10- The Bee Van

7. Describe your ride home. 

                Well, technically, I don't have a ride home, unless you consider the elevator of Asia Pacific College a ride home, since I live in the dormitory during school days. So, instead, I shall write about my ride home during my high school days.

                You see, even if when I was already in high school, my parents still didn't want me commuting from and from school, even if it was like only two jeepneys away. So, instead of riding the jeepney during school days back then, I ride the school service. The transport itself  was just a simple silver black van. Sometimes it would be the green van since the service owner had two service van. By the time I was a fourth year high schooler, the van was painted to be like a yellow school bus since it was a requirement for all service transport.

 

                The vans were air-conditioned and had its own players for songs. Though sometimes, the air-conditions would break down and we would have to suffer with the heat. And if it would be raining, we would have to just bear with the shower. The capacity of the van was like 15 persons but at times, we would have to make some space for like 25 persons in one journey. Other rimes it would be only 10 persons or less. each morning though it would just be right.

                I guess if I write about my service all through the time I was riding it, I would take up almost 20 pages so instead I would just talk about the time I had to take the last ride of 5:00 pm. I would reach my home at 7:00 pm.

                You see, my classes during third year were all up until 5:00 pm. I wasn't the only one who would go home during this time. other high school students taking the service would also go home at this time. Usually, the trips are divided into two, the Bayan side (the left side of the bridge) and the San Isidro side (the right side of the bridge). But during the last trip, we only use one van and those from the bayan side are then mixed with the San Isidro side. I'm from the San Isidro side. And usually, the driver sends the Bayan side home first. Now, I don't really have a problem with them being first. The problem is that the bayan during 5:00 pm is usually the time the roads are crowded with cars and other services from different schools. You can actually call this the rush hour of Batangas City. It lasts until 7:00 pm.

               

                Now, we had like 5 kids who had to get off in the Bayan side. Not much right? compared to those in the San Isidro side which was like 10 of us. The only problem here is that since it is a rush hour, like your car won't be able to move until every 15 minutes or so, add to it that the ones from bayan lived far from each other and all over the bayan itself, the time our service would be finished in sending them home and only start going to the way of our house would be 6:30 in the evening. It would be usually dark outside already.

                The irritating thing here would be if the driver would decide to save fuel by not turning the air conditioner of the car on. We would suffer from the intense heat and dark pollution of the outside world. The only consolation to this is that while in the traffic jam, we would be able to buy anything we want from the street vendors through our windows. That is if we have money to buy some.

                The time I would reach my house would be 7:30 pm. My family would've been done with dinner and I would be the only one to eat. My home works not yet done, I would stay up just to finish it. Then I would wake up the next day at 4:30 in the morning to prepare for school, waiting for the service to pick me and my sister up from there to go to school in a cramped van. The worst thing of all that this ride has; the music that will be playing. Come on, who plays old love songs in the radio in a van full of sleepy students that has to be alert for the day? They would be sleepier!

                Of course there would be something I love in this ride. It would be those I ride the service with. My service mates are fun to be with, the younger students and even the yayas of the kids. They were all nice. We joke around while we wait after school for the service to fetch us. We would play and sometimes just gossip. They were my friends. The pre-elems, though, were the cutest I admit. And the elementary students the smelliest while the high school students the chattiest.

I miss my ride home, but I sure don't miss the cramped van and the traffic jams.