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Rafael Elijah De Belen

Mrs. Aldan

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31 August 2023

Philippines 2022 Family Vacation

My most recent vacation was last year when I flew to the Philippines with my two

siblings and my father. We first flew to the Guam airport which didn’t take that long. We

ate Burger King for lunch which costed us so much money. After, we took a nap for a

while and after 6 hours we boarded the next flight, which directly flew us to Philippines.

The flight took 4 hours and half of the time I was sleeping and watching movies on the

plane’s seat screen.

When we arrives I was so excited but at the same time I was super drowsy. When we

had gone outside it felt like a new world because of the tall buildings, the busy road, and

the different scent of air. I could already different smell of air. I could already see the

difference of Philippines and Saipan, my hometown. The next day I looked outside the

window of the building outside. The first thing I wanted to do was revisit the Manilla

Ocean Park which I had gone to 7 years ago. When we finally went there it had felt way

bigger than how I remembered it. I got to see a lot of different kinds of animals including

penguins. I also entered a room with different jellyfish glowing different colors inside a

glass-pillar aquarium. It was such a sight to see!

The next few days we went to an SM Mall. It was humongous. It had different stores
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like Ace-Hardware, clothing shops, phone repair stores, and jewelry stores. The mall also

had a bunch of restaurants like Jolibee which is Philippines most-well known restaurant.

There were also arcade rooms and some gaming rooms. The arcade rooms were pretty

fun.

The next few days we just stayed at the house or explored the area we lived in. My tito

(uncle) drove me and my siblings around and talked about the areas where my mom used

to walk around when she was little. I learned more about my family history and many

more things about my mom’s past life. We visited an old two-story building that my mom

lived in and played with her siblings about 40 years ago. The building was still intact and

some of my relatives still live there. A week later we took a 2 hour drive to Nueva Ecija

to my grandmother from my dad’s side. There I experienced riding the tricycle and saw

bunnies which are now rarely found in Saipan. Other than that we didn’t do much at my

grandmother’s. Another week later we drove up to the cold city of Baguio. Houses there

don’t have air-conditioning and the houses were colorful and crowded together similar to

the houses of Veneto, Italy. It was funny playing bumper cars and bicycling around in the

rain.

After all this fun we had to say goodbye. Me and my siblings learned so much about

Philppines and the difference to Saipan. We learned many things about our family

especially our parent’s history. The Philippines was such an experience and I cannot wait

for the next vacation trip to Philippines.