Covid-19 put a lot of our usual routines since early 2020. Two years later, we still don’t know how to manage it. Life goes on …
2020
We celebrated my mother’s 90th birthday on the last weekend of January. It turns out that would be the last major ‘family reunion’ we are going to have. Normal living as we know it would come to a grinding halt several weeks later as infection of Covid-19 would take over every country.
Travelers get stranded as they try to book flights back to their own countries. When our province went into lockdown, we were fortunate to be able to work from home. Working from home was an arrangement we have been doing primarily due to weather and other situations when being in our office building is not possible (tele-work).
We were thankful we never got infected by Covid-19. Our summer travel plans were put on-hold or cancelled. Instead, the ‘spare time’ was spent with one another and time with our daughter’s family. Our son also came to visit us and worked from home for over a month.
I got involved in producing recorded worship service for our church that were posted online on YouTube. Producing videos was such a fun and time-consuming endeavor. I am thankful for high-speed internet connection. Downloading and uploading 4 GB of video file takes less than a minute.
During the summer time, we got the opportunity to visit (again) our neighboring province. We also visited attractions in our own province.
We went back to our office buildings to work. There was somewhat normalcy when fall came but soon enough as Covid-19 cases started to rise, a subdued Christmas season would be first of successive year-end holidays that we will experience.
Christmas 2020 was not like the previous years we had. But celebrating the birth of our Savior was always a joy in our hearts.
2021
This year marks the permanent arrangement where I have to work from home full-time. This meant I have to make a somewhat permanent space or room in the house to be my office. This arrangement worked well for me.
In the spring, our eldest granddaughter got older. A month later, we welcomed the arrival our grandson. The pandemic never stopped yard work that needs to be done as the snow melted and with the lawn needing attention.
Summer brought the usual sun and heat. It also brought lawn care (mowing, etc.) and some gardening. This was a year we were not able to travel outside of our province. Because of this, we also got the opportunity to explore the natural wonders of our province. We also had a close encounter with a bear cub crossing the highway while driving at 90 KPH. We missed hitting the juvenile cub by inches (at foot at most – the dash cam caught a video).
As the year came to a close, we were excited and busy preparing for a trip to Hawaii that was been planned for a long time but got delayed because of CoVID-19 restrictions. We were testing almost weekly in December. We did got the flu before the Christmas break.
2022
Our year started getting tested with CoVID-19. We got a negative result. We finally can fly to Hawaii. We visited the island of Oahu. Jr’s niece showed us around the island. For the most part, we were enjoying Kuhio Beach in the morning and enjoy strolling in the warm tropical weather. We hiked Diamond Head early morning (5:00am) to view the sunrise.
After a few days in Oahu, we hopped on a plane to Maui. It was a short flight. We waited in the OGG area before pickup the rest of our group in the afternoon.
We had a great time in Maui. We witnessed the sunset at Haleakala National Park – https://youtu.be/IEdcFSbEWB4. We were saddened later (in August 2023) that the place we enjoyed was reduced to ashes.
In May, we met our son in Phoenix. It was hot. We watched a Coldplay concert together. We also had an opportunity to drive to Sedona and see the ‘Grand-Canyon-like’ mountain formation.
During the summer time, we enjoyed our time with our grandchildren. Jr’s youngest nice got married. It was also a nice time of family reunion (especially my kid’s family and their cousins and their families). Our grandchildren are meeting their 2nd cousins for the first time.
Travelling to other countries this year is still somewhat restricted (or requires additional vaccination and testing). At the end of summer (after much preparation), we travelled to Copenhagen and later boarded a cruise to Malaga. While we were in Copenhagen, we were able to visit Malmo (Sweden).
One of our cruise stop was Ferrol (in northern Spain). This city was famous for building ships during Columbus time. It had a cabin replica of Magellan’s ship during his travel to southeast Asia. They also have a painting of an image in my elementary Social Studies book (1st Mass in Limasawa – see below).
After we disembarked in Malaga, we spent sometime in Madrid before flying back to home. It was an interesting experience to visit Portugal and Spain at the same trip. It gave me a cultural perspective of the influences brought by Magellan and eventually the might of Spain to the Philippines for more than 300 years.
In the fall, we were able to enjoy a couple of concerts by well known Canadian artists – Bryan Adams and Michael Buble.
Winter (winter-like weather) came quickly. There were so much snow on the ground in December. Our grandchildren were able to ride their toboggan in the backyard.
As the year come to a close, it was a great time to reflect over the last three years of pandemic. So much lives were impacted by it. We are thankful to God for His grace during the past three years.