Tacloban City's downtown area is currently brimming with vendors and buyers.  Trade and commerce continues to flourish and that most home-grown entrepreneurs of the city has returned home.  It is no secret that Tacloban City houses almost all known food chain franchises in the likes of McDonald, Jollibee, KFC, Max's, Shakeys, Greenwich and a lot more, but there are quite a number of restaurants born and raised in the City of Tacloban.

I grew up in Tacloban City knowing that there is only one festival that we celebrate and that is, the Pintados Festival. With my first homecoming for a Tacloban City fiesta last year, a new festival emerges (on my own vocabulary), that is, the Sangyaw Festival, and that Pintados Festival is now celebrated simultaneously with the Kasadyaan Festival.  

It was only then that I learned from fellow travel bloggers that the Sangyaw Festival has been celebrated since 2008.  And making my further research to feed my curiosity, Sangyaw Festival was held in the year 1974 and was cancelled in the year 1987.  Why?  Quite political in nature.

Tacloban City is definitely back to business. The recent opening of the attention-drawer facade of one of the restaurants situated at P. Gomez Street is one of the indications.  A signage conspicuously displayed at the gate of the compound with a building painted in light blue can easily attract every passer-by to visit and dine at Chew Love.

Hope emanated on the unpaved roads of the northern-most barangay of Tacloban City with the newly-built houses creating an instant community of former residents of Barangay San Jose, whose respective homes were completely destroyed by Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda).

This is Barangay Sto. Nino of Tacloban City, fittingly named after the patron saint of the city and their children were the new recipients of our project #1pencil1notebook.  

In coordination with my high school alma mater, The Leyte Normal University, the project was a huge success and that an altruistic and priceless moment was felt by everyone involved in the project.  Truly, one of the moments when smile is contagious as we see the facial expressions of the children.

Excitement filled my veins on the 28th of June 2014.  I, along with friends from Manila, boarded the first flight to Tacloban City sleep-deprived.  Ever since typhoon Yolanda struck my hometown, I am inevitably bound to accept that early morning flights will be part of my itineraries.

The homecoming is not only for our project #1pencil1notebook but for the feast of Tacloban City in honor of Senor Sto. Nino, reunion with family and friends and for the annual Pintados-Kasadyaan Festival as well. Despite rumors on the non-holding of the festivities for this year, The Pintados-Kasadyaan Foundation headed by its executive chairperson, Mayor Remedios Petilla of Palo, Leyte, decided to push through with the event.

It was a huge success.

It was exactly a hundred days after Super Typhoon Yolanda turned the City by the Bay into rubbles which caused innumerable lives to perish, when I find myself back into the arms of a place I call home - Tacloban City, Leyte.

The people of Tacloban are now slowly picking up the pieces of their shattered lives although the remnants of the super typhoon onslaught remains.  Barangays San Jose, Nula-tula, Magallanes and Anibong are among the most devastated areas of the city.

In celebration of the 18th birthday of our youngest sister, our family decided to conduct a feeding program and at the same time made the first wave of distribution of our project #1pencil1notebook. Hence, our homecoming.