The holidays, first part

I went back up to my hometown before the holidays to spend Christmas with my family.  However, before the 25th is, surprisingly, the 23rd, during which my friends Armand and Singkaw surprised me with a birthday cake. The cake had three lit candles, commemorating the fabulous day I turned three.  It was a very happy surprise.

Come Christmas eve my mother and I were at La Union, where my sister and her family live.  We traveled to Tagaytay the better part of Christmas day and spent the night there, and from there trekked to Taal volcano on the 26th.  I took about three hundred forty-seven pictures of the hike, all of which are still in my sister's camera.

By the 27th I went back to Marikina to spend the New Year.  It was my first new year celebration here, and the fireworks last far longer than they do in Baguio.  Moreover, due to the difference in urban planning, which I can't quite put into words, I was privy to fireworks going off nearer to me than how they do in Baguio.   Here the fireworks happen two houses away from ours (I need to fix how I said that), while in Baguio the most visible ones were those which make it higher than the surrounding hills.

 
 


The fireworks light up the night sky so brightly due to their nearness (or perhaps their pyromaniac power or however you call it).  I imagine their lumen lighting up my face, which for a moment I think they did, before all the lights in our block went out due to a power outage.

For our part we bought sparklers, wondering briefly why we call them lusis.  That might be clarified by quick research, but we were too lazy to Google why so we formed light shows in pictures instead.


It was an excellent celebration of New Year's eve, and, inevitably, characteristic of a person with no regard or desire for new year's resolutions, I have a mountain of work left happily untouched.  I left undone all the work I was supposed to be nibbling on through all the vacation days these holidays gave, and instead aimed to finish them all day tomorrow, with a chin determinedly turned up and dripping with chocolate sauce.  

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