When I was in the Philippines to renew my passport, I found that even if they were more expensive, LRT's or MRT's are really very convenient to use. Imagine... I would come Antipolo and travel to Pasay just to process my passport. And I have gone to Pasay a few times before I got my passport at DFA (Department of Foreign Affairs) office.

From my sister's place, we would take a cab so we could go outside and take a jeepney to Santolan to get take the LRT. From Santolan, we would pass by 3 stations to get us to Cubao Station. Then we get off and walk for 10 minutes to be able to get to MRT Cubao staion. Then we had to go through 9 stations to get to Taft station. Then we would get down and take a jeep. Then take another cab (tricylce) to go to DFA office. That has been my routine when I was there.

It was so tiring but I enjoyed taking the LRT and MRT. I saw and observed quite a lot of people, most of them students from different technical colleges and schools and even from different universities.

It was nice to relive the moments when I was still in college. Those were the days when you didn't care so much about anythinge... except to do well in your studies so you can find a decent job when you finish school.

This is the nearest mall at my sister's place in Antipolo, the Sta. Lucia Mall. Everytime I visit her, which is once in two years, we always go to this mall. It's quite huge. The only thing is you get confused because the new building is attached to the old building.

Once when my sister went somewhere else and she asked me to wait at National Bookstore, I went inside thinking that it would be easy for me to find the bookstore. I was wrong. Took me a lot of asking before I got to go to the place.

I liked the National bookstore there. I bought a few things from there in fact. They had a lot of promotional products that were just so irresistible.

I bought a chess board. Yes, from the National Bookstore. Hehehe. I loved playing chess. I was only in Grade 1 when my father started teaching me how to play chess. I actually have gone to places playing chess. Can you believe that?

Now that I have kids my own, I also want to teach them how to play chess. Apparently playing chess can lengthen your attention span and can help a lot with problem solving. I have two more years to wait to teach my boy.

We have finally started sending our boy to a drama school called Helen O'Grady Drama Academy. We've been planning to send him there the moment he was born. Oh... I think we did the moment I got pregnant. That's how determined we were. Of course, we wanna send him to a lot of "schools" for exposure. We don't mean to impose it on him. We thought we would try and if he's not interested, then we'd stop sending him. But my oh my... he's indeed a drama boy! LOL. It's obvious the acting thingy runs through his veins. He's the youngest in the class by the way but he's doing really well.

Today is his third session. The image above was taken on his second session. Apparently, they are given a situation. Then they would act on a situation, with facial expressions. They are taught how to speak loudly and clearly without sounding like they're screaming.

Of course, the sister is exposed to it as well. She imitates her brother a lot. She has a long time to wait for her turn though.

I and hubby had a chance to watch a movie last week when the kids were away. Well, can you believe we watched a kiddie movie? Oh well, there wasn't any other nice movie available so we opted to watch The Bolt. Other movies were horror movies which were not our type of movies. But what made us decide to watch this movie was it was shown in 3D. It was fun.

Bolt tells the story of a dog who is convinced that his role as a super dog is reality. When he is ripped from his world of fantasy, and action by his own doing. His own obsession with his owner and keeping her protected from the green eyed man of the television show he works on completely absorbs his life. This takes him to the point of no return when he believes that she has been kidnapped, and he accidentally gets packaged and shipped to New York city in pursuit of his owner. This is when the story unfolds, and he goes through a transitional period where he learns that he is as super as every other dog. His disbelief of his abilities being non existent fuels a lot of different emotional changes, and eventually comes to a reality of who he really is. This all culminates when he finds his owner and reunites with her in the action packed climax of the movie.

There are a lot of themes you could draw out of Bolt. But as I watched it, Bolt reminded me of a Homeschooled fellow. I have seen a lot of homeschooled kids/people and my impression with them is like they live in their own world... and when exposed to a real world, they couldn't relate. They don't know how to relate to other people. They're mostly overly protected... and when they're out there, the believe they are better than the rest of us. When in reality, they're just one of us. They don't even care you exist and they wait for their parents to tell them what to do. This goes especially to those who don't have a social life, I think. Kids that were not exposed to other kids their age, or just other kids in general. Probably, this is not true to others... but I have seen a lot of homeschooled kids and they all act the same way. The reason why I observe them is because since getting pregnant with my first, we were already considering some options of where to send the baby (when he grows up) to school. So for 4 or maybe 5 years now, we've been observing homeschooled kids. This was just one of the reasons why we decided to send our boy to a real school. Anyways, I have yet to come across homeschooled kids that know how to relate to other people.

Like Bolt, there is hope though. And parents need to be very resourceful so the children can get enough exposure. Otherwise, all homeschooled kids would be like Bolt when he was inside the set of the Hollywood TV sries.

i went for a parent-teacher meeting at my boy's school again last friday. this was the second meeting i had with the teacher. they would normally have parent-teacher's meeting at the end of each term (3 months/term). my husband was away for the first meeting. and away again for work the second time. he was very sad. so i promised to copy my boy's report for him to see when he came home.

i was happy (and proud) with his progress. his teacher said he has improved a lot after the first term. he's mostly A's now for his grades, a few B's and no C's at all! Last time there were quite a lot of C's and a few A's. His reading has progressed so much. he's in book 5 now. that means he can read 5 books already! i am happy. although i also give credit to myself for sitting with him and reading with him his book, but i thought it was his own effort that really did it.

he's learning to love reading now. when we drive and he sees words, he would read them. but of course, he would read the letters first. i think the school's reading program is not bad at all. although i was a bit frustrated at first coz how in the world can a 3-year old child read Bubbly and Whizzy on the first week of school? read about my frustration here: reading at 3. if you have read this post before, i also apologized to my readers after i did a bit of research about their reading programme which you can read here: q-dees reading programme. now he's a bit ahead compared to his other classmates in reading. although there's this chinese girl that is so smart she's already reading her book 10! they always say that girls are more advanced than boys when it comes to their development but i think not all are. maybe, generally, we girls are... (wink)... but there are also girls that are not so advanced.

other languages my boy learns in school is bahasa melayu (which the teacher said he's very good at reading) and mandarin. he can sing a couple of chinese songs now and i saw he's started writing chinese characters already. nowadays, education is totally different. last time, my age... i mean my time, it didn't matter whether you have gone kindergarten or not as long as you've reached your ear with the opposite hand you're qualified to go for primary school. LOL. i actually don't have a strong basis for this. it could be a joke last time but what i'm saying is... we didn't need to go through kindergarten to be able to enter primary school.

anyways, there are quite a few reading programs that i have heard of. there's this glen doman method, phonetics, and the one my friend lalaine is using for her daughter. i am also interested with that but can't find a copy of the book in mph. wanna try that for samantha later.

where was i? ahhh... the boy's progress. i am sorry. i haven't written a family update post for a while so i have a lot to say i am sidetracked a bit. anyways, all in all, i am happy with my boy's progress. he had a rough and slow start but when he picked up, he picked up fast. that's what the teacher told me. i am happy we decided to send him to school this time. he could have a harder time to catch up if we start sending him next year only.

will try to send samantha to school next school year. what do you think? hehehe.

We woke up early today to go for my son's Sports Day at school. Good thing we reached the place early as there were already a lot of parked cars around. We found one spot right near to the gate, thank God. It was amazing to see my boy participate in the games for his category. He was very fast. I think my boy is going to be competitive in sports too, like his daddy and mommy. His daddy also used to join most of the sports that was offered in his school last time. Sports indeed is a good way to foster sportsmanship, friendship and healthy competition. The only thing my hubby didn't try was golf. A friend of his used to ask him to go with him to play golf. I think, if you get into golf, you would need to buy your own golf equipment.