This past weekend Robbie and I joined Matt at CR’s “2012 Year End Party”.  In the Philippines things are done a little differently, and it really is “More Fun In The Philippines!”  All employees of the CR Manila Shared Service Center, know as MSSC, were invited to attend (which means 1,000+ people were there).  They rented out a huge convention type room at the Manila Hotel (former residence of General MacArthur) and we were there from 4:30pm – 12:30am!

The winner of a year long competition was announced between Finance, IT, HR & Downstream at the Year End Celebration

A ginger bread house inside the Manila Hotel lobby…yes real ginger bread and candy. It smelt good enough to eat, and Robbie was hungry!

“Jack Frost” met us at the door

The theme of the party “Mystique Madness”

Before the party really got started, CR MSSC employees were playing live music. Apparently they have a CR “club” for music/band in the Philippines

CR Manila’s “GLEE” club performed

CR MSSC dance club also performed

There were about a dozen caricature artists onsite…a little souvenir of the night.  (Tia and Robbie)

Fortune Tellers were also available

Photo booth souvenirs from the evening.

Filipino magician Jeffrey Tam (who won “Close-up Magic 2 years in a row) performed for us and was a judge of the End of Year Performances

Matt was on the “Yellow Team” (I.T.) participating in their performance

Yellow Team was the “First Runner Up” for the year long competition and got 2nd place on their performance in the points department. They did WIN “Best Mystique Story” and “Best Performance of the Night”

There was a live (CR employee) DJ who had some great music playing after the performances and awards

Matt and Robbie held their own on the dance floor

We all had a really fun evening

For those who care to watch Matt’s performance here is a link…WARNING: It is 20 minutes long; Matt has 3 separate parts, one in the beginning, middle, and end.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08TaR13V4vE

More photos of MSSC Christmas party here.

My brother is visiting us and we want to make sure we keep him busy while he is here!  So, today I took him to Rizal Park with Mason.  This park was named after Jose Rizal, a Filipino martyr.

Monument of Jose Rizal with guards on duty.

Information about Jose Rizal posted at the park

Front of the Jose Rizal “garden” area…Mason just woke up

Robbie about to be executed like Jose Rizal

Tia just got shot!

Entrance of the Chinese Garden at Rizal Park

Mason inside the Chinese Garden

Statue of Confucius in the Chinese Garden…I tried to tell Mason it was Sensei Wu from Ninjago, but he didn’t believe me

More photos of Rizal Park here.

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.

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!