Reckoning the Day Before

Yesterday was very hectic for me. I forgot it was my mom's first death anniversary but I tried to celebrate it in a simple way with my close friends.

I started the day with my driving lessons. I started to learn how to drive a manual car. I didn't even realized that driving a stick shift was very hard. Unlike the automatic cars I've been driving.

There were three pedals to step on compared to the two pedals for the automatic cars. I find it so awkward at first to step on the clutch. I always forgot to step on it really hard and also gassing up after a stop so it ended up stalling the engine. I did that several times until it had fixed into my head to always gas up before releasing the clutch gradually.

My other mistake was shifting down to lower gear when slowing down at the stop sign and always putting the gear back to gear one. Then the next one was after accelerating especially shifting the gears to a higher gear and then gassing up or accelerating slowly. It was totally confusing at first.

The first few times was kind of crappy but eventually I kind of picked it up from there. Now, I felt I had an idea already about it and had felt and experienced how to drive a manual car or a stick shift car.

I still have one session next week and hopefully I will be a little better compared to my first experience today. It will take a little more practice for me then hopefully I can manage to drive it on a busy street although today I had a feel of driving it on a crowded street. I was so nervous but luckily I did good.

At 1:30 pm I had my French class. My teacher was very patient in teaching me the numbers today which I find very tongue twisting and very hard. We had reviewed some of the basic greetings and questions and also the name of the months and the days of the week.

Our main topic today was about the verbs "to be" and "to have" which is more confusing to me. I am always confused about what's the singular and the plural pronouns in French and conjugating them correctly with the verbs.

It was a slow process but at least I had an idea already. Good thing Omar was very patient in helping me for this. Even the speech was very hard for me although I kind of trying myself to imitate and follow my instructor which was very helpful to me.

French is really a hard language to learn but hopefully my purpose to learn it will be realized eventually even though I took the process very slowly. They say it's okay to be slow but at least I am sure I am learning everything from it.

In the afternoon, I was supposed to have a date with my former students from Homestead at Sprinkles Cupcake Bakery but apparently it wasn't pushed through because Roselle had to cancel and attend to something very important so we decided to postpone it next Saturday.

I decided to pass by the church instead to offer some prayers for my mom to commemorate her first death anniversary. I remember my very sad moments last year with her in the hospital during this very times.

I then called Kuya George and Kuya Robert to prepare and get ready because I will pick them up for a little eating-out dinner. I decided to also surprise Kuya George tonight for his advance birthday celebration.

I passed by the Paris Baguette Bakery and bought a cappucino cake for Kuya George to blow the candle later and bought a bottle of chardonay. I then headed to pick up the two after that at Kuya George's place.

We then went to Thai BBQ Restaurant which we always frequented. I secretly instructed the waiter about my surprise plans and he agreed. The dinner was good and we were so full after that. Then I signalled the waiter to bring the cake in and Kuya George was really surprised about the gesture which almost renderred him to burst into tears but he held it up. That was very touching!

We then took some pictures of the blowing of the candle and the slicing of the cake. That was a very good impromptu party and getting together with my close friends to commemorate my mom's first death anniversary and at the same time celebrating Kuya George's advance birthday celebration which supposed to be on Tuesday, July 13th.

The night was already late so I then dropped the two at Kuya George's apartment then I went home straight ahead because I had to go to bed erly because I have a clinical work tomorrow.

So far the day was full of a lot of loaded activities and was very hectic yet still it was very fun, especially the dinner with my close friends. Another day full of magical and historical moments had passed and yet an unforgettable ones.