Mother and Son Make The World Their Classroom for a School Year: February 18, 2015 (San Juan, Rosales, Manila, Phillipines)

It was nice to wake up to the beach. Everyone went out surfing early and I enjoyed sitting on the sand with Amber watching everyone surf. The water was probably around 80 degrees and very clean and clear. Apparently this beach in San Juan is well known for surfing and there were almost 80 people out surfing at one point. There were many surf schools out with first timers, perfect with the small consistent waves this beach had. Allie, Riley, Klane and Sam caught tons of waves and were out for almost an hour and a half before we needed to pack up and hit the road, because we had a long day of driving ahead of us. They said an hour and 15 mins, which always translates into nearly double- which was right. It took us almost 3 hours to get to Rosales. This was also one of Riley’s mission areas and he had organized for us to ride a trike- a motorcycle with an attached side car for passengers, and a Kaliglig, kind of like a tractor that can take you out into the rice paddies.

Our first stop in Rosales was his old apartment. It was back on a fairly quiet backroad but with dozens of Roosters which are used for cockfights. Riley said a couple nights a week the neighbor would host cockfights where the Roosters fight to the death in his backyard- local entertainment. The roosters were so loud, it would be hard to live with the constant ring of Cockadoodledoo in the background! We then made our way to 3 friends of Riley’s that lived in the ward and that he was close to. Two twin brothers were dance instructors and masters at cross stitch. Their house was filled with elaborate patterned cross stitch work. They had a nice home with a fairly large piece of property and their friend did laundry for a living and there was laundry hanging everywhere. Interesting they are all leaving shortly for Qatar where they have a contract to live and work at a new hotel there. It is actually interesting. This country’s greatest export is their people. Millions live out of the country and work and send money back to the country to support family there. It is the only way to get ahead. It actually makes me very sad that their country hasn’t developed enough tourism, which it seems like it could as much as any other country in South East Asia to keep their people here for work.

A friend picked us up on a Kaliglig- sp? It is like a tractor engine without the rest of the body and then you can either ride it alone or they had a trailer attached where we could all sit down in the back and we went for a tour of town and into the rice paddies. We were on a quest for a water buffalo for Riley to ride. That was something on his wish list. Water Buffalo are used in the fields and sometimes are riden and he thought that is what he wanted to do until we got near the first one and the bull reared his head at us and had horns as long as a Long Horn from Texas! Riley jumped back and said let’s find another one. We finally found one that seemed pretty mellow that was in the canal that runs along the ride paddies and as Riley was considering it the bull sat down in the river- that would have been hilarious! We also stopped at a friend’s house that had a trike- motorcycle with a side car. I took it out first with Klane and Amber as my passengers. It was super wobbly and would be really hard to drive full speed all the time. We were like a novelty riding through the streets taking turns doing laps on the trike- lots of kids starting gathering and watching. They thought it was so funny to see white people driving them around. After our playing with the trike we took the whole group to McDonalds. I am not going to lie, McDonalds never tasted so good and topped the day off with a sundae- haven’t had one of those in years.

I was back at the wheel for our final stretch back into Manila. Again they said it would take 2 hours,…four and a half hours later we arrived at our hotel. Probably 2 hours to get to Manila and then 2.5hours in traffic to get through the streets and they were packed with people in some areas- which maybe was tied to a Chinese New Year Eve celebration. The traffic is everyone goes at once and do whatever you need to do to keep moving forward.It keeps one engaged.

Back at the hotel, you could tell they were happy to see we arrived safely and as we pulled around the lobby entrance I tooted the horn and they all smiled and laughed :)