tymeless

Dingdong sent me this text this evening: "For what it's worth, mukha namang happy ka with your choice of going to the Make Believe orientation."

Yup, I am.

Choosing Make Believe Productions over Palawan turned out to be an easy choice. Even though schedules regarding orientation days and training sessions had changed, I'm glad I stayed in Manila during Holy Week.

All because I fell in love with Make Believe ever since I spent 3 days with them last year. And this year, they invited me to officially join the gang.

I was off to Merville this morning for Make Believe orientation. Lesley gave the address of what I had assumed was Nina's house, and because I don't really know my way around the village, Lara and I had agreed to meet at 7-Eleven half an hour before the meeting. Even though it was Black Saturday, I still didn't want to take the risk regarding the traffic flow along the service road. I had arrived about 15 minutes early at 7-Eleven, and realized that Lara had the same idea about coming early, as she was there a few minutes before I did. It was still pretty early, so we decided to grab a little bite right then and there before we headed inside the village.

By the time we arrived at the address that Lesley had sent us via text, I noticed that the house looked as if was new, being sold, and never been used. Uh-oh. I even had to check if we had the right address, and yes, we did. So Lara contacted Lesley, who was already on her way. We were at the right house, alright, but apparently, Nina's mom is selling the property. We were just going to use the house as a venue for our meeting. Thank goodness Lara and I had come together, otherwise, whoever arrived first would be so confused, hahaha.

Lara and I were sitting on the curb in front of the house across the street when Lesley had arrived. Talked for a bit, some updates here and there until Nina arrived to finally open the house doors. The moment we had stepped in, I fell in love with the house. It was gorgeous. The space downstairs was fairly big, as well as the bedrooms upstairs. It would be a good place to rent for Make Believe, they had said, hehehe. Anyway, Mike had arrived a few minutes later, and then we finally settled down on the floor to begin.

Even though Lesley had thought of a little formal introduction to start things off, there were still a lot of crazy and funny moments abound, like my "makuha ka sa tingin" expression when I looked at Lara, which cracked Nina up. Anyway, more talk galore about certain ground rules for the workshops, who gets assigned to which classes and at which venues, lesson plans and other stuff. After more discussions, Lesley asked us to make a first-day lesson plan for our respective classes. Nina helped me with mine, considering that my assistant was still tentative, so she talked it out with me. When we were finishing up, Lesley finally showed each of us our contracts, which I gave a nod to. Then we presented our lesson plans to each other, and it helped a lot as Lesley commented on each of them, plus suggesting more stuff for us.

After a while, we finally ended the whole meeting. And of course, because we had Lara with us, we couldn't resist doing a whole lot of camwhoring. During that entire time, we were laughing until our sides ached, and I have to admit, I even had a headache from laughing too hard. I couldn't help it, Nina's laughs were way too contagious.

When we finally got tired of laughing and camwhoring, we walked to Food Box for lunch. I was starving, so I really had to get something heavy to eat. More talking as we ate dessert before we had our actual lunch. This is one of the parts I enjoyed with these people the most, I get to hang out and bond with them sans the teacher modes. I just love bonding with friends, both old and new alike. Among the group, I've hung out with Lara the most. I only got to talk and hung out with Nina after those 2 rehearsal days last year before the Make Believe culminating showcase. Other than that, I hardly ever spent time with the rest, Lesley and Mike included. Hopefully, despite my own schedule, I can still find the time to bond with them, especially since we have a master class until the end of summer. Too bad I won't be able to attend that class until after this month. But at least I'm still allowed to catch up in May.

I'm getting excited. This summer is going to be a blast.