KidzKlub Waterfight

On Saturday, November 8th, we had a play day for KidzKlub, the weekend outreach program here at Samaritan's Place. Normally during the play days, we will have some organized games, songs, dances and then just free play but THIS time, we did something a little different.

WE HAD A WATER FIGHT!!! YAH!!!!

We filled up buckets all over the side yard and gave each child a cup to use for getting others wet. It was a BLAST and all the kids (who joined in - not eveyone was up to the idea (-; ) were SOAKED when we were done!!

Here is one little guy, trying to get the last of the water in the bucket!

Here is Dean and me with some kids - notice that Dean is about to get drenched!! Ahhh!


As I am sure it usually is during waterfights, the HOSE was the weapon of choice. Whoever held the hose, held the power... but that also meant that whoever had the hose was the one that got attacked by everyone else! Sacrifices, sacrifices...


(Random shots)

Poor Dean... he is getting a bucket over his head again! (-;

Wait a second... WHO is that that is pouring the water on him?

Hmmm... looks a little bit like me, Christin. (-: Whoo hooooo!!

This is a shot of some of us after the waterfight!! YAH! We had such a fun time!! Who knows, maybe the waterfight will become an annual thing for KidzKlub!?!?! (-:

It's Christmas time!!

On Wednesday, November 5th, a group of us from SP hopped into a van and headed into Manila for a shopping area called "Divisoria". Our purpose? TO BUY CHRISTMAS PRESENTS! Yah! With the many donations that SP received from all of YOU, we were able to use those funds and get some amazing presents for the kids both here at Samaritan's Place AND the many kids that come to the outreach, KidzKlub. So, below are a few pictures of that day. Enjoy!

The busy streets of Divisoria. It actually wasn't bad the day and time that we went (we left SP by 6:00 am and arrived to Divisoria around 8:00 am) so we were really thankful for that! Usually, you are squished into a "line" and kinda shuffle through all the stores/stalls.

One of the main intersections in that part of town. Divisoria is interesting because there are shops and stores all through the streets and then there are two huge buildings, filled with stores (think one of the malls is called 168) that are about a block away from each other. So, if you can't find what you want in one place you just keep walking and check out the other.

Here is (L-R) Ruth, Ghie, Gina and MariCris. We all had to continually update our "books" of how much had been spent on each child, how much was left and what we were anticipating spending elsewhere... yes, by the end of the day, all of our minds were exhausted with computing the numbers over and over... but, thank the Lord for calculators!! (-; Those definitely helped keep the confusion to a minimum.

Here is Ruth, MariCris and Dori, outside one of the toy stores we shopped at. It was great because when you buy things in bulk, the vendors would drop the price by a few pesos per piece, so we got some great deals! Especially for me, because I was buying things in bulks of 20 to 80 at a time (for the outreach kids)!! YIKES!

Again, shopping for the kids, but this time we are inside Divisoria. It was really nice because Joe, one of the housefathers, would meet up with us often and get our MANY bags and take them back to the van whenever our arms were full, so we could keep going and shop more. He was pretty exhausted by the end of the day, but we sincerely appreciated his help.

Above, this is all of us with most of the stuff back at Samaritan's Place around 8:30 that night. We got a TON of stuff and we still had/have more to get! WHEW! What a very long, but very FUN day!! WHoooo HOooooooo!

That Friday, we all assembled in Unit 4 and started wrapping the presents. It took us about 4 hours to get everything done and to have the presents all under the trees! Now the kids are all trying to guess which presents are theirs, since we secretly assigned each child a number and marked the presents with those numbers, instead of the child's name. They said it keeps the kids from trying to open their presents early! Oh, the suspense of it all!

A shot of all of us, wrapping the presents. Meca is in the middle of our group thinking, "Hmmm, I wonder which one of these is mine?"

It was a really fun week, full of shopping, wrapping and singing Christmas songs and it is only mid-November! WOW! But the kids and staff alike are so looking forward to Christmas and getting to open the presents that everyone worked so hard to get, so it is all worth it!!

Merry Christmas!!

Taal Volcano

As some of you know, Dean and I hiked Taal (pronounced Tah-all) Volcano a while ago. We headed out across the water by 9am, but it was ALREADY incredibly hot. We didn't get done with the excursion until about 1:30 and as you can guess, we were exhausted from the climb, the heat, and our tour guide (more to come on that).

Hope you enjoy the recap of our day!!

We were able to find a place by the water that would take us (cheaply) over to the volcano. Taal volcano is unique in that it is set in the middle of a lake, with a lake inside of it. So there is a lake, surrounded by a volcano, that is surrounded by water, that is surrounded by land.

Make sense? (-:

Here Dean is trying to get his "life jacket" fastened... not really an All-Size-Fits-All version.

Here is a picture of our boat, coming up to get us in order to take us over to the volcano. The water was really clear and was reflecting everything above it. Really pretty day...

Shot from our "boat". (-:


Another picture from the boat...really beautiful...

Once we got over to the island, we were met by MANY of the locals (they live right there on the island) telling us that we needed a guide to take us up the MANY paths... So, we hired a guide and took off walking... Our poor guide quickly grew tired and practically begged us to buy a horse so that I (Christin) wouldn't be so tired. WHAT? I told him I was fine, that we were not renting a horse and that we were hiking because we like the exercise. He was not happy with that answer and tried 3 more times to convince me of my fatigue - all because if we rented a horse, then he would get to sit on it with me and therefore, not have to hike up the side of the volcano... I finally said, "I'm walking and that's it" and he dropped it... but not without a lot of huffing and annoyance at me... I bet he was SO glad he decided to take these crazy Americans to the top! (-;

Shot of the walk to the top - some places were forest-like, others were like more grassland-like. Very quiet and peaceful...

While trekking up to the top, there was a spot where some of the steam was coming out of the volcano - this is a shot of that. Both Dean and I put our hands over it and - yep, you guessed it - SUPAH HOT! OUCH! But still, glad we did it. (-; I mean, we felt the STEAM OF THE VOLCANO! How cool is that? (-;

Shot from the top of the mountain, looking down into the "crater" of the volcano, which has a lake in it now.

Another shot of the inside of the volcano - that is steam and lava in the water, right under the surface. The guide said we could go down and swim in it, but we decided against it... we were too tired! (-:

This is a shot of the "stores" at the top. The vendors were selling drinks (we got one for our exhausted guide) and shirts. They actually live down the mountain and hike up it everyday to manage their stores.

Dean, resting in the shade... very very hot day.

Right at the top of the volcano, the trail gets really steep and the people had to put in this cement bags in order for people to be able to get to the top. I know the picture doesn't show it, but it was PRETTY steep...

Walking back down the mountain....

This is a picture of the horses at the bottom of the mountain - you know - the ones the guide REALLY REALLY wanted us to rent. (-; I bet the HORSES were really glad we didn't rent them...look how tired they are... poor little horsies...

Back on the boat, heading back to the mainland.

It was a great adventure and we are glad that we did it - neat experience to have. But I think the thing that we were MOST excited about was that the volcano didn't blow while we were on it. YAY! Thank you Lord!!! (-:

Some of our favorite pictures

Below are some random pictures of the kids and staff - hope they make you smile!

Angel is examining her cracker to make sure their is enogh salt.

Here is a picture of Christin with Isabel. Any time we have a camera, Isabel is always in the center of the pictures...as you can see.

Cedi is always happy when he is near his Tito (Uncle) Dean.

We have taught the staff how to play spoons. Lets just say that they are very competitive.

We made chocolate covered peanuts for the kids and Haymes has decorated his face with the chocolate. Needless to say it was very hard to stay clean with the heat and humitity melting the chocolate very quickly.


Here is Meka throwing a temper tantrum. She is so upset that her hair has stood straight up. This hair style is actually very common with the infant girls here at SP. The caregivers have a lot of fun with Meka and Angel's hair.



Khomer is showing his "cool" side.

Dean loves to play with Cedi's ears and got a little carried away.



Here are the three sisters (Jenny, Bea, and Roxanne) showing how close they are.





The four infant were playing peek-a-boo at the same time.

Cedi looks way better in Dean's hat than Dean does.

Smore night

Smore night at Samaritan's Place!! Below are a few pictures of that blistery cold night a few weeks ago (totally kidding on the "cold" part) when the staff got together to have some good ol' fashioned smores! Yuuuum!

Since SP is in a residential community and not on a farm, we had to build the fire on some old metal sheets and put scraps of wood on it to use as our fire pit.

Here is a picture of some of us carefully toasting our marshmallows... the wind direction kept changing so we had to hop around a lot, making sure we didn't start to suffer from smoke inhalation!

This is Joe, one of the housefathers, working on another marshmallow for his next smore. All in all, the staff really enjoyed the experience and suggested that next time we do hot dogs and even make some beans or something... sounds like it might turn into a real nice cookout by the time we leave! (-: Yeee haw!

The infants are MOBILE!!

So, as you may have read in our latest update, all of the babies (minus Tony, who is only 10 weeks old) have recently learned how to walk!! YAAAAYYYY! Below are pictures of them using their new talent...

This is Cedi - the little boy who the doctors were wondering if he would ever learn to walk. Looks like he is walking to me!! See how excited he is? Too great...

Dean is the one taking the picture here - Cedi loves his Tito Dean!! In the background is Richelle, the social worker here at SP. She has been with Cedi since he was born and they are very close....She is VERY proud of him!!

Aaahhhh! Here Cedi lost his balance and is about to fall into Dean's lap. Catch me!!

Ok, here is a picture of Meka (she has known how to walk now for a couple of months) and her little sister, Angel. This picture was taken during the first few days of Angel walking and it was super sweet because I (Christin) told Meka to help her sister walk and to go hold her hand and Meka waddled right over to Angel and did just that! Super smart and wonderful little girl!!

And this is McCoy, the last of the walking team. Here he is sporting his new skill out in the garden while wearing a very flattering Garfield shirt. Look at that concentration...

Island Cove adventure

Below are some pictures that we took while at Island Cove, a little amusement-like park close to Manila. It also had a small zoo, so here are a few pictures from that! (-:

Here I, Christin, am seriously 2 feet away from this tiger. I could have reached out and pet him, but I wasn't sure how friendly he would be to visitors. (-: There were about 12 tigers in all in various cages - it was pretty amazing to see them so close up! Not sure if that would fly in the US... (-:

Here, Dean is petting a baby tiger cub who is about 2 months old!! That was a "first" for both Dean and I - and yes, the cub was very soft and sweet.

In another part of the zoo, they had about 100 different crocodiles, all separated by age. They were EVERYWHERE! Neat bit of trivia we learned - in order to stay cool, crocodiles will open their mouths which allows them to stay about 10 degrees cooler. I kinda thought it was because they wanted to show off their nice dental work. (-:

Here is an ostrich, eating in the shade. They were HUGE!

We ended up spending over half the day at Island Cove and got a pretty nice burn during it, but all in all, it was a great adventure and we have some pretty great memories from it. (-:

Where o where have we been?

Hello Wonderful Blog-Readers!
As many of you may have noticed, we haven't posted anything on the blog in a LOOOOONNNG time and the reason for this is because our computer went belly-up on us and was in intensive "therapy" at an HP "hospital" in Manila for the past month... kinda touch and go there for a while but now our lovely computer is back at home with us at SP and we are slowly nursing it back to health (ie, updating our anti-virus software, etc.) It is still acting funny (the mouse keeps disappearing?) but we are hoping it will make it till we are back in the US and can have someone look at it.
Either way, wanted to let you know that we will be posting pictures and updates very soon so please do not despair. (-:
Hope you all are doing well, Christin

Trip to Thailand

On July 24th through the 29th we had the great opportunity of going to Bangkok, Thailand. A requirement of the Philippines is that any foreigner must leave the country for a night after six months, in order to return and stay for another six months. So, for our excursion we chose the beautiful country of Thailand. The below pictures are just a little of what we did..sorry they aren't in chronological order...we are still figuring out this blogging thing. (-: Enjoy!

The view from the top of our hotel. It was really breathtaking!

One of the things we got to do was visit a small zoo...here Dean is scratching an itchy spot for a little monkey. It was hilarious because the monkey kept moving around so Dean could keep scratching his back, neck, arms, etc. We were cracking up because it was like he was saying, "That's great...now, a little over to the left!"

Where are we and where are we going? We had about 4 different maps of Bangkok, so we were well prepared for checking the city out.

A small glimpse at the streets in Chatachuk market, one of the world's largest markets. We had no idea it was so famous but they said that people come from all over, just to rummage through the trinkets and see what treasures they can find! It was a really neat place to check out but SUPER crowded!!

This is us, dining at a small, outdoor "restaraunt" at Chatachuk. We had authentic Pad Thai and something else that looked like an eggroll - it was DELICIOUS and very cheap!

This is me, waiting in line at Customs when we entered the country...please let us in! We promise we aren't drug smugglers!!!

The view from our hotel room during the day...

The view from our hotel room at night...

One of the many houses on the river that we got to see during our river "tour".

One of the famous Buddhist temples...not sure what it is called, but really famous...??

This is us as we began the river tour of Bangkok.

A really neat bridge we got to see on the tour.

Houses and businesses positioned right on the river.

View of Bangkok from the boat.

We learned that many people will put their goods in a small skiff and row up and down the river and try to sell things. They have a famous River Market where there are rows and rows of boats and people just buy things directly there, right on the water. Pretty neato!

We went to a snake show while on the river tour...they didn't really tell us about it when we signed up for the thing, and I think I know why. I (Christin) was terrified! Here a young guy holds a viper INCHES from his head! The viper actually did bite his hair and when he pulled the snake back, the venom was on his head! I mean, TERRIFYING!!!

Here is a cobra, getting ready to try and bite this man... At one point the snake went over the small two foot wall that stood between us and the snake tried to move into the crowd...needless to say, I was practically sitting in the poor ladies lap that was right behind me I was so scared... don't worry, I apologized later...

Our last night in Thailand, we got dressed up and ate at a nice restaraunt. Here is Dean's meal..chicken curry served in a pineapple! It was really good and really fun to eat out of!

Us, at the nice restaraunt, waiting for our food. Sorry the picture is blurry...

And that is it! Hope you enjoyed seeing some of Thailand with us! We have a gazillion more pictures if you ever want to see more, so just let us know...especially the snake show part...(-:

Summer guitar recital

This summer I, Christin, worked with four of the older kids here at Samaritan's Place and taught them how to play the guitar. They learned basic chords, parts of the guitar, the strings, simple beats and songs. As part of the lessons, I required them to each learn and play at least one song in a recital for the other kids and the staff at Samaritan's Place. They all did GREAT and I was really proud of them!! As a "present" for all of their hard work, they each received an official copy of the songs they had played and they got to choose a pic to keep.

Below are the pictures of the recitals.

This is me and Darline - Darline was the youngest student I had.

Darline playing her song...

This is Jesryll. She is incredibly good at the guitar and decided to play THREE different songs for the recital. Very gifted in music I think...

This is Jaylord - I was really impressed with his determination to learn the guitar because he is LEFT handed! He was a real trooper and practiced a lot in order to be ready for the recital. He did a really good job!!

Here's a pic with me and Francis (sorry we don't have any solo pictures of him above..), Jesryll and Jaylord. I think they are very happy and relieved the recital is over...(-;