Catching up from the Homeland pt 3


December 26, 2009

My birthday was ushered in somewhat unceremoniously when my mom realized while packing that it was 12:40am and wished me Happy Birthday. Operation International Packing Mode had hit a snag and my mom had switched from putting pasalubong in a box to a suitcase and back to a box again. I went to sleep slightly uneasy about whether or not we would actually finish packing in time, but trusted in the Happy Birthday spirits to send good luck our way.


That day we went around doing some errands and then called up my aunt to see if she and the fam wanted to have lunch. We went to BJ’s at the Del Amo Mall, where the Happy Birthday spirits got us a parking close by and right away despite it being Return Bad Christmas Gift day and the mall was completely crowded. The Happy Birthday spirits weren’t able to shorten the wait though, so about 40 minutes later we were seated and proceeded to order right away. My 1 1/2 year old cousin was great before-dinner entertainment, of course. In addition to his wiping down tables fetish, he is currently calling everyone “Mama” or some variation of that. I’m telling you this kid is future-oriented, being organized and being un-gendered. (The odd thing is that he used to call his dad “Papa” but has now switched to simply calling everyone “Ma”.)


Food arrived and we were very very pleased, I’m hungry just thinking about it—avocado egg rolls, calamari, chicken wings, fettuccini alfredo, and a deep dish pizza…yum. And even after stuffing our faces we still had so many leftovers. A nice surprise came when the waitress came out with a “Pizooke” basically a warm, freshly baked chocolate chip cookie about the size of a personal pizza with vanilla ice cream and a candle…oooh so much warm cookie it was delightful! Technically it was also the only birthday cake I had so I’m thinking of having another proper birthday cake back at school.


Back at home it was really crunch time, approximately an hour or so until we had to leave and all the final packing had to be finished. Of course it was all finished though, and when we got to the airport we were pleasantly surprised that the line wasn’t nearly as long as it was last year when it extended out the door onto the sidewalk for practically a half mile. But again surprise surprise when we got to the counter and they had no more seats next to one another? Only two of us were flying, and they didn’t have any 2 seats together on the whole plane! Very peculiar in my book, especially because so many people still had to check in, but no matter, take the waves as they come, at least none of our baggage was overweight.

More flight details to come, and then I’ll finally get into the traveling part of this travel blog!

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