The Year 2020 Starts with a Bang!

2020 January

Welcome 2020!!

It's another year and there are certainly many things to be grateful for and so many more things to look forward to.

Here's wishing for those great things to happen...

I spoke too soon... I didn't think it could happen in my lifetime but Taal Volcano just erupted! So surreal!!

Whenever a New Year comes, I no longer create New Year's resolutions for myself.  I just try to take it a day at a time.  So yes, we may have just a small amount of food for New Year's and it's just us in the family celebrating, still, I feel grateful that we even have this much.

Patrick also was able to come out of the house for the first time, not counting those days that he had to go to therapy.  

Then, from out of the blue, I noticed a weird icon on my phone's weather app and as I checked it, I found this:  It signified "Volcanic Ash" and I thought, "Has my weather app gone bonkers?"  And then, I checked Facebook (of course!) haha and I was shocked to see so many posts about Taal Volcano, the volcano in Tagaytay, had erupted! Yes, erupted! 

 

This was the volcano that could see from across our room when we stayed in Tagaytay just last May.

And this was Taal in January 12, 2020.  Picture taken from The Washington Post.  Unreal, right?

Static electricity is discharged as lightning from a column of ash
towering over the crater of the erupting Taal volcano on Jan. 12, 2020,
as seen from the city of Tagaytay. (Ezra Acayan/AFP/Getty Images)

Naturally, the next day, classes were suspended in Manila because of ashfall.  The last time I experienced ashfall was when Mt. Pinatubo erupted in 1991.  The ashfall was different this time though.  It was sandier compared to Mt. Pinatubo whose ashfall was like gray powder, very very fine.  Still, it caused Dylan to have an asthma attack because he was playing outside on the day of the eruption and we didn't know then that there was even an eruption.

But, despite this natural calamity, Patrick had exceptional progress as you can see in this video.  He was able to climb our stairs with hardly any problems.  This was quite a feat as you can see considering that he wasn't able to even stand in November.  

So that's our first month of the Year 2020.  :)