Greg's birthday

We had fun going to Makati and having burgers for lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe and got an extra bonus hour in the car to talk without kids interrupting.

On Thursday, Greg had a birthday party at work-his co-workers surprised him, though he was rather suspicious about a "meeting" that he was needed at that afternoon.  They made him a banner, got a cake and balloons, and had a caricature drawing of him riding a bicyle.  When he was on a trip to Vancouver, he and a few of the guys rented bikes and went riding one weekend.  They also wrote nice notes on the back of his picture.  I loved it-he had a surprise party and I didn't get in trouble for planning something embarassing!

Ashley and I bought him an ice cream cake-sadly one could not be found that contained mint chocolate chip ice cream but we found cookies and cream instead.  We all had some of that after dinner on Friday night.

We had a relaxing weekend at home-playing Life with Scott and Ryan, playing wii, and on Sunday we went to church and swam in the afternoon and played Clue.  As usual we were sad for the weekend to end and Monday to come again. 

Though Monday we had a "girls" lunch with Greg at the mall which was very nice.  Ashley asked me if the boys were coming and I told her that they were at school.  She asked if we could swim with them later and I said "well we just did that yesterday"  and she said we needed to do it again soon.  She made it sound like it was ok to sneak off and have lunch with Greg without them getting to join us as long as we went swimming with them later!

First Week (last week) with Ashley out of School

She has about 3 weeks off before her preschool's summer camp program begins and I am looking forward to less scheduled time with just her-

Monday-we played learning games on the computer, re-painted rainbow toenails-see below, read books (of course), and watched some of Anne of Avonlea-the second movie where she is a teacher.

Tuesday-we went to the American Women's Club Bazaar with my friend Corrie and her daughter Aurora, who goes to preschool with Ashley but is in the next older class and having a girls lunch after our shopping.  The girls chose to eat at McDonalds!

Wednesday-Moms in Touch meets at our house.  Two of the ladies bring their preschoolers also-Philip and Hannah.  They have a great time playing together and we even went to the playground for a little while afterward with Hannah.  As we drove home from the playground, I asked what Ashley wanted to do when we got home and she said "go swimming!"  so that is what we did. 

Thursday-Bible Study Fellowship-I am so glad that Ashley and I have gotten to do this together, even though it has just been for this year.  She will go to school 5 days a week next year from 9-noon, so I will go to BSF while she is at school next year.  Then we had a special lunch at the mall and did some errands and rode the flower cup ferris wheel in Pixie Forest.  For an almost 4 year old, she is great to do errands with, especially when there is some fun involved too.

Friday-Ashley stayed home and played with Miss Dali while Greg and I had a lunch date at the Hard Rock Cafe for his birthday.  She and Miss Dali love to color and draw together and she is so patient to sit and let Ashley "do" her hair with her play hair stuff.

Silly thing Ashley said

Ashley saw some pictures that I had out of the boys with Santa Claus and herself sitting in Santa's lap as a baby, crying.  Ashley made me laugh with what she said after looking at these pictures-"Mommy when Santa comes next time at Christmas, can he stay and bring his bathingsuit and go swimming with us?" 

By the way, I can now say that I have been swimming in an outdoor pool in all 12 months of the year.  When I was in 2nd grade my parents built a pool.  It was built over the winter-the hole even was snowed in and they finished in April.  I was just itching to get in and try it out and my Dad let me and even swam with me, in spite of the fact that the water was VERY cold.  Normal people swim in May, June, July, and August.  Our neighborhood pool in Greenville was open until early September and the kids and I would usually swim right up until they closed the pool-even though the water got colder as soon as the nights started cooling off.  Since being here we have also been swimming in October, November, December, January, February, and now March-so that makes all 12!

Did you know???

That modern yo-yos were brought to America by a Filipino man named Pedro Flores in the 1930s.  Yo-yo means "come back" in tagalog.  He mass-produced the toys in his small toy factory in California.  Later Donald Duncan (I remember having a green plastic Duncan yo-yo as a child) bought the rights from Flores and began producing them.

Some say that yo-yos were used originally as weapons, for hunting animals, in the Philippines.  These were much larger than toy ones and some had spikes on the sides.

I also read that yo-yos are thought to be the 2nd oldest toys in the world-after dolls.

By the way-I didn't just decide to google about yo-yos because I didn't have anything else to do.  Scott is researching them for something at school.

Another Awesome Book I found

at the Brent School Library.  The title is very catchy

There is a world map in the front of the book and there are stories about unique libraries in many countries-boats, mobile ones in trucks, converted train cars, boats, books by mail, elephants in Thailand-made me appreciate our awesome Greenville County Public Libraries more than I already did.  Though our school library is terrific (John Steven Gurney-the illustrator of the A to Z, Capital, and Calendar Mysteries and author of Dinosaur Train-not connected with the tv show is coming to visit and sign books in April) they limit parents to checking out 10 books at a time.  When I told Greg that he laughed because I always had at least triple that checked out at home.  He would often tease me and ask when someone from the library was going to call and ask for their stock back or threaten to put a branch library sign out in the yard.  I can't help-my mom and grandmother read to me A TON when I was little and it stuck!

Anyway if you are looking for something interesting to read to your kids, My Librarian is a Camel is great.  The same author has another book entitled My School in the Rainforest:  How Children Attend School Around the World.  I need to see if it is available in the Brent Library too.

It is hilarious to me what kids remember and associations they make. 

One of the unusual libraries mentioned in this book and a country marked on the map at the front is Peru.  At its mention Ashley immediately said "that's where Paddington Bear came from Mommy, darkest Peru" and she was right. 

She also recently overheard me asking Chris, our driver, to tell Elmer (the man in charge of arranging all the drivers at Greg's office) for a driver on Saturday.  Ashley said "Elmer, the elephant?"  meaning the patchwork one who is always playing jokes on his elephant friends.  Even Chris got this and was laughing to himself as I explained to Ashley that this Elmer was a person and as far as I knew there were no patchwork elephants who worked at Daddy's office.  They are truly little sponges, soaking up all that they hear!

Funny Philippines Things

NO I am NOT pregnant!  I am just excited about good sour dill pickles.  Apparently not many people in the Philippines like dill pickles.  In spite of a whole aisle at one of my regular grocery stores of olives, capers, mayo, mustard, bread and butter ones of all shapes, sizes, and brands, I have not bought dill pickles since we have been here.

I was having lunch recently with a group of ladies and one mentioned buying dill pickles and I asked where and what brand.  I was finally at this store looking for them and came home with these 3 huge jars-just for me.  No one else in the family likes pickles!  At McDonalds I tear the children's burgers in half and eat the pickles out of theirs.

Then the even funnier thing was that I put one jar in the refrigerator because I wanted my pickles to be cold.  They were in there for several hours and I tried to open them-I couldn't.  So I called Greg, he couldn't either.  We ran the lid under hot water, tried to heat the metal lid with a lighter, let it sit out over night to warm back up.  I tried several more times this morning and finally after a lot more hot water and effort got to eat some pickles and they were delicious!

I also have to tell you where I found the pickles at the grocery store.  This is not a store that I go to regularly so I was wandering a little and looking around to see if they might be hiding anything else that I would get really excited about.  Here in grocery stores there are always shelves above the open freezer cases-they are usually horizontal,not many are vertical with doors like in the US.  I think the stockers hunt for the most random things they can find and put them above the freezer cases because that is where I found my pickles!

A couple of other funny things because I know everyone is tired of reading about pickles by now!  TV shows begin and end at the weirdest times here and NEVER on the hour!  There are fewer commercials in general which I assume is the cause of this but it is still weird.

Also, every digital clock that we have bought here is fast and gains time-EVERY time you set it correctly!  In about 2 weeks they are all about 15 minutes fast!  We just find that extremely ironic since it is a big joke among expats here about "Philippine time" because that means that you never know how long something is going to take and usually double or triple the length of time a person told you it would take.  I try to keep my watch set to the time that the bus driver has so that the boys don't miss it in the mornings-so far we have been lucky.

Hope I have made you laugh today!

Another ALIG Charity Event

 Another charity that ALIG supports is the Southside Dump Site School-yes, you read that correctly.  I have been curious about this place since we got here but volunteers always go here on Fridays.  This past Friday, I did not have anything going on at Brent so I went along.  It was not exactly what I was expecting but another one of the MANY experiences I have had in the 9 months since we have been here that really makes me appreciate and be humbled by all the blessings we have.  We rode about 30-40 minutes from our neighborhood and were at what is called a "completed dump site" which means it doesn't smell TOO bad.  The school was begun because the children nearby were not allowed by their parents to go to school but were sent to the dump to go through garbage looking for stuff the families could use or sell.

What the volunteers do each week is while the teacher is reading to the children in Tagalog-or you can bet I would have been the first one to volunteer to read-we give them a snack and a shower, dry them off, help them re-dress (sadly, often in the same dirty clothes they came in), and comb their hair.  There were 2 groups of 25-30 kids who came into a very small room, sat with their teacher and sang, ate, and were able to get a shower and receive some minor care to cuts, and brush their teeth.

 The teacher closes a gate-that you see through the doorway so that the number is limited because of the small space.

 I laughed to myself as I realized the songs the children were singing were "The Lord's Army" -I remembered from church as a child "I may never march in the infantry, ride in the cavalry, shoot the artillery. . ."  They were singing in tagalog except the "yes sir!" part.  The next song was "If you're happy and you know it clap your hands"  We were warned not to wear much jewelry and even told when handing out snacks to look carefully and remember where you had left off because the children would hide what they had been given and say they had not received anything yet.  We had some extras at the end and were giving them to children-the teacher had asked them to line up outside the classroom but they were pushing and grabbing-just such amazing need.

 The first group was mixed boys and girls-there were some other volunteers who braided hair and we had powder and body spray to put on them.  I was the drier as kids came out of the small closet sized room where the showers were.

 Enjoying his peanut butter on graham crackers

 The hair station

 Traci-in the back with the white shirt on-she is the ALIG charity coordinator just sitting and enjoying the children

 showing how to brush teeth with a model

The second group of all boys enjoyed having their hair spiked up in mohawks.  It was sweet time with these children-many hugged and thanked us when we left.

Since I had not been there before and there were also a couple of other first time volunteers, the teacher led us back behind the village store-next door to the school to see some of the houses.  WOW!  We saw a beautful baby who could not have been more than 2 months old-yes I did want to bring him home with me.  Traci told me about a family that she has gotten to know who lives in a 1 room tin shack with 8 children.  I don't think any of these "houses" have running water and if they have electricity it is stolen from a pole nearby-though I did see one with a television that was turned on.  It was quite sobering to see where these children were coming from.  If you think about it, pray for these children and teacher Keith and teacher Shara that what they can teach the children will make a difference for their future and that of their families.

Mabuhay Club

The ALIG-Alabang Ladies International Group-that I belong to is doing something new called Mabuhay Club-that is the Philippine word for Welcome!  I decided that even though I wasn't that new anymore, I would join for a month and I have learned several things in the 2 meetings we have had besides having fun with some grown-ups!

We have also had interesting ice breaker games each week-the first time was that horrible game that I have always hated, where you have something on your back and you are supposed to ask yes/no only questions to figure out who the person or what the thing is on your back.  I didn't ever like to play this with people I already new.  Come to find out I was Helen Keller-I learned this when I cheated and pulled my paper off and looked at it.  They certainly chose interesting things to put on people's backs-one was Manny Pacquiao (a famous boxer in the Philippines-I only know this because he was in this HUGE fight not long after we arrived here).  I really think that you would have to have lived under a rock in the Philippines not to have known him.  Someone was Santa Claus-it's really hard to answer yes/no questions about Santa.  Someone was the Great Wall of China and someone was Bill Gates-a Canadian lady who had a very difficult time figuring this out-but she didn't just cheat like me.

The 2nd game was called "Never Have I Ever"  Everyone puts their hand out on the table and each person says "never have I ever ______________"  You try to say something that other people would have done but that you haven't.  Each time you have done the thing someone says you have to tuck in a finger and whoever has fingers left at the end is the winner.  My friend Fran was really sneaky-she is from Chile-and said "never have I ever cooked a turkey for Thanksgiving" thinking that she would get me for sure.  Thank you to my mother in law and all my great aunts on Daddy's side for always cooking the turkey.  She thought it was hilarious that I had never done that.  But she ended up winning anyway!

Our first meeting was focused on our own neighborhood and there was stuff there that I didn't know!  Heidy in the blue shirt above and another friend Melissa are leading the group and they rented a jeepney for us to ride around in for the neighborhood tour.  It was fun but I will say again that I am glad that I don't have to drag groceries and 3 kids around on one of these all the time-they are also made for people who are short!  Not a lot of spare headroom!

The outside of our jeepney!

 We went to our neighborhood offices-there's a doctor's office, dentist, administrative stuff, a copy center/fedex place, and a library-not great selection at all compared to what the boys have at school or anywhere near our Greenville County Public Libraries-I may have to see if they will let me have a temporary card for the summer???  We finished our first meeting with lunch at a cute little girl lunch place called Mary Grace's-I had Caesar salad, fruit flavored iced tea, and a traditional Philippine dessert called and ensaymada-it was AWESOME!  They are light fluffy rolls and the ones Melissa suggested we try were warm with carmel and cashews on top.  A great treat-will have to take Greg and the kids there sometime to have one.

At our next meeting we focused on the area surrounding our neighborhood and went to the deli that I was thrilled that someone told me about when we had been here about a month, did things like post office, banks, another neighborhood with some interesting shopping areas, and then something that I had not been brave enough to do yet-the wet market-some of these pictures you may not want to look at!  It is called the wet market because they prepare the meat to be sold there and it isn't wrapped in cellophane the way I like mine and they just hose down the floor.  The smell was awful when you started getting close to the meat section.  There is other stuff there besides food though-which I didn't know until we went-stuff for kids like a giant Oriental Trading catalog and a friend showed me a stall where they have kids costumes from all different countries around United Nations day-so I will be going back in the fall-it didn't smell bad there!

 On the way in!

 Look at all the RICE!

 The ALIG charity ball's theme was Carnival this year so some were shopping for masks!

 The Oriental Trading catalog section

 More Rice

 Rice and noodles

 There is another traditional Philippine dessert called halo halo-meaning a little of this and a little of that-it involves shaved ice, coconut milk, and all these toppings that you can choose-I think all these colorful things are "jellies" looks like what we call jello at home.

 I took this picture to show the massive pile of brown coconuts in the back

 Beautiful fresh fruits and veggies but one of my friends said "I have a hard time shopping when I can't breathe!"

 Moving around more rice!

 The meat section-

 A whole truckful of rice-when we went outside to meet our van and get away from the meat section

 These are called tricycles here

 a fabric shop-no Emily, I promise the fabric I sent you didn't come from here right next to the meat section!

 My friend Fran from Chile!

 We ended this day in a much nicer place than the wet market-at the Palms Country Club Japanese restaurant.   You have to be a member or invited/accompanied by one to eat in their restaurants so this may be my only chance.  It was really fun!  Left side in the back-Melissa, Lyn, and me  Right side- Heidi, Angie, and Fran

 The view of part of the restaurant from our private room with a sunken table

 The outside of the club-so pretty!

Ashley's End of School Program

Ashley's school is on a Philippine school calendar and they had a big program/graduation for the whole school on Saturday.  Each class sang and danced to a broadway musical and it was hilarious.  Ashley's class did songs from Annie and she even had a speaking part to learn.

Below are some pictures from practice-the program was held in the auditorium of one of the schools here in our neighborhood.

 Ashley practicing receiving her diploma

 Afterwards, they received the diploma (all ages-not just ones who have finished their last year at the school), the older students went forward and told what they wanted to be when they wanted to grow up.  It was funny.  Ashley said she wants to be a ballerina "because she wants to be like Teacher Boom and Angelina Ballerina"  Teacher Boom is her preschool teacher (not ballet) and does not do ballet either.  Behind Ashley on the screen is her picture taken at school one day in her ballet outfit.
  Some of the other answers given were hilarious-A few of the girls said they wanted to be a princess because they wanted to live in a castle.  A few wanted to be teachers, chefs, or golfers.  Several of the boys wanted to be race car drivers because they liked going fast, one wanted to be a basketball player like his dad, or a business man, or golfer, or a banker.  The pictures were all very cute.

 Her class in practice

 These are from the actual program!

 The above little boy-who I think said he was 5-sang along with the recording of the Philippine National Anthem that played-I was impressed with how well he did-I think it is nearly as hard as "The Star Spangled Banner" to sing-even if you do know the language.

Her class singing Annie songs

 of course-they danced too!

 The toddler class did Sound of Music-their teacher dressed as Maria-tried valiantly to keep everyone on stage at the same time but it was hard work!  I loved their costumes!

 I admit to knowing nothing at all about Hairspray but the kids were cute anyway-I am surprised that Ashley didn't say that she wanted one of their pink and purple dresses.

 Another class did Mamma Mia-I'm so glad Ashley doesn't have one of these costumes so that I don't have to forbid her from wearing it anywhere out of the house.  It was hilarious watching the kids singing and dancing!

 Another class did songs from Grease.

 Classes starting to get their diplomas-these toddler boys were sword fighting with theirs-thankfully they were only blank papers rolled up and tied with ribbons.

 Here is Ashley, diploma in hand, telling everyone what she wants to be when she grows up-Now I understand why my dad, the video camera nut, always complained about lighting being bad at school programs.  Many of my pictures did not turn out well in spite of our good camera and great zoom lens.  But we are getting a dvd from the school.

 Ashley's class and teacher

 All the children came out at the end and sang a song called "Happiness"  I don't know why but during the practice and the program Ashley just sat during this song, not singing or really looking happy-maybe she just didn't like this one!

 Here are Ashley and her classmates, Andy and Bjorn, watching the chaos that occurred when confetti was shot out and balloons were dropped after the last song.  I was surprised that Ashley didn't jump up and run into the craziness!

 Ashley and her sweet Teacher Boom

 After the program!  Next time, Mommy has to remember and get in a picture herself!  It was a fun night and we are proud of our littlest!