writing & drawing by hand

A lasting benefit our Benedictine education (ora et labora) brought wonder | wander | women were penmanship classes. Before that we watched our parents writing longhand - admiring their beautiful handwriting and eagerly awaiting our turn to put thought to paper so beautifully. 

"Bayan Ko" chorus in baybayin by Mahala Urra

Long before studies showed the importance of hand writing and how among other things it engages the whole human being - we were encouraged to write legibly and well. 

Being creative ignited our love for cursive early on. Eventually this art form spread into other calligraphic options. Including writing in our own regional native alphabet, badlit - the Visayan version of the better known baybayin, Philippine script of Luzon islands. 

wonder | wander | women creative collaboration

Baybayin is a pre-Spanish 14th to 18th century writing system used in the Philippines to write Tagalog and other Philippine languages and dialects. Baybayin is an abugida, which combines a consonant and vowel into a single symbol that represents a syllable. The name comes from the Tagalog word baybay, which means "to spell".

paris la vie

wonder | wander | women are lucky to have been to some of the world's iconic cities: Rome, New York, London, Paris. These are cities we have seen in art and media, read about it in books, and otherwise have heard about our whole life. 

The Eiffel Tower over the Seine

midyear visions & vistas

Another month has come and gone in this year, 2026 - what and where has it brought us so far? 

Challenged as we are to look past all the noise and drama that has been parked right up our face - wonder | wander | women are opting for the long view, beyond the currents of chaos and strife. Towards the BIG picture - to where we can find succor, support and sustenance. 

nature & wildlife images, National Geographic

In the language of numbers, 6 carries the vibration of Venus - the force of unconditional love, harmony, beauty, and healing. On 6/6, this energy doubles, creating one of the most open portals of the year for heart activation, releasing old wounds, and aligning with abundance. This energy is available to us for six whole days. 

The Lady and the Unicorn

wonder | wander | women don't often speak of going on a pilgrimage. Many of our family have been on the Camino di Santiago, and in 2001 we celebrated the Maha Kumbh Mela with our community in India. A trip to a museum doesn't seem comparable at first, but in the days of modern travel more people embark on a cultural pilgrimage, to see Charles Dickens' house or Karl Marx's grave or the Museé du Louvre.

wild wonders & noble beasts

Last week, we joined the world to celebrate International Museum Day under the theme Museums Uniting a Divided World. 

We proudly posted our hometown island's museum with a majestic artwork of a three-ton carabao at its entrance. The water buffalo is the national mammal of the Philippines. The shockingly sad reality today is the carabao is slowly disappearing from our country's agricultural landscape. 

BAO: the unbowed carabao at The Negros Museum

A new exhibition at the Philippine National Museum of Natural History located in a niche at the landing on the fifth level is a family of carabaos from Nueva Ecija that was especially prepared by the museum’s taxidermists and scientists.