July Hodgepodge

I have a new favorite board game: Pokemon Splendor! Apparently, this game is only available in South Korea, which means the game producer there must have gotten approval both from Splendor and from Pokemon and develop and produce it. Somehow, a few of my board gaming friends got their own copy. So one of our board game nights, I got to play this. I am not really familiar with the many Pokemon characters or how they evolve but I always thought they were cute and the evolution aspect of this game was an incredible element added to the original game. I love this game so much that I have played it in almost every game night I attended since the first time tried this game. I now want to get my own copy haha.

Pokemon Splendor

Because of my upcoming trip to Kenya, I decided to get a couple of new jackets. The temperature in Kenya during our visit would go up to the mid to high 20s Celsius and as low as about 10 degrees in the evenings, which is pretty cold. While I do have jackets at home, they are all either brightly colored or black, both of which are not recommended. (Apparently, bright colors can scare animals away while black can attract tsetse flies which carry the African sleeping sickness.) As such, I thought of getting a new neutrally-colored jacket (although I ended up getting two haha). The first one was this really nice Adidas Z.N.E. Woven Full-Zip Hooded Track Top (see photo below). I really liked its design and its color, which is apparently tent green, and while it wasn't exactly cheap, it was on sale at 30% off so I decided to get it.

Adidas Z.N.E. Woven Full-Zip Hooded Track Top

Very shortly after that, I passed by Mango during their store sale. Some items, including this really nice brown jacket (see photo below), had a 50% discount. Wow! I really love how this jacket looks and the discount was too good of a deal to pass up so I got it as well, even if I already had a new jacket.

Jacket from Mango

Also in preparation for my family's Kenya trip, I decided to order Smart Tags on Lazada. These are like Apple Air Tags but for Android phones (which I have). I thought it might be good to have Smart Tags in case any of our check-in bags got stuck somewhere, including at the airport where we would have our layover. I never used Smart Tags before but I'm happy that they were all pretty easy to set up and use. (Thankfully, they all worked too and none of them were defective.)

Smart Tags for Android

I needed a bit of a break from the stress of all our travel preparation so when my schedule freed up a bit, I decided to watch Inside Out 2. I had been hearing lots of great reviews about this movie and now that I've seen it, I gotta say it was really good. I loved how the film depicted how one's belief system is formed and how anxiety can so easily take over. It's a very well-made and tremendously good sequel.

Inside Out 2

Finally, I got to join Tita Florence's birthday celebration. Initially, I wasn't sure whether I would go because she lives about two hours away and her dinner party was on a weeknight. However, I ended up going so that I could take my mom and so that we could also see Tita Florence's son and my cousin Fr. John, who was home for a few weeks. I was happy that we got to go because so many of our relatives were there, even if some arrived quite late on a rainy weeknight. Family truly is love.