Nǐ hǎo, Hivers! It's been a while since I wrote my first blog here.
I'm glad today that I've finally got the time to sit and write.
How are you? How have you been? Are you at work? Are you working from home? Are you on your day off?
I am sure most of my fellow Cebuano/Filipino bloggers have already posted about the tremendous typhoon that came a week before Christmas. I knew everyone was devastated by what had happened to Cebu, Siargao, Bohol, and some parts of the Visayas and Mindanao Philippines.
It's been 1 month and 4 days since the typhoon Odette came.
Let me share how I was that day and what it taught me.
So it was December 16, 2021. It was also the first day of the dawn masses. I woke up at exactly 3:30 am because it is really our tradition to attend the dawn masses. Before taking a bath, I was busy checking the sky, and I was so grateful that it was so clear. The stars were shining brightly. Typhoon news was everywhere on social media that it was going to be bad, so people should be prepared. But seeing the sky at that time was very hopeful for me, making me believe that everything would be okay.
When it was halftime of the mass, raindrops were falling but not too hard so again another hopeful moment.
I even went to work that day because it was the last day of our quarterly assessment, so the parents would return their test papers to be checked, and they even brought some Christmas presents for the teachers, though the wind was really hard that time. That time, I felt angry at our heads because they were so late in announcing that we didn't need to go to work that day. I felt sorry for the parents because they needed to travel just to return their children's test papers. So instead of going home, we stayed and waited for the others who could go to school at that time.
I remembered that it was late afternoon and there was much news about what happened to Siargao and Bohol. Cebu, at that time, was declared in Signal No. 3. It rained so much in Southern Cebu that afternoon also. I was becoming increasingly concerned because the majority of my college best friends live in that area. I began to call them, asking how they were. We're just so lucky that the internet was not cut-off yet.
At 6 pm, I informed my mother that the power would be turned off at 7 pm, resulting in a blackout throughout Cebu Province. So we ate dinner early. My nephews and nieces were still playing while I was in my room, busy on Twitter to get some accurate information. When I went out of my room, I automatically talked to my 2-year-old niece because she was looking at our Snr. Sto Niño at the altar. She said the baby Jesus was crying. She talked straight that time and I think that was the sign.
At 7 pm, it was already starting. The wind was too strong. I even went out to buy some cellphone load. At 8 pm, I felt like the wind would take us all. It was too strong. I was too close to breaking down in front of my family. My oldest brother and sister are upstairs because they were the ones using the second floor of our house. So I was really panicking. I kept on calling them because I was scared and worried about their children, my very own angels. And thank God they were all brought down because when I look at their faces, it seems like they were shocked by what was happening and what they were hearing outside. But they were so brave that nobody cried. It only took them a few minutes to be shocked. After that, they asked my Mom to cook some soup noodles because they were cold. Maybe they saw that I was close to crying because they kept on staying beside me, making funny jokes that could make you forget that you are in the middle of a typhoon. Instead of crying, my angels were having a food trip in front of our altar. They even tried to drink coffee so that they could stay late. They even asked me to take pictures of them.
We grown-ups were really scared that night, but our angels made us so brave and showed us that everything would be alright. My nieces and nephews, my dearest angels on earth, give us so much hope for what tomorrow will bring. I'm just so grateful that night. My family was safe, nobody got hurt, our house was only partially damaged, and we slept late peacefully.
Typhoon Odette really opened our hearts and minds, deepened our faith in God, making us understand that life is really full of surprises and that children are fragile but not weak.
And indeed, everything happens for a reason.
Zàijiàn, 'Til then on my next blog.
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