Ice Skating, Teaching, and Going Home

Sorry I haven't blogged in a long time! We have been very busy. It is crazy that I will be home in 3 days. I am really not ready to leave. We are all very sad whenever we think about it. So I will start with last weekend:

We were in Pasay City in Metro Manila South from Saturday night until Tuesday morning. We stayed at Grace From Heaven CRC there. We did a presentation after church for the youth and other church leaders that went really well despite the fact that we had none of our supplies with us! We weren't expecting to do a seminar. I made a powerpoint presentation on Saturday night though, so that was really helpful. For the rest of Sunday, we hung out with the youth from that church which was really fun. On Monday, we toured around the neighbourhood where the church was. It was pretty crazy. A big group of kids followed us around because there was no school for them because the president was giving a national address. I wish I could describe the neighbourhood, but I just can't! A lot of poverty. It really made me want to work with the urban poor...the urban poor kids in particular. We saw one lady's house who attends Grace From Heaven CRC that was smaller than my living room, and she is a single mother with five children living in that house. After walking around the neighbourhood, the deacon ladies took us to Mall of Asia. We went ice skating on the skating rink there! It was pretty crazy...we were ice skating in shorts and t-shirts. Some of our new friends from that church came too. We also rode a mini ferris wheel at the mall haha and got Krispy Kreme donuts.

On Tuesday morning of last week, we were picked up by Ate Gladys and Matt and B.A. We toured around "Old Manila" for awhile, then went to the CRWRC and CRWM offices to meet some people and look around there. After that we went back to Los Banos and had a going-away party for Eric. It was really fun! We also had a campfire and made s'mores which our Filipino friends had never had before, so that was pretty cool. Ate Eena and Ate Kaygee loved cooking marshmallows.

On Wednesday, we had a tourist day with all our friends. We went to see an underground cemetary, then went to a road which sells hundreds of "slippers" which is what Filipinos call flip-flops. Afterward, we went to the Bravo's and watched Ice Age 3 and played with Maurice, a little 2-year-old who lives with them. He is very cute! We stayed up late on Wednesday night because Eric left at around 3 a.m. Thursday morning. It was so sad. We were really sad all day Thursday and anytime one of us girls would mention it, we would all get tears in our eyes at the thought of leaving the Philippines.

On Thursday, without Eric, we did two seminars at the National high school in Calamba. We went to Ate Gladys's after that and did laundry and made lasagna for dinner. Then we went to a cultural dance show at UPLB which was really, really cool! I loved it. On Friday morning, we taught at Grace Christian Community School in Calauan. We mostly taught English. It was really fun. Nicole and I were partners, and first we taught grade one's, so we read them our kids books. Mine is about a lazy boy named Juan who turned into a carabao haha, and Nicole's is about eating your ampalaya which is a bitter vegetable here, or else the ampalaya will eat you haha. They liked the books. Then we played Simon Says, did some spelling bee thing, read some English words out loud, and wrote some random sentences on the board that they had to copy to practice penmanship. The sentences were about "ipis" which are cockroaches haha. After that, we taught grade two and did much of the same thing. Then we taught grade three, and we ran out of English to teach them. We taught nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Then we did some Math multiplication questions, then taught them about Canada, then taught them about photosynthesis haha! It was really fun. After that we came back to LB and shopped a bit. Then at Contilu that night, we had a really cool dinner where we didn't have any utensils or plates or anything. We ate off of large banana leaves all with our hands. It was fun! After that, Nicole and I played piano for the ladies there and we played and coloured with J'Lou, a 4-year-old adopted girl there. She is super cute.

On Saturday morning, we went to Grace Christian Community High School and coached some first-year girls in basketball and volleyball. That was really fun. Afterwards, we went to Calamba and hung out with the Bravo family. We had a meeting at LBCRC at around 6 to talk about our presentations and then I went to the Garcia's for dinner which was really great! I will really miss them! On Sunday, we went to church in the morning and had lunch there afterwards. We napped in the afternoon and played pool and had dinner with everyone at Contilu. Today we have been doing last-minute gift shopping for our families. We have a going-away party at 4 at LBCRC. It's going to be horrible leaving! Tomorrow we are going to compile pictures onto CD's and Wednesday we are doing a debrief thing with all our peer educators and us. Then our flight leaves at 6:45 a.m. on Thursday! So see you all really soon!!!