Project Description

During the celebration of the National Book Week, we came across the story of �The Wonderful Orange Fruit� from the book Treasury of Stories by E. Arsenio Manuel.� He wrote this story based on a research paper he made in 1978 about Filipino Myths and Folktales.� This story is set in Bontoc, Mountain Province during the pre-colonization period, a time when our forefathers had no interaction yet with foreigners.

We got very interested in this story because of the important role of the orange fruit, which we knew to be a recent product of our community. We wondered about the credibility of oranges growing during the early times so we decided to do an in-depth research about it. Besides, discussing the story in our Developmental Reading class, one of the language skills we needed to develop was the ability to express ourselves both orally and in writing.

Thus, as part of our project in English, we were tasked by our teacher to do a simple research paper about a product of Bontoc.� To satisfy our curiosity about the orange fruit in the story we read, and to hone our writing skills, we chose to study about the Maligcong oranges which were very abundant when they were first sold in the market in 2000 or 2001.

In the story, the mysterious orange fruit came from an upland village so we decided to travel to the uplands and validate whether sweet oranges could come from the villages located in the mountains that tower over the town proper. Our research was a bit delayed because we had to find a common time to visit Maligcong, but finally, we were able to reach the amazing orange orchards. More than being able to submit a requirement in English, we had a fantastic time learning about oranges in the paradise-like orchards of Maligcong!