Saturday, August 7, 2010

I am officially in Manila, Philippines! The first few days have been incredible. I woke up to a note under my pillow from a little boy on my first morning here and he follows me everywhere. The Children are so sweet sometimes it is hard to believe some of the backgrounds that they come from. It is definitely culture shock but I am adjusting just fine, I hope. Jet lag has not been that bad...
This week, I have been adjusting to the time change so I have been hanging around another missionary who is moving here whose name is Brittany. She has been wonderful! There has been so much that has gone on in only a few days it hard to tell everything! I will try though!
Lets see. I am helping a little boy named Franz who is nine with Spanish, he is moving to Spain with his adoptive family in a few weeks. Teaching someone a second language that I barely know is challenging enough while in the trying to learn a third! I have to say I am enjoying it though! I am sharing a room with Brittany and another girl named Jovilyn. Jovilyn is really sweet but really quiet.
My first night at Gentle hands the pipe in our bathroom was broken. So we had to use another bathroom to take showers and whatnot on the same floor to avoid flooding.
The next day Ate cher hired a "plumber" to fix our bathroom. Well, I don't know how much of plumber he was considering he flooded our bathroom twice and our bedroom once. He left the pipe on the first time and it flooded the bathroom only. I thought that was bad, not as bad as the second time around though. After dinner Brittany came running up the stairs yelling "Our room is flooded!" I ran down stairs to the second floor to see, and, well sure enough it was flooded. We had to move everything on the floor into the big room next to us. which was not a lot and the water got picked up very quick! They all grabbed buckets, towels, and dust pans and scooped the water up and put it in a bucket and dumped it. They refused to let me help. The next day two of the boys at Gentle hands came in and did what the plumber should have done and fixed it! A big thanks to them!
Apart from this the days have been pretty normal. When you go down stairs to the first floor you get mobbed by several little kids, I love it! I took three boys to get haircuts on my first day which was a very interesting experience. The barber did not know English and someone I did not know had to translate. Like I said interesting. I played hide and go seek and Sardines one day which was so much fun! Franz hid in a spot that we could not find him in. He had to jump out at us! I am convinced he picks the best hiding spots. I am enjoying getting to know the kids and playing with them. I'm learning a lot about their personalities and their dispositions.
Today, August 7th, some of us went to Malabon which is like a community or a neighborhood in manila. It is a little bigger than a neighborhood or a community but I forgot the word for it. We did not do a program which is what they normally do, instead we passed out food to the children. There was a fire behind Malabon and we were afraid of getting mobbed by people staying in the vicinity that had lost their homes. This didn't happen though. Oh! The new building that the builders started a couple of weeks, ago is already getting cement put on the second floor! It has been crazy!!
There is so much more that I will be learning while I am here and I can not wait to see what God is going to do while during this time! Everything has happened so fast and I have prayed for this for so long. There will be more blog posts to come and more interesting stories! Atleast, I hope you find them interesting :)

Thank you for all your prayers!
Lacey

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