My daughter and youngest child Maia, now five years old, learned to read on the internet. It was on a site called starfall.com which I now recommend to all of my friends with pre-school kids who have access to the internet at home. She learned not only to read, but to count and to do simple addition through its online math tutoring section. The only disadvantage to online tutoring is that my daughter did not learn to write by hand, actually holding a pencil to paper, because she had become accustomed to typing her letters and numbers out on a keyboard.

But that’s been remedied by going to kindergarten school, starting June of this year. Now her handwriting is quite legible, and coupled with reading on her books and on the internet I believe she has taken in far more information than her classmates who are less exposed to the internet. Of course, internet learning should not completely replace parent- or teacher-supervised learning. Human interaction, after all, is probably the best teaching tool a young person can have.

Maia is representing Austria in her school’s United Nations pageant late this month. Preparation for her costume involved quite a bit of internet research as to what the national costume of Austria looked like, and how to find such a costume in any store in Manila. Having one made to order was already out of the question. Most tailors required a month’s notice for such jobs.

Last week I tried the malls. I spotted costumes for Korea, Japan, the US and some Polynesian ones but ziltch for Austria. In fact the malls had more Holloween costumes than United Nations costumes. Holloween in the Philippines is something I am not very keen about but that’s another blog post.

Cris did some research himself and came upon this mom’s support forum where one Mom mentioned a store in Quiapo that specialized in United Nations costumes. She could not recall the street it was on, but gave enough directions to her co-forumers that Cris knew where to find it.

The store was on what used to be Echague Street, parallel to Hidalgo, on the farther side of the Quiapo Church. In fact from Sta. Cruz, following Echague Street will take you into Quiapo Ilalim. Echague Street is now known as Carlos Palanca St.

We found our Austria costume at the Echague Bazar, ran by William Uy and Christine Cheng. They sell all kinds of embroidery, barong, ladies bags, kimonas, long gowns, costumes, wedding gowns and table cloths. They also accept made-to-order barong, gown etc. I got that bit of information from the business card the owner gave us. Maia’s Austria costume cost us P350.00.

Echague Bazar is at 163 Carlos Palanca St. with phone numbers 314-7890 and 733-6357. It’s on the same side as Excellent chain of stores where people in the know get their hams and quezos de bola for the holidays.

Additional directions: from Manila City Hall take España Bridge which will lead you to Plaza Lacson. Immediately after the bridge on the right is Carlos Palanca St (Echague). At that corner is Plaza Fair, behind it is the old SM. Just keep going past the camera shops, looking to the left and you will see the Echague Bazar.

Then I asked her if she was missing Ate Bebing, who she always referred to as her best friend. She nodded, and almost started crying, but then I told her that we were going out in a while to get Ate Bebing’s ticket so she can come back to us. That made my little girl smile. Actually I had really planned to get the ticket today, it was just a good thing it cheered Maia up as well.

So off we went to the 2GO outlet at SM Sucat, where a ticket from Iligan to Manila cost a little under P2,000 including travel insurance. Not bad, I thought, since the ticket going to Iligan cost a little over 2K. This is the longest time Ate Bebing’s been on holiday, but I am glad to report we suffered no ill effects like the other year when she went home for a couple of weeks on Christmas. No hunger strikes this time, and no stomach flu.

Maia and I must be getting older and more mature

I suppose it’s better now because Maia’s older. Being the only child in a house full of adults can’t be easy, but she’s doing rather well these days. What I’d like to find out is if Maia can do without her best friend for an extended period, say for the time it takes to go on one of those Orlando vacations (as if I could afford one), and be the well-behaved big girl her mom would like her to be.

The photo you see above are Maia’s stuff since I don’t know when. OK, since we moved back to Manila, which is almost 4 years ago. The thing is I have not been able to throw anything out, not even the broken ones, because she will not allow it. There’s stuff in there that were gifts from previous birthdays and Christmases, Happy Meal toys from McDonalds, even some of her Kuya Maui’s hand me downs. I wouldn’t be surprised if I found toy Ferrari parts while digging into that hill.

I would like to really get rid of some of them, if only to clear out a little space in the room. But I am met with such enormous resistance from Maia I really don’t know if I can make any progress in this direction. All you mom’s out there who have faced the same problem, please … I need your advice!