An Earthquake Drill, a Cafe, and College With the Right People

If there is one thing I have learned in my first year in college, it is that it is all about finding the right group of friends you can lean on whenever college gets hard, serious, or heavier than what we can carry. I would say my first years in college were not promising, and it took me three years before I figured out how to persevere in college without company. But life will always bring a good gift to you in the most unexpected moments. Good things will find their way into your life that you can hardly remember what happened three years ago, and then good friends would come your way with a greeting on random school days. My first year in college was never easy, and I really took it so seriously in searching for the right friend group, but now, I have found the good ones. Friends I can rely on during my dull days.

So here are my friends in college. We are just random college students scribbling our notes in our classroom, and then one day we just clicked without our awareness. And from then on, we would find ourselves eating together at lunch, studying while squeezed in a library corner, and going out together just like biological siblings. In this blog, I will share with you our Cafetana Cafe experience after our enrollment in the third year of our program in psychology. Until this year, this friendship lasts authentically, and I am really grateful for them in all the ways I know about our friendship.

We were having an enrollment process on this day, and suddenly, an earthquake drill occurred before we knew it. The drill happened too quickly, and we didn’t have that much time to think about what was happening, so we followed the other students on their way outside, only to learn that we were having a drill. If you don’t know, the northern part of Cebu had suffered immense catastrophe from the 6.9 magnitude earthquake last October, and our school is still recovering. So when we learned we were having an earthquake drill, we laughed and recollected our earthquake experiences last year.

It was scorching hot under the January light, and we figured out we could depart from others and stay in the shade far from them. While trying to deviate from the student crowd, my friends and I decided to head to Cafetana Cafe instead of staying under the sun. Even if we knew how vital it is to participate in such drills, we had to go somewhere comfortable since two of my friends are not okay being under the sun because they would faint.

When we arrived at Cafetana, we ordered our food immediately. Supposedly, it was just snacks, but we decided to order lunch instead so that by noon we could go back to school and line up first before office hours resumed and have ourselves accommodated immediately. So we ordered our meals and drinks and sat at the table for minutes before our orders arrived.

I ordered a chicken meal and a lychee drink, and some also had the same orders, but our drinks differed. I didn’t like the chicken when it came to texture since it was too hard to eat and I couldn’t bite the skin, maybe because it was too crispy. But the lychee drink was so perfect, it complemented my meal well. I struggled to eat the chicken, but I still ate it so I wouldn’t waste the money I used to buy it.

We spent our whole time in the cafe talking about random topics, future plans for this academic year, and how life has been since the earthquake occurred. For the record, this was our first time meeting together after almost five months of staying at home and recovering from the earthquake. A lot of things happened in our lives, and we listened to each other’s stories, which made me excited and interested in how they spent their months at home and how they coped with what happened. I cannot share each topic one by one, but I would say it was really a good conversation with good friends.

At night, I gave my mother a flower. It was 5 in the afternoon when I finished my enrollment process, so I immediately headed to a flower shop in Bogo City to buy flowers for her since it was her birthday. She looked so beautiful in the photos, and she was happy with our gift. We had a simple dinner together at home and finished the day with a karaoke session and some bonding as a family.

Looking back at this day, I realized how small moments like these quietly remind me why I keep going. Between friendships, shared laughter, and family at home, this day became another memory I will carry with me through the rest of my college life.