Day 7

G'day Folks, it's Kait and Caylee here!

Whats happening in the land down under? How is the weather and what's the latest news?

Wanna hear what we got up to today???
It started off with the sweet and delicious smell of fresh hot pancakes and juicy mangos. Jealous much? Today was to be a regular day of rotations between the two building sites, the children's home and food distribution. Our group (consisting of ourselves, Hanna, Luke LB, Mrs Nicholas and Mr Mac) headed off to the building site to mix cement and sift sand - OBVIOUSLY our most favouritest activities EVER! We realise that that may sound sarcastic, but we honestly do love giving the Filippino workers, Randy and Arnold a hand. Watch out we're gonna be muscle machines when were back!! It was a bit of an eye opener though for we were talking to Randy, asking him about how much he worked at the different building sites. He explained to us that he works everyday, even weekends. :O He also told us that he had been doing this for 10 years now. We learnt that without higher education, like university, Randy will never get the opportunity to earn more money for his growing family - which we found extremely devastating.

Today is a very special day for one of the orphanage girls. ITS IRA'S BIRTHDAY!!! she turned 11 years old and to celebrate the orphanage put on a birthday party for her. It was our group's turn to head to the children's home (lucky us!!!) as we got to join in the birthday celebrations. Never did we imagine that a series of interesting events were about to unfold..

So you see, here in the Philippines they have a very popular chain restraunt called Jollibee. It is like the equivelant of our Maccas. Like our Ronald McDonald Jollibee also has a mascott. It's pretty much a big happy bumble bee. As the kids were finishing their meal, out jumped, much to our delight, JOLLIBEE :D
We frantically pushed the small children aside to get our time with the super cool and cuddly bumble bee. There were masses of children everywhere and we could see that it wasn't going to be an easy mission. Tactfully we each picked up a child and holding them above our heads we surged through the growing crowd, dodging grasping hands and using our recently learnt jungle survival skills. It was tough work, but we made it..... just. Up close he was just as awesome and totally squidgie as we imagined *sigh*
As we made it to the front, Jollibee glanced across and something caught his eye. He smoothly made his way over and grabed Caylee by the hand and swooped her onto the dance floor. The two lovebirds (or lovebees?) danced the morning away bee style. But wait! It gets better!! As Jollibee was swinging Caylee around he fell onto his knees and looked up lovingly at the smiling, yet confused and overwhelmed face of Caylee. He was proposing!!! The whole crazy yet romantic shinanigan ended with free fast food for all the hungry tummies and us to head back to the ministry centre for our lunch.

Meanwhile, two other groups had headed out for a food distribution. Through awesome team skills and comunication we heard that this session had been a raging success involving inflatable balloons for the children, mounds and mounds of high protein and carbohydrate stew for everyone, the singing of lyrics and a game about my little pony.. (you may have to ask Pistol Pete about that last one). Of the distributions performed thus far, all groups have done well to handle the situations presented before them and the balloon animals have been ever so popular with the kiddies.

After our break it was on to our third rotation for the day... and it was the children's home again! We excitedly rushed up the hill to the big blue gates of the orphanage desperately seeking the friendly face of Caylee's new fiance. Much to our dismay, he had gone :( Even so, we were just as excited to have an evening with the kids. We have all fallen in love with every single child so much so that we all get very excited when it's our turn to spend time with them.

Construction was our last activity for the day. This particular session consisted of transporting buckets of sand to the top story of the childrens library...by hand.. up four flights of steps! It's incredible what we take for granted in Australia. Our builders have luxuries such as wheel barrows and cement mixers. Here, everything has to be done manually. For example we have to sift the sand before we mix it with the cement. This sand then has to be transported in buckets or bags to its intended site. We then, with shovels, start turning the mixture over and over again until its consistant, adding more water as we go. It's hard work but as we said, we will all return fit and toned. BOOYEAH! Also, Hanna incured a bit of an injury catching a falling bucket and consequently had a booboo :( Practitioner Pete patched it up so its all nice and dandy now.

We had an early dinner of ENCHILADAS! which were extremely tasteful and satisfying. We skipped our way back up to the Children's home to have devotions, sing a few songs and settle the kids down for bed. Despite their hard day of partying they were just as insanely energetic and lively as usual. :)

Then it was time for our secret night activity!!! We were given a strict instruction to wear bathers and pack a towel - our guessing of the outing quickly became narrowed down to a few options. Swimming... or swimming? We all jumped into our allocated automobiles and headed towards our unknown destination. ALAS WE WERE RIGHT! We were swimming indeed... at the Manila Resort! This place was home to a giant wave pool and water slide. We all had so much fun, nearly drowining from laughing. All attempted surfing but a major hit was the water slide. This was purely because we had to try lots of different ways of actually sliding down it. Most resulted in various superman glides.

Back at the ministry centre we gratefully gobbled down the leftovers from our previous meals which had been prepared by our lovely kitchen ladies. Kudos to them. Debriefing and devotions was a quick occassion for everyone was rather sleepy from our long day.

So here we are, sitting recounting the events of this awesome day, and we are both just blown away with the experiences we have all shared. We are all having the time of our lives and we all appreciate your thougths and prayers! Your support has been amazing! Keep those comments rolling for we all love to hear from you!

Catch ya later!!
Love Caylee and Kait
xxx



PS: Hi to Jeanette, Bev and Cindy. Hope all is going well, miss you guys!! Love from Nat and Kaity xxx