Day 1 and 2

7-8 December 2008

The beginning of our trip. We checked into the airport and were a little dismayed at finding that our flight was delayed by almost an hour, which meant that our connecting flight would have left 30 minutes prior to when we would land in Honolulu. We were faced with the possibility of having to stay overnight in Hawaii and lose a day of vacation, but we really couldn’t complain. It’s Hawaii, after all, so there was no need to get worked up. It turns out that we had nothing to worry about anyway because we started boarding at 8:00am. We arrived in HNL with plenty of time to spare – we even had time to order smelly take-out food from Gordon Biersch (garlic fries that I’m sure our neighbors *loved*). The 11 hour flight was uneventful. Leah passed the time finishing up the Twilight saga as I watched several movies (Meet Dave, Mama Mia, Wall-E, Baby Mama) and more than my fair share of bad music videos on the digE console. How anyone takes Britney Spears seriously as a musician is beyond me.

When we arrived in Manila, we were greeted by Rusty, who helped us get our luggage and expedited our passage through customs. It felt a bit awkward to have someone helping us like that, but in the end, I was thankful because it would have been near impossible to find my cousin’s car after we left the baggage terminal.

The drive to Blue Ridge (a barangay or “village”) in Quezon City, where my maternal aunt and her family live, was what I expected street traffic in Asia to be – extremely congested with the road lines being treated as mere guidelines rather than hard and fast rules. Needless to say, it was a harrowing experience for my sister, who hadn’t been to Asia in 25 years. Having been to Thailand two years ago, I knew to expect that kind of thing and let go of my fear of colliding vehicles more quickly. I’m going to have to get back that healthy sense of fear before I return to the States.

The first thing we did was visit our Lola (grandmother). She was resting in her room with my aunt Milette by her side. My mom reminded us that we were still in grade school the last time she saw us and we all got a little teary eyed when we greeted her. She looks healthy and is still the same fire-cracker, independent spirit she was before her stroke. If anything, seeing her smile made this trip worthwhile.