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!