Summer/Fall Filipino Reading

We revisited the Children's library last month and I found a pretty good number of Filipino books. With my husband's encouragement, I decided to create a more structured Fil-literature-based for P to continue learning Filipino. I have the list made up for the next three months at least.

The first three books which got me started were quite interesting that I decided to really make the list for the following weeks and not just pick whatever we fancy. Might as well structure it so we can make the most of the resources available. 

"Mga Tambay sa Tabi-tabi," is an interesting reference-like book for the supernatural beings in the Filipino folklore. Most if it were pretty new for me since I'm not that fond of reading scary stories at all. Some, I just heard from my Mom whenever she would be chatting with other adult when I was younger. It all seems very interesting listening to these stories. Not in a storybook kind of retelling but very casual way that it really did happen in real life of someone the speaker knows. I don't think it's more appealing than that. Unfortunately, my son had to contend with the storybook kind since his mother leans toward the scientific stories and wouldn't have a direct experience in these field.

I do love the stories though, specially the legends. I remember the well-thumbed in small pocketbook of legends in my elementary school library long time ago. This got me to pick up the book, "Ang Alamat ng Talangka." Modern writer penned this but it still has the elements of a traditional legend. Some Tagalog words would probably be at least for 5th grader coz there were some long and mouthful words. Not the casual storytelling words to use.

The next book is "Ang Mahiwagang Biyulin." I would have spelled the word violin as "bayolin" as I am pretty confused sometimes. This story has easy words even for me. It may be okay for a third grader to read at least. I managed to pick some vocabulary that I know might be unfamiliar or hard to decipher for my son. It was a fun read though, partly because of the little mouse appear in every page. The story itself was interesting.

This week's set (at least for the next two weeks) is the first on the list that I have. I tried to cover some folktales, legends, and biography. There were no legends that made it into this set. I was looking for another Lola Basyang stories but only found one. Juan Tamad sounds interesting and funny so I included it. And of course, the Aquino bio since yesterday was Aquino Memorial Day. We might start with this. 

To whoever made these books available in the local library, thank you. I just hope other immigrant moms will find and make use of these. Since there were other books in other languages there like Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Indonesian, and I can only guess what else. 

Korea War Memorial and Museum and a bit of Itaewon Streets

The trip starts waiting for the subway ride. 

One good part of waiting time is the reading. (while waiting for the sub)

Four hours on our feet walking around from Itaewon to here and my feet are just about to surrender. We have just covered around 3/4 of this and we still have to check out the outer exhibits. That is basically just the indoor exhibits. 

Another War Museum and it's on a bigger scale, way bigger than what we've been to so far!
Why? But of course, it should be since it's the War Memorial of Korea.

P had some summer homework to do, so I thought why not do some day trip to Seoul. And what could be a better place to head with kiddo but to a museum that he would be totally interested to go to. I would have preferred to just go walking around some interesting street but with a kid to educate, a museum would be better. I'll try to induce him to do the street one next time.

We did a little walking in the middle of the hot sun to get to his favorite gimbap chain, and a bus stop after. He even found an interesting alien thing outside a small cupcake store called Monster Cupcakes.



Nevertheless, we both enjoyed the war memorial yesterday. It was almost killing my feet to cover the three floors and we only managed to roughly cover more than half of the indoor exhibits. We just went in and out of the exhibits, roam around in our own free will until P finally realized to really look for the outdoor ones. It was about time to head out around four with my feet almost about to give out. But I still had to do some mother role of taking photographs.

We saw the exhibit about Korean-Vietnam war, how the Viets lived underground during the war, the land mines, the different war strategies like isolating a village so the enemy can't use them as cover and suppliers.

He was also fascinated with the workings in the exhibits. He told me that he like how the miniatures were made and he'd like to make things like that too. I'm pretty surprised coz I've never really seen him to be meticulous and that kind of thing needs a very detailed eye. 

Oh boy, what will he turn out to be is still a mystery. 

For future reference on a next trip to the place, here some notes:

1. There are some QR code available in some exhibits so better prepare the app before heading there.



2. An overview of the floor plan of the exhibit room can be helpful to fine-tune or maximize one's time. I looked it up a bit online but didn't really register much. The flier at the entrance was helpful, IF we took a few minutes to study it and figure out the exhibits' layout. BUT the little boy insisted on just going with the flow of our feet. As a result, we missed the Children's Museum and other possibly interesting exhibits. 

3. English Guided Tour: As far as I can remember, there should be a 10 AM and 2 PM tour. Unfortunately, there were almost a dozen of US soldiers in the the 2PM tour and the guide available is just pinch-hitting for the day. P insisted on DIY. I was too tired to disagree.

4. Pick a better time to take outdoor shots. Definitely not the best on a summer day, with the sun's heat in the middle of the day and it's angle against the lens on the later part of the day. We went in the midst of summer. Spring or fall season might be actually better.

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