Field Trip

This past week was the high school ISAC tournament. The boys were playing soccer and the girls were playing basketball. The tournament was on Luzon, so all the high schoolers on the teams had to fly up to Manila on Wednesday and stay there until Sunday. Most of the students here at MICA are on the sports teams, so we were left with about 1/4 of the student body. Instead of just going on with classes, we decided to take the kids to a ropes course, where they did low elements and high elements. They stayed overnight on Wednesday and came back on Thursday. On Friday we all went on a boat trip. Rob and I have not been on a boat trip here in Davao, so it was really fun to be able to go! Although Friday was cloudy and windy, everyone had a fun time snorkeling. The principal here at MICA teaches marine biology and knows A LOT about underwater life. He would have the students go looking for certain creatures and bring them back to the boat and he would talk about them. It was really fun. My favorite part about all that we did was getting to know the students better. I only teach one class here at MICA, so this was a good opportunity for me to get to know some of the students I do not have in my class. My other favorite part: Taking pictures!! Of course I have to share some of them with you!! The trust fall

I'm not so sure if Rob trusts these students to catch him.
You have to get your whole team from one side of the spider web to the other, without touching the web. You have to get your team from one side of the wall to the other.


Gotta love the zip line!
Two of the students enjoying the boat ride
Rob very interested in this sea creature A cool star fish

Coach Rob

Well, Rob has been the Junior High boys assistant basketball coach this year. He has had fun getting to know the kids. Saturday they had their last game of the season. Although they did not win their last game, they have improved. Here are some pics of the b-ball season:
Coach Rob!
The two coaches


This is a sight often seen at MICA and FAD sports games. Rob is often in charge of the score board!

Thailand Pics

Back to school...

Well, the second semester started yesterday. Rob is still teaching 9th grade OT and 3-4th grade & 7-8th grade PE, as well as supervising all the maintenience at Faith Academy. My role has changed quite a bit this semester, and will continue to do so. I am still teaching yearbook at MICA. I have 3 more students this semester, for a total of 6 sudents in the class, which is good. I am still the Student Council Advisor. For the next 3 weeks I will be teaching 1-2nd grade and 5-6th grade PE over at Faith. It has been fun getting to know the elementary students. They are a lot more energetic than the high schoolers, especially for PE. Today I had the 5-6th grade, so I have not met the 1-2nd graders yet. Rob and I are also squad leaders for the juinor high Outdoor Ed (OE). OE is a trip they take every year that last for about a week. It is a time where they do outreach together, learn about the Lord and bond. The Juinor High always does their OE with Faith Manila, so there are tons of students, but we are just incharge of our 9 students. The Squads meet twice a week, during school hours to discuss OE, come up with a team name, cheer, etc. We met with them yesterday. They really are a great group of kids.
Rob and I were also asked to teach some Korean students english. We are not sure what level they will be at. This is not with either school. It is actually being run by a Korean missionary. We will be teaching 2 night classes a week for the next 7 weeks. Tonight is our first class, so we will see how that goes. All we know is that there are 19 students from elementary to high school, so Rob will take the jr high and high school and I will take the elementary students. So, our roles have changed again, but we are happy to help out where needed.

Thailand

Well, we did not really have internet the entire time we were in Thailand, so I was not able to blog as we went. So, you will just have to settle for one big blog about our trip. I am so glad we went. Although it was one of the strangest Christmas seasons I have ever had, being away from family in another country, it was fun to do something different. Plus visiting a new place kept our minds off of being away from family.
December 23 11:30 pm- We arrived in Bangkok, got a taxi and headed down to our hotel. The street we stayed on was very busy. There were tons of people out and shops open even at midnight when we arrived there. We were driving down our street and all of a sudden, we see this baby elephant walking down the sidewalk. It was then that we truly realized we were in Thailand.
Dec. 24th- we went exploring around the city. We headed to a huge park and walked around, went to an enormous mall, and headed down to Jim Thompson's house ( an American man who who really established the Thai silk industry.
Then we headed back to the mall for a movie. You should have seen this movie theatre. They had all these different theatres where you could pay more and get a foot rest, or even get a couch to sit on while watching a movie. It was crazy. We were too cheap to pay for anything but a normal seat, but it was still nice. On our walk back to the hotel, we passed by a local market that was right on the street we were staying on. So, we had dinner and walked through the market. We finished our day with a foot and shoulder massage for about $6 USD!
December 25th- celebrated Christmas together, giving gifts and reading the Christmas story. For Christmas gifts to each other, we decided to go to a book store and get something for each other at the same time, without the other person seeing. It was a really fun idea. If you are limited to one store, you have to get a little creative and plus trying to hide it from the other person is fun too. After our Christmas morning, we went to a park and rented a paddle boat. We had fun paddling around the park, and feeding the fish. Then we went back to the hotel and got our free 15 minute massage. Soo nice! and just relaxed. Then we decided to head to the Night bazzar, which is this HUGE night market selling just about anything you could imagine. It was fun. We ate dinner there at a Thai place and headed back to the hotel.
Dec. 26th- we switched hotels, to stay at a cheaper place in a different part of the city. This one was on the river, which was really nice.
In the afternoon, we went to the Grand Palace, which has a temple with an emerald buddha, and the Palace which is where the King lives. It was a huge place, but very fun to walk through. After that we headed back to the hotel to rest.
Dec. 27th- we headed out early with a tour company to the floating market, which is about an hour and a half drive from Bangkok. At the floating market, there were ladies in boats selling food and people along the canal, selling all kinds of souvenirs
Yeah, it was a pretty touristy place, but it was fun to go to. After that, we headed to a place where you could ride elephants. You can't go to Thailand without riding an elephant. So, we took a ride, which was pretty fun. Then we headed to a place for lunch. the next stop on the tour was a place where they did a Thailand cultural performance. With dancing and music. It was neat. The final stop was a place where they make jewelry. We got to go into the work place where they actually cut the rubies and make the settings. .After our long day, we headed back to the hotel to relax for the rest of the evening.
Dec. 28th- The day we visited temples. The hotel we were at was right on the river and most of the locals get around the city by a river taxi boat, so we decided to try it out. And it was a really fun way to get around. We took the boat to the Temple that had this HUGE reclining buddha and then we went on the boat to Chinatown, which was really crazy. We went there to try to eat some Chinese food, but soon found out that we did not know what anything was, so we ended up at KFC. Then we headed on the boat to the Temple of the Dawn, which is this really tall temple that you can go up and see all over Bangkok. After that we went by boat to this road which is where all the backpackers stay. It was crazy. There were people and shops everywhere. We walked around for awhile and ate dinner there. Not to mention, got another foot massage. We could not help ourselves, massage places were everytwhere here in Thailand and they were so cheap!
Dec. 29th- We went on another tour to Ayutthaya, which is about a 2 hour drive east of Bangkok on our way there we stopped at a huge palace and walked around. Then we headed to Ayutthaya, which is ruins from the 1300's. It was really neat and our tour guide was great. On our way back to Bangkok, we took a lunch cruise boat back on the river. It was a really neat way to see thailand. We headed back to the hotel to swim and then went to eat dinner at a restaurant right on the river!
Dec 30th- Our final day here. We went to the King's Barge Museum, where you can sese the boats the king rides on for very special occasions. We decided to take the adventurous way of getting there, by boat and then walking. it was the most interesting walk I have ever taken. We had to walk through all these alleys with poor Thai people living on either side. We sure had the local Thai experience. Wow, words cannot describe... Anyway, after the museum, we went to the Weekend Market. Thailand has a ton of markets, but this one was probably the biggest most popular one. And boy was it big! We stayed there for most of the day! Then we took the Skytrain back to downtown and went and saw a movie ate dinner and then it was time to head to the airport!
WOw, that was really long. If you are still reading this, thanks for sticking with it. We had a great time and are so happy we went. If you ever get the chance to go to Thailand, don't hesitate.

Day 2 & 3: Manila

Well, we have had a great trip here. Our second day was filled with more fun. After a very quiet, restful morning, we decided to venture out to see what we could find. We ended up at this mall/market place close by where we are staying. We decided to stay there all day. We ate lunch there. Found a starbucks read and had some yummy coffee. We watched a movie in a freezing movie theatre. Went to a few book stores, shopped at a local market, and ate dinner at Chili's. Very fun day!
On Saturday we went to a place called Intramuros, which is a walled city in Manila from the 1500's. We took a carriage ride around, went to some really old churches and museums, and walked around a fort. It was really neat. You could still see the bullet holes in the walls from WWII. The rest of our day was spent at another mall where we got Christmas presents for each other (from the same store, at the same time), and we even found a Dairy Queen! yumm...
Well, today is Sunday and we have been talking to family most of the day and have just been lazy. We leave tonight for Thailand and will get there at midnight! We are really excited! Hope you all are doing well. We will let you know how Thailand is!

Day1: Manila

Well, we have arrived here in Manila, the biggest city in the Philippines. And if we didn't look too hard, it felt like we were back in America. We have settled into the SIL guesthouse here, which is very nice.
It was around lunch time when we got here, so we decided to go to the Mall of Asia to eat and look around. When we got there, it was enormous. I mean, the biggest mall I have ever seen. Our first mission was to find a place to eat. We immediately look for Wendy's (thinking about yummy frosties) and sure enough, there was one! Yeah for Wendy's!
We walked around the mall for a long time, and went in a few stores. We found a VERY nice bowling alley and decided to bowl. There were couches instead of the chairs and flat scene TVs.
It was really nice. After bowling for awhile we went this Discovery and Science Center where they had a planterium, and watched a show. The end of our day was topped with eating at a nice Italian Restaurant.
It is really nice to feel at home for a little bit. In Davao, the only American anything we have is McD's and KFC. But here, there are American stores and restaurants. Doug, there is even a Chili's! Don't get me wrong, we are happy to be in Davao, there are just certain things we miss about America, and we are so thankful that we get to have a little taste of home!

Christmas Vacation

Most of you probably already know this, but for the few of you who don't.... we are going to Thailand for Christmas, and I am so excited about it! A friend of mine here just showed me pictures of her trip to Thailand and it makes me even more excited! So, here are our plans:
Leave: Thursday December 20th fly to Manila, Philippines
Leave: Sunday December 23rd fly to Bangkok, Thailand
have lots of fun in Thailand
Leave: Monday December 31st fly back to Davao, Philippines
I think we are going to have internet on most of our trip, so I will try to blog and take you along with us. No promises, but I would love to share our trip with you as it unfolds. Otherwise, I will just do one big blog about it when we come back. We love you and miss you all!

MICA & FAD

I know my mom likes to picture where her kids are, so these are for you mom!!!

This is MICA (the high school)
This is FAD (the elementary and middle school)
This is the covered court on FAD's property
This is the SIL building. It is on the same property as MICA and FAD. In fact it is right next to MICA. Nae and D- this is where D would work if you guys were assigned to Davao! No pressure, just wanted to post this for fun!
This is the route we take every morning from our front gate to school. That White gate is FAD's gate. Yeah, we live about 2 blocks from school, so nice! Oh, and that strange looking vehicle is a jeepney. Philippine public transportation.

One Busy Weekend...

We had an extremely busy weekend. I am so glad that Christmas break is coming up. A two and a half week break will be nice right about now! Here's how our weekend went....
Friday: Right after school the boys had a soccer game which lasted from 3:00 to a little ater 5pm. We ran out to a local restaurant to have dinner and ran back to school for the FAD Christmas musical called Angel Alert. The kids were so cute and did a great job. After the musical I helped with merienda (meaning "snacks"). After cleaning up, we were on our way home..
Saturday: Our shopping day. It is hard to get to the grocery store during the week so we usually get most of our shopping done on Saturday. This took most of our late morning and early afternoon. Around 4pm it was time to get ready for our Christmas Banquet. Student Council is incharge of this banquet, and I, being the advisor, had a lot to do for the evening.
Everyone arrived at 6pm for the banquet where we talked, ate and played games. What's a Christmas banquet without making human Christmas trees? We also did a white elephant gift exchange, done just like we use to in youth group days. How fun! The kids seemed to have a great time. After all the festivites comes the after party. We loaded all the students in jeepneys and heading off to the bowling alley... until midnight!! Rob and I came home exhausted, but very excited that the evening had turned out so well.
Sunday: There was a Christmas outreach over at FAD for the poor kids that live in the neighborhood around the school. There were about 350 kids that came! The was singing, the Christmas story, crafts, more singing, and even a lesson on brushing your teeth.
At the end, they gave Christmas gifts to each of the kids. They recieved a packet with a shirt, flipflops, toothbrush, toothpaste, comb, and soap. They were so excited to recieve a gift. Of course I couldn't help myself. I ran around a lot of the time, taking pictures of all the cute kids. They LOVE to get their picture taken. I was walking around with the camera and the kids were asking me to take their picture. Then they would scrunch together really tight so that they would all be in the picture. So cute. I only wish I knew more Cebuano so I could communicate with them better. We came home pretty tired, but so excited about how the weekend turned out. Seeing so many different people's smiling faces this weekend was such a blessing. We are so thankful God has given us the opportunity to be here right now. We know we are exactly where He wants us and there is no better place to be.

Carnival

On Thursday Faith Academy held their annual Canival. Each of the classes makes a booth and all the money earned goes to a local orphanage. This years theme was pirates. Although it is a carnival for Faith (the elementary school) Every year, they ask MICA (the high school) to do a booth as well. MICA Student Council is in charge of the booth. This year they had two booths, a Slave Auction, where people could buy a high schooler and they would be their slave for 10 min. It was pretty funny to see what some of them did. You saw little kids making high school boys do push-ups and give them piggy back rides! It was quite the successful booth. They also did a Pirate Factory booth, which was face painting. It was a great afternoon and came together quite nicely. Here are some pics:
The Pirate Factory

Even Rob went to the Pirate Factory and got a tattoo (a heart with my name in it, aww....)
Every year at the carnival they have a jail where you can pay money and the 8th graders will throw whoever you want in jail for 5-10 min. depending on how much you pay. Well, half of the fun is running away when they come to put you in jail. I think Rob was thrown in jail 4 times and ran every time they came for him. The kids loved it!
Rob in jail
The kids loved buying slaves and making them do fun things like push-ups while they sit on their back. (Our slaves were very tired by the end of the day!)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Since we are about 14 hours ahead of America, it is already Thursday Nov. 22 here. Thanksgiving day! Wow, this will be one weird thanksgiving. We have school today, so we have to teach. And tonight we are going to an Italian restaurant that is serving the typical American thanksgiving meal, with some Irish friends, and don't forget, we are living in the Philippines. Talk about an international thanksgiving! Just thought you all might enjoy that.... Everyone eat some good ole turkey and pumpkin pie for us! We miss you all.
What I am thankful for...
1. My Lord and Savior
2. My Husband- he is my support and best friend. I don't know what I would do without him
3. My family
4. My friends
5. God's incredible provision
6. the internet- It has made being halfway around the world a little easier!

We love you all. Happy Thanksgiving!

Welcome to our apartment

So, I have been meaning to post pictures of where we live and just haven't gotten around to it. So, here it is. Our apartment....

Camiguin Island

Last week was our fall break from school. It could not have come at a better time! We were in desperate need (well, I was in desperate need Rob was just in need... I'm a little more dramatic than he is!) of a break from the crazy life of a first year school teacher! So, what did we do with our week of? Travel! Of course, we have to take advantage of this season of our lives, no kids, living outside our home country... We had heard about this small island north of Mindanao (the big island we are living on) that has volcanos, beaches, hiking, hot springs, and plenty of cheap places to stay! So, we decided fall break would be the perfect time to go.
We had quite the adventure getting there. We had to take 2 buses, a boat, and a jeepney. The entire trip took about 12 hours! Talk about a cultural experience. At all the bus terminals, we were quite the sight to see! Everyone came running up to us, trying to sell us something or bring us somewhere or just want to know what we are doing. Wow, I usually don't mind all the attention in Davao, but this was very overwhelming, not to mention we were tired, hungry, and I was trying to get over my motion sickness. I was beginning to wonder whether all this travel was worth going to Camiguin Island. Once we finally got to the beach club we were staying at, ate dinner, and rested, we were glad we came. We spent 3 full days there, going to beaches, hiking to waterfalls, going to hot springs, cold springs, snorkeling, and eating Philippino food. We spent 2 nights at a beach club right on the coast and 2 nights in this mountain resort that was probably the nicest place to stay on the island! And it was ony $50 a night. In America, you can't even stay at a Motel 6 for $50!. At the highland resort, we had hot water and a bathtub!!!! We haven't seen a bathtub in 3 months! They would bring us movies to watch in our room, ice cream, ohhh it was so nice! We had a great time there!
There are many motorcycles here in the Philippines! Rob and I decided the best way to get around the island would be to rent a motorcycle! well, Rob has driven a motorcycle like once and that was a long time ago! So, of course he learned with me on the back! Yeah, and there really aren't any laws here about how many people can ride on a motorcyle, helmets, small children. It is very common to see 5 people on one motorcycle, no one with helmets on, and one is carrying a newborn! Crazy! Rob got pretty good at turning and shifting on the motorcycle by the end of our trip and I got more comfortable riding.
Then was time for our long trip home. We went on the boat back to the main island and got on our first bus, but it was full and there were no more seats! Rob and I were no very happy because we did not want to wait an hour for the next bus. As we were about to get off, we hear a bunch of people talking about extension. And of course being the Americans we were, we had no idea what they were talking about. Finally this man comes with these wooden boards (it looked like a peice of a 2x4) and he puts it in the aisle between the two seat for us to sit on! Oh it just cracked me up! So, Rob and I got the extension seats for awhile until some people got off the bus.
What a trip, after the 2 12 hour bus rides, being attacked by Philippinos, and our nalgene water bottle and motorcycle helmet being stolen, we were glad to be home! We did have a good time on our trip and quite the adventure! It was great. But I don't think we want to do long bus rides for awhile!

Davao Elections

Well, this past Monday, elections where held here in Davao. It was quite funny to me to see the difference in campaigning here as compared to America. Most of the signs here painted on rice sacks that were cut up. One thing I have learned here: nothing is trash. It can always be used. Why throw away rice sacks when you can use them for campaigning? I love it...