Teacher Ondoy or Mr. Ketsana

This is the same journal that I've written in my English class about the typhoon with several additional sentences. About the term "Teacher Ondoy", i got it from Ms. Senado, my social studies teacher. I agree with her that the typhoon really taught us a lot of lessons. Here's what i learned from him...

Sept 26
I put down the third book that I've been reading for the past 30 minutes. I looked out the window and saw people who were just letting the water current drag them forward. I could only see their heads up the water. I felt really bad and guilty when i found out that some people lost their homes and i was literally cursing and whining about the loss of electricity and water, but other than that, I enjoyed drinking gallons of hot chocolate (:D) while reading a book.
I guess I should have been thankful that the water only entered our front room and the flood inside our house was actually 2% of the water inside our neighbor's house that reached the fifth step of their staircase.
I was in a bad mood when i had to share the bed with my sister because for some invalid reasons, my bed was drenched with dirty water. I thought maybe Mother nature filled a barrel of flood water from outside and poured it over my bed while laughing viciously.
I don't like it when i have to share the bed with someone. I want the bed on my own, but i had to share it then, otherwise i would have slept on the floor. (If you find me melodramatic, i don't care!)

It was the first night that i slept without brushing my teeth or washing my face. That's the worst part. Besides being extremely hot, i also felt really sticky and dirty. :|
Several times, my sister shushed and hissed at me to settle down because i was tossing and turning on my limited part of the bed.
I was in the verge of sleeping when suddenly loud-mouthed dogs started to bark and shout at each other. I opened my red eyes, (maybe they were red) and silently cursed. In my mind, I was already planning gruesome ways to torture an animal like that if I'd get the chance. I was thinking of stuffing a large piece of stone in his noisy mouth, sticking pins dipped in hot oil in his eyes and pulling his tail so hard that it would snap away from his body.

Joke! :) I'm not that violent! I wouldn't do that to anyone. But I was like, "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" i chanted those words several times and tried to block my ears with a pillow but their barks were in the maximum volume.
After a few minutes, when i was already widely awaken by adrenaline, they finally shut their mouths. I muttered a 'Thank you' message to God and tried to sleep once again. This time I succeeded.

Little did I know that while I was mentally trying to destroy every bad thing in my mind(huh.), Many people were actually dying. Many people were actually stranded in the roofs of their houses. Most of them didn't really experience the kind of luxury that I had that night. All of them were not even dry, they were drenched with water, anxiety, fear and stress.

These are the things that I've learned from Mr. Ketsana:

First of all- Water is a very precious human resource. We should not take it for granted when we have full abundance of water. We SHOULD conserve it. Think of it as a limited blessing that we should use wisely, otherwise it would run out. Every drop counts.

Second- To spend a day without having any problems except brushing my teeth and sharing the same bed with my sister is actually boring. It was an easy and extremely boring day for me and I did not enjoy it that much. Not going to school is actually a very lame thing to do. I realize that I should appreciate going to school everyday even if sometimes I really hate it. Therefore, We should always be thankful when we are idle or bored, because being bored is being free from all the worries and anxieties in this world.

Third- Bad times are just temporary. We should learn how to say "Things could be worse." in times of trouble. That night, I thought it was the worst thing that ever happened to me, but i didn't know that millions of tragedies that night happened to other people and it could have happened to me as well. God just blessed me enough to give me such a speck of a problem.
Even if trouble blocks our way, it would turn away soon and we would have the chance to get over it. Just as good times turn to good memories, bad times would eventually turn into lessons as well. There are times that we feel like giving up but there would be a time that we can look back and just laugh about it.

To all the Filipinos that were affected by the typhoon Ondoy, I pray for all of you. I know you can get past that because I believe Filipinos can always get up whenever they fail to stand on their feet once in a while.

I'll try to remember that Experience is the best teacher.