30 Days of Blogging Challenge – Day 18

Maggie, Cheila and I are doing the 30 Days of Blogging Challenge. Here we are at Day 18.

Today’s prompt is about Things I Have Learned From Blogging.

Here’s a few things I have learnt during my few months blogging.

• How much I love writing – this little blog has reignited my passion for writing. I love writing, about anything and everything. Its nice to have this as a creative outlet 😀

Just two months in, and I have already wrote more than 100 posts

• How much I love taking photos – like with writing, I have realized how much I love to photograph what goes on around me. I know people say to live in the moment and not through your phone, but I like a healthy dose of both. I want to capture moments so I can look back on them, and then I’ll put the camera down and enjoy myself (before bringing it back a few minutes later). I take so many photos, you guys only see a small portion, but I love going through them all on lunch breaks, or rainy days, and reliving all these memories.

Makara Beach

Hallo! Welcome to another little TBT post. Today’s is about a place I have very briefly mentioned before in the blog. It’s about Makara Beach. I had never heard of this place before, but Rory had frequented it with his family as they liked to walk there. So in 2015, on a Labour Day weekend, Rory drove us up there, so we could do this little walk up the hill.

It was a very stony beach

As we made our way past the carpark, we came across this beach. It was very stony. To the left, there was a little path and a sign showing us more about the walk.

A helpful little sign

There were a few options we could take. We went with the ones that went up to the Fort Opau gun battlements. The full walk takes few hours, but we decided on just doing a small part (we got hungry).

My Heritage

This week’s photo challenge is about Heritage.

I immediately took this to mean about family and culture. It could be interpreted a range of different ways, but as regular readers know, I absolutely love my family. I also love talking about them. So here we go again.

I am bicultural. I have lived most of my life in New Zealand, so that side may come out stronger, but I also consider myself a Filipina (mostly in spirit, as I keep meaning to relearn Tagalog). My dad is from New Zealand, and my mum is from the Philippines.

I consider myself a proud Kiwi. Our country is beautiful, it’s a tiny island sure, but it’s packed full of incredible sights. Lord of the Rings and Weta have certainly helped boost our image of that 😛

As with any sights, you just sometimes have to go out of your way to find it.

As for my Filipino side, I was there when I was incredibly young. I only lived there from when I was 4-6. However, I do remember from my time there, that it gave me an amazing work ethic (which I since lost and then regained yay!). The schooling system was very different from kindergarten back home, there was more of a focus on academia. For that, I’m thankful, as when we came back to New Zealand, it gave me a boost, and for most of my school life, I was doing work above my grade level.

I have also inherited a lot from my family.

Including biological traits. I have inherited my parent’s black hair and brown eyes. Their short to average height (For some reason though, my sister is an Amazon). My dad’s poor eyesight which means I require glasses. A slightly lighter version of my mum’s darker skin, which also gives me the ability to tan fairly fast in summer (thanks Mum!).

As well as personality traits. I have a weird sense of humour. I love to photograph everything, bake, and give out hugs thanks to Mum. I love movies, computer games and board games thanks to Dad. Also, my love of mini golf! Is there any better outdoor activity? 😀

Finally, I have inherited my love of family birthday traditions. Every year, for each birthday, we will get together for a dinner, cake, presents, and chats. (Similarly for Christmas.) Most recently, we got together for my Dad’s birthday last weekend. Next month, it’s my brother’s turn.

Heritage is fun to stop and think about, especially when you have an amazing family. I have been shaped a lot by how I grew up and my parents. I have since grown up and left home, but I look forward to one day passing my own heritage down to future generations (not any time soon though!)

Angela.