This Is Me Challenge {Part 2}

Okay, so I was reading over some more of the questions from the "This Is Me Challenge" and I thought of just answering a few questions on different categories, not just one. Again, I didn't do any proofreading so excuse my grammatical errors.

What games did you play as a child?

Besides our FAMICOM (Nintendo Family Computer) games such as Super Mario Bros., Battle City, Galaga, etc., we also had plenty of outdoor games with our friends after school. My favorite one was called "moro-moro." Other people call it other names such as "agawang base" (base-stealing). The idea was to capture the enemy's base while at the same time trying not to be captured by the enemy. And if you have teammates that were captured, you try to save them, too. It had a lot of running around which was fun!

There's also mataya-taya (tag, you're it!), langit-lupa (heaven-earth where the "it" guy tries to touch someone who "goes down to earth" by stepping on the lowest level of ground, usually where the 'it' guy is), tagu-taguan (hide and seek), hopscotch, chinese garter (you make a loop of rubber bands and do this routine leg movements around it but it goes higher and higher as you move on to another round), and "sipa" (means "kick" in English).

I was really good in "sipa" when I was in 5th grade. There were different ones for the boys and for the girls. For the boys it was a bottle cap and a candy wrapper (the candy wrapper inserted right through the bottle cap). For the girls, it's this big whole bunch of rubber bands wrapped together until it's heavy enough. I loved it! We made our own rules. You kick it up and down the air, it can't touch the ground or you're out. The first 5 kicks, you can't catch the "ball." The next round (10 kicks), you can only catch it ones (to sort of pull yourself together before kicking it some more). The next one is 15 kicks with two catches, and so on. At the end (say the 5th kick at the first round), you try to kick it as far as you can so the opposing team won't be able to catch it with their foot. It's really fun!

What activities did you participate in (teenage years)? Explain what you did with each activity.

I will just list the one thing I did in high school: I signed up for Cadet Officers Candidate Corps (COCC) when I was in my junior year in high school (15 years old. We used to start high school after 6th grade at 12 or 13 y.o. They're going to change it now with middle school, too). COCC was like a high school level of ROTC. I remember waking up early on Mondays (I lived 1 hour away of commute from my school) to get ready for the pre-flag ceremony exercises. The sun was always still down when I arrived in school at around 5:00am, my fellow COCC's and our officers already shining their pins and wiping their "swords." I loved being able to be one of the main participants in our flag ceremonies. We always did it with the scouts.

After a Monday morning flag ceremony, with all the accessories taken off.

We had a training every Wednesdays at 1500 hours (3:00 pm). Most of the time we were left for half an hour with our arms folded across our faces, and our faces facing up to the sun. And if you've been in the Philippines long enough, you'd know how hot it was to be there. Sometimes we were told to "drop like a log and produce [number], [closed or open fist]" which meant we dropped to the ground from standing up, and doing push-ups. If they said open fist, we had our hands wide open. If the officer(s) said closed fist, we pushed with our fists closed.  We also did a lot of marching dances, sometimes with our eyes closed. It's pretty funny when it's like that because by the time we open our eyes, we are all spread apart and not in one square. We had a lot of fun even though it seemed to non-COCC's that we weren't fun people.

We also did some marching parades at some point but I can't remember. I think we did it three times for three special people from the government. All these just to avoid taking a boring P.E. (Physical Education) class.

This Is Me Challenge {Part 1}

I found this "pin" on Pinterest called "This Is Me Challenge." It's some kind of a challenge to write about yourself in your journal or personal history records or anything. I eventually want to add my answers to these questions in my binder of personal history records that I made in my class when I was in college. But I also thought to share some of them here in my blog - the not-need-to-be-kept-private ones.

Since she has a lot of suggested questions, I'm going to divvy up this post into several series. So here goes Part 1:

My Family

* What are the lessons you learned from your parents?

Several things:

(1) I learned that money doesn't REALLY matter. We grew up either not having enough or just having enough. Sure it's nice to have a little extra to spend here and there, especially in an emergency, but you don't have to be rich to enjoy each other's company or to be able to serve other people. There are so many more other ways to be able to do these and a lot of them are free! We didn't have fancy things at home when we were youngsters, but we had what we needed. Food, shelter, clothing, and each other.

(2) Have faith. Being poor, we always counted on faith. Faith is all we had to lean on to. And being faithful is always calming. It gives you a sense of hope. Just do what you need to do and leave the rest to the Lord. He will never leave us alone in our ordeals.

(3) Instant gratification doesn't satisfy, working for it does. If we wanted something either from them or from one of our siblings, we had to work for it. Most of the time, my payment is loads and loads and LOADS of laundry. And I'm telling you, it's the kind of laundry where I sat outside and rinsed them all by hand. Our washing machine only had a washer, it didn't rinse. And our dryers back home didn't dry clothes completely as how they would here in the United States. Once the dryer is done, we hung the clothes up outside on the clothesline. Too bad for us if the rain came too quickly and we didn't have time to get the clothes inside the house. When I finally finished working for what I wanted, it felt 10x better to receive it.

(4) Do housework. I remember when I was really young, around 6 years old maybe, when my mom used to have a chart of house chores to be done every day by someone in our house. The little ones like me had the easy chores, the older ones got the harder ones (like doing the dishes). This was taken away after a few arguments between siblings had been made, and by then we were old enough to do chores on our own without a chart.

(5) Listen to the counsels of Church leaders. We didn't miss a Sunday to go to Church either unless we were really sick. Modesty and chastity was taught to me and my sister as we grew up.

(6) Have family time. Lots of them. Growing up, my mom was always busy. She had a job outside the house, several callings at Church, and seven kids. When we were little, we always went out during the weekends. It was either to the Temple, to go swimming, or to go (window) shopping at the malls. Whichever as long as we're all together. Family time! And then when we grew up, she became a Stake Young Women President when I was in the YW Program, so we got to spend time with her as she did her calling especially for Youth Conferences. She was also our seminary teacher at some seminary classes. But we always tried to do some other family activities, like simply going out together, or playing games together, or the usual Sunday School answers: Family Home Evening, Family Prayer, and Family Scripture Study. Once in a while, a family council (or counsel?), too, which sometimes feels like someone's initiation day! xD

How about you? What did you learn from your parents from what they taught or did not teach you?

Part 2 coming soon. Oh and check out my family update in our family blog if you want.