Just wanted to share my labor of love for my mom on Mother’s Day:

Her bibletreasures.net website is now hosted on our server and now it is a Wordpress blog

Happy Mother’s Day Mom!

I am very thrilled to share the photos I took from my leisurely trip yesterday to Brugge, Belgium. The photos are not technically perfect due to the fact that I was too lazy to bring my DSLR and just used my point and shoot/digicam Sanyo X-Acti. I feel that I did not do justice to my subject by making less than perfect images. Oh well, there will be other chances again I hope and next opportunity to see a city with rave reviews I should bring the DSLR.

I planned this day trip more than a week ago after finding out that my husband will have his boys night out. I grabbed the chance immediately to fulfill my now deprived wanderlust. Read more…

When I was living in South Jersey, it was a pleasant surprise for me to find out that I don’t have to go to the Midwest to see and learn about Native American culture. Within 20 minutes drive of where I live, there were several powwow events that happen regularly each year. Powwow’s as I observed, are regular social and culture events for the Native American community. The formal ceremony starts with a parade of participant tribes. It would be then followed by speakers, dance performances and  musical performances. It was the first time I’ve ever seen such a cultural event and indeed attending it was all worth it. I was fortunate to be able to attend two of these events during my stay in the U.S.
To find the next Native American cultural event in your neighborhood just visit Powwows.com.

Holland is the more popular name that refers to The Netherlands but actually it is only one of its provinces. I chose these photos as an introduction because this is what the world sees as typical Holland — and that is so true. Once you are outside of the major cities, this is what you would see everyday — hectares and hectares of flat lands with cows and sheep grazing. Oh yes, maybe I have missed the cows but in the future I will include a photo with cows in the background.

The windmills have also been here for maybe hundreds of years as they provide an economical means of power and help control the flow of water in the fields.

Cheese and milk. This is what Dutch people can’t live without. Their typical lunch (and sometimes breakfast) will always include a cheese (kaas) sandwich with sometimes ham (boterham) and on the side they will have milk or even sometimes buttermilk (karnemilk) which is the sour kind. I don’t know why but they just love it. They also like to put cheese toppings on almost every meal.

Roads are part of our everyday life. They lead us to where we want to go. Without roads there is no progress. Roads connect us to the world.

Country roads, city roads, muddy roads. I like them all.

• Note: These photos were taken during our recent road trip in the West Coast of USA, and some were from a visit to Canada, the rest are from here locally (Netherlands).

I think this blog should not only include just my wishes but I want to share others’ as well. Recently I received this e-mail from my aunt and here she described her own dreams as well. (The following e-mail has been edited to protect her privacy and the people she mentioned):

” I recently enrolled in a course Introduction to Viticulture. It is something interesting to me, having to do with grape growing and possibly in the future go to winemaking so I can use my food technology background.

I might even get a manual job picking grapes or looking after grape vines or seedlings in the future. Who knows? Life is full of surprises; It is an adventure, really!

I am happy for you that some of your ‘dreams’ come to reality too. I also notice the Filipino trait of helping others specially our family and relatives. I think that is not only Filipino but universal. But sadly in some affluent societies like Australia, the idea of helping family or relatives in terms of time and money is not as prevalent. I know of Filipino family members who are ‘heroes’ in their own right, like some of our countrymen working abroad just to have money for their family at home to make both ends meet, to send their children to school and be educated so that they can live a ‘better’ life for themselves and their children. It is very touching to see it myself ( as I have seen and met some of them in Belfast) and learn of those stories from elsewhere. My niece used to tell me what she saw in Dubai, the first time she was there, and she can not help but say that those Filipinos, Indians, Pakistanis and other Asians working there, away from their families are sacrificing a lot to the point of being ‘heroes’ to their families.

I also experienced it with my parents, they literally ‘made night into day’ to have us educated and I think their dreams for their children have materialized in the sense that we, their children live in a ‘better’ circumstances, materially, than they. I can not speak for their social life as they also had a ‘life’ so to speak!

One of my dreams nowadays is to teach my grandchildren Tagalog so that they can pick up Filipinos talking our language wherever, and that they would feel joy in having a conscious identity of their Filipino heritage, a legacy I dream of leaving them. At present, I have told my son and daughter in law that when my granddaughter and I are on our own, I will only talk to her in Tagalog so that she can pick up some Pilipino words! What do you think of that dream?

I dream also of getting a paid job sometime in the future, after all these trips, and even at my age. One of these days, I dream of landing in a job that I will truly enjoy, probably only part-time, so it is not that stressful compared to other jobs I had. We can always dream, can’t we?

I read somewhere, that happiness can also be a decision; so we can decide to be happy whatever our material circumstances are, and count our blessings, without comparing ourselves with others. Life is also a personal philosophy and a choice and decision, ‘ika nga’. Whatever that means to other people, but its meaning is very clear to me, as I dream of ‘that’ choices and decisions all the time!”

I wish that my aunt’s dreams will come true as well.