Academic Night at SASMA

St. Augustine Major Seminary (SASMA) is a formation center for seminarians located in SVD Road, Tagaytay City. It is turning 40 years by next month. It has a community of more than 20 members that includes 17 seminarians. They usually hold an Academic Night with an invited resource speaker.

It was Fr. RV, a good friend whom I met in Milan, who invited me to deliver a talk about my experiences on backpacking and blogging. My talk was entitled Backpacking: A Way to Experience Culture of Other Countries and the second part was Documenting Life’s Experiences through Blog.

I shared to the community my previous personal travels and included also the exchange programs that I have participated in. This was my second time to talk about my travel experiences. The first one was at the Virgen Milagrosa University Foundation in Pangasinan to students and campus leaders where I lectured leadership and global networking citing my participation to exchange programs and other travels abroad.

It was fulfilling to inspire young people to travel. Since the beginning, I was influenced so much by a quote from St. Augustine that says “The World is a book, those who do not travel read only a page.” It is very true that learning takes place outside of the classroom. Traveling itself is education. One gets to know beautiful and historical places, meet different people, experience the culture and gain new perspectives in life.

With those experiences gained, I have emphasized that its possible to document and share these to the world. It is not only through travel but on one’s own personal journey in life that one can write about and post it in a blog. They can write their reflections and preach the gospel or evangelize. The community was eager to create a blogsite so I helped them create a sample blog.