Google ilocos+buri festival and you will get over a dozen links to news featuring the eagerly awaited First Buri Festival of San Juan, published before the big event happened. From the reports, it is obvious local officials put much hope on the festival to boost the tourism industry in San Juan. On the day of [...]

They are everywhere, these welcome arches. We see them along the main highways and along barrio roads, silently bidding goodbye to or welcoming people. We don’t really pay much attention to them, unless we’re in strange territory and we need them to tell us where we’re at or how long the remainder of our journey [...]

Christmas officially starts today, Dec. 16, with the first of the Misa de Gallo that runs through Dec. 24. As always, the masses here begin very early at 4 o’clock in the morning. I would like to think many Lapoguenios still look forward to this novena, a preparation for the celebration of Jesus’ birth on [...]