Other things may change us, but we start and end with family.
-Anthony Brandt

wow..so it's been about 2 weeks since my last post..and in those two weeks i have been lucky enough to be able to travel with about 17 of my family members from here to visit our other family members back in the philippines....and in all the chaos going on in the world..the war..sars...the bombings at davao airport...it wasn't exactly the best time to go..but finally going back to p.i. after my last visit in 13 years was well worth it! it's so hard to explain everything that went on in those two weeks..i do know that it was an eye opener to me...and i am truly blessed to have such a wonderful loving family..and as corny as it may seem..all those lectures/stories i hear from my parentals about the sacrifices they had to make just to come to the states..all those times they told us that we are so lucky to be living here..all the times my dad would start a story by saying.."i walked 5 miles in the rain.." or ..."10 miles in the heat"...and so on and so on..all began to be a reality on this past visit...call it an ephiphany or whatever..but i realize how much we take even the littlest things for granted that shouldn't be...1 dollar could feed you for the whole day in p.i!!! crazy huh? i know i'll probably always have little things to complain about..but hopefully my conscience will be more aware of what's going on..yah i know it'll be hard..but no one's perfect!!...my mom even took me to visit one of the schools in the province where she lived..and being the brat i am..i didn't want to go..i just wanted to keep riding the moped..but after finally convincing me to go, i'm glad i did....this elementary school was so poor...the teachers had only one bookcase of outdated books to use as teaching material, because of a flood that happened a while back and ruined a lot of the other books they had..they had one dictionary in the whole school which someone donated..the children sat on the ground in the classrooms..the school was pretty much rundown...and it seriously made me and my family just want to donate whatever we could when we got back to california...so that's my older sister's new mission..she's getting ready to ship out some balikbayan boxes to send over to the school....it may not be much..but hey..we're trying right?..i guess this kinda sounds like i'm preaching or something..i'm just letting out what i learned on my trip...i did get to go sight seeing as well....let's see we went to bagiuo city..i saw real igorots!!..sorry no bahags=P..the drive up there was soooooooooo scary...it was like a drive to big bear..but with more turns and higher up...the scenery was beautiful though...we went to this resort called villa escudero where i got to row a bamboo type of raft..that was pretty dope...and the beaches have the warmest water!!...the new in thing is not clubbing..but to go see live bands..kinda like house of blues...jollibee, mcdonalds, kfc...all serving spaghetti, chicken and rice??...hahahha as my aunt kept saying..."only in the philippines!"..one thing that did drive me crazy though was all the TRAFFIC....so maybe i'm a bit biased because that's my field of work..but seeing as how cars from every direction enter the intersection regardless of whether the traffic signal is red or green can be quite heart stopping...hahahhha...my heart must've sunk so many times watching the craziness on the roads...well i could go on and on about my trip...but i don't want to make this thing longer than it already is..so i'll leave it by saying...it was too short of a time to spend with all my family there..til the next family reunion!....take care...

-aloha and mahalo...belle=)