the island life (issue I)

Greetings from our life on the Philippines island!! (technically the Philippines is not an island, it's an archipelago but island life just sounds so much cooler!)

Our journey here was a piece of pineapple!! ah ha ha, get my joke?? We got to hang in Hawaii for a bit and everything. Loads of movies to watch...Hawaiian Air ROCKS!! (they have COCONUT handsoap in the bathrooms. I was sold) Mikey especially enjoyed the movie Confessions of a Shopaholic which he watched while eating chocolate brownie Ben and Jerry's icecream....no joke here.

Rainier (youth adult director that is planning our time here) picked us up in the church van and took us to our host families house. It is SOOOO humid here, but a very nice change from Seattle. Mikey and Johnny are bunk bedding it up across the hall from Brit and I. The boys woke up at 7 AM but us ladies slept until about 10 AM. ah ha ha.

Ate loads of tropical fruit this morning and we all took a morning swim. We are all pretty much lazying around for a couple more hours and than we are off to Station One. Station One is equivalent to The Inn so that is going to be lovely indeed.

I have already seen two cockroaches!! They are so beautiful.... While we are on the topic of non-human things, our host families have two dogs and their names are James Bond and Shorts. How flipping awesome is that? Oh and for you Harry Potter fans....a cat named Crookshanks!!!

Everyone here is oh so friendly and welcoming. Immediately after eating some Filipino dinner we went shopping! Not really, but we are about a 5 minute walk from about 20 malls. Seriously. (We live in the central business distrcit so life is very hussel bussel) One of the malls is so gigantic, its called Greenbelt but there are FIVE of them. So you have to figure out if you want to go to Greenbelt 1, Greenbelt 4, etc. I cannot even describe how many shops and restaurants they have. It is absolute madness. But of course Brit and I are thrilled to buy shoes for $3. Everything is so cheap here. Also found out you can get an hour massage for $4.

I am going to stop my rambling now (this is Ashlynn by the way) and possibly go find some coffee! (they have STARBUCKS!! and Seattle's Best) Tomorrow we have orientation for Habitat and actually start building Thursday; yippee skippee. So in conclusion we are going to come back super buff and tan!

Mahal namin kayo (We love you),

Team Philippines

Fun Filipino Fact: you do not call it the bathroom, you call it the CR. CR stands for comfort room.

Words of wisdom: "I basically carry a miniature library with me whenever I travel." -John Fay