Last December 7, I went to Bataan with the first and second year high school students. Nope, not for a vacation. (Well I wish it was, but it wasn’t.) On the contrary, it was more like a practical exam on the beach.

Last weekend, we had the yearly field trip to the Pawikan conservation site in Bataan - part of a unique tradition that hedcen started four years ago. Fortunately, I was part of the pioneer group that initiated this extraordinary custom. For the past 4 years, usually during December, freshmen and sophomore students spend 3 days and 2 nights camping on the beach of Morong, Bataan looking for Olive Ridley turtles that climb onto the shore to lay eggs. Students, accompanied by Pawikan volunteers and teachers, go on night patrols to scour the 7-km beach for egg-laying females and/or nests. The goal is to save both the adult females and the eggs from the relentless assault of poachers who, most of which, come from the same fishing villages surrounding the beach.

And for the past four years, I’ve successfully released turtle hatchlings, transferred clutches of eggs, seen abandoned nest sites, but I’ve never seen a female Olive Ridley turtle actually lay eggs. Well, at least not until last December 7.

Finally, after four years, I got a chance to witness the rare opportunity in person. I couldn’t even come up with the right words to describe how elated I was so instead of doing so, I’d just share the pics…

This has been our mantra since a few months ago. It’s embarrassing to admit that we racked up thousands of pesos in credit card debts. These cards, if handled unwisely and irresponsibly, can wreak havoc to your personal finance goals. Ramil and I will be eternally grateful to a couple who decided to give us a time-out from our debts and loaned us money to pay them off - without interest, without pressure. A second chance is what this is! We plan to go back to being money-wise so that we can pay back the money we borrowed. Hopefully, we would be 100% debt-free by the end of next year.

Andrea and I will be attending two more wedding before the year is over and we have yet to buy gifts for them. Having received some our own set of wedding gifts two years ago, we want to take time in choosing a gift for the couple. We wouldn’t want our gift to be the same as that from two other guests. Because of this, it’s always safe to give Personalized Wedding Gifts to a marrying couple. This way, you are sure that what they will be getting from you is unique. Also, it shows that you spent more time and effort in giving the gift instead of giving some generic item that can be bought anywhere. Based on our experience, beddings will also be always welcome. These are things you can never get too much of. Especially if they are personalized as well. So I guess we have options already, we just need to find the time to buy them.

Starting your own business can be really difficult especially if you lack the money for it. Well, I have the passion, dedication, and ideas needed to start my own business. Unfortunately, I am lacking in the financial side. I have a few but definitely not that much to be able to start a decent business. Getting a Start Up Loan, like the ones from EZUnsecured.com, is a good option for people like me. They offer not only great service but easy processing and fast funding as well so that you get your money fast. I guess my business dream can be a reality after all.

Andrea and I has been making a small amount of money by blogging. It has been such a big help especially after Andrea and I decided that she’ll be teaching part-time only to be able to take care of Mateo. Good thing she found out about different ways of earning through your blog. There are a lot of people out there who do blog advertising.

One such service is Smorty, they connect advertisers and bloggers. I’ve recently signed up with them and so far, so good! What’s even nice is that they pay every two weeks so you get your money early. Also, if you decide to reserve a task, you’re given three whole days to complete it, definitely one of the longest among other paid-to-blog platforms out there. It seems that a lot of get paid to blog services are sprouting like mushrooms everywhere. I’ve been trying several of them and so far, smorty is among my favorites. So if you’re one of those who are looking to get paid to blog, might as well give them a try!

I’m pretty sure everyone has dreams of retiring early and enjoying their retirement. Andrea and I are not exceptions to this, especially now that we have Mateo. Most days, we’d find ourselves wanting to spend the day together or wanting to go to places with Mateo. One of the ways of ensuring that our small family can be financially secured so that we could retire early, is to get a trust deed. I know some people who maintain such investment portfolios specifically for certain things, like their retirement, or their kids education. Hopefully, Andrea and I could start one too and who knows, we might find ourselves retiring early than we planned.

I spent three days and two nights on the wide sandy beach of Bataan. The school had its annual field trip to the Pawikan Conservation Project in Morong. We spent every cold night on the beach waiting for a pawikan to come to shore and lay eggs, we scoured the whole beach and got sunburned during the clean-up, I missed lying on a warm, soft bed, and most of all, I missed my family. More stories and pictures to follow.