Init dito!

So it’s the fourth day of 2006. It doesn’t really mean a thing to me as it would to a lot people – people who speak of resolutions or starting over. I find resolutions to be futile, and one day that starts a new calendar year by no means wipes your past clean so you can rebuild your life. However, New Year’s Day does mark that it’s been 2006 years (give or take) since our Christ’s birth, and that is something to always remember. I also like to see it as one more year closer to the Second Coming, which is an overly optimistic way of seeing things since we have no idea when that day will be, but this is one thing I have no problem being optimistic over.

New Year 2006 was also a marker for three full years where I didn’t visit the Philippines. Kuya, Oli, and I spoke several months ago about visiting during the holiday season, and it slowly got more and more serious as the months went by. Unfortunately, Kuya and his family weren’t able to come, but Oli and I had the privilege of going. So Oli and I took off in the late morning of Dec. 30, and arrived in Manila just before the birth of 2006. We wanted to get back to Auntie Emily’s house before the fireworks kicked off, but we ended up driving the roads as bottle rockets, OG’s, fire fountains, and cobras (small fireworks chained together to explode in quick sequence) lit up the streets. Smoke and debris filled the roads; it looked like a war field.

We arrived at Auntie Emily’s around 12:30 am, where the party was still going on. The loudness of Filipino chatter and the high volume of the TV made me feel right at home. I sat down at the dining table and immediately grabbed a plate to serve myself some authentic Filipino food goodness. Half the things I had no idea was, but I ate it anyway. It all tasted fine if not good, even when I found out one of the dishes was ox tongue, which gave me the thought that most of what people think tastes bad is purely based on the knowledge of the food. I always thought it was strange when people don’t eat food if they see the head of the animal. It’s still fish. It’s still beef. It’s still pork. What difference does it make if you can see its face? The ox tongue was still good, the taste doesn’t change just because I know it’s ox tongue or not.

Anyway, we left the house to my parent’s place around 1:30 am. There we opened up the Balikbayan boxes we brought with us. Throughout our missionary years, Balikbayan boxes have become a sort of giant goody bag from the States. It’s filled with State-side candy, clothes, canned and packaged food, and other things that you can’t buy here in the Philippines. Most of the stuff is provided by our relatives, so opening up these boxes can’t wait till the morning.

We pulled out the Christmas presents from friends and family from the States, and Mom, Dad, and Rachel opened them all and loved them. Mom and Dad especially liked the Caleb photo album that Kuya and Chesney put together for them, and Rachel loved her new dress from Auntie Nene.

That was our first few hours in Manila.

The past few days consisted of visiting Mom and Dad’s church, having the relatives come over to Mom and Dad’s for dinner, and going to Greenhills Mall where Oli and I hung out with Khup and Nem and had dinner at Chili’s there – one of the several restaurants that we considered very nice places to dine way back in high school.

It’s been a lot of fun being with the family and being able to participate in their everyday living. Rachel made a friend here who is very much like her best friend back in Escondido, so it’s almost like visiting them in So Cal…except the Philippines rocks and So Cal is only so so. Ha!

This weekend we go to Baguio, but till then we are heading to Mega Mall to enjoy the five stories of Philippine retail goodness. Yes!

If you want to see pictures, Oli has posted our day-by-day living of our trip on his Flickr account.

P.S. I dropped my camera on its lens back at the SF airport. I do this a lot, so I wasn’t too worried, but I picked it up to find that the UV filter cracked in two places. Luckily, the actual lens is perfectly fine. The only problem now is I think the UV filter bent on the inside because it’s now jammed onto my lens and I can’t get it off. I’ll have to take it to a shop to get it off…or stick it into a vice. I suppose either option would work.