Manila · Rizal Park · Intramuros · SM MOA
Standing at the exact spot where Rizal was executed hit differently than reading about it in a textbook. History stopped being a subject and became something I could actually feel.
Intramuros made me realize how much of Philippine history I took for granted. Those 4.5-meter walls weren't just built for protection — they were built to control. Walking through them as a free Filipino felt meaningful.
As an IT student, MOA reminded me that technology and commerce are deeply linked — the logistics, systems, and infrastructure behind a mall that size is basically an IT operation in itself.
Our batch was loud and excited the whole day — but the moment we stepped inside Intramuros, everyone got quieter. Some places just command respect without asking for it.
Day 1 set the tone for the whole tour: every place we visited had layers. Nothing was just a landmark — everything had a story, a system, a reason to exist.
"I didn't expect Day 1 to hit as hard as it did. Walking through Intramuros with my batchmates — all of us IT students from Davao — felt surreal. We spend our days thinking about code and systems, but here we were standing inside 500-year-old walls built by people who had no electricity, let alone computers. And then ending the night at SM MOA, watching the bay light up, I thought — this country has always been building things. We're just the next generation doing it differently."
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