Inside My Summer Backpack: Blown-Out Fuse and Sunburn

All it took was the inferno of May 14 to completely torch me and the last remnants of my sanity to bits. Rewind to that day and I remember being released from school for only a couple of weeks and I really did feel like zombie. I was up by 7 (but slept at around 2 AM the night before thanks to someone I know who got home waaaaay past bedtime) and did not get to sleep until 4 AM the next day.

So I went bawling to my mother and cried "I really need my vacation now."

Apparently she desperately needed one too.

So right then and there, my mom, dad, sister and I decided we were going to take a week off and just scuttle out of our city like refugees into some place where we could undo the knots in our muscles and the lines on our foreheads. Naturally, it was almost a unanimous yet unspoken decision that we would most likely end up in Boracay because of ease in accessibility, familiarity with the place and our pent-up desire to finally regain an old tan (for me) or get a new sunburn (for my sister).

But then, my mom and I had been planning to go on a backpacking trip somewhere South - like Cebu, Dumaguete or even Bohol. We weren't going to live exactly like backpackers but we had decided that we should bring nothing more than a backpack and "live out of it" for about a week or so. And the idea of going South was even more enticing because, even if I love Boracay a little bit too much, it would be nice to see a new place once in a while.

So into my backpack went, among others, two swimsuits, a black scrunchie, a huge bottle of SPF45 sunblock lotion, baseball cap, sarong, a batik halter sundress, my trusty phone with its high-res camera and 1 GB of storage up for filling and my mother who could still speak flawless Cebuano after more than thirty years. No, wait, the latter part of that enumeration does not sound nice.

But I had to cry because I realized I forgot my even trustier digital camera and video camera in my apartment closet back in Manila. Major bummer but the trip must push through.