Years ago our small group of friends wanted to get together to participate in the cultural history of one of our friends.  He is Filipino and we wanted to have a Filipino night.  We didn’t really know how to refer to the group of people that we had invited, so we dubbed the group PNG – Filipino Night Group.  It wasn’t until much later that we realized that we really should have called ourselves FNG.  All of us had spelled Filipino wrong in our abbreviation of PNG.  But, it was too late, PNG stuck.  I believe that was the first and the last time we got together for Filipino food.  Most times we ended up eating batayaki, a Japanese meal introduced to us by another member of PNG.

That evening was the beginning of many PNG events.

We get together to have batayaki,

we carve pumpkins

we celebrate New Years Eve

we pray together

we celebrate birthdays

we go to the movies

we eat more batayaki

and we even bought a brick together at Disneyland.

We have watched each other’s families grow.  Some of us have moved away and then moved back.  While we may not be able to spend as much time together as we used to, we are still PNG.  Last night we had a much too long in coming PNG reunion.  One guess as to what we did….ate batayaki.