An Affair to Remember: 100 Years of Mary Chiles College

Trying to remember how I ever got myself enrolled in Mary Chiles College brings back funny and warm memories of myself as a newbie in the Manila area and of my grandfather who chaperoned me as I took entrance tests in different colleges and universities in the U-belt area.  Walking back to where the Roxas-Gastambide jeeps would wait for their fares at the corner of Gastambide (now Dalupan) and Tortuosa Streets, Papa would spot Mary Chiles and quip that he hadn't realized that the hospital was still there. He remembers it as a pre-war hospital; and I would just go uh-huh and nod, because I took pre-war to simply mean really old.  He was even more surprised to discover that it ran a nursing school too. And that very same day, I took the entrance test, passed the test, and that was the beginning of a new life, a new school, and a second home.