IndoIan: Manila Random

Here is Emmerson after being debraided. We finally got Ada's out and she refused to go with the lion look at all - showered immediately. I think Emmerson went one day with it - mainly due to her aversion to showers. Bagels and instant Udon - hows that for fusion cuisine.

I forgot to mention a harrowing event that took place while Alicia was in Singapore. It just so happened to be a particularly busy week with me involving lots of after school things and evening things and the girls had to tag along. Wednesday I am playing/learning "touch rugby". The staff plays against the ISM girls team for practice. I am not going to go into the specifics of "touch" but it is quite involved and I do not havea clue but at least it is a run around. My girls loved the large open space that makes up the high school track and field and one of my Australian girl students took them under her wing and ran around with them - good times and thanks Tayla. Unfortunately "touch" ends in peak traffic time. I haven't left this late in a while and was not expecting what I got into. I went the "river road" route and once I got up against the traffic pile did not move for 20 minutes. Even more unfortunate was that my gas tank light had been on E since the previous day. I turned off the car but realized this was not a good situation. So I actually backtracked back to the area around school as it is more developed than the river road area and figured it would be a better place to run out of gas. After getting back to the Fort (area around school), I drove around trying to get to the gas station that was also, unfortunately, on the opposite side of the street than I was on and blocked by about an hours worth of traffic. So I tried going back roads to try and access the station from another way. After about 1/2 hour of driving - keep in mind - all of this driving has been in about a mile square area- I got to the station. The girls stopped crying, I stopped all the things I was doing, and we relaxed. To celebrate, we parked and walked across the street to KFC, which was too crowded but McD was conveniently located right next store. We waited out the worst of the traffic and enjoyed a happy meal to celebrate our happy state - well that was the plan but they did not have any toys left for the happy meal which made me not happy ... anyway. We waited it out in the oasis that McDonalds - for all its down points - can certainly be to a dad stuck in Manila traffic with no gas and two really hungry and freaked out kids. Thank you Ronald, thank you.

Don't want to blow this picture up as it might frighten but this is Dolce, our 50 something year old yaya's reading selection. She arrives at our house around 4:30 am and I am pretty sure and hope, that she takes a break during the day - relaxes, has a nap and reads "Bolang Apoy"!

This is what Tagalog looks like.

Countries of ISM students.

Enjoying some Frozen yogurt and Christmas creche ducky. Llamas in the back - not sure how they got to the manger from Peru but hey Jesus worked some serious miracles.