A couple days prior to my departure last September, I recieved a lot of emails from stitching friends all over the globe telling me about the typhoons back home. I have to admit that during those days, I was busy packing instead of watching the news. From the bottom of my heart, please accept my sincere thanks for your thoughtfulness... you all know who you are!
Anyway, it is a fact that the months of September and October have the most rainy days in the Philippines. However, I never thought this year's storms & typhoons will hit Luzon terribly, particularly Central Luzon where my parents and most relatives live. I think it's the first time in history, but definitely first time in my lifetime, that landslide occured in my hometown - a part of barangay in San Juan Bano due to typhoon Ondoy. A lot of kids, housewives, and few grammies died there... after that incident, the community had trauma of rain. All of the farmers in my hometown - including my father - didn't harvest much palay (rice) this year due to severe flooding.
At least 3 days a week in the month of October, the sky has this dark clouds at my parent's place. I took this 2 photos after typhoon Pepeng. I think it was also Pepeng that caused various landslides in Benguet, and more floods in Pangasinan and Nueva Ecija.
By November 1st, which is our All Saints Day, the sky looks like this. Hooray! We were at the cemetery when my sister took this photo of Mt. Arayat.
I'm glad I managed to celebrate All Saints Day with my family this year. Starting 5:30AM, some of my cousins, uncles and aunts were already at the cemetery where my maternal grammy was buried. My youngest brother and few cousins had to put up the tent before sunrise so the first few batches who gets there won't get roasted. We had potluck for the whole day food and we're in-charge of lunch and dessert. Me and my mom went in town market around 5AM on that day to buy some ingredients and flowers. My mom's younger sister brought chicken soup (sopas) for merienda (afternoon snack) while the rest of the siblings were in-charge of sandwiches, softdrinks, chips, etc. Almost everybody brought candles and flowers. It was a fun fun day! I think we went home around 7PM.
BTW, I keep on saying that All Saints Day in the Philippines is our version of Halloween in the US, but according to Aunt R, it's more like a Memorial Day!
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