We were on our way to Chapel on the Hill for Ia's wedding when Mark received the bad news. One of the people who died in the tragic landslides in Benguet was someone we know.
Toni was a "kohai" or freshman at IUJ when we met her. She was a member of the "library gang", or the group who would stay at the IUJ library until the wee hours of the morning - writing their papers, doing research and being diligent students. I met up and interacted with her a number of times while I was in Japan. Toni had a very vibrant personality - light hearted, very animated and chatty. Mark said that she was also a pink lady - her bag, laptop and school paraphernalia were all in this hue.
When we found out that she, along with their house and 3 other family members, were buried during the October 9 landslide, the feeling was a mix of sadness and disbelief. It's already difficult when you see stories like these on the news, and it's triple or quadruple times more difficult when one of the stories has someone real - someone whose face you know, and whose face you can still see.
My heart and prayers go out to Toni, her family who survived the tragedy and will have to live with this huge loss, and to her friends, especially the Pinoys in IUJ who was her family in Japan for 2 years.
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