"Amang"

"Sa wakas uulan na din!" That was what my mom said when she heard Kuya Kim announce a storm that may pass here in Manila. My dad told her that all we need is a little rain. He told her how destructive a storm is. He retold to her the story of how our lives were when "Milenyo" came. My mom was in the USA during that time and she never got to experience the very difficult way of living. Both water supply and electricity were gone.

We had an exam to pass last Sunday. A passing grade in that exam means "hello" to the jr. black belt. We can't have a black belt until we're sixteen so we have to use a jr. black belt for now. Ate Angge didn't want to take the exam which may give her a blue belt. Our sensei really wants her to take the exam but her hopes were shattered when my sister didn't appear.

My dad didn't take us to the school (by car) because he's extremely tired so my little sister and I traveled alone. It was raining when we left the house and it rained even harder when we rode in the trike. We were soaked and muddy when we got to the jeepney. We thought we'd feel relieved in there but thunder came. It was followed by a lightning that struck a nearby vehicle. Poor vehicle.

We rushed to our school and got there 5 minutes before the exam. We had a written exam first followed by warm-up exercises then the kata, a series of moves performed differently by each belt. Before the results of the written exam were revealed, we were forced to join the sparring. Forget about the sparring results. Hehe. Anyway, I didn't like the result of my written exam. We were given wrong information by our sensei. I passed the exam though but I really want to get a perfect score.

So that was "Amang", the first typhoon in our country.