Sweet are the friends from girlhood

I wasn't much of a joiner in high school. I skipped the junior-senior prom when I was a junior, then skipped it again the following year when i was a graduating senior. The outsider feeling (OP or out of place) is quite pronounced in the teenage years. I guess that explains why I still like J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and his creation, Holden Caulfield.

There's still a little bit of Holden in me even as I approach the next decade: my 60s.

But life is short so when Bibit Esteva Llamas asked if I'd be in Baguio Feb. 25-26, I answered that I was scheduled to visit family here. That was how I found myself with my lively Class '73 batchmates. I served as their tourist guide. We all had fun and capped Thursday with wine and beer at home where they met The Wee One and where the sleepy husband showed how he cared for me and my friends by being willing bartender.

Let's do it again, sweet girls of my youth.

Our ground zero was the Europa Condo Villas on Legarda Road where we had a full breakfast, the works! The gourmet cooks in the group, Vicki Narciso Valero (second right) and Bibit Esteva Llamas (third from right) took over the kitchen and cooked well-marinated beef tapa, cheese omelette, etc. Others in this chorus line are (from left): the blogger, Marie Zamora Lazo, the balikbayan from Vancouver, Canada, Rita Heimbrod Fathi, and Marianne Martin Soriano.

Imitating the pose of some bulul or figures of rice granary gods as suggested by the Bencab Museum guide

We "bumped" into my husband Rolly and his fraternity brod Chibu Lagman (left) at the museum's Cafe Sabel after we toured several upper floor galleries. If I'm looking more lola-ish than usual, blame the flights of stairs that my creaky knees had to manage. I recommend the lemon grass iced tea to recover fast.

Another group photo before we headed back to downtown Baguio to meet up with our former high school principal who now supervises the canteen and dietary requirements of patients at the Notre Dame de Chartres Hospital on Gen. Luna Road.

At 70-something, Sr. Auguste is quite strong and refuses to slow down. Her problem that Thursday noon when she sat down with us was how to find 40 kilos of fresh fish in the public market. It's Lenten season. The hospital serves no meat on Fridays. Sister Auguste still goes to the market almost daily with her kitchen staff.

Stopping at Billy King's Le Chef at The Manor, Camp John Hay, for coffee and pastries

The girls just had to stop at Mines View Park to buy and eat pusit before going to the nearby Good Shepherd Convent's Mountain Maid Training Center for pasalubong shopping. I didn't join them and stayed in the van to watch shoppers go by.