Hi. Stella is my mom's sister but I call her auntie Laila. She was born in 1960 and decided to move to the USA a few years after my mom did in 1994. She's from Santa Barbara, Iloilo which is located in the Philippines. The reason that inspired her decision to move here was for a better life and she said she really wanted apples from America. I don't understand why she told me that last part haha. Trizza and Chakee are my auntie's two daughters who traveled with her from their old home to their soon to be new home in California. During their plane ride home they got stranded in a city called Taipei. There was a bomb scare but my auntie didn't know what was going on until they let them back into the airport. After all that they finally landed at their destination, the LAX airport in Los Angeles. She said that she was very homesick at first and the cultures were very different from what she was used too. Her youngest daughter Trizza was so excited when she took her first bath in her California home. She thought it was a swimming pool. I guess the bathtubs back then in the Philippines weren't that great. After all these years living here my auntie said that she was glad she moved.
Trizza Dawn Nooris:
This is my cousin. She's full filipino and I asked her about her childhood in the Philippines. When Trizza was like five or six she probably didn't have her iphone4G or Mac laptop with her, so instead she found other ways to enjoy her childhood. In the summertime she said that she would always catch fireflies with her sister Chakee (I've always wanted to do that). In the town they lived in there was always different beauty pageants going on. Trizza's older sister Chakee was always asked to be the queen in these pageants and Trizza said she would get so jealous of her sister so they had to make her a princess whenever Chakee got to be queen haha. Everything is so relaxed in the Philippines. You could sit on the roof of a car while driving on their roads and nobody would question you.
Leslie Torcella Osterman:
This lovely lady is my mama. She's pretty ahmazing. When she was thirteen she attended the high school, Colegio del Segrado Corazon de Jesus in 1973. At first my mom's parents didn't have enough money to pay for her school but my mom said she whined so much until she got what she wanted (I see where I got my whining from haha). Every Monday my mom would leave for the city to go to her school. She had to stay at someones house because this was like a boarding school type thing and when Fridays come around she takes the train back to her town. She said that the train ride home was terrifying for her. Nobody used the train on Friday afternoons and none of her friends lived in the same town as her so she would usually have to ride home alone. But my mom knew it was worth it because all she wanted was a good education.
Grandma & Grandpa:
Aw look at this happy couple. These two people are my mom's grandparents. I've never had the pleasure of meeting them but I always hear fantastic stories about them from my mother and aunties. My mom's grandparents have been married for 50 years and they were celebrating their golden anniversary in Santa Barbara, Iloilo. The party was held in the front lawn of my mom's house. This was a traditional Filipino party with music and especially lots of food such as pansit, lumpiat, balencia rice, and of course a roasted pig had to be cooked. They played lots of music. Michael Jackson, Tom Jones, and Frank Sinatra is what they would listen to (my parents are pretty old haha).My Mother's Father:
As I asked my mom more about her family she asked if I wanted to hear the story about her dad's accident I shrugged my shoulders and said sure. This is my mom's dad or I would call him my grandpa. I never got the chance to meet him but he seemed really cool. He managed a soccer team in the Philippines his company at work helped sponsor it. So here is the story. He was riding home on his motorcycle and there was construction going on all around the roads and as he was riding he hits this sand pile while trying to change lanes. The motorcycle stopped in the pile of sand and flung him right into the side of a house's cement wall. I can only imagine how painful that must have been. As my mom was telling me this story I could hear the sadness in her voice and I know she was using her strength not to cry. I've never really talked about these kinds of things with her. But back to that cement wall..he was taken to the hospital and was in a coma for a couple of hours and eventually never woke up and then soon after that my mom's mom died just from being sick. My mom was the oldest out of her 5 sisters and 1 brother. Now it was her responsibility to take care of the pack, be the leader and make sure everyone stayed safe and healthy.
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