Friday, November 30th was Bonifacio Day (day to celebrate the birth of Andres Bonifacio), so that meant VACATION time for the family.  We booked a trip to Cebu through Fly Seair and stayed at the Shangri-La in the Ocean’s Wing.  And then we flew back “home” to Manila on Sunday.  It was a quick trip, but nice to get away and be together as a family enjoying the beauty of the island.

Ready to go to the beach on the last day of November!

Building sandcastles and playing in the ocean

Kalani got buried

Mini golf with each hole representing some part of the Philippines…Mason loved this

Mason found the swings

Matt found a hammock

Matt and the kids under the waterfall at the “Main Pool”

Kalani at the kids water park area

Boys at the pool. Mason LOVED going down the slide in the background.

We had dinner at watched a “cultural show” and then had our picture taken with the performers. It wasn’t as good as the Polynesian Cultural Center in Hawaii, but still enjoyable.

The kids had to share the pull out bed…our kids are spoiled in that this was the first time that they HAD to share the bed with each other.

We finally went paragliding…we tried a couple of year ago in the Carribbean, but the weather didn’t permit

Up, up, and away!

It’s more fun in the Philippines!

More photos of Cebu vacation

Kalani went to a “real” school for the first time last week.  We have been homeschooling her for the past 3 years, but with our move to the Philippines we decided to enroll her in the International School of Manila or ISM as it is referred.  So far things have worked out well.  This “night owl” daughter of ours that stays up until midnight in the states and doesn’t wake up until 9am, is now waking up before 6am and starting school by 7:30am!

We started the enrollment process in August since there is a limited amount of space available.  The class sizes are about 23 students.  In the 3rd grade, there are 6 classes.  Kalani didn’t start school right when we arrived since the school was on a week long holiday.  Then she needed to take an assessment test and have an interview with the elementary counselor.  The assessment test was done on a computer, and I was told it would take 90 minutes to complete.  Kalani finished it is 45 minutes and I was told she did well  (not sure what her score was, but it doesn’t really matter).  She took the test one day, interview the following day, then gave the teacher a full day to prepare for a new student and finally she had her first day of school on Friday, November 9, 2012

Elementary School playground/courtyard

She wears some kind of uniform everyday for school…it is nice not to fight over what she wears.  There are some options.  There is a PE uniform that she has to wear on the 3 days that she has PE. (and she could wear the PE uniform everyday if she wanted to AND if we let her)  Then she can choose from 4 different color polo shirts, and shorts, capris or skorts to wear.

Happy and ready for the first day of school

On the first day of school she woke up at 5:30am and ate breakfast at 6am.  (we are still living in the serviced apartments and breakfast starts at 6am)  Traffic is bad in Manila.  The school is only 3 miles away from where we are staying.  But, because of traffic it takes anywhere from 20 minutes to 45 minutes to get to her school.  So we leave at 6:30-6:45am to make sure she is at school by 7:30am.  I was so happy to pick her up at 2:20pm and to see a big smile on her face!

Big smile after her first day of school

Kalani asked me if I was going to homeschool her again when we return to the states.  I said that I would like to continue to homeschool her if that is what she wanted.  She said, “yes” that she wanted to be homeschooled again when we returned.  I said that was fine, and then followed up by asking if she was happy to be attending ISM.  She said yes, that she is enjoying herself by going to school.  Then I asked if she wanted to homeschool because she gets to sleep in…again she said yes!

Matt has great co-workers that tell him about places to go and things to try.  He has a co-worker in California who married a Filipina, so they return to the Philippines often and recommended a resort owned by his brother in-law called Eagle Point.  With it being the “All Saints Day” holiday, we decided to take a day trip to that resort.  The drive was about 1.5 hours away, and being from Texas we are use to having to drive to get anywhere!

Because it was a holiday we wanted to treat our household help, so we took them along for a “vacation” type of day and to also help with the kids so Matt and I could enjoy ourselves as well.  (They had the actual holiday off on Thursday, but the day after they came to work…think of it as Thanksgiving day as the holiday, and then Black Friday was the day that we took our day trip)

Something we were not aware of was the tolls on the road.  It was a lot like traveling in Europe where we kept having to stop on the freeway to pay tolls.  We paid about $8 each way just in tolls.

Day trip to Eagle Point from Makati, Manila = 100 minutes drive with no traffic one way.

Loading up in the “shuttle” to take us from the parking lot to the resort

Kalani helping her dad out with sunscreen so he won’t get burn.

Matt trying to get Kalani to snorkel in the pool with the black tip sharks…she didn’t want to do that.

Matt did get Kalani to snorkel with him out in the ocean.

Mason also tried snorkeling in the ocean with his mom.

The resort is called “Eagle Point” and they had about 6 “Filipino Eagles” there and a few other birds as well in their aviary.

The kids (and adults) really enjoyed this slide

Since we spent the day at the resort, we ate at their lunch buffet.  It was pretty good food with a decent selection and reasonably priced.  We spent around $65 for 5 adults and 2 children to swim, snorkel and eat lunch.  We will most likely return to this resort again and probably stay the night so we don’t have to be in the car for 3-5 hours in one day.

When Matt and I came on a house hunting trip to the Philippines in September, we were told about The Mind Museum.  I love taking the kids to museums and letting them learn while having fun.  So, we spent a couple of hours there and had Kalani bring along a friend she met at church.

Learning about static electricity

Crazy mom hair!

Kalani inside a large bubble

Mason making a bubble “just like his sister”

The museum wasn’t super cheap, but it was a needed activity for our family.  You can only do the same things a number of times at the temporary housing before you get stir crazy.  It was also a bit upsetting that we paid $11-$15 person and could only be there during a certain 3 hour time frame.  But, the museum was pretty cool and there were things that we didn’t get around to seeing or doing.  I’m sure that we will attend again before we leave the country.

We have now been in the Philippines as a family for a week!  With traveling there are the pros and cons, so here is my attempt capture our first week of the good and bad.

CONS:

-Living in temporary housing.  This isn’t that bad since they are serviced apartments with a yummy breakfast buffet, nice fitness center, 2 pools and hot tub.  But, it does mean that we have to move again in a few weeks once our furniture arrives.

-Not having our things.  We traveled with 6 suitcases and 3 carry-ons…I guess we could have brought 2 more suitcases, but really we didn’t have room in the cars for more suitcases and I didn’t want to try to maneuver more suitcases either.

-Arriving on a Holiday Week.  The International school was out for the whole week, so Kalani wasn’t able to start school and make friends right away.  Many people were  gone from church traveling and stores were closed for “All Saint’s Day” as well.

 -Jet-lag.  I was told that it takes about one day for every hour difference from your “host” country to over come jet-lag.  And that seems to be the case since everyone tells us that it took them about 2 weeks to overcome their jet-lag. (The Philippines is 13 hours ahead of Texas during day-light savings)

PROS:

-Having our driver on-call 24/7. We got picked up from the airport  by our driver in a new Toyota Fortuner.   It is a company policy for us NOT to drive in the country.  And really we don’t want to drive here since we would most likely be in an accident or cause accidents daily if we did drive.

-Having “Help”.  We hired the help from the family we replaced and they are FABULOUS!  We have a maid/cook and nanny. I came to the realization yesterday that they are another Tia, and I am getting use to it quickly.

-Church Members.  I think that if you want to travel and/or live overseas you should be Mormon since there are members all over the world and you automatically become included into the local network of Mormons at the new location.  Our branch here has nearly 200 members with 98% active!  We have also been invited over for dinner 3 (edit: make that 4!) times during our first week.  A thoughtful co-worker also invited us to lunch and a movie on Saturday.

-New Adventures.  We love to get out and try new things.

-Friendliness of locals.  Super nice and friendly people everywhere we go.

-Spending time together as a family.

Highlights of the week:

Halloween party for the kids at our temporary serviced  apartments

Mason found a dinosaur at the Mind Museum

Kids rode on these animals in the mall…kind of like bumper cars

We dropped the kids off at a play place for an hour where there were toys, slides, computers, etc

Snorkeling with black tip sharks

We are looking forward to more adventures during the next 2-3 years while we live here.  And REALLY looking forward to having our furniture and belongings with us so it will feel more like home.  And REALLY REALLY looking forward to friends and family visiting us!