The winners of the recent baranggay election in our village held a blow-out party in my little beach. It looks like half of the village attended the event. It doesn’t take much to please these people. Simple food such as rice and fish and veggies suit them well. It is because that’s all they can afford. They live on a day to day basis.

But, look at how happy these kids are.

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My husband is amazed at how much rice they can eat. I told him that is how people survive in the province by filling up on what they have most and less on other things. Somehow, they pull through. I am a living example. But now, I can only eat a small portion of what is considered a regular serving for them.

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It looks like they run out of ulam.

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Happy and well-fed.

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The boy wearing a blue shirt is my nephew, who lives with his parents in this place to care for the property. He must have been tired of ocean water, reason why he is the only one who is dry.

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Even the grow-ups join the craze.

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The little girl on the right has quite a resemblance of myself when I was her age.

Despite of the black sand, this place is our favorite because the water is nice and calm and doesn’t have huge rocks to hurt our feet. It doesn’t have the waves crashing against the shore. Also, this place seems to be gaining land as opposed to the other place in the northern part of Catanduanes which is being swallowed by the seawater at the rate of 3 millimeters a year. Quite an alarming phenomenon! In fact, they already lost a street, 12 houses, and now building their seawall as the first two seawalls had been gorged by the ocean already. I hope there is something that can be done to save this town from being wiped out in the map. You can read all about it here.