I’ve been doing this annual pilgrimage to see my relatives almost every year now for the past 4 years. Before that, I was only going once every 2-3 years because of restrictive work schedule and schooling. Now with a job that lets me have “at will” vacation, I am definitely taking as much time as I need to visit abroad. I The primary reason for me to make this trip every year (despite the 15 hour flight time, 6 hour layover, another hour of ferry ride), I really do enjoy seeing family that I never get to see since moving to the States. I guess as one grows older, I am finally realizing and feeling the effects of that while I am busy growing up, my parents and grandparents are growing older, and sometimes they can’t wait for me to be “done” with something before their time is up. My last set of grandparents (paternal) are 90 years of age – they won’t be here forever. While I can still travel, I’ll make an effort to come as often as I can. Although I was a lot closer to my maternal side grandparents, I wasn’t able to spend as much time with them towards the later years of their life, right before their passing. Life doesn’t wait for anyone to grow up, and anything can happen to those who are close to us that we often take for granted when they’re around. But seeing my grandparents isn’t my only reason for this trip. I pretty much just want to see all of my immediate relatives that I normally never get to see.
In fact, I am going to visit my grandparents for a bit in their village. I didn’t know that fireworks are banned in major cities, so I was vastly disappointed when I came home and found out that I couldn’t blow sh!t up in the sky. But since my grandparents live in the remote/rural countrysides, fireworks there are perfectly “legal” there – and I have every intention of blowing a lot of stuff up in the sky.
Faraway Universe 