I'm glad to be finally home. :) Okay, quite a few things have happened so far, but I'm feeling too tired to talk about much so I'll just list them all out. I'll add a few pictures later when I can.

-God has been completely enormously good and kept us safe during the flight

-We met Ai Ai delas Alas in the plane on the trip home! She was very very nice and down-to-earth, and we were able to get a picture with her! :) And I don't know why they're making so much of a fuss about her chin, she seems beautiful without makeup. Seriously...

-I hit the same foot thrice already on different things

-One of my dreams came true! Qatar Airways gives tuition refunds of about 50% so we were able to buy the family a digital vidcam! I've been drooling over this for ages... God, I'm really grateful for all this... thank You.

-Manang's pregnant daughter passed away in their province... hope the family works things out. Hope she rests in peace... ang sakit na mamatayan ka ng ganun...

-We just came home from the Greenhills screening of THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW. Beautiful movie... it made my cry, not because I was touched, but mainly because I was scared, in a very different way. It can really make you think about the future of this place... the whole Ice Age concept (it had brilliant conceptualization) really struck me. I'm saving water and resources from now on. :{ That movie was just humbling, you know? It makes you realize that we humans are PUNY. As in SMALL and TINY and LITTLE... and we need to save the world.

-I realized I like it better with no househelps-- doing chores can actually be enjoyable when you have the time, and you learn to be a lot more responsible by handling different things on your own. Real life just doesn't go with training wheels.

-I still don't know what course I'm going to take. This is so confusing... my top choice as of now would be Nursing in U.P. Manila, but the choice is about 70% unsure. Otherwise, I'll go with more of the arts, like Creative Writing for Advertising or Culinary Arts. Or maybe Computer Engineering?? Or I can take Nursing as a Pre-Med course & go on with Medicine. Pediatrics perhaps? Interior Design too but that won't make much money as quickly.... ARGH! I don't know! This is so frustrating.... please, I just want to enjoy college and learn and have a fulfilling and successful job. Right now, I'm really very scared/unsure of what awaits me.... and I mean really very scared... I'm worried about how I'm going to do in the UPCAT and ACET, especially since I haven't taken any review classes yet, and I'm still unsure if I am. I'm scared and I feel small right now... I really, really, really don't know how College and I are going to get along. Yes, I'm excited, but completely scared. I don't know... I just don't. /:[

-Albus (my hamster) is gone from his cage!!! We came home seeing an empty cage, and I hadn't gotten the chance to ask Manang about it and they're in the province now!!! I don't know what happened to my hamster!!!

-School is coming back and I'm a SENIOR!!! Aagh!

-Summer has been very much enjoyable. These past few months have been really fun. :}

-I'm really happy with the American Idol results... Fantasia really deserves it, but I'm going to remain a Jasmine and Camile and George and John fan anyway. :) Lisa Leuschner is good too! She would've done well in the Top 12 if she got in.

-I've been hitting my head accidentally everywhere, and I don't know why! Last week, I hit my head on a bedpost! How can you hit your head on a bedpost WHILE SITTING DOWN for goodness' sake??

-My brother actually CALLED the I-HOP restaurant in Hawaii to talk to Camile Velasco!!! A Filipina co-worker/friend answered in Tagalog that Camile was still in L.A. doing the tour, but told him to call again some other time when she comes back! My brother has a big crush on Camile so he was happy to at least have been able to get a little contact! Hehe, walang hiya! But I really want to at least have autographed pictures or something too. I hope I get to meet them someday! :} Also I've never been to Hawaii and I really want to visit the place even for just a day.

-I'm missing summer already. :{





From the trip
Friday - May 28, 2004:

God has been (and just really is) incredibly, undefinably, and wonderfully good. Last year, He gave my mom the chance to win a 3-day stay at Bangkok's Crowne Hotel (Holiday Inn) at a Qatar Airways contest for its employees, so we're relieving ourselves of jetlag right now in Thailand. Our flight from Doha last night, which lasted 6 hours into the wee hours of the morning, kept me up all night with two reruns of Peter Pan the Movie, two trips to the lavatory, and countless glances at the sleeping and snoring people around me before that seatbelt sign finally got to flash itself out again.

I'm really happy that all of us were given the chance to end our summer breaks with something other than work, which my mom can finally get out of with our stay in BKK. And I'm really grateful about having the chance to see a place I can feel more at home in compared to one filled with curry-scented turban-wearers and deep [and beautiful]-eyed people staring at you like crazy with unintended daggers in their pupils [Arabs have this really piercing and alert look about them for some reason, especially when they have theeeck eyebrows. Pero magaganda rin ang mga tao doon; we even saw one who looked REMARKABLY(!) like Tom Cruise]. It's also my first time here so alongside that break, I'm also here for the experience. It's also nice to know that people aren't staring at you as much anymore... The annoying part comes when we get mistaken for Thai people (which happens all the time). It's because MANY Thai look very Filipino, kaso medyo singkit.

And the shopping here's just crazy!! Honestly, I thought Bangkok would be nothing more than one of those busy cities with a lot of traffic and highways, because that's just how it looked the moment we stepped out of the airport. I would've seriously confused the place with Manila if it hadn't been for the pointy-roofed Buddhist temples and right-side drivers. Plus, the roadside shops (mga tiangge, better put) we first went to just seemed like a replica of Divisoria or Kamuning cloth shops so I felt a little disappointed as well upon not being able to experience anything different.

But hours into it and we discovered that you just had to find the right places to go to, like the MBK mall--- an airconditioned Greenhills kind of mall, with its typical mall setting combined with a very good number of different little shops {tiangge ulit!). The prices here, as we were able to confirm from all the hearsay about Bangkok, can get surprisingly cheaper than those of a load of items in Manila. We were able to get good-quality (Wacoal!!) erm, underwear, for practically half the price you'd normally get them in Manila!!! And there were loads of accessories and clothes and souvenirs too, so anyone (or any woman, more likely) would really enjoy being in this place. Besides, I don't get to shop much in Manila now so it was a really enjoyable thing to experience all that.

The tourists (there are a lot! Belgians, Filipinos, Chinese, Germans, Americans, Britons, you name it!!) here are given a lot of importance too, because tourism is mainly what keeps Bangkok's economy rate up. It's a good advantage for us as well, because when you're a tourist you get a 10% tax refund for every 2000 baht purchase. But you don't have to worry much about reaching that much (around 2,700 pesos) because before you know it, you'll have spent a heapload more than that. That's the big downside about it though; you'll really need a lot of self-control for all of this. I hope I'll be able to use mine for the next few days... :}