**Finally! I get to blog again! After a 2-month long vacation staying inside a cave, preparations for the opening of classes, getting ready again for my MLIS classes and 2 tropical storms [sent by Poseidon?] and there's still one at my back, I am once again writing. Well, I am doing this partly for my EDR210 class and partly to relieve me of the stress I feel because of the gloomy weather.
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So, if I were to use our EDR201's "definition" of what is reading, I would say that I started reading when I was three years old. That was the time that my attention and curiosity was aroused because of a stimulus -- my baby sister.
I'd say that when I was young, I was never really a favorite. I say that because I noticed the gestures that my gramps and grannies extended to my older brother while there I was, seated on a corner, drawing and sketching. My parents were appreciative of what I did but there was a different twinkle in their eyes when my younger sister arrived to this world. Even our other relatives were very fond of her. It was because she's the only little girl in our clan. Most of us were boys.
It was also the time that I wondered, when watching something on TV especially news or mass, what that person enclosed in an oval found on the lower left hand of the screen was trying to do or express. I even tried to mimic those gestures and found it worthless, back then.
Well, fast-forward to formal schooling. I could still remember it was my mom who patiently taught us how to read the ABC, since our dad was away. Our aids were the yellow ABAKADA/ABC book and my favorite storybook back then, Run Bantay Run. We were then enrolled to a Chinese school. During that time, I really found reading of books too tasking and too brain-draining. Aside from the new way of reading materials: top to bottom, right to left instead of the conventional left to right, line-by-line, we were also coerced to memorize new sets of alphabet: Fookien and Mandarin.
I was then bombarded with Chinese stories in Chinese language, which, honestly, I vaguely understood if not for the help of accompanying pictures. Until eventually, I got familiarized with the languages and the rest is history.
Came high school, I was transferred to a public school. Given our situation here in the Philippines, you wouldn't really expect tons of storybooks in your high school libraries. Although fortunately, our library was quite big and full of reading materials. The thing is, I thought that not all of those reading materials were suited for our age. Our librarian then explained to us that they were just all donations, that since the library did not have enough budget, they relied on things that have been donated.
Honestly, I really lost interest in reading books during high school. Probably because of the limited number of interesting materials, or probably because it was also the onset of puberty, where one finds it more fun to socialize rather than seclude yourself. I really don't know.
Then college came and I was back to reading. I was once again flooded with much reading materials which are parts of our course requirements but I wasn't really going back to reading storybooks yet. The time that I started reading storybooks again was when I was in my third year, when I wanted some diversions from my on-the-job-training.
It was further reinforced when I started working as a school librarian. I realized that there is so much to learn from my library's collection that I could share with my users. That as a librarian, I should be more equipped and be ready to provide my users with the knowledge, facts, stories that they want.
Well, my "reading" did not of course stop and was not limited to reading materials. Eventually, I also learned how to read body language, simple gestures, symbols, I even tried to learn the sign language. I now understand what the person in oval was trying to express. I also learned to read and express different emotions, try to predict how the weather will be (just like now), and exchange information using different languages.
And I guess reading does not stop here, or it does not stop at all. In fact, just now, I am re-reading my homework and the color of the sky if there will be class on Saturday.
/dmarco
