Korea = The End

Finally, here is the last blog post of my adventures overseas during summer 2009! It certainly took me long enough, but I get to close with our layover dash into Korea, which was oh so much fun!

We did arrive at the way early hour of about 5 am, so we slowly moved through customs (though there was no one else trying to leave at that time....the airport was so empty!) When we made it to the entrace to the airport, we determined that Mrs. Jones would stay behind with all our carry-on lugguage in the most convient spa located on the far end of the terminal, all the way down on the base floor. It was quite the nice hidden jewel, as she got a private room, shower, and access to spa facitilites while us kids went gallivanting off into Seoul.

First off, things are way expensive in Korea! While the airport was located about 1 hour away from the city, it cost us just under $9 each way for bus fare! (In Seattle, we pay only $2.50 each way for the lightrail) And then, on top of it all, we were so tired and all wanted to sleep on the way, but we didn't know when to get off, so Charis kindly stayed awake to poke the rest of us awake when we rolled into town. We had previously talked with a missionary who was currently staying at the place we were in Manila, but who was from Seoul, and he had given us some touristy things to try to see. Mainly he had written out a rough map using landmarks of downtown, but forgot to put which way was north....

When we finally decided that whatever the bus driver called out sounded like the name of the place we were looking for and knowing that we had been on the bus for about an hour (our prescibed time), we jumped off and found the most curious statue - a tall silhoutte of a man with a hammer just like the one outside of the SAM! And to top it all off, Seoul really felt like Seattle to me, so I was almost confused as to where we were....I did notice that every sign was in Korean :)

We wandered around for a while trying to figure out where exactly the giant statue we were looking for was place (one of a man on a horse, in the middle of an intersection, so you'd think it wouldn't be hard to find!) We did see some cool archetecture and the outside of some crazy refolding museum, an art museum, and a history museum all in the same small block area. We just passed by everything, looking very much the tourists. We were also all wearing matching red polo shirts embroidered with the Kids International Ministries logo and a Filipino flag. We definitely stood out!

After about a half hour, we decided to walk up the street a ways to see if we could find that statue. Along the way we meet a nice man, a doorman I think, who not only pointed us in the right direction (we were headed there) but also gave us a tiny origami frog he had made!

We found the statue, and the river walk that we were aiming for next to it in short order, but in the meantime, the boys of our group had found a public pay toilet. It looked like the one down by Pike's in Seattle, but apparently this one cost roughly 10 cents and let you use the facilities for 10 minutes....apparently this was exciting enough that all of them had to try it out....

After that small side detour, we found our way along the river walk and enjoyed the pretty haven right in the middle of the city. It was a very cool set up - the river ran right down the middle of the street, but it was sunk down about 25 feet with large retaining walls and a sidewalk on both sides and small foot bridges occasionally allowing one to pass to the other side of the river. Really, though, it was more like a shallow crick, 15 feet wide and 5 inches deep in parts.

My favorite part of the river walk, however, was when we stopped to take a group picture, posing on some rocks that were stepping stones to the other side of the creek. We had some funny poses, but we heard the strangest laughter from up high. We looked up and found a bunch of Asian people filming and taking photos of us goofing off on the rocks! We just laughed and ignored them, but I was so surprised!

Finally we made our way back down the river walk and headed for the palace we had been told we needed to go see. It is called Gyeongbok Palace and quite the large complex! We showed up right when they were doing a demonstration of the changing of guard during the palace's more active days; it was quite fun to see all the different costumes designating different ranks and parts of the guard. We had been taking with a greeter at the front of the palace before hand, and he showed us one of the better places to see the performance and convinced us to spend the $4 to get into the palace.

To kill some time before the English speaking tour started, we headed over to the free part of the museum that was filled with all the artifacts they had pulled out of the palace, as well as things from previous kings and occupants. It was a good way to start the experience because we went into the tour knowing some of the history (well, as much as you can get in 45 minutes of looking at objects behind glass!) The coolest thing was a replica of the water clock one of the kings commissioned that actually kept accurate time. It was an amazing piece of engineering!

We ended up on the tour eventually and our matching shirts made more than one person inquire about KIM and what our team was doing in the Philippines, which was great! Also on the tour was a couple from Poland (I think??!!) and a young couple. About halfway through the palace tour, Alex realized that he had been through it before, but had started from the back gate, which is why he didn't recognize anything for a while. I must admit, I loved all the color work and intricate details and repeating patterns, but would not have loved to do the job of painting all it! The colors were brilliant bold primary colors that created amazing motifs. Many of the sleeping buildings for the king and queen actually had heated floors, fed by fires that were burned in little doors along the underside outside. We had a great tour guide and were able to see all the best parts of the palace (or so she said :) )!

After the tour we decided to head in the direction Insadong, a touristy area of Seoul that we had been pointed towards. We had asked a couple Koreans where the closest place would be for some good, authentic Korean food, and both pointed us to Insadong. We were able to find a suprisingly cheap ($5 a plate!) place for the most authentic Korean I've ever had. We were glad they had pictures and a few English words on the menu, as we just picked was looked pleasing. And all our choices were great! The metal chopsticks (apparently that's the type they use in Korea) were a bit challenging to manuever and got hot with use in my hot dish, but over a great meal experience. My favorite part of the mean was when the waiter came to give us the bill and it was all in Korean. All of it. The food, prices, total...eventually the waiter typed up a number on a calculator and showed us how much won we owed, and we were able to find a menu and pull prices off it to divvy up who owed what.

After a filling lunch we wandered the street a bit, all getting ice cream along the way, and I picked up two great new teacups and a teaspoon! Fortuantly, Alex and Charis were paying attention to where we had traveled and somehow (I think partially by the grace of God!) we ended up on the right street to pick up the bus we needed to catch to get back to the airport. They glitch in our plan, however, was to figure out how to buy our bus pass. At the airport we had pre-bought tickets at a window, but there was no such place on the side of the street. We went over to a magazine/snack kiosk near the bus stop to try to ask about where to pay, but she spoke absolutely no English. Fortunatly, a man passing down the street overheard our failing conversation and popped in, translated, got an answer for our question and kept moving on his way. Apparently, we just needed to pay when we got on the bus. All was well and we made it back to the airport in plenty of time to make it back to our terminal. In fact, Alex, Chris, and I even got a McDonald's ice cream cone because they were less than 40 cents! So fantastic! I also picked up a bunch of Korean candy for my family because I didn't want to go to the trouble of exchanging the three dollars I had left in won.

Overall, I really enjoyed our time in Seoul and would not mind going back, at least for more than 7 hours!

As you can tell from my other postings, we did eventually make it safely back to Seattle and went our separate ways until school started again. I really enjoyed my experience overseas, both in the Philippines and Korea, and am so blessed I had the chance to see God's work going on there and to get to help out a bit myself. I loved our team and loved getting to see a bit where Charis grew up, especially since I never thought it would actually happen! I hope you have enjoyed following my long and drawn-out adventures and I thank you for your support and prayers while I was journeying!

And I took thousands of photos while I was overseas, so if you want to see any more, email me, call me, text me, facebook me....just get in touch and I can show you some!

I think I will continue to blog a bit, especially since I have an exciting NASA Microgravity experience coming up in April and I'm going back to NASA this summer. We'll see if anything else catches my eye that I feel I need to blog about!

Stranded on the Island...

Okay....so here I am, almost 4 months after returning to the states and I am finally finishing blogging about my Philippines trip. There are two reasons for this: 1) I am sending out thank you letters with links to this blog and I want to finish it for them to read and 2) I am procrastinating on my PChem homework.

The morning after my last blog post, we woke up to the usual rain and wind in Puerto, but it did look like it was not coming down as hard as the previous days, so we were hopeful about our scuba outing. When we scrambled over the rocks and got to the dive shop, we found out that there was a tropical storm headed for the island, and we might not get off it for a few days if we did not leave that morning. While most of us would not protest a few more days of relaxation, we did have one team member who had to catch a flight back to the US on Monday for her job training. We decided that we did need to leave that day, but we were able to work it so that we could still do scuba-ing and snorkling. The dive shop agreed to do only one dive, instead of two, and before we we out, all us kids packed our stuff. This way, Mrs. Jones could gather it all up, check us out of the resort, truck it down to the dock and purchase our tickets back to Manila, all while we were playing in the water.

This plan worked out beautifully, we were dropped off the dive boat at the dock and walked right on to the boat taking us back. All was well - until we got near Manila, that is. All of a sudden, we were pulling up to what looked like a cement retaining wall behind a bunch of houses. This was definitely not Batangas pier. They told us to grab our stuff and get off the boat, herding us all towards a jeepney that would take us away from there. To where, we were not sure. Eventually it was made clear that the driver would take us to a bus station where we could catch a bus back to MegaMall, where it was then just a short FX and trike ride away from home.

You have to understand that the worst part about all of this is how all of us were still in our bathing suits. I at least had shoes on, but Charis was barefoot, and all of us were wet. Cramming all of the boat passengers and our luggage into one jeepney was quite a feat - it was a bit squishy in there - but fortunately no loud music or bright lights during the ride, as the usual jeepney experiance. I don't know how well our battered team would have tolerated that....

On the upside of our unexpected early trip home, we got to go back to one of the megachurches we had visited the first week and fellowship with others, including many of the missionary families we had been introduced to during our stay.

We also got to teach in the school one extra day, which was wonderful. All the kids and teachers were surprised we were back, but let us jump right in to help. Two of my science classes got to look through the microscope that Monday. And yes, there was more blood to be looked at, though this time it was a student who donated hers....

I don't recall if I mentioned this before, but one of the sweetest, most unexpected things the students did for us was make us thank you cards. I have each one and love to remember each student as I reread them. They make me smile - there is one that says, "smile b 4 open!" down the front opening, and many have misspellings ('Olifa' was my favorite), but all reflect their genuine hearts. I am blessed to have known them.

Tuesday was a day I had been waiting for. Divasoria! This is both one of Manila's poorest areas, but also home to the textile market I really wanted to go to. I had been saving all my pesos for this trip! It took us an FX, train, and jeepney ride to get there, which meant that by the end of the trip, we had taken every form of transportation Manila had to offer. The area was very run down - there were multi-story buildings that had been taken over by squatters. It was also very dirty, as there was lots of water in the street and the night market apparently left less-than-pleasant smells for the daytime visitors. At one point in time, we had to jump from pallet to pallet to rock to get across the water in the street to the sidewalk.

We did have a missionary with us who shopped there very frequently, so we did not have to stumble around and try to find everything on our own. Since she shops there so often, she has certain people that she has built a relationship with and will typically buy from. I was introduced to those women and happily bought a few lengths of cloth from each. One woman, her name was Amy, was dressed very professionally for the area and spoke very good english. Probably the best I had heard from a Filipino in Manila. I later found out that she had gone to college in the US and was successfully working on the east coast, when her family called and requested that she come back to the Philippines to help them out by buying and selling cloth in Divasoria. Because of the family-orientated culture of the Filipinos, she came back and since then has sold fabric in the corner of a dark, dirty building.

While I had known that prices were cheap there, I was floored when I found out that cotton fabrics were typically 40-45 pesos, or roughly 80-90 cents per yard. CENTS per YARD! Stuff that was typically 5-10 dollars per yard in the states! So what ensued was what I can only term speed-shopping like I've never done before. For a solid hour and a half, I could buy anything and everything that caught my eye. I bought beautiful summer dress material, Amy Butler fabric for my sister and mother, shantung silk for myself and my youngest sister (for a prom dress), even a most unique dark green wool-cashmere blend suiting from England. I would have paid upwards of $40+ per yard in the states for that last fabric, but I bought 4 yards for $12! In fact, prices were so good that I didn't even get to spend all the money I had saved for this excursion, we had to leave before I could trade all my pesos for fabric. Ah well, I am very excited to make special garments from my fabrics!

The next day, we packed our stuff, said goodbye to the kids, took lots of pictures, and finally drove to the airport. We had a red-eye out of Manila to Seoul, taking off right before midnight. We landed in Seoul around 5 am their time, and after getting our bearings and stowing our carry ons, we were off to the city for a quick adventure.

However, I must get back to my homework, I hear it calling for me...so I will post the last of my summer adventures overseas later, when I can get away from all that I must do as a student.

Puerto Two!

This post continues my narration of our trip to Puerto Galera this last weekend. We did to much to fit it all into one post and still be readable!

Waking up to a rainy morning, we ate an early breakfast, and we put on our hiking shoes to finally meet the women who made all the bracelets we sold. The resort we were staying at, Tamaraw Beach, was just a short jaunt to the village by way of a nicely paved road. Uncle Alex, our guide and the man behind Threads of Hope, was recognized and greeted by almost everyone we passed on the way there. He travels to Puerto about twice a month to pick up orders of 20,000+ bracelets. When we arrived at the actual community, we came upon their huge community center/church building that was still in process. It had a floor and a bball court, but no real walls yet. All the women who were expecting to get paid that day were gathered in the building, and we were introduced to them. 

Shortly after being introduced to them, we traveled up a steep, muddy and narrow path to Alona's house. Alona is the woman Uncle Al and Aunt Chris met when on vacation in Puerto and who inspired the ministry of  Threads of Hope. Alona now takes all the orders from Uncle Al and distributes them to the women who make bracelets. Not all women who want to make bracelets for Threads of Hope are able to, as Uncle Al can only buy so many per month. So, Alona makes sure that the women in the community who need money the most get larger orders, and then when women complete orders they bring the bracelets back up to her and drop them off for Uncle Al to pick up. When we traveled up to her house, we were picking up the bracelets that were being bought today. 

As we were reviewing the bracelets and beginning to pack them all up in order to cart them back down the mountain, Alona surprised us by giving our team a bundle of bracelets that she said were a gift to us from the community. She had collected some from each of the women and then gave them to us. There were roughly 100 bracelets, including some flat style bracelets with 'Puerto Galera' written in them, as well as some with beads. We were all incredibly blessed by their generosity.

Walking down the mountain, we arrived back in the ministry center and Uncle Al began to dole out money. It was a very interesting process to watch: At a round table, Uncle Al would sit in the center, with Pastor Al's wife on one side and Alona on the other. Each of the women had record books, and Uncle Al had the money. When each women's name was called, she came up to the table, and Alona said how many bracelets she had made (+dollars) and Pastor Al's wife said how much thread they had received (-dollars) and the left over amount is how much the bracelet maker was finally paid. All in all, the whole process took about 3+ hours for all the women to be paid. 

During the time Uncle Al was buying bracelets, we were meeting and talking with all the women. They all had very diverse and interesting stories, however the overriding theme was one of poverty and struggling to make enough to send their kids to school. One woman had a son in Engineering school (a 5 year program) and another entering a different school as a freshman, and one more who is a senior this year. The senior might have to take a gap year or two in order for the family to afford to send them to school. 

After talking for a while and noticing that the rain had lessened/stopped, we asked if we could help them out by painted part of the bball court upstairs. We had thought that we would just be painting things like lines on the cement court, but no - we literally painted the court floor. They had this white rubbery type of paint that needed to cover the whole court. But, in order to lay down paint, we first needed to sand the cement floor to smooth it over. So, half the team was down on their hands and knees sanding, and the other half was rolling the floor in paint. We applied 3 gallons in 2 hours and covered about a fourth of the court. 

Then, we headed back to the resort, then traveled over to White Beach (a 15min walk) for lunch and a little beachside shopping. Apparently since it is off-season, there were not so many shops and restaurants open, and the one we ate at only had about half the foods that were listed on their menu. 

But the shopping was cheap and fun, I purchased a sundress, some earrings and a gift for my sis there, and all in all spent less than $12. We wandered back to Tamaraw beach, and went for another swim in the ocean, minus the rain this time! We seem to swim in the rain quite frequently around here...

Dinner this night was a fancier affair, as we went next door to a higher-end resort that had excellent food. I might have ordered the fillet mignon... It was a fun experiance and we took lots of photos that evening. It was wonderful to sit outside, where it was warm, yet there was a breeze from the ocean, watching the night fishermen travel out to the water. I also tried a bite of grilled squid at dinner, which kind of tasted like the grizzle on a piece of beef. 

I must admit, one food I am really ready to go home for is potatoes. I miss my potatoes and do believe that it would take a bit of time to get used to eating rice all the time. And yes, we have rice almost every meal, though I've only been served it twice for breakfast. 

Sleep came easily, and we went to bed praying that the next day would dawn calm and sunny, as we were to go snorkeling and scuba diving! However, there were more adventures in store that all began when we got up the next morning....

But that's tomorrow's story!

Puerto, Day One

The last few days have been super fun and super full with lots of changing schedules. I think over the course of our stay in Puerto Galera, we only kept to the orginal plan for half a day...

Day one (Thursday) we left really early in the morning, at 5:15am, to catch a ride to the bus station. Once at the bus station, (after a 45min drive) we hopped on a charter-type bus, which was super cold because of the air conditioning. We drove on that bus for a good 3 hours before arriving at Batangas, which was the pier from which we would catch a banca boat to Puerto Galera. The waves were quite choppy and the boat was moving up and down rapidly and catching a lot of wave. It was not a confidence-inspiring picture, to say the least. When our boat was finally called for boarding, we loaded up and started off. It was okay at the beginning, but got rougher out on the open sea. Sometimes, if the waves were too high, the engine would get cut so we could ride the wave out more gently. Banca boats are about the only form of water transport in the area, as ferries do not go to the island any more, and sailboats are owned privately. After about 1.5 hrs on the rough sea, we finally made it to our port. Then, after a short trip by car over to the resort, we finally checked into our bungalows. 

The bungalows were fantastic. About the 2/3 the length and width of my dorm room last year, our little room held a small armoire, two twin beds, a table and two chairs in the corner underneath a wall-mounted TV. Through the door on the other side of the room was our little CR (that is Filipino for 'bathroom', and it stands for 'Comfort Room'), which had a sink in the middle, toilet on the right, and a shower head on the left. There was definitely no shower curtain, or shower lip, the water and sand just ran down to the corner where the drain was. Effective, but a little strange. About 50ft outside our front porch splashed the ocean on the beach, and halfway there was a bahay kubo (a little hut thing where we can sit) that we used quite frequently.

Also on-site is a relatively inexpensive restaurant where we lunched. I ate garlic rice and fried chicken. Most everyone had mango shakes, except for me, as they are a speciality of the beach (and the Philippines in general). I don't really like mango. After lunch, we all jumped into the ocean and went swimming. And it was raining. It rained almost the whole weekend, but as it was still warm outside and the water was super warm, we didn't mind. Never have I swum so much in the rain as I have here in the last week. After splashing in the waves, half the group walked the beach over to White Beach, which was just 10 minutes away. The other half of us stayed a played a game of scrabble (Alex won, Chris lost, and I was somewhere in the middle) until dinner. 

Dinner was a wonderful affair. Apparently, you can get either Italian or Filipino food on the beach, and there is one particular Italian restaurant on the very end of the beach that has excellent food. It is literally the last building on this stretch of beach, right before the bend where the beach runs out. We had delicious pastas and pizzas, the helpings were huge, and they were in no rush to see us off, so we sat and chatted for a decent couple of hours. It was a 20+ minute walk from where we were staying, and we were in no hurry to get back. Quite a memorable meal.

Also note: they don't apparently serve much ice cream in these parts, as when one orders a chocolate shake (for $4!) all you get is blended ice and chocolate powder or sauce, depending on where you order it from. Not to great if you ask me. I was really craving some ice cream, and fortunately in the mall where we catch public transport home, there is a DQ where I have gotten a Blizzard or two...

And after a short team meeting, we ended our evening early, needing a good night's rest for day two, which would include painting a basketball court and meeting all the women who make the bracelets that our team sold these past months. 

Here are some pictures of the day:

Back Early...

Due to and impending storm, we traveled back to Manila today at the last minute from Puerto Galera. Literally we got the last boat back of the day, and then it didn't even take us all the way to where we wanted to go. But more on that story tomorrow, when I have enough sleep in me to write cohesively. Tonight, I am just going to shower and get all the saltwater and sweat off from the day and hit the sack, as they say. 

To tide (no pun intended) you over and whet your appetite, here are some pictures from the trip: 

Offline Again...on a Beach

We are off to another adventure where there is no internet connectivity, so this will be my last post until Sunday evening, or Monday, it depends on how awake I feel after hours of traveling...

This time, however, we are headed to Puerto Galera (or something spelled like that) and will be meeting the women of Threads of Hope! Thanks to everyone who supported that ministry by buying bracelets from us - we'll still have some when we come back if you want more... We'll be both serving and relaxing on the beach, and I'll be snorkeling for the first time! I can't wait and I promise there will be lots of pics when I get back! 

I'll leave you tonight with pictures of my classes that I helped teach this past week and a half at Cuatro Christian School, they are great kids!

400 Paso?

Monday was a day off for the team from working, partially because it was a national holiday and the school we help with was closed for the day. Probably the best part of the day was getting to finally have time to skype with my family and Kali at a decent hour of the day in both time zones. 

We took public transportation all day and that was kinda fun, but also very different from Seattle Metro: the first part of our trip we took trike-like bikes, but these were all pedal pushed by the driver on a bike, and there was only a colorful table umbrella for cover, not the little seater thing. Not all drivers pedal equally as fast, and Alex and Chris' guy was by far the fastest. 

Next we hopped on a ginormous bus that looked like one of the greyhound buses, but inside the seats were squishier and all vinyl covered. We watched a Filipino talk show in Tagalag along the way. We took FXs the rest of the trip, so those were the only real new experiences of the day.

Where did we go? We went to a place called Greenhills, which is like an indoor flea market/swap meet where you can bargain with prices. And the majority of booths were comprised of pearl sellers, embroidery/pashmina sellers, woodcraft sellers, and fake designer bags/watches sellers. It was amazing to see everything, and to see how close each booth was to another. And all the pearls were beautiful! You could buy just strands of pearls, necklaces, bracelets, rings, earrings, and in white, black, or a variety of colors. I bought a few gifts here, but spent relatively little in US dollars because I had a master bargainer, Mrs. Jones, at my side who helped me out. 

Megamall was next, via FX, and we were going there to eat at this restaurant that supposedly had things like balut, crickets, and frog legs, but when we got there, none of that was on the menu! So, we decided to go to a Chinese noodle house, but a different on from last time. My beef and rice came in a bowl that was sort of slanted in shape, and I want some for our house to eat from. Dessert was found elsewhere: I was really craving ice cream, and we had seen a DQ in the mall earlier, but to our dismay, it was not listed on the directory map, so I had to settle for a mama bear sized Arctic Freeze from a place called 'Spike's'. It was still good, but man I was missing the M&M DQ Blizzard. 

By this time it was already 4pm, so we headed back to the guesthouse in Cuatro, ate a super fast dinner and went to help out with devotions and put the orphange kids in bed. Charis, Sarah, Michael and Mrs. Jones snuck off to get manicures, pedicures, and massages for cheap down the street a ways, and Chris, Alex, and I finished off the night with a little bit of Fantasy Football and picture uploading. Which reminds me, here are some pictures of our day: