Winter Vacation

Today is the second month of a new year, and I’m not getting any younger. Sigh, another year older. While listening to Michael Learns to Rock on headphones, I was thinking back, “What happened the year before? Was it good or everything is just getting worse?” I had my winter vacation at my aunt’s home in London. Until now, I still can’t believe I traveled 13 hours by plane, light years away from home. On top of that, I took a packaged vacation alone! I’ve always dreamt of going to places or traveling around the world capturing the magnificence of God’s creations. I’ve seen the famous Stonehenge; I’ve seen the Roman Baths; the Salisbury Cathedral, the calm waters of Gretna Green, Scotland, York, and other parts of UK. They were all breath-taking that I got everything on video. I met very interesting people along the way, Cubans, Malaysians, Filipinos, but mostly Australians. They were all very kind and courteous and have some story to tell that really made the trip fun. The tour director seemed to have memorized the whole almanac! If only I have good memory or had written down those true stories of lies and deceit, greatness and despair. People from different time and places that have suffered, and challenged by grand ordeals, and came out as one in the history books whose names became immortal.

Last year was just like yesterday, and the memories that lingered in my head about the trip was evident that I was looking for something. I got to know my aunt a little better; I got to see my cousin, who is already a grown woman, and my uncle who took me to places that I’ve never seen, with some occasional jokes of course. I can vividly remember me staring longer that it has to be on people’s faces especially to women. “Ah, foreign beauty,” just like the title of a song. When I came to have the grasp or sense of the surroundings there, I felt really sorry for my home land; thinking that it should have been like this or better than this, if only my countrymen will change and be more respectful to everyone because back home, nobody really take serious of some of the laws imposed, I mean, garbage are everywhere, people cross the street anywhere they want and whenever they want, or the pirated CDs that is flagrantly displayed on sidewalks. My discipler was right that I might be discouraged, thinking that there could be a better place, a better world to live in than my home like software updates offering better features. There is something we could learn from famous people who lived long ago like Alexander the Great, or Moses, or Einstein, is that they were just individuals- frail, persons with weaknesses and dreams, whom we thought can never make a difference in the world, but the rest was history and proved us wrong. The change should start in us, and do something.