ON ‘FULL-TIME MOM’ MODE

Robredo in Boston to help Harvard-bound firstborn Aika settle in

Vice President Leni Robredo flew to Boston, Massachusetts this week to help her eldest daughter "settle in" as a student in Harvard University.

In a post in her personal Facebook page on Wednesday, Manila time, Robredo shared several photos with her firstborn, Aika, including one with her in the driver’s seat. Another photo showed the Vice President seated on the floor as she helped assemble a bed.

While she had a side meeting with a potential partner for her office’s Angat Buhay program, Robredo said the brief respite allowed her to be “a full-time mother once again.”

“It was a very hectic two days for both of us as we fixed and cleaned her apartment inside the campus,” she wrote.

Aika, 29, was accepted into Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government for the Mid-Career Master in Public Administration Program.

She is attending the Ivy League university as an Edward S. Mason fellow, like her father, the late Interior Sec. Jesse Robredo.

The Vice President said she and her eldest “went around the campus and visited (their) old haunts from 19 years ago,” when her late husband was studying there. They also visited the Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School, where Aika attended fifth grade.

“Tonight, we were lucky to join a potluck dinner among Filipinos in Harvard. In a few hours, am flying back home comforted by the thought that Aika will be in very good company,” she wrote.

Robredo first went in Los Angeles, California, where she spoke at the invite-only fundraising gala of the Filipino American Symphony Orchestra (FASO) and met with some members of the Fil-Am community there. 

The Office of the Vice President said she will be back in the Philippines by Thursday, June 22, though it provided no details beforehand about her trip to the US.

Before leaving, Robredo had led the Independence Day rites in Rizal Park in Manila, which came as President Rodrigo Duterte took several days off for “private time.” —KG/KVD, GMA News