@shairanada for the picture."My Christmas Vacation: Day One!"
Hello and what’s up steemit friends!? Few more days to go until we celebrate Christmas and I hope you guys are all doin’ good! I am so happy for all the Filipino steemians especially Iligan steemians who have already cashed out their earnings! Congratulations everyone! May pang pasko na!
Anyway, I went home in my province of Zamboanga del Sur last December 19 (Philippine time) to attend my cousin’s funeral on December 20. His family was really devastated by his sudden loss and I really hope that they’ll still be blissful this coming Holidays.
So basically, it’s been three days since I was home and I was supposed to blog my entire stay here but I’ve been busy in the past days and I only got the time to make a post today. I do really have a problem with the internet connection here; like we do not really have an internet connection in our house and so I have to travel for 10 to 15 minutes to go to a nearby computer shop just to post this.
To make my very first post, let me share to you the photos of our home that I took yesterday. Pardon me if my shots are very bad. I am just trying to fulfill one of my dreams which is becoming a professional photographer. LOL! Below is our fish pond.
There are actually various types of fishes living there such as tilapias, carps, koi fish and two fresh water sharks. I am not really certain of what kind of shark is present there but I am pretty sure it is a fresh water shark. LOL! Those two are not really dangerous though.
Tilapias are huge there and sometimes I catch a few of them to cook for food! Their meat is tender! But I only take those large typical or common tilapias; I mean I always return those with pinkish or orange colors back in the pond. Thus I only take those with black color except for the two sharks but I would still loved to fry them. LOL!
By the way, speaking of those sharks, I was fortunate enough that one of them is captured in the photo below. He is not really as huge as what you think that’s why they’re both harmless. LOL! Can you name its type? If so, then please leave it in the comment box below.
Anyway, let me also share to you these beautiful flowers. These are my mom’s and there are bunch of these plants here but I was not able to take photos simply because I am lazy and I am really not into it. LOL!
Let me also introduce to you to our dogs! They are more than just pets and house guards; they are more likely a family to us. There are actually seven of them. The other three are either at the back of our house or are out in the neighbor.
Below is a photo of my mother with our dog friends. They are actually very playful and they would definitely relieve your stress. By the way, that black dog is “Batitoy”, that small one with chocolate color is “Momay”, the brown one is ”Kiko” and that white one is “Moymoy”.
The other three are “Duday” - the mother of Kiko, “Totskie” the dog with a short tail and ”Tiger” which is the oldest of them all. I think he is already ten years old now. Originally, there were seven of them, the other one died due to severe illness.
They are named by my parents and I really admit that they got hilarious names (haha!) but those names are what makes them stress reliever! Those names are what really make them a real family.
Below is a photo of how we exactly cook our food here in the province. LPG is expensive and so we used fire woods instead. Also, majority of the people here are into it. I think the photo is self explanatory.
I also took a photo of the back of our house.
That’s actually a rice field out there! My mother told me that this month is planting season for rice in our village. By the way, rice is harvested twice in a single year. So basically there are two harvesting seasons and two planting season per annum for rice.
I am not really knowledgeable about agriculture and/or how the rice field is taken care of but during my younger years, I always participate during harvest. But that doesn’t mean I am one of those people who actually harvest the rice.
I only participate during after harvest and we call it ”hagdaw” in our native tongue. The people are only allowed to hagdaw the rice fields after the farmers are done harvesting and collecting the rice. So basically hagdaw is when we accumulate the rice that farmers fail to gather after harvest.
Then the rice that we gathered after we hagdaw the rice field are now ours! We then process them manually and we sell them to local buyers. We are already happy that time even if we only earned 50 to 100 pesos (that is about 1 to 2 dollars).
The best part after harvest season is that the rice fields become our playing ground! We used to fly our kites and spend our entire afternoon in the field. We then play local games such as the ”dakpanay” and ”bihagay”.
These two different games are somewhat the same, it’s just that in bihagay, we play it with two opposing teams and two bases. Dakpanay translates to ”habolan” in Tagalog where in one person is tasked to catch at least one from those participated in the game.
Bihagay on the other hand is a team play. Each team sends one of their teammate to the ground to act as bait and whenever an opposing team member/s decided to catch the bait, a support would then run and would also catch those who would try to take the bait. Rival support would then catch enemy support and so on. It is really a very fun game haha!
Those are one the best things when you live in the province. I took a video of our play ground before which also happens to be a rice field before harvest. LOL!
Thank you for your time and follow me for more interesting posts!
Bonus gifs below!
THANKS!