This Semester

I thought you may want to know what classes we are taking this semester, and I guess if you don't want to know, you can scroll down to see pictures of Krispy Kreme!

• Introduction to Community Development- pretty self explanatory, but it's a little interesting to take this class after having other CD subjects last semester. We're looking forward to getting a good overivew of what CD is and maybe more importantly what it isn't.


• Being a Servant Leader- Seminaries train leaders, so we're going to learn how to serve like Christ, with a towel and basin instead of a crown and sword. For this class we're going to start and lead a young professionals group at our church.


• Community Organizing- This class takes on a new meaning for us Americans who experienced last year's election... We established last night in class that if we're a community organizer we should be prepared to become President or martyred (like the greatest community organizer, Jesus) and maybe everything in between!


• New Testament I- This class will focus on the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke.


• Theology I- This class studies systematic theology, theology proper (study of God), revelation and bibliology.


• I (Sarah) am also taking Doing Theology in Asia- Most of theology has been done from a Western perspective, but the church has grown and is growing more so in the 2/3rds world and the way they do theology is different, so I'm going to learn about the Asian perspective. Though we don't plan to live and work in Asia, I think African theology will probably be more similiar to Asian than to Western thought.


• Uche is taking Transformational Learning and Teaching- We learn how to teach in a way that will change the lives and thinking of the people we are teaching. This is different from giving out or downloading information to learners.

So, there you have it our 18 units for this semester. This is how we'll spend our Monday-Thursday. Friday will become a day we spend in poor communities getting to know people there and see what kind of work is being done in these communities. We're super excited about the semester and after all our different first classes we decided that class was going to be a good class. We're so grateful that we have the opportunity to be here and study.

6 years and counting...

On Tuesday we celebrated our 6th anniversary. It's kind of fun to be back in the country where we met, fell in love and married. While we would've loved to go back to the island (Boracay) where we spent our honeymoon we had class all afternoon and evening, so we had to just have fun at the mall before going to class. We went to one Sarah's favorite places for our date.

Sarah got the chocolate custard filled and Uche got the lemon cheesecake. It's dangerous how close Krispy Kreme is to our house. Of course, we have to walk in the blazing heat to get there, so it's probably a good thing we don't have a car....

Malling

Did you know that "malling" is a word? It's a verb, meaning to go hang out at the mall, as in, "When my sister came to town we went malling." I think it's fair to say it's the Filipino national past time. Of course, the malls are huge, air conditioned and fantastic here, so why not.

Last week we went to the mall to pick up a couple things at the hardware store and a birthday present. We went into Mi to look for the present. All the sudden a song came on in the store and the employees started singing and dancing. We'd never seen such a thing. But if you're familiar with the Philippines you're not surprised that such a thing exists. They all did the choreographed dance moves through out the song and once it ended went back to what they were doing before.

Can you see what the sign says on the far right? Happy Shopping indeed.

I love that the security guard isn't even watching them. I wonder how many times he's witnessed the show....

While purchasing our items at the hardware store Uche saw something behind my shoulder. Can you guess what it was??

What hardware store doesn't have a karaoke machine that the employees practice on??

Some of our Favorite Things

Just thought I'd share some photos of what we've been enjoying being back in the States.

We love to ride our bikes, so we've managed to do it a couple times. Of course, our bodies aren't used to it yet, so we're always a little sore... There are crazy people who actually ride in Manila, we know some, but we're not them!! We'll stay on the back country roads thank you very much.

Kool April Nites cruise, a classic car cruise. This is annual event in Redding, and we've done with our great friends the past few years. We were excited to be back in the country for this event.

Fresh air, mountains, clean beautiful water, not always something we get to enjoy in Manila, so we're soaking it up as much as possible.

This is me cutting some lettuce out of my mom's garden. We've been eating salad a lot here. We can get lettuce in Manila, but it's a little spendy and not fabulous. It's been great to walk outside and cut lunch!

Tea Party

Tonight Uche and I headed down with friends and family to the local Tea Party here in Redding. The tea parties were held all over the country to protest wasteful spending by the federal government in Washington. It was a beautiful evening and fun to be part of. It was held at the Sundial Bridge along the Sacramento River.

Here's everybody gathering to cross the bridge. There were many homemade signs and flags being displayed.

Here's everyone crossing the bridge. The bridge started shaking because of all the people on it so we stumbled more than walked across the bridge.

I just like this picture with the people lined up on the bridge. As we walked along the path people were reading quotes about taxation from our founding fathers.

The crowd gathered under the bridge to put their tea bags in cases that were thrown in the river.

Taipei

On our way back to the States we purposefully scheduled a long lay over in Taipei, Taiwan. Neither of us had been to this city, so we were excited to check it out. We took a bus from the airport to downtown and cruised around to see what we could see. We had a fantastic day and we're super impressed with Taipei and the unbelievably friendly people we met there.


The picture is too small for you to see the temperature on the Panasonic sign behind Uche, but it says that it's 16 Celsius, which is 60 Fahrenheit. That's pretty 30+ degrees colder than where we had been in Manila. We enjoyed spending a day walking around without sweating.


This is Taipei 101. It's currently the world's tallest building, but will be eclipsed by a building in Dubai this fall. It's really a pretty building and definitely dominates the Taipei skyline.


Uche's almost as tall as 101....



You could buy tickets to go to an observation deck, but it was kind of cloudy so we didn't know if we would see anything if we went up, so we just took our picture next to this mural.



Inside 101 there's a fancy mall. We did a little window shopping, but were afraid to go in the stores. What if we broke something and we had to pay for it?? And those bright pink flowers in the big pots are orchids. There were tons of orchids through out the mall and they were gorgeous.




These motorbikes seem to be the transportation choice of many Taiwanese. They had little parking lots cut out of the wide sidewalks all over the place and they were all full. Uche was checking them out.




This is me in front of the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall. We had no idea what it was commemorating as all the signs were in Chinese. But I found out later it's a memorial to Dr. Sun Yat-sen founding father of the Republic of China.


This was taken from the memorial stairs looking out to 101.

There's park surrounding the memorial with a little lake where we had to take a self portrait.




We walked down to a night market with a side trip to eat some dumplings from a roadside stall. The night market was super fun to look around. I found some great shoes. We had to buy an umbrella because it started raining. The rain limited our time there, but we did manage to buy some tea and dinner.

Here's my dinner. I went with the recognizable since I'm a wimpy eater. The food was laid out like a buffet and we'd just point to what we wanted or use tongs to pick up what we wanted. They'd charge you by the number of food items you chose. It came with rice and soup. It was cheap and delicious!

Here's Uche's meal. He enjoyed his fish and tofu and other veggies. We're not the greatest with chopsticks, so at one point, Uche took one chopstick and just started stabbing at his eggplant. It was more effectice than trying to pick it up.

After a full day of walking around the city we rode a bus back to the airport and availed of the free massage chairs. Uche looks like he's pretty excited about the next 10 minutes. You can see me below mid massage. These chairs may be the reason we think Taipei airport is fantastic!!

Last Days in Manila

We're now hanging out in Northern California, but I thought I could share some pictures of Manila. Things we love and things we hate. I'll start with the good stuff.

Halo halo, if you ask me this is a bad thing, but Uche loves it. So, the day before we left we went over to the fast food restaurant Chow King for some halo halo.

This dessert is popular in the Philippines. The bottom is shaved ice mixed with a sweet milk. On top is where things get crazy. There is ube (a purple yam), beans, buko (young coconut), rice crisps, corn, gelatin, and ice cream (vanilla and ube)

Uche was excited to eat it, but I just can't handle all the different things in it. A dessert shouldn't have beans.

This is Uche getting the last drop out.

Finshed! Uche was a happy man!

Now you get to see the thing I think that I may hate the most in Manila.

The following pictures require a bit of explanation. A few years ago the mayor of Quezon City (part of metro Manila) put up fences to block people from crossing Edsa, a major road in QC. He also added walk ways that cross over the road at regular intervals. Then more recently he put up fences along the sidewalk to stop the busses from pulling over and picking people up at any old place since it makes traffic even worse than it is already. Of course, if there's any kind of space people gather and public vehicles stop to pick them up.

At this particular cross over there's very little space between the fence and the stairs, so only one person can pass through at a time. This would be fine except for thousands upon thousands pass through here everyday. Here I am about to pass through the space on my way up the stairs. By the way, the mayor of QC loves the colors pink and blue, so everything is painted those colors. All over the city you'll see these colors.

Here's a wider view of this area. Unfortunately, there's something else on the sidewalk at this point that makes walking here even less fun. When it's hot, as it always is, and there's a line to get through the space, as there usually is, I hate going this way. Unfortunately I have to pass it to get to the mall where we do all our grocery shopping, eating out and movie watching. Can you see what's under the stairs with the green leaves painted on it??

Yes, that is a urinal. The mayor put these up around the city to stop men from peeing along the walls on the roads all over the place. Unfortunately, these urinals just drain on the ground, so there are now these areas that are no fun to be anywhere near. It's a real bummer to stand in line to wait to get through the space.