Vacation

I was lucky enough to go on a vacation with our principal and her family and one of the other missionaries from our school. We went on a trip to some different parts of the Philippines and it was so great to see things and see different people.
Our first stop was Manila. We took the boat to Manila and stayed the night in the Beavers home there. We spent the next day in the Mega Mall. We had a ton of fun there eating Wendy's and other American foods. We capped it off with Krispy Kreme. We were sitting right outside the window and we were eyeing the donuts being made because they looked delicious. All 7 of us were staring into the window without realizing it, but the guy making the donuts realized it and was getting really nervous, so naturally we started to stare even more and take pictures. Well the next thing we know the manager comes out and asks if we want to learn how to make some donuts. So we were super stoked (by we I mean me and the MKs) so 2 of us got to go in and make the donuts.

The guy we were spying on.

Step 1: Proper attire- krispy kreme hat and 1 glove.

I look excited but this picture isn't even close to showing how excited I was.

Step 2: Put the donut in the chocolate, I may have dipped it in a little too deep, but who has ever complained about too much chocolate?

I don't know how to spell ta-duh, bu that would have been a good caption here.

Step 3: sprinkle the sprinkles onto the chocolate. I figured since I had extra chocolate I obviously needed extra sprinkles, solid decision on my part. Also you can somewhat see the crowd that we had watching us make the donuts. There were probably 20 people outside watching.

They loved us so much that the entire staff came to take a picture with us, yes the entire staff, including the people at the register waiting on the people trying to order donuts. We're kind of a big deal.

Step 4: Enjoy delicious donuts for free!

When I see a sign that says hot chicks, I just can't resist. We needed a picture.

I saw this restaurant and just had to try it. It was pretty good, definitely not Californian or Mexicalian quality but still good.

 After Manila we flew to our next stop in Legazpi.

Legazpi is famous for its Mt. Mayon volcano. It might only look like a couple centimeters in this picture but it's much bigger in real life. Also the hill in front of the volcano is the hill we climbed that you will see pictures from next.

Over looking the city of Legazpi, part of it.

We decided to take a "short" cut through the jungle as we were hiking up the hill. Turned out to be very much a long cut, but it was still really fun going through the crazy trails.

A lot of climbing in this hike.

It looks like I'm just posing really awkwardly, but in my defense I'm actually standing on a hill and grabbing onto a vine. I'm not just trying to be a teapot. This spot was really cool though. It was a Japanese tunnel from when the island was controlled by Japan. It had all the history of it and the dates of when they arrived and when they were found and overtaken by the US. It was pretty cool to see and it was only 50 cents to go in so totally worth it.

Lizard

The view of Mt Mayon volcano from the top of the hill.

Our next stop was Donsol. Donsol is about an hour drive from Legazpi and is famous for their whale sharks. The main purpose of our trip was to swim with the whale sharks. Unfortunately for us we were very unlucky. March through May is the prime season for the whale sharks as their following their migrational pattern or whatever they do, and we went in the middle of April. They keep lists of how many sightings there are per day and last year during this time of year there were 30-40 sightings every day. The week we were there, zero. They disappeared just in time for us. It was definitely disappointing but we tried to still make the best of it. We figured we might as well take some pictures with the whale shark at our hotel since we couldn't take any pictures of real ones.

I said I was going to ride a whale shark and it might've been fake but I rode it.

Pretty sweet painting

 We got to snorkel during our whale shark expedition since we weren't going to see any. It was super fun and we saw a lot of awesome coral and fish. The clown fish were definitely the best because they were so much braver. They'd just sit there right next to their anemones and we were able to get super close with out them swimming away. They were super curios too.

I'm not sure what this thing was but the little yellow dots on it were glowing, it was pretty cool whatever it was.

Donsol also has another tourist attraction in it's fireflies. There are trees on this river that are just sworming with fireflies.

We went down the river at night which in itself was super amazing. It's hard to tell from the picture but the river goes straight through the jungle. It's like a river trip through the Amazon, except in the Philippines. We were also lucky enough to go on a night where the moon was just a sliver so it was extremely dark. We were able to see so many stars which was one of the first times I have since coming to the Philippines. It would have been just an awesome river star gazing trip, but then we got to the fireflies and it was so cool. It literally looked like Christmas lights. Apparently the fireflies synchronize with each other somehow so they were literally all blinking at the same times. Half would go on, half would go off, and then they'd switch. It was so cool to see. We went to 3 or 4 different trees down the river that for whatever reason the fireflies all lived on. Definitely an awesome night and very spiritual. It was so amazing looking at so much of God's creation and just being in awe of it.

Filipino style. Yeah we all fit on the trike. Including the person taking the picture. It was definitely a very snug ride, but that's how we did it every time we were on a trike here.

 Pretty sweet mudflaps.

Also pretty cool to be driving down the road and see this. Not out of the ordinary in this part of the Philippines.

We went on a walk through the town during the day and the people are so open and friendly. Even with the whale sharks there still aren't even a quarter of the tourists here as there are in Boracay, so we are a bit more uncommon. Everybody would say hi, and the kids were all very curious and friendly. We joined a backyard basketball game with some kids. It was awesome to hang out with them and just the openness and friendliness they had, this would never happen in America.

Dogs grazing in the grass with the cows, kind of hard to see in the picture but it was pretty funny.

We also got asked to play basketball with some older kids who were on the road. Because we were white we allowed to use the basketball court at one of the resorts along the road.

It was a fun game and just a lot of fun to play with people we just met and to not have all the separation there just always seems to be between people normally.

The sunset as we were eating dinner in Donsol.

The sunset another night, with someone else's camera

We all were in one room so we had a bed on the ground two people had to share. So obviously we had a wrestling tournament to determine who would have to sleep on the mattress on the ground. Definitely a ton of fun and hilarious to watch. I got to be the official judge and it got pretty intense at times for sure.

Stretching before the tournament.

After Donsol we traveled through some other places much less touristy but still very cool. We stopped at a basically National Park that surrounded a volcano. It was hardcore jungle and was so crazy. We went for a hike though the jungle and it was so amazing. We were told we might see monkeys, wild boar, and snakes, so me being me we started to hike and I'm looking up n the trees for monkeys. All of a sudden the girl next to me says 'oh look a snake', as it slithers right past me feet. I stopped looking for monkeys after that. We saw a couple snakes and a huge lizard thing that I don't know what it was but it was big. We also saw a Jesus lizard, the one that runs on the water. I saw it along the bank and so I was pointing it out to everyone and then it took off running across the water, it was so cool. Unfortunately no monkeys though.

This is a lake we stopped at as we were driving, not during our jungle hike, it's out of order here.

This is a jade vine or hanging jade or something like that. It's a very rare flower that only grows in this part of the Philippines. It was pretty cool.

The crew.

Our driver also took us to a waterfall as one of our stops. We were super excited for it.

And then we got there. He says the name of the waterfall means drop of water haha. So yeah, this was the water fall. Still a very beautiful place and we got to swim around in it and everything.

Jumping from the top of the waterfall.

A river going by the waterfall pond we were at.

I'm pretty proud of these pictures. It was not easy to get that close to the butterfly and get the camera zoomed in and steady to take the picture. It was a huge butterfly, a lot bigger than it looks in the picture, like everything here really.

Officially the biggest spider I've ever seen. my camera is zoomed in a bit, but trust me I was a long way away from this thing when I took the picture. It's web was bigger than me, and I definitely didn't feel like risking getting stuck in it.

This guy was just hanging out in the park. Weird.

We stayed in a town close to the volcano that is popular for it's hot springs. This is in the bathroom of our room we stayed in. It's a natural hot tub. Pretty sweet.

 We ordered sweet potatoes and got fried leaves instead. Very interesting, they actually didn't taste bad they tasted the same as every other fried food.

Trying to keep the flies off of my rice. I never realized I would care so much about rice.

A huge tree at the hot springs we went to. You know what I'm going to say, it's a lot bigger than it looks in the picture, but it's true. It was huge

Flip flop for size reference.

The showers at the hot springs. Each shower was a different temperature.

There were also three different pools. Cold, lukewarm, and hot.

These were pouring the water into the hot pool and the water was almost scalding. It was so hot coming out you could barely touch it.

The volcano, with smoke coming out of the side. Their are a lot of clouds, but there is a spot on the left side where smoke was coming out.

The side of a jeepney. Jesus and the power rangers, it doesn't get more safe than that.

We stopped in town at a basketball game that was going on and stayed to watch.
The town we stayed in was definitely not a destination point of many foreign tourists. It was a little bit touristy for Filipinos from other places, but not from people out of the country. People were very surprised to see us everywhere we went throughout town and even in our hotel. I have never been stared at so much in my life as I was in the 2 days we were here. Staring is an aspect of Filipino culture that isn't considered rude, and so it's common to get stared at even in Boracay. But nothing even close to here. People would literally stop whatever it is they were doing and just stare at us. It was similar to what you would do if you all of a sudden saw a UFO hovering above you. It doesn't really matter what you were doing you would stop and stare at the UFO. I am not exaggerating one bit that is exactly what it was here. In the downtown area which is even further out of the way of the touristy hot springs we were like celebrities. I literally could have gone around with a pen signing autographs. There was a big market that we went into and we were buying some food, so while they were buying everything I went through the market on my own and people were just in shock. There was finally one girl who was brave enough to say hi, and I said hi back, everyone giggled and she ran off and came back with like 5 other people from a different shop, and they'd say hi, and repeat, and pretty soon I had over 20 people following me around through the market just watching me look at things. Definitely one of the most unusual feelings I've ever felt. It was weird but at the same time kind of cool.

At our basketball game I was sitting on the edge of us at first and I had a kid come sit near me, and then another one, and then another one. Then they scooted a little closer, then some more came. Pretty soon I had 20 kids sitting next to me. So I decided to break out some of my Tagalog, which wasn't super effective because they speak mostly their own dialect and not pure Tagalog, but we were able to communicate a little bit. As soon as I started talking though they all came right up to me. Thye were kind of keeping a safe distance at first as if they didn't know if white people bit or something, but as soon as I started talking they opened up and encircled me and everyone wanted to talk. After we played basketball and switched seats they switched to Carla and encircled her as you can see in the picture above.

The halftime entertainment, oh hey, that's us! The refs through us the ball during one of the timeouts as we were of course the honored guests there and we got to play during the timeouts and halftime. The announcer was announcing our game, people were cheering, and every single person there was watching that's for sure. Some of the kids tried to run on the court to play at one point and they shooed them all off haha. It was so crazy how much we amused people. We stayed and played after the game, and not a single person left. The stands were still full, the other side, which was full of people standing and watching the game, was still full of people watching us play. Nobody wanted to leave and miss out on watching us play. It was such a weird experience.

This kids is why you don't play basketball on rough concrete without your shoes. Tsk tsk.

 Waiting for our bus. We had like 3 guys that saw us and decided to wait there with us to help us flag down the right bus, for an hour and a half. But they stayed and we got a bus. I do definitely miss the kindness of people from this region. Most Filipinos are very kind in Boracay, but it was just a totally different level here.

Taking a bus back to Legazpi to catch our plane back home.

It was such an awesome trip and we had such an amazing time doing so many different things, even though we didn't see any whale sharks. We did a ton of fun things and that was awesome, but I think the most awesome part was seeing the different groups of people in different parts of the Philippines and being to interact with them in so many different ways. It was definitely a weird feeling at times but it was fun and so nice to be surrounded by so much kindness and hospitality.
Our river guide who took us to see the fireflies also told us about a village or group of villages I think that are a couple hours up the river who are very impoverished and very remote. he said they don't have a lot of access to things like education, medical help, or anything like that. He goes every once in a while with some people to bring them supplies and things but it is hard for them to afford it all the time. I am trying to look into possibly going back next summer and being able to do a mission trip up the river to these villages and bring them supplies and whatever kinds of things they need, including some educational aspects and even the Gospel. It's definitely something I think would be awesome to do and I love the region so much that it would be great to be able to go back. Please pray for that if you would, it's obviously a long time from now, but I really want to try to get that planned.

Sorry for being so behind in my blogging. I'll get my next blog up next week to catch you up on how things are going here on Boracay.