Depression, Jeepneys & a Paper Christmas Tree

The title pretty much sums up our Christmas season so far.

Since John came back from Vancouver to say good-bye to his mother, John and I have begun feeling the loneliness that comes with the realization that a loved one is no longer with us. As the Christmas season is upon us it's hard not to think about what (or should I say who) we're missing. It's hard being here knowing that Dad's alone and the family is going through the same loneliness back home.

Last week, we thought we would trek out to the mall to get our minds off of our sadness and do some Christmas shopping. As we were fighting the chaotic Christmas traffic, a Jeepney cuts in front of us and hits our car. Luckily it wasn't a serious collision and no one was injured but because it was our first collision, we were a little bit unsure about what to do; the jeepney driver didn't speak English (but of course he knew enough to tell us that it was our fault), and we were partially blocking a major intersection in Christmas traffic as we waited for a police or traffic officer to come by. And of course to add to that hightened stress level, Kayla and Keona were complaining about how hungry they were. The traffic officers eventually came and began to collect our information. As one officer directed traffic behind us, another officer took out a scrap piece of paper out of his pocket and began drawing pictures of our vehicles. These hand drawn illustrations would later become part of the official documents for our accident report. He then proceeded to take pictures of our vehicles on his little camera phone. We all eventually went to the police station to file an accident report (you'll have to ask John about this surreal experience in greater detail in his more colorful version). As he steps into the station (I, by the way, was in the car trying to find food to give to the kids), people in the office were watching "Mythbusters" on Discovery Channel on TV, there was an officer playing computer games on a computer which wasn't connected to the internet, others were passing around a pot of food as it was their lunch time, and another was welcoming John showing off his pictures of his family on his desk. In attempt to fill out the report, John realized it was in Tagalog so he asked if there was an English translation. The officers couldn't find one so one of them came and sat down beside John and translated word for word what the report said. John was also asked to pay P400 for an officer to take another picture of our car (on his camera phone) and another P150 for photocopies they had to make of the accident report. Uhhh, did they think we were stupid? Well okay maybe we were because we paid it ('cause it didn't look like they asked the jeepney driver for payment...) but I guess, it was better than them outrightly asking for a bribe. Maybe it's the same thing but I guess we'll see how far it goes as we file our insurance papers to get payment for our broken headlight and scratched up hood. We're not even sure what all those officers did with those camera phone pictures they took of our car...
Driving home, I asked John, "Was this enough of a distraction for ya?" We both had to laugh.

As we try to get into the Christmas spirit, we continued a tradition we began last year of drawing up a Christmas tree instead of buying an actual tree and putting it up on the wall (you can refer to last year's tree here) . Maybe it's laziness, we didn't really want to go out and buy a Christmas tree because we didn't know how long we were going to be here and two, we thought it would be somewhat of a hazard with little kids around. A paper Christmas tree doesn't take up any room, you don't have to worry about bristles, pieces of ornaments falling on the floor or having the tree topple over, it's totally environmentally friendly, cheap and hassle free. Kayla and I enjoyed putting it all together. This year, we "got" a really big tree, so tall that the angel on top actually hangs over (partially taped onto the ceiling), we used origami paper (courtesy of my mom), aluminum foil, felts, glitter and stickers to make ornaments. When it gets closer to Christmas Day, we'll put the gifts under it. It beats last year's tree for sure.