When we're not doing homework...

Lately I've been trying to figure out what I could share on our blog. I don't know how many more pictures I can post of us sitting in front of our computers with books piled all around us in the library! That's where we spend a large amount of our day. The library is air conditioned, has wifi and lots of books, so it's a good place to hang out! Sometimes we get to have a little fun...


Awwww... Starbucks... It's my happy place....

But even time at Starbucks must not be wasted. Some light reading... The Law and its Fulfillment A Pauline Theology of the Law- actually it was pretty interesting and quite helpful for my paper on Romans 7. Uche was reading about Old Testament prophecy. Actually, we went to Starbucks during a recent trip to immigration- Starbucks is making a killing being located right across from a place that requires you to wait for anything and everything.

So, this outing was purely fun (though we did go grocery shopping afterwards). We went and saw Avatar. Fortunately, the mall closest to us has an IMAX 3D screen, so we got to really enjoy all the effects.

Had to add a picture of Uche with his glasses, just to be fair. He insisted on wearing them walking into the theater and walking out. Maybe I can find this style in pair of sunglasses for him.

In all seriousness, we have been super busy this month. Fun outings do not write papers! We have been spending time in a poor community for our internship. We've been meeting with people there, and that has added to our already loaded schedule, but we're enjoying it and learning a lot. It's been exciting to put into use the great stuff we've learned over the last year.

We were joking while taking this picture that it was going to look like a class picture, and it kind of does. These are just some of the people we'll be working with in the community. They're all community leaders in some way, and their input is invaluable. Without their help we couldn't hope to accomplish anything.

We interviewed this woman about community issues. She was very brave to speak in English with us. I really respect any person who can even function in another language, and she was great! She did a great job of explaining things to us.

We'll be working with a church planter in the community to see how the church plant can be involved in community development. We're hoping to be able to work with the community to come up with a plan for some sort of project that could be a blessing to the whole community. We also talked about this community before, click here if you want to read about it.

Christmas trip 2009 part 2- Malaysia and Singapore

We were so sad to leave Hua Hin and the beautiful beach, but we wanted to see as much as possible on our trip, so we headed out of town. We had hoped to make arrangements in Bangkok to take a train from Hua Hin to Penang, Malaysia. The train was sold out! So, we headed down to Hua Hin and hoped we could make arrangements from there. We went into a travel agent near our hotel right after we checked in and were able to make arrangements to take a bus. We were happy just to be able to get to Penang as we had a schedule of reservations ahead of us. We left Hua Hin at 9:30 at night and arrived in Penang the next day around 6 pm. It was a very very long trip. We first rode on a nice sleeper bus, but early the next morning we were transferred to mini bus (vans) for the rest of the trip.
Once in Penang we were able to meet up with a friend of mine from college who lives there with his family, and he was able to set us up to stay in a guest room in their office. It was located in a nice quiet neighborhood close to cheap, but tasty, restaurants. In fact, Penang is known for good cheap food. We found it to be true! We went to church the next morning and spent the afternoon at the Penang Botanical gardens and wandering around town a bit. We left early the next morning for Kuala Lumpur. Our camera battery was getting low after Thailand, so we didn't get as many pictures of the rest of our trip as we'd like, but we did get a few good shots.

At the entrance to the gardens there were a couple carts selling snack food. I got some watermelon and Uche got peanuts. The lady who sold it to him asked if it was for feeding to the monkeys. I told her that he doesn't share his peanuts! Uche is serious about peanuts. :)

In the end, Uche did share a few with the monkeys.

The gardens were really beautiful and we enjoyed the quietness and the lush greenness. Because we live in the middle of a huge city we appreciate any chance to spend time in nature. We hadn't seen that many trees in one place for a while.

Inside the city we saw this street market and went looking for something to eat. It was super busy, as you can see, and we finally decided to head to the market closer to where we were staying. For most of our meals on our trip we just found a local market like this to eat in. Usually they're cheap and the food is good. At one point we did have dinner at KFC- I couldn't bear anymore rice and noodles.

It seemed like all along the coast of Penang (at least the areas we saw) there were high rises like these. They must have fantastic views.

Early Monday morning we flew to Kuala Lumpur. The must see place there is the Petronas Towers. Not sure what the banner says above Uche, but that's one of the entrances to the towers.

See we did travel together. We always joke that most of our pictures look like we went by ourselves since we spend our time taking each other's pictures. Fortunately, we can usually find some friendly person to take one of us together.

There is a park on one side of the towers and they have a shallow lake with a bunch of water fountains. Right after we took this picture it started pouring and we had to run for cover. We shared a gazebo with a bunch of people until it was safe to go out.

We didn't really do much in KL. We were exhausted and low on money. We had had a stressful morning and after days of being on the move we both kind of pooped out. We had been excited to fly to KL from Penang because it was a cheap short flight and then we'd get to spend the whole day in KL before taking a sleeper train to Singapore. In Penang, my friend had made arrangements for a taxi to pick us up at 5:00 am to take us to the airport. At 4 that morning I was woken up by the doorbell; I woke Uche up so he could go see what was going on. The taxi driver said he was ready to take us to the airport. Uche told him it was only 4, but the taxi driver corrected him saying it was 5! Well, the clock we were using as our alarm had been set on Thailand time which is an hour behind, so we were an hour behind. AUGH! We rushed to get ready and prayed we'd make it to the airport on time. We did make it, obviously, but I think I used all my adrenaline getting ready, so I was not in the mood to wander around a new city. We spent a lot of time just sitting at different places watching people. At one point we sat in an entrance of a large mall with these fantastic Christmas decorations (sorry no pictures of it) watching people take their pictures next to the decorations. It was a little weird to see M*slims taking pictures with Christmas decorations with songs about baby Jesus in the background. It's a crazy world we live in! Anyhow, at the end of the day we were happy to get on the train and head down to Singapore.

Singapore is something else. When we were walking around I felt like I was in Manhattan- it was so clean and beautiful! I haven't seen that many new luxury cars in a long time!

We spent a lot of time walking on Orchard Rd. which was super decorated for Christmas. The street is lined with malls. We even did a little shopping ourselves buying me a pair of shoes.

At the end of our day as we were riding the bus back to our hotel I spotted a Borders! A Borders!! I LOVE bookstores and I miss Borders/Barnes & Noble stores so much while I'm overseas. I almost yelled, "STOP THE BUS", but I really needed a shower and I had to go to the hotel to do that.... but if it hadn't been 36+ hours since I had showered (while walking miles in the tropic heat) I totally would've given up the money set aside for eating for the rest of the trip to go relax in Borders with a cup of coffee for a few hours!

This is the visitor center in Singapore, on Orchard Rd. They have FREE foot and leg massage machines. It's right next to the FREE chilled water cooler with cone shaped cups. If I didn't already love Singapore- I would've at that moment! After our refreshing time in the visitor center we were ready to hit the road and check out some more sights.

This is a well known hotel, Raffles Hotel. I still need to google it to see why. :) We didn't go inside because of the afore mentioned lack of showers!

This was a cool side street in Singapore. The street looks old and quaint which is contrasted with the modern skyscrapers in the background.

We were sad we only had one day in Singapore. It seems the theme of this trip was too many cool things to see, so little time!

Christmas trip Part 1- Thailand

It's hard to be away from home for Christmas, so for the three Christmases I've spent away from home I've traveled. My poor husband, has spent many more Christmases away from home, but he handles it better than I do- he handles most of life better than me as well! :) This year we decided to travel around another part of Asia we'd never been. We found some good priced tickets going to Singapore, so we bought them and started planning. We found out it's pretty easy to travel through Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, so we decided to head straight to Bangkok from Singapore and then work our way back down to Singapore over the next week. Over the next couple days we'll put up pictures to show what we saw. It was a once in a lifetime trip, and we won't bore you with all the stories, but if you have an extra 4 hours on your hands, give us a call, and we'll give you the long story! :)



Sitting in the tuk tuk in Bangkok. We only got to ride it once, but it's a fun way to travel. We were all about public transportation on this trip!



Uche enjoying the river taxi. Another great way to get around Bangkok. Sometimes we weren't sure what stop to get off at, but we just figured we'd follow the other foreigners since they hopefully knew where to go. The strategy worked pretty well actually.


View from river taxi. Not a sight you see everyday... unless, of course, you live in Bangkok. We really enjoyed seeing sights from the river. You can see how big these river taxis are.

This was outside the Grand Palace- not bad for a self portrait. This was before we decided to pay the admission to go inside. We debated whether to spend the money since admission was over $10 a person, and we were budget traveling.

We were glad we paid to go inside or we couldn't have gotten a picture like this! We have a lot of pictures from inside, but we'll only post a few here. Everytime we turned a corner we'd see another amazing building.

We had to wear long pants inside. In fact, they wouldn't let you enter in shorts. So, outside the palace there were quite a few small shops renting sarongs and pants to people who weren't in dress code. We had our handy dandy zip off pants to wear, so we didn't look ridiculous wearing the rented clothes. I tried to get a picture of a guy wearing purple pants he had rented, but couldn't manage it!

Isn't this building gorgeous? The colors were fantastic! Towards the end of our time there we were just overwhelmed with the beauty of the place and it was hard to get excited for another fantastic building.

The shapes of the buildings were so different from anything we'd seen before. There were lots of people taking pictures, so sometimes it was a bit of a juggling act to get a picture without other people in it.

The buildings were huge, as you can see in relation to me. The Grand Palace was totally worth the entrance fee, so if you get a chance to go see it- do!

On Christmas Eve we traveled from Bangkok to Hua Hin which is a beach town about 3 hours from Bangkok. We only had one night there, but once we arrived we wished we could stay much longer. It was great!

After we arrived in town we wandered around checking out the beach, restaurants, markets, etc. I had seen on the internet that there was an international church that met at the Hilton, and we had talked about seeing if they were doing any special services while we were there, but we didn't know where the Hilton was. As we were walking along the beach we looked up, and there was the Hilton! So, we went inside to see what we could find out. At the time we were both in our bathing suits- totally not dressed for the Hilton! They told us the church would be having a Christmas Eve service in 30 minutes. We rushed down the road to a restaurant for dinner since we hadn't eaten in a long time and scarfed down some fabulous food and went to the service bathing suits and all! It was a wonderful service and we met some neat people and it was soooo nice to fellowship with brothers and sisters during this special holiday service. After the service we headed back to the hotel, but were distracted by a night market on the way where we spent a couple hours eating fun stuff and just hanging out there.

Christmas morning breakfast- mocha, vanilla latte, chocolate croissant and almond croissant! :) For most the trip we ate street food- lots of rice and noodles, but for Christmas morning I forced Uche to go to this coffee shop because I just couldn't do rice on Christmas morning!

This was our spot for Christmas Day. We sat here, swam, sat some more, ate, sat some more and swam again. It was super relaxing!

This was the first Christmas I'd spent at the beach. It's a great way to spend Christmas if you can't be home with family. There were lots of people to watch and the sand and breeze felt great!

The Hilton is the large hotel in the background. We didn't take too many pictures at the beach because we were too busy relaxing and enjoying it! :)

Unfortunately we had to leave Hua Hin Christmas night. We took a bus from there to Penang, Malaysia. I'm looking a little red as I wait for the bus...

Stay tuned for more trip pictures....

Happy New Year!

We got back from our Christmas trip the evening of Dec. 30, and we're still trying to organize our thoughts and pictures, so before I share about that, let's talk about New Year's Eve here in Manila. This was the first year I'd been in the Philippines for New Years (Uche's spent a few here) because I had always been visiting outside the country for Christmas when we lived here before. I've heard alot about the noise, partying, fireworks etc that happen here, so I wanted to experience it at least once. I have to say it was something else!

I've spent New Years with large crowds before, 50,000 for the year 2000 in Portland, OR, and 20,000+ at two different Urbana conferences, but last night was the noisiest ever! We got together with our neighbors for dinner, watched a movie and around 11:30 we went up to the roof to watch fireworks. People have been setting off fireworks here for weeks. All through the Christmas season you can hear and see them; the two big malls near us had a big fireworks show every Saturday throughout December, but the climax was last night. It was pretty noisy during dinner, but we could still carry on a normal conversation with each other. When we went up to our rooftop at 11:30 the noise of the fireworks and firecrackers was deafening. We had to shout in each other's ear to be heard! It went on like this for at least an hour before it settled down a little. I have no idea when it stopped because it was still pretty noisy when we went to sleep around 1:00 am.

I'm glad I was able to experience New Year's Eve here. I've never seen anything like it before, and I'm not sure where else I celebrate quite like that. According to our friends this year's celebration was a little subdued because people aren't doing as well financially as in years past, plus there were major national tragedies that occurred here during 2009. BUT if that was subdued.... I can't imagine what normal is like....

This is the group we had dinner with. We enjoyed tasty food and lots of laughs.

This scene was repeated on thousands of streets throughout the Philippines. So the noise was coming from the street and from the sky.

During the height of the fireworks. From every angle on our roof this is what we saw. It was pretty amazing.

Two worlds

Within the last week we went from one side of the metro area to the other. It began with a trip to Manila to go to immigration. We actually live in Quezon City which is bigger and more populated than Manila, but is part of metro Manila. When we have to go to Manila we always combine as much as possible in the trip. Immigration trips are often paired with trips to the barber for Uche. There's one guy in the city that cuts most of the black men's hair here- they've trained him! Then we usually head to a Middle Eastern restaurant for lunch. I LOVE hummus and we tried a new place last week, and it was fantastic. We then headed to a Christmas bazaar at the World Trade Center where I was hoping to find Filipino handicrafts- I'll tell you about my disappointment in a bit.

You can see the hookahs behind me. While we were there a few different men came in to chat and have a smoke. They're really cool looking I think.

I was excited when we walked into the Christmas bazaar and saw this display. I saw the traditional Filipino huts with the poinsettas and I thought how the whole place must be full of local handicrafts. I was specifically looking for a very Filipino looking nativity. Then we walked into the hall, and I was soooooo disappointed. It was full of stuff you can find at any market- cheap t-shirts, cheap plastic toys and no Filipino crafts to be found. I was bummed, but glad I hadn't made a special trip for it!

A few days later we headed to the total opposite end of the metro area to a place called San Mateo. During the floods this area was hit really hard. A pastor who has been planting churches in a couple different communities there has been working to help people to rebuild their homes that were destroyed in the flood. We went to go see what has been done in the recovery and try to see if there's the possibility of us doing our internship in one of the communities.

The last community we visited is really on the edge of town, and the name of the community translates as edge of the town. It's hard to believe we were still in the metro Manila limits, because it felt like it was worlds away. The people have to cross this rive to get from the town of San Mateo to their homes. Many people living there have carabaos (like these in the picture above) which are water buffalos that they use in farming.

There're also cows. We had to keep reminding ourselves we weren't out in the province (rural areas).

We took a boat ride across the river. I was ready to wade, but the boat ride was nice. This little guy was helping his dad transport people back and forth.

I was a little concerned how low the boat sat in the water with all of us, but no worries, the driver was very good and we made it safely across without a drop of water getting in.

In the community there some homes like this one. With the second story the husband of this family was able to stay on the roof during the flood to watch their home while the rest of his family fled, with many others from the community, to a nearby hill when the waters rose. This family was fortunate to have that second story and a house built with cement blocks.

This is an abandoned home that a woman in the church plant is considering buying because her home was totally destroyed during the flood. It was in pretty bad shape. It's hard to imagine a family living here.

This little girl was too cute not to photograph. Her family lives on the edge of the community and their living conditions are horrible. It's hard to see people living in such dehumanizing conditions.

Here's her little brother retrieving the tire he was playing with. I kept trying to get him to smile for me, so I could take his picture. He never did. He did smile when I showed him the pictures I took of him and his sister- he got quite a kick out of that.

All in all this week was kind of normal for us. There's such a contrast of wealth and poverty in this city. We have our feet in both worlds. We hang out in restaurants and enjoy fun activities around the city, but we also visit with people who live in conditions that depress you. This is how we see our future- being a part of these two worlds.

Taal

Last Saturday Uche and I joined our friend Holly for a day trip a couple hours outside the city. We didn't know exactly how it would all work out, but we just decided to head down and try to hike the volcano Taal. It ended up being a super fun stress free trip. Sometimes it's crazy traveling in foreign countries when you don't know exactly what you're doing. But with help from a lot of friendly people we met along the way we got to hike the volcano and enjoy a day in a beautiful place. Holly was super fun to hang out with; we were sad to say goodbye as she headed back to Nor Cal a couple days after our trip, but maybe we can hike another volcano with her in California!

We had to take a banca (boat) across the lake to the volcano. Taal is a volcano that sits in the middle of Lake Taal.

This was the last picture we took on the boat ride as soon after this was taken we were getting soaked from waves of water hitting us. The lake was really choppy and water would just fly in, fortunately the water was warm!

The hike wasn't too long, 4 km or almost 2.5 miles up. It had some pretty steep parts, but it wasn't bad. You could rent a horse if you wanted to so they would have to do all the hard work. This guy on the horse kept riding by us trying to convince us to rent the horse. We kept assuring him we were fine and wanted to walk. I noticed he always showed up on the steep parts! I guess he was hoping we'd see the lunacy of walking ourselves up the steep path, come to our senses and rent his horse. The lady up ahead of us did succomb to the temptation of sitting on the horse and enjoying a ride to the top.
Part of the way up. The views were fabulous. We had to keep stopping to take it all in.

The three of us. See we're still smiling, so the hiking must not have been to hard! :)

View from the top.

Once you're on top of the volcano you can see another lake inside the crater. So, we were by a lake which is inside a volcano which is in a lake. Did you follow all that?

Yay! We're at the top. There was a fabulous breeze blowing and it was just a perfect place to relax after the hike and enjoy the beauty around us.

Uche took this cool picture. I just love it.