We went to Davao this last Weekend. Daddy had to go for meetings on Friday, so we all went along for the weekend. It was a great weekend! Not exactly relaxing, as we left home about 3:30am Friday morning and had a weekend of 3 very full, long days, but it definitely was great!

We stayed at the center (guesthouse and offices) which is back to back with Faith Academy Mindanao, so the girls had a great time with lots of new friends and a play ground while Daddy worked. Davao is a lot hotter than Manila at this time of year, so when the girls weren't playing with friends, they played in the enormous dip-shower bucket in our apartment:


On Saturday, Daddy took us to Paradise Island for a day on the beach. What a day! A short boat ride, chasing hermit crabs up their home tree,
watching the birds in the aviary and trying to answer such questions as why the eagle cries like a baby...
why the keeper throws fruit for these big birds to catch and eat...
why this pigeon is so huge and has funny hair...
why some birds have such beautiful colors...
what on earth this love bird was doing...
why God gave the peacock such a huge tail...
AND, we got to go swimming/snorkeling with fish! This is the main beach edge by the breakwater where the boats load/unload. Coral has taken over a large portion of the breakwater and all kinds of fish hang out there. Since this area is pretty shallow, it was perfect for snorkeling with the girls. They lay on our backs and looked over our shoulders. Grace tried a mask and snorkel a little, but Jasmin wouldn't try. I wish we could have taken pictures of some of the fish - amazing! Daddy spent so much time out there that he came home with a bit of a burn on his back. We concluded that snorkeling is something we'd all like to do again. There was plenty of other things we could have done, but we ran out of time. Perhaps a place to go again...

On the other hand, when we flew to Davao, Daddy had a little bit of a cough, while we were there struggled with asthma a bit, and we all came back with a chest cough. So, the cleaner, greener city made us sick!?!

Friday we went on an adventure with Shinji and his mom and their guest from Japan who wanted to explore Manila a bit. We rode on a jeepney, the light rail train, and did a lot of walking (more than necessary because we didn't know exactly where to get off!)

Jasmin was captivated by the idea that a map could tell us where to go. She insisted on carrying one to study carefully herself.
I'm not sure this was where we set out to go, but this is where we ended up!

Looks pretty interesting? Well, at one point it was a fantastic place to come. We came at a time of badly needed renovation, so there were only a few bird cages and this turtle pond to visit.
Since we had already done more than our fair share of walking, we contented ourselves with a picnic on the bench and a rest on the concrete dock jutting out into a murky green lagoon. We had to field a large number of "why"s as across on the other shore was a military group drilling!
The prize of the afternoon was finding this water hyacinth:
and seeing a rather large fish jump for a fly.

After this, we had to already begin our journey home in order to avoid rush hour. We splurged ($3 - about triple what the rest of the day cost!) and took a taxi home instead of attempting to reverse our public transport adventure. And to end well, we stopped for an ice cream just before we got home.

A dinosaur Jasmin made all by herself. Every last bit!

Blogging Catchup in Pictures #1....

We kicked off the new year with a long promised visit with Alli, the girls' first friend in Manila. Her family moved out to near Faith Academy (world famous school for Missionary Kids) in the summer. So after a lunch together at our house, we went out to Faith for a play on their fabulous playground...
Someone had great fun designing this place! It is cut into the hill, so on two levels, with fireman poles, tunnels, slides, "tree house" platforms connecting the two.
As this is the first playground we've been to since leaving Canada, Jasmin was a bit intimidated, but after an introduction by Mommy/Daddy, she was good to go.


I even got to play 4-square (last time was grade 4 or so...) and shoot some baskets.Grace loved it! She only stopped in to say she was thirsty once in awhile.
The best thing about it for me was the green view and traffic-noiselessness :o) We stayed so long we had to go find supper before finding our way home in a taxi. Grace found this huge shoe on the way and wanted Daddy to buy it!
We all had really good sleep that night! But, when we got home around 9, both girls were quiet adamant that we had to do our Bible story time before they could go to sleep! We were happy to comply with this, of course.

We are having a wild weekend of celebration - not only for the turn of the year, but also because we are finally officially free of sickness and can go out all together!
So last night we met with Shinji and his family for a late supper and to watch fireworks. Grace was so excited about it, she writhed and wriggled in bed all afternoon instead of napping - and still was going strong after midnight! (and then slept in till 10 this morning.) They talked all day about seeing the fireworks, but when it came down to it, both girls were much more interested in playing with Shinji.
We decided to go out to eat, and carefully timed it so we wouldn't have too much time to wait around afterward. Wrong move - after walking 15 min or so to the restaurant, we discovered that everything closed at 8pm. It was 8:15 or so. We took a taxi back home, planning to whip up some food of our own, but lo and behold, the small Korean take-out-with-a-few-tables restaurant in our own building was open. So we had KFC - Korean friend chicken :)

New year's fireworks in Manila is an experience. We were on a helipad on top of the building - about 30 floors up - so we were actually above most of the show. Every night since Christmas we have heard sporadic fireworks exploding as we went to bed. But this night... by about 11 it was there was a pretty constant sound of explosions. And then it increased in intensity until shortly after midnight - everywhere we looked, colors exploding in various patterns. No coordination or "shows" to speak of, just rapid firing of all sorts of fireworks. We stayed watching until there was a noticeable decrease in the explosions and the smoke from the mountains of fireworks set off actually obscured all but the nearest ones.
Thankfully, a strong wind blew all day today, so the air cleared quickly. In fact, we can see farther than we've ever seen.

A kid-speak funny:

We had to buy a hand-held vacuum cleaner this week as the doctor diagnosed a persistent itchy rash of Daddy's as bed mites (why do they only like him?) and told him to vacuum the mattress. Not knowing anyone with a vacuum cleaner, we thought of a few other uses for one and decided to buy.
The girls were curious, not remembering well the vacuum we had in Canada. Mommy had to field lots of why questions about it... and when we got home with it, Grace went straight to Daddy to tell him, "We bought a bed sucker, Daddy, to suck the bugs off your bed!"