22nd

Last January 20, I turned 22. Two years have passed of not celebrating my birthday due to: one, I didn’t feel like it; and two, school took over my life that I can’t even make myself feel special even on my special day. As negative as that sounds, it doesn’t matter now because I finally celebrated it this year with my family! It feels weird to be celebrating it again and I honestly developed this thinking or way of seeing birthdays as just another day where we expect to be treated in a more positive light but end up with really disappointing results. This is why I stopped bothering to even treat myself, my friends, or my family to a special day out to celebrate my birth or in this case, concluding another year of living in this world. Okay, I need to stop since this is becoming really sad, hahaha.

Anyway, my main point here is celebrate your birthday however you want to. We can always treat ourselves a little extra when we feel like it. Any day can be a celebration of our birth or basically our existence in this vast universe. That alone is a reason to celebrate! You’ve mustered the strength, courage, and faith within you to face all the bariers and challenges.

I didn’t intend for this to be so deep but all the statements from above are just part of the realizations I’ve come to grasp through the years. To continue on with this post, here’s a recap of how we celebrated my birthday!

If I were to give three words to describe or hint you with how my birthday celebration went it would be: food, cold, and flowers.

Why?

Well, my family and I spent our weekend at Tagaytay. We were supposed to book an Airbnb but we ended up in Villa Ibarra instead. No regrets, at all! The food, the view, and the whole experience was a-okay!

But before we checked in, we went to Museo Orlina, which was one of the museums I’ve always wanted to visit. We also dropped by a thrift store where I spent my last few bills but ended up with items that I really like (*cough* thrift haul post this weekend *cough*).

The restaurants we went to were Balay Dako and Restaurant Verbena. Balay Dako has got to be a place to remember and I’ll definitely come back for the whole experience. The food was my favorite part, of course. The latter, however, was a bit of a disappointment. But it was just a spontaneous pick so we just let it slide, hahaha.

My favorite part of the whole weekend was when my brother and I woke up early to wait for the sunrise. But then we were greeted by the fog which made it hard for us to capture photos and record a timelapse. We still managed to take pretty good shots and I’ll share that in a different post next time.

Before heading back home, we went to Starbucks along Tagaytay-Calamba Road just to take photos of the view. We also stopped over at Tagaytay Public Market where I bought a sunflower and a bouquet of carnations for myself. Just another treat on my special weekend.

It was a fun weekend from the usual birthdays that I had where I just stay in my room and eat ice cream while binge watching series (that will still work for me though). It’s fun to get away from Manila for just a little bit. I hope I’ll get to celebrate more days like this!