So, this will be my first entry this summer about summer.

My mom is working in Dubai, UAE as an accountant, and one of her benefits in the company is the yearly vacation here in the Philippines. Making it short, she arrived last friday. The time is very short and we already have some plans in that 35-day vacation that she had.

The first is the family bonding moment of their Handmaids of the Lord (HOLD) group in Dubai. For a little background, my parents are active members of Couples For Christ (CFC), a religious organization, here, and she decided to join its branch, the HOLD in Dubai, which obviously caters the single women (either widowed, single parent, not with their husbands, and more, as long as they are single, literally).

Back to the story, their group, with most of them having their vacation here, has already planned this outing weeks ago, and I’ve just learned about it like two days before my mom arrived. My first impression was, “Ah.. Okay.” Nothing more, nothing less. Not that I’m not interested, it’s just that maybe because I don’t know them. And also, I’ve learned that my older sister is the oldest among their children, that gives me the impression that I’m also one of the oldest, and that the other kids are around 8 – 10 years old, and I somehow don’t like that scene. I dunno why.

But I’m such an optimistic person (really?). I just think that I’ll meet new friends, and I’ll meet my mom’s friends that makes her happy while she’s away from us.

So the day came. We went to the meeting place and picked some of them, then travelled to the real place. It’s just a private pool, big enough for us. And at that time, the scene that I was thinking shattered. Thank God. The other kids are also in my age group. But the other thing was that I’m the only guy among the kids. It’s already hard for me to mingle with “new” people, and it’s harder for me if those “new” people are girls. So in these occasions, I just let my older sister (ate) to do the mingling and I’ll just ride along.

We ate breakfast that we brought, then prepared ourselves to swim. The original plan, I think, was to wait for our other companions to arrive, have some games, eat lunch then swim. But it’s too hot, so we just jumped in to the pool while waiting for the others.

After an hour, the rest arrived. The other kids are also in my age group, and that I’m not the only guy anymore. Hurray for that! Since we’re already complete, our moms started the program.

First is the introduction of each family, of course. I think there are eight families. Then we had a game. The first game was called “Two for a road.” The rules is to grab someone you don’t know then know each other fro two minutes, exchange basic information, trivial facts and stuff. Since I’m a shy type of guy, I’ve just sat there waiting for some loners. haha. But then someone grabbed me. I was startled because I don’t recognize the guy (which is around 30, I think) among our companions. I stood, hesitated, but followed him since my mom, who saw it, said so. It means that he’s not a dangerous man. And he really is not a dangerous man. He is the husband of one of my mom’s friends. So we exchange information, talked a bit until the time is up. It’s fun talking to him since he’s not that intimidates the one he’s talking to. The pairs presented each other. By the way, we are the first one to present. All pairs said almost the same things, their provinces, age, status in school, but not us. Since we also asked each other’s cellphone unit, which is a real surprise for the crowd. And at that time, I know that we will win the game.

The next game is called “Shagidi Shagidi Sha Popo.” We were divided into 5 groups. Rules are simple. A leader of another group will do a simple dance step or any action, while saying the title of the game. Then the next person will copy the leader. The next next one will copy the next one, and so on. Making the long story short, our group won. But that’s not an easy win since we had a tie with another group. We won, thanks to our group leader, Man-man, ’cause he made some difficult steps for the other team.

After the games is the much anticipated lunch. I’m so hungry after those games. There’s a lot of food, brought by each family, like shrimp, squid, chicken, mangoes, watermelons, and lot more. After eating, swim again!!!

Swimming is good! Especially with that heat, and of course when you’re with a good company. The other kids are fun to be with. Though it’s not official, we played our own games, like “Hanapan Piso,” which actually just means that you’ll search for the coin that someone threw in the pool. It seems simple but it’s fun! On the side note, I felt sorry for Than-than, since she lost her 10 peso coin in this game. And I think that it’s my fault.

Then we also played what they’ve called “Head and Tails.” But I think the real title is “Catch the Dragon Tail.” We grouped ourselves into two teams. The rules is for the first person in the line to touch the last person in the line of the other team. It may be simple, but it’s hard to move since we are in the pool. I was the first person in our team for three rounds. And I should say that it’s really tiring since I’ve been swimming already for hours. Actually, my arms is hurting today, because the other team’s head, Paeng, gave me hard time pushing him. Haha. And again, I should say that it’s really fun. We had a draw since each team got two points each, and everybody was already tired for a tie-breaker.

We continued swimming for some time then our mothers decided to have another game. This is pretty popular here in the Philippines and it is called ‘Pinoy Henyo.’ It came from Eat Bulaga, a noon-time TV show. Rules? A word will be posted on a person’s forehead, then that person will ask any question to the his/her partner about the word, but his/her partner should only answer “yes”, “no” or “maybe.” So our turn came, and of course, I and my ate will be the representatives of our family. Everytime I join this game, I always ask the basic categories, whether the word is a person, an animal, a thing, an event, a place, a food or a part of the body. Unfortunately, I forgot to ask if the word is a place. I don’t know why, it just slipped off my mind. I also asked if the word is in English or Tagalog and she said ‘no’. At that moment, I got confused since it’s not in the languages that I know, then maybe it’s in other languages. So I asked and asked some things. Actually, I’ve just repeated some of the questions I’ve already asked, and suddenly when the time left is around 30 seconds, I remembered that last category. But still, I ran out of time and we lost. The answer was “Boracay.” Yeah, that should be easy. Stupid me. haha.

That’s the last game then after a few minutes, we prepared to leave. That was a bit difficult for us kids since we’ve only started to know each other and to enjoy each other’s company. But since we’re good kids, we followed our parents. Aww.

Before leaving, there was a small awarding ceremony, and I’ve won two prizes! Yehey! First is for the “Two for A Road.” I knew we would win that. Hehe. We’ve got new caps for that. Tito Robert, my partner, got an Adidas cap while I took the Lamborghini cap. The other participants got a box of candy drops each. For the second game, our team won a jar of chocolate with almond nuts and caramel. Yummy. The problem that it already melted then they’ve put it in the cooler again, giving us a hard time scooping out the food. It’s much much harder than ice cream, but it tastes better, so just don’t mind the hardship. XD

The last part of the ceremony is to acknowledge the new graduates, and there are five or six of them, which includes my ate. They had a cake that they’ve shared with everybody. It’s a chocolate cake. Isn’t it obvious that we love chocolates? After that is a group picture. You’ll see it below. Then we all went home. Awww.

What I’ve first imagined was really nothing compared to the real thing. At first, I thought that I would not enjoy the event, but now, I’m wishing that it was an overnight event. I’m looking forward to meeting them again. We haven’t even had karaoke!! Right now, we’re communicating via text messaging and facebook, and we’re waiting for other pictures to be uploaded, pictures that we will cherish.

It’s a pleasure to meet all of them. Imagine, our mothers celebrated the Christmas together. They are their family away from family. And it’s only right for us to know them and their real families. I don’t know why. I just know that it feels right. I hope that this is just a start of new bonds between our families. I hope to meet them real soon. And of course, I would like to thank our mothers, especially Tita Gitte, for giving us this opportunity to know our mothers’ HOLD family.

Peace, love and success, Rico. ^_^

Titas Picture by Tita Beng; Group Picture by Tito Rey

Diclaimer:

any grammatical errors, typographical errors, spelling errors? just comment it out. I didn’t proofread this blog. Haha.