Tiny In Toronto

Day 13 was the only day I had a hangover and lemme tell ya, hangovers in the Philippines aren’t any different than the ones in Canada! It was the worrsssst and therefore “Day 13” became “lazy day”. I chilled around in the same area as our condo and went to places that were in walking distance. I tried Jollybee for the first time. I tried a different place called “Dakasi” for milk tea (it was good). Then we had all-you-can-eat wings with the famjam. At this restaurant we ate parmesan flavoured wings. We ate other flavours but this one was definitely the weirdest of them all. Apparently, this flavour was the most popular but to me, the parmesan-flavoured wings tasted like feet. To drink with our wings, we had apple-flavoured beer! It was SO GOOD. Big, BIG fan of the apple beer.

With my cousins Njay and Jae, we spontaneously decided to go to a haunted house after dinner. Yeah, my not-so-wild self thought she’d be able to take on a haunted house even though she’s NEVER been in a haunted house before. I don’t even know what to say. It was scary, man. I will NEVER enter a haunted house again in my life. Maybe haunted houses are scarier in the Philippines? Maybe I’m the biggest baby in the world? I entered the house and immediately there were long-haired scary-looking zombie type things walking towards us. One had a knife in their hand. One touched me with that knife and immediately I was screaming, “LET ME OUT! C-CAN I GO PLEASE?!!” And that’s how I left. I literally just stood outside the house waiting for my siblings and my cousins to come out. Thankfully (LOL), they came out 5 minutes after me. My brother ran and left my sister in the dust LMAO. It was something else. It was an experience we’re never going to forget, and we’ll probably be laughing about it for the rest of our lives (even though it wasn’t funny at the time lol).

It ended up being a really fun day! It started off pretty rough but I had so much fun spending time and getting to know my cousins! After our short visit to the haunted house, we decided we earned some chimney cones. They’re the ice cream cones that I had been wanting to try for the past week! They did not disappoint. Once we finished our ice cream, we went to a bar (I’m not 100% sure if it was considered a bar but there was seating, food, and alcohol there) at the top of the mountain! We brought our own alcohol and snacks though! Our cousins insisted that we try Smirnoff Mule. It’s a yummy alcoholic beverage that they like drinking. Anyways, we took our chips and Smirnoff Mules and drove up the mountain. From the top of the mountain you can see the entire city, and it was beautiful. First timers are encouraged to ring a bell when you get there so my brother, sister, and I did it. The Smirnoff Mules did not disappoint! They’re a blend of vodka, ginger beer and lime. Odd combination but honestly SO yummy! It was a great way to end our day.

On “Day 14” we all went to support Jeano’s United Nations presentation at his school. Every child at his school or in his class was assigned a country and had to come dressed in an outfit that best represented their given country. Jeano was assigned Chile. I got a few clips on video and it was so cute. They were only 3-5 years old and needed so much direction. It is definitely hard to organize and have a production like that run smoothly when there are kids THAT young running about. It was hilarious. But it also went on a little longer than we had expected. We had plans to meet my mom’s ENTIRE side of the family for dinner at the boardwalk and I think we showed up a little later than expected!

Meeting all of my mom’s family (a million cousins, aunts, uncles, etc.) was so much fun. It was so nice to meet everyone and they were so welcoming despite the fact there was sometimes a language barrier. It made me wonder what life would have been like if I had grown up in the Philippines and surrounded by these loving individuals. It really is a shame that it took 25 years but I’m glad I met them and was able to visit at all.

By “boardwalk”, I mean we were basically parked and eating dinner in a parking lot (which I found pretty cool lol). We had a whole table spread of delicious food that if I’m being honest, I wish I could eat right now. I miss the Filipino food so much!! I know I was getting a little sick of it while I was there but now I’m having madddd cravings. Once we finished eating we played a card game with our cousins. It was called “1,2,3 Pass!”. Really hard to explain the game without playing it. You guys know I can’t explain anything properly if my life depended on it. However, to give you a gist, if you were the last one to put your hand on the table, everyone would put baby powder on your face! Here’s a picture of my sister (she kind of sucked at the game ha-ha):

At 10PM there’s a curfew and an alarm of some sort that goes off and basically tells everyone to go home. They’re not allowed to roam the streets that late! When we heard the alarm we relocated to a relative’s house where we ate balut (a developing bird embryo that it boiled and eaten from the shell), fresh coconut water, and sweet sticky rice dipped in hot chocolate. I didn’t eat balut but by now, you guys probably could have guessed that. I’m a wuss. We also sang karaoke. I sang Shaggy’s “Angel”, or was it “It Wasn’t Me”? I can barely remember lol. I might have left out that I had drank a few more beers that night. I DO remember that there was an anaconda in the garage!

It was such a good time! It’s really a shame that we were really getting know all of our family near the end of our trip! I can only imagine how much fun we could have had with them if we just had one more week. Again, just another reason to go back, right?

This marks the end of the second last post of my ‘Tiny In The Philippines” series. This is CRAZY! I have two more days to share and one of them was solely spent on an airplane! I can’t believe it. What is it that they say? All good things must come to an end? I guess in this case that’s true.

Until next time!

– Tiny ❤