Santa Claus is Coming!

This year (for the first time in AGES - more than I can actually recall...) Santa Claus is visiting our house! Nigel and I debated for a little while whether Santa was in fact going to come. (We thought perhaps he "might not know our address, since we've moved so much...") But in the end, we decided he may as well come. And it's so exciting.


I made some stockings especially to hang up for him to fill. (Seemed odd, when we don't WEAR stockings and we certainly have no fireplace to hang them over. I'm sure originally the tradition came from the family's washing hanging to dry in the middle of winter...) Nevertheless, Emily helped me a little bit with the sewing and she says "I think Santa will like these stockings!"



So we hung them up, and she wanted hers at the top. Fine, only then she was worried: "What if Santa can't reach my stocking?" So she decided to put a stool next to them, just in case. And she wrote a note. It reads "Dear Santa, if you can't reach my stocking, here's a stool." We left some cookies for him, too. I wonder what will be inside the stockings when we wake up tomorrow morning!

Otherwise, the day holds our very first "nuclear-family only" Christmas. We have not gone home for Christmas this year, and no one is here with us. But we've had a great time preparing for it. Here's our tree. (A darn sight grander than the little one-foot white jobbie that we've had for the last 5 years!). Every single decoration on the tree (apart from the electric lights) has been hand made.

If you look closely, you'll find paper chains of different colours, a few pop corn chains, one chain of painted elbow macaroni, a gingerbread man made by Emily at school, a gold-coloured pasta star made by Emily last year at school, a couple of 'furry stars' made by the girls after opening a present early that had lots of plastic 'fluff' and a funny cone-shaped thing at the top which I think was supposed to be a tree, but we decided it would look good at the top.

There are a few other one-offs, but mostly we really enjoyed making the tree decorations together. And decorating the tree several times (especially after Tessa managed to get at the tree in her walker!)

As a family, we also designed a menu together for the day, and have bought all the ingredients we need to make our 3 meals. There are some great favourites in there, like breakfast pancakes (Dad's domain), self-saucing chocolate pudding for the desert at lunch, and pupmkin soup with home-made German Zopf (bread) for dinner to go with our lunch leftovers. Emily and Zoe took great care putting our "menu" on the fridge, so we wouldn't forget.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Christmas Productions

The Silly Season is almost over here. It started back in September, which marks the beginning of the “-ber” months. The “-ber” months are the Christmas months here. So even before Halloween, some shops had started decorating with red and green. The twelve days of Christmas are taken quite literally here, too. Everywhere I go, I’m being wished a Merry Christmas. And our local village square is holding sunrise Masses each morning from the 16th till the 25th. So much for our School Holiday sleep-in. Bells are ringing to wake us up at 5:30 each morning!
Anyway, both girls’ schools naturally joined in with the festivities. Along with Christmas parties and decoration-making, Emily and Zoe have been involved in Christmas shows. Emily’s came first, and she wore (much to her delight) a golden Angel costume. Others were shepherds, sheep, wise men, or Mary & Joseph.
There were 8 different songs in the production, and Emily had been singing all 8 of them by heart around the house for about 4 weeks. Such was her ‘practice’ at home, that Zoe was able to sing along to many of the songs when she went to watch! Emily was one of the narrators of the play, and got to stand in front of the microphone to tell her part of the story. She enjoyed performing so much that the teachers let her stay in front of the microphone for the whole of the song prior to her narration part. To my surprise, our once shy girl (see this entry for proof) stood tall and sang with pride.

Zoe also enjoyed her production.

Although admittedly, hers, being a performance for 2-3 year olds, was much more chaotic. She was obviously told to go up on stage and find her name tag on the floor. So this she did, and promptly pulled it off the floor, and put it down where she decided she’d like to sit! It moved around every time she got on stage! Her class was asked to wear a costume of their favourite fruit or vegetable, so this, for Zoe, meant being a Banana. I enjoyed designing and making her costume, and she enjoyed wearing it.

(And by the way, in relation to my last blog, her ‘crocs’ came from a local market. I had been looking for bright yellow shoes, and found some imitation Crocs at a department store for about 1,400 pesos (about NZ$45). I kept searching, and found some in a market later, and paid just 100pesos. (NZ$3).

On Veggie Soup and differing economic markets

One of the interesting/confusing/difficult/crazy/incomprehensible things here in the Philippines are the vastly different socio-economic sectors of society. Here, there are VERY poor people, surviving, as mentioned in the last blog, on the smell of a dirty rag. And there is also a group right at the other end of the scale. They are also filthy, just filthy rich. Corrupt politicians are known to have siphoned literally billions of $US into offshore bank accounts. And in between, there are numerous other levels. As Kiwis, we pride ourselves on not being too 'flashy'. Even the wealthy among us in general don't flaunt it. A classic example is Gareth Morgan, who was New Zealander of the year in 2007. With a multi-million dollar sale behind him, he still wore jeans and T-shirts, and in fact decided to give most of it away to those who needed it more than he.
Here in Manila, the wealthy don't aspire to hide their riches. In my morning walks around our village, I pass several households that have a more sports cars parked outside than there is room for occupants inside. And the cars are being dutifully washed and polished by the household staff each morning. And our village is by no means the most exclusive.
If one wanted to live an exclusive first world lifestyle here in this city, one could easily do so. There are the finest international brands being sold here; designer bags, clothes, shoes, toys, imported foods, cars, whatever. And next to these expensive outlets are also the cheap palengke (markets) selling anything and everything from little plastic toys, imitation shoes, fruits & vegetables, meat (with flies all over it) and so on.
So whatever your income level, there are shops to match your needs.
I was reminded of this yesterday, when we had lunch at one of the more exclusive malls. It's exclusive, because there is no public transport to it. This thereby restricts its market to those who own cars, or can afford taxi fares. (And by the way, taxis here are cheap compared to Western standards. An hour's taxi ride might cost NZ $7 or $8. Public jeepneys, on the other hand, cost about 15c for the first 4km). We like visiting this mall, as it is so much quieter than the others, and one can actually relax and enjoy the aircon there.
After eating lunch, I wanted to buy some vegetables to make some soup once we got home. So Emily, Zoe & I made a trip to the supermarket end of the mall, chose our veggies, and then went home. When I started to make the soup later that afternoon, I got out the Zucchini I had in the fridge, bought from our local supermarket, and saw that it had cost me 37pesos (NZ$1). The second Zucchini, bought at the exclusive mall that day, even though it was smaller, had cost me no less than 147 pesos. A threefold difference, simply because it was bought at a shop catering to a different economic market. And I'm positive if I had bought it at a palengke in a squatter area, it would have cost me about 15 pesos.

Nan & Grandad's visit.

As I mentioned in the last blog Nan & Grandad came to stay for a week recently. And what a week they had! On Monday, they visited both the girls' schools, and Emily and Zoe enjoyed handing out the little trinkets that had been brought for their classmates.
The following day we celebrated Zoe's birthday, and that, of course, was enough energy for the day!
On the wednesday, after a morning swim and a bit of shopping,

they caught 'bonfire night' at the British School. This was the annual Guy Fawkes celebration, complete with bonfire and "guy"s that kids had made, as well as food, drinks and a fireworks display to finish the evening.

Thursday held yet more intense experiences. They were guests a the school run by the Philippine Christian Foundation. The school exists to serve the children of a slum in the Tondo area, arguably the poorest community in Manila. While there are literally hundreds of other squatter communities around the city, this one is built upon stinking, rotten rubbish. One has to wear gumboots to walk through, and apparently, the worst is what can't be captured in photos - the rancid smell.

The adults (and children, unfortunately) of the community "work" the dump, trawling through the rubbish as it arrives, finding anything at all that can be used/sold/made into something else.

The school was set up a few years ago, to help the next generation get away from dependency on the rubbish. I'm sure the experience visiting the people there will not leave the Smiths any time soon.

Later that day, after leaving the slum, the Smiths also experienced Manila traffic first hand.

There was some political unrest in Makati, so they had to take the "long way home" in the taxi. They got home about 6 hours later. Luckily, they broke their journey up and had some afternoon tea in a mall they passed. The political unrest, the fact that it was a payday, and that it was raining, all contributed to a wonderful, "Manila live" experience. (No wonder Shriley told me that that evening she found it hard to sleep.)

After all that upheaval, the whole family joined Nan & Grandad on trip to the beach for 3 days. We'd been to Bohol before and decided that would be a nice place to relax and unwind a bit. We did manage to unwind, which was a good thing, as our journey there was another adventure.

Our plane to Cebu was delayed (after being cancelled the previous day, then re-scheduled earlier (very early start!), then cancelled again, then re-booked...) and so when we finally touched down on Cebu, we had only about 30 minutes to get to the Ferry that was taking us to Bohol. We told the taxi van driver to floor it, and that he did. Let's just say we were happy that we were no longer in Manila, the way he drove. Well, we arrived at the ferry terminal, literally RAN through to the departing boat, all three children in tow, and made it onboard just a few minutes before they lifted the boarding plank. A long boat ride and another taxi ride later, and we were finally at Alona Tropical, letting the tension melt away.

Luckily for us, the return journey to Manila was far less eventful, and we made it home in time for sleep on Sunday night.
Monday saw a visit to a large Christmas bazaar, and some other last-minute Christmas shopping on behalf of the extended family, then Derek & Shirley made their way back to the airport to return to Australia.
It was a great week, albeit exhausting. They managed to catch in 7 days what took us about 7 months to experience, so they really did get a look into 'real' life here. I hope that hasn't put them off coming back!

Zoe turns 3!

She's a big girl now. (And hence asked for an "adult plate" at dinner the other day!)

We celebrated her birthday a week early, to coincide with the visit from Nan & Grandad.

We were rostered to host the MADS North playgroup that day, and so we invited everyone to dress up for our 'pyjama party'. It was utter chaos, as expected, with around 25 children (from 4 months up to 9 years) and then their associated adults.

We did manage to play some games for those children able & willing. We had a treasure hunt for glow-in-the-dark stars (which they could then keep), a game of musical pillows, and the ol' favourite, "pass the parcel". Even Granddad won a prize in that one!

My two superwomen cooked up a storm, and we were eating leftovers for a week.

For the 'goodie bags', I dusted off my sewing skills, and made up 22 drawstring bags for the children as 'going-to-sleep bags'. They had a box of milk, some homemade star cookies (thanks, Emily), a good-night prayer and a night-light inside, to get them started. We also printed off some instructions about what kind of things one can keep in a 'going-to-sleep bag' beside one's bed.
After all the time, planning & work, (...and let's just say it was not a small effort), the party felt like a huge success... Or was it?

Zoe was quite overwhelmed at the beginning, and was very clingy to her father. She got into the games, though, and after a bit of food, she was well & truly warmed up. The next morning over breakfast, we were talking with Zoe about her party, and we asked her whether she enjoyed it. She said 'Becca was there' (Becca is the big sister of one of her pre-school buddies). I said 'yes she was!'. She was very pleased about this. Then she asked me "Were you there, mummy?"
Well, despite the urge to wring the child's neck and say "Yes, of course I was, and I worked for two weeks solid to make it happen"...

...I just smiled and said "Yes, I was there, too, Zoe! Remember, I helped do the games?" "Oh!" she said. "And I got two prizes in Pass-the-Parcel!"

Perhaps next time I won't bother inviting any friends... I might just make a huge Pass-the-Parcel, and let Emily and Zoe pass it back and forth between themselves. She'd be in heaven.

Another fancy pointsman

I told you (here) about the dancing pointsman who is quite a hoot here in Manila. He works in Fort Bonifacio, where the British School is located. Well, yesterday, driving out of the Fort, I saw another fancy pointsman. He was dressed in a Santa Costume! I had a good, out-loud chuckle to myself, and then felt very sorry for him, wearing red velvet & a white wig/beard combo in this tropical heat!
Pity I didn't have a camera on me...
I admire those who aspire to make other people smile.