Scenes from Manila

Here's some pictures of life in Manila.


Here in the Philippines each barangay, small neighborhood area, has a fiesta one weekend out of the year. So that barangay decorates the streets and spends the weekend partying. A couple weekends ago Uche and I noticed that there were a lot of fireworks going off and there was lots of loud parties happening. Uche even saw at one house there was a live band playing in the courtyard. We thought at first it was early Christmas celebration as Filipinos start celebrating Christmas as soon as the "ber" months hit beginning in September. A day or later we realized that it was fiesta time. Next year we'll have to join in.



The first picture shows the whole street decorated and here's what they used. Spaghetti noodle wrappers. So when you're looking down a street it looks really cool and decorative. Then you get closer and see what they used. I think it's such a creative way to make inexpensive cool decorations. Of course, someone ate a lot of spaghetti as the decorations go on for blocks.


Here's the Catholic church down the street decorated. This is probably my favorite decorations in this area. You can't tell really well in the picture how shiny the plastic streamers are.


I couldn't tell what exactly was used to make these decorations. They're silver plastic and very shiny. All I know is that it looks cool especially when there's a breeze.

Part of adjusting back to life in Manila is getting used to crowds again. As it's Christmas time, the malls are ridiculously crowded. Uche tried to get a picture that would do the crowds justice, and this is as close as we got. We'll be working on getting more because it's really quite amazing. As far as you can see it's a sea of people...

This is the mall two streets from our house. It's huge, of course, and they've been working on a new addition to it. It's going to be the 2nd biggest mall in the Philippines when they're done with it. It may be hard to see, but there's quite a few guys working on the blue section.

Here's a close up of two guys working. Notice the lack of any kind of safety anything. It kind of freaks me out to watch them because they're working really high up and if something bad happened they would be dead.

Evening at Mall of Asia

Monday evening Uche and I joined a couple from our church to go see SM Mall of Asia. Basically, if you haven't seen an Asian mall then you haven't seen a real mall! American malls are childs play compared to the ones here. Malls here have all the normal mall stores, food courts, restaurants, but they also have movie theaters and grocery stores. Mall of Asia has been built in the past few years since we were last here. We heard it was huge, and it was! It's the largest mall in the Philippines and the 3rd largest in the world. It sits right on the bay, so they've created an esplanade outside of the mall that borders the bay. It's quite an amazing place.




This in front of the only Olympic sized ice skating rink in the country. There's other malls with ice skating, but not this big. Every few minutes "snow" drops down from the ceiling onto the ice.


This is outside the mall on the esplanade.

This was taken from the skyway between the mall and the esplanade. It's hard for the picture to show how cool it is. The lighted Christmas tree changes color every few seconds.

Also taken from the skyway.

This is Uche in line for one of his favorite treats here in the Philippines. They are blended drinks with tapioca pearls in the bottom. So you get this really wide straw so you can suck up the pearls with your drink. I got mango and Uche got ube, a purple yam.

Chocolate Buffet

Chocolate and buffet, two words that should always go together... The celebration of my birthday continued on Friday night as Uche and I went to a super fancy hotel, The Manila Peninsula, for a chocolate buffet. They only do this for a couple months out of the year, so lucky us we're here at the right time.

It was wonderful! Not just the delicious chocolate goodies, but the atmosphere as well. It's held in their huge lobby with a live jazz band playing. The service was fabulous and we stuffed ourselves with all different kinds of goodies. We ate a very light dinner, so we'd be able to go wild for dessert!

Uche's favorite was a chocolate, Bailey's cheesecake. I don't know what was my favorite... was it the chocolate panna cotta with brandied cherries or the chocolate fudge cake with a truffle on top or the pot of chocolate hazelnut cream or the chocolate cups with cream and fruit or the dark chocolate fondue and strawberries.... I can't decide!

Afterwards we walked around a little bit to try to work off some of the damage. We looked at some of the windows that are decorated for Christmas and then headed home. It was a wonderful end to my birthday.

Look!! There's chocolate!! Up on the top left in the brass colored pots is ice cream that is set in a block of ice.

Aren't those big blocks of chocolate with truffles scattered on them beautiful??

The presentation was gorgeous. On left you see a chocolate scuplture with gold leaf covering parts of it. The pictures don't do it justice.

Uche enjoying a chocolate dipped breadstick. They were surprisingly good.

Getting the last little bit of the chocolate/hazelnut mousse, I refrained from licking out the bowl... just barely.

A Christmas window at Rustan's department store. It's still bizarre to think Christmas while walking around in sleeveless and capris...

Uche in front of another window at Rustan's. The windows were quite beautiful and really well decorated.

Happy Birthday to me...

Well, Wednesday (the 19th) was my 33rd birthday. I'm afraid I'm getting old... Anyhow, we used the birthday as an excuse to plan a party for our building. On the top of our building is a covered patio area. The owners have some plants up there and it's a great place to hang out.


We bought some Krispy Kreme donuts (yes, there's KK here!!) and made some popcorn and headed upstairs to get to know our neighbors better. I love donuts, so I didn't really miss birthday cake.


Our party had four different continents represented. There were 3 Americans, 2 Nigerians, 1 Mongolian, 2 Japanese, 1 Australian and 1 Chinese Filipino. Pretty cool, huh? That's one of the great things about living overseas, getting to know people from all over the world.


The other two Americans there were Simpson students, so we're able to discuss Redding versus Manila life. There are a lot of similiarities between the two cities, like they both have fast food restaurants and Starbucks and ... ... ...... ok, there's no more. Of course, even the fast food restauants are pretty different, unless you think you can order fried chicken with rice and gravy at the local McDonalds there...


Here's a picture from our party. The others didn't turn out so we'll have to introduce you to our neighbors another time.

Class Schedule

On Tuesday, Uche and I enrolled for the next semester. We met with the head of the Commuinty Development department and set up our class schedule for our first semester. She also gave us an assignment due on the first day of classes, write a page on why we chose to study Com. Dev! So, here's the classes we will both be taking this next semester:

Gender & Development
Organizational Development
The Art of Dialogue
Personal & Spiritual Formation
Health & Development

Once we start classes we'll let you know what they're all about!

Bits and Pieces

We’ve been pretty busy the past week setting up our home and getting things ready for school. Our house is almost complete; we just need some kind of table/desk and then we’re set. Our apartment building is full of international students going to our school, and they have been wonderful. I guess as people graduate and leave they start passing out their belongings, so we’ve been the recipient of these hand me downs. From our neighbors we got: a table, chairs, stools, dishes, silverware, gas tank, 2 burner stove, water containers, and a couch. These were all things we would’ve had to buy, but the Lord just provided them through our neighbors.

Yesterday we went and did our medical exams, blood test and chest x-ray for our school to complete our application. We chose to wait and do it here in order to save some money. By doing it here we saved around $475. Yay!

Today we’ll be registering for classes and next Monday we’ll start school. I can’t believe it’s all really happening. After years of planning and preparing, it’s good to see God has making our dream a reality.

Here’s some pictures of random things for you to enjoy:

This beauty is my pride and joy. It's a hot water heater. Apartments here come with just cold water. Even though it's blazing hot here a cold shower just hurts me, so I knew in order to live here for 2 years a hot water heater is a must. Now, I don't take hot showers cause I would die of heat stroke, but a lukewarm shower is a good thing!

This is my sweet husband sweeping the floor in our kitchen/dining room. It's a local broom, so it looks quite different then what I'm used to at home. Behind him you can see some our borrowed items.

This was taken just down the street from our place. Rooster fighting is a big time thing here with men pampering their roosters and gambling on fights. I won't go into what I think about that, but all I have to say about these roosters is they wake up early and let the world know they're awake for the day!

Our apartment

Here's some pictures of our new place. Yesterday we shopped all day and today we start the cleaning organizing process. It's a lot of work to go from nothing to a home....

Here's Uche in front of our building.

The sign that greets you at the bottom of the stairs. Fortunately we're only on the 2nd floor, so not too many stairs to climb.



Looking into the apartment from the front door. The kitchen is to the right. The room on the left is our bathroom and the bedroom is on the right.

This the kitchen area.

Our bedroom. Notice the air conditioner under the window. Praise the Lord it came with the apartment, so we didn't have to buy one!

This the top of the building. It's covered, but open so everyone can enjoy the cool breeze (if there's one...). It's a common area for all the people in the building. We're looking forward to using it alot.

Round one of shopping.... There's more to come if my swollen feet and ankles can handle it!