life of the people were an irony to the fantastic place. it was the simplest life i have ever seen. they dont have big houses, no high tech gadgets, no mechanical means of transportation, no pretty clothes, no clubs, no internet, yet they are contented, they are happy. i was touched because i never imagined that contentment can be found on people with the simplest life.

i met people who are very dedicated with what they do. a man who do his best to give the people work through agriculture, a nun who became a teacher to a 3-room elementary school and a child who is willing to learn inspite of lack of materials in school.

i have seen places that touched me i almost gasped for air. the prayer mountain, the worn out church, the school, the pond and the farm with different vegetables and flowers. it was heartwarming and refreshing i could not help but smell its scent.

i really enjoyed my stay there with my groupmates whom became my closest friends. in the end, our trip was no longer for the sake of a project. it made us closer. it made us a better person. it made us realize our real dreams. we were touched by the place, by it's beautiful simplicity, and by the people we met who left a very big mark in our hearts.

it was a memory of a lifetime. an experience that i will treasure.No matter where I will go to in the future, my heart will always go back to this place, where I stood at the very top of a mountain, and realized that I want to see more of the world.