Christmas in the Philippines!

okay, i will tell you that although most of these photos were taken by me, some of the ministry party pics were taken by other people and posted on facebook.  thanks for sharing, connie and isabell.

i'll start with a picture of a poinsettia at the market, i put those fellows in there so that you can get the idea of the size of this plant . . . bush.

there is a party that is given by the ministry for the staffs of the baby home and the birth home.  i didn't bring my camera, but here are a couple of pics.  the baby home and the birth home staff traditionally perform a dance number at the party.  this is the baby home staff and a couple of the kids posing in their dance costumes in front of the home made nativity that decorated the patio (party central) at the birth home.

you see how big it is there behind them.  it is fabulous.

i love most the baby jesus wrapped in a banana leaf.

this is connie and i, as she said, posing in front of a junk pile. :o)  there were games and food and lots of gifts to the staff from the ministry including a big bag of rice and a ham for christmas.

there was a party for the children that was given by the american embassy club.  this includes the kids from the baby home, and kids of the staff.  there were presents . . . 

music . . . 

facepainting . . . 

games with prizes like pencils . . . 

and a photo booth.  there is a disc with all of the photos floating around, and if i get my hands on it, i'll throw all of them up on a post. it was great fun, as you see. this is ate tonia and gabriel.

this is deborah, with her daughter bernadette, who was adopted many years ago from the little children's home.  deborah's parents founded the ministry and she has lived here in the philippines since she was 12.  after her father passed away, she took over running the baby home.  her mom jeri runs the birth home and her husband darren does all the admin.  their family is really my adoptive family here, and i don't know what i would do without them.

here again is the pic of me and cutie isiah.

this is nicole with her gifts. 

this is our beautiful and wonderful social worker jasmin with ezra.  if you recall, ezra was the first baby i took home when he wasn't doing well. he did not gain any weight between his 1 month birthday and his 2 month birthday.  you see we have over-acheived in our goal to get him to be a chubby and happy baby.  he, i must admit, is my favorite.  

on that note, at the baby home, every baby has a care-giver or two who favor them and they consider this to be natural and positive. they will tease and say, ate jo, your baby ezra has been crying all morning for his mama.  when a favorite is adopted, there are often extra tears from a mama or two on staff.

this is our volunteer nurse, annemarie and her red-head daughter nina, who is holding their favorite, louie.  she is a life saver to our ministry.  next is  her husband, hans, and their kids.  they are from holland, and have been missionaries here for two years.  he works in the slums of manila helping people to start and run businesses.  they also work at a TB clinic that is run by their ministry. beautiful people.

this is isabell, taking photos,which is her full-time part-time job here!

this is levi and nino.  levi and his younger brother were adopted from the baby home 17 years ago. they came back with their parents and sisters to visit the philippines for a few weeks. they also met their birth mom and their two younger brothers.  i spent a day touring around with them . . . that will be another post. 

the night before christmas eve, i was leaving the baby home and came upon some carolers. i asked them to go back and sing for the kids, which they gladly did.  

on christmas eve, i went to a party at the home of lori and dave french.  lori went to college with my viriginia friends abbe and jon gudeman. she went to the philippines to do her student teaching and never returned.  when i was looking for a position in an orphanage, abbe reached out to lori, who poked me on facebook, and the rest is history.  she teaches at faith academy, where she met and married the art teacher. :o)   they have two brilliant and charming kids, just a fantastic family. actually, she and abbe are the same person, so i can see why they are fast friends and you can see why i fell in love with her even before we ever met. 

there were about 30 people there, all bringing good old american party food, yay!  

since the baby home was closed, i brought along baby isiah and jasmin, who lives at the baby home but stayed with me during christmas.  although she is muslim and philipino, she is very far from her family and had great fun graciously experiencing an american christmas party!

i was holding the baby and didn't take a lot of photos.  some of the kids brought instruments and we sang along while they played christmas carols.  it is a family tradition that they read and act out (in costume) the christmas story.  it was wonderful fun.

on chirstmas morning, i got a text from deborah inviting me over for a breakfast of homemade cinnamon rolls and bacon.  and coffee.  real coffee, not the instant blech that i drink at my apartment! cinnamon rolls were our christmas morning tradition, and i appreciated and enjoyed it so very much.

then for dinner, we gathered at jeri's for traditional christmas turkey dinner. stuffing, cranberry sauce, yams and pumpkin pie with homemade whipped cream, etc.  the whole deal.  i brought mashed potatoes, which were yum.  check out jeri and her beautiful turkey!

this is katie, with isiah.  she and her friend sara, teach at an international school in abu dhabi. they came and spent time at the baby home over their holiday break, bringing gifts for all the kids that they gathered from the parents of their students. katie did a mission trip here when she was in college, and since it was too far to travel back to the states during break, they came here instead. pretty swell, right?! they were happy to be in a country where they could celebrate christmas.

i know that this is a terrible picture, but i still just love everything about it. deborah, darren and louie.

this is emma, who was interning at the birth home as a midwife student.  she returned to her home in australia the next day and we miss her very much.  fun loving, easy going, smart and caring, just a great person.

we had dinner by candlelight out on jeri's beautiful patio.  it was quite the crowd, there were people from the philippines, usa, canada, australia, holland, spain and korea.

louie pretty much looked like the rest of us felt at the end of the party.  tired, but happy!

okay, lastly and for the ladies, i'll show you the christmas gifts that i received.

this is the blouse that connie snuck for me into the gift exchange at her church.

this is a beautiful porcelain ornament from jeri.

i hung it here on the wall at isabells, where there was an empty hook.  also, sarah and karen bradley, please see what else i have hanging there . . .!!!

these are chocolate covered figs from abu dhabi, which are from katie and sara.

this beautiful tea light from jeri and sara.

this is a calendar from isabell. she had these made with pics from the baby home, just beautiful!  there is a verse with each month's photo, and this is the verse which inspired the little children's home name. 

i know i shared this pic of joy, but it is just too fantastic to omit.

and this little cutie pie . . . i have done some video chatting with her and her mom and auntie grace these past few days while they have been all together for the holidays.

all told, i had a really nice and beautiful christmas.  

i hope you all did as well!

xoxo  jo

i opened the fridge tonight to look for something for dinner.

a big cockroach ran out so i stepped on him, which is one reason i always wear flip flops in the house.

i was thinking, just add that to the "list of things i never thought i'd get used to".

then i was thinking that yesterday, i told darren that i killed a giant spider in the bathroom, a spider that was so big that i could see it on the floor without my glasses, so you know it was ginormous.

he said you know those are cockroach eating spiders. uuuuh, even with the fridge episode tonight, i was thinking, i can kill the roach more easily than i can tolerate the spider.

anyway, i got my glasses to sweep up the dead cockroach from the fridge and it was then that i realized it was that little baby gecko who's been hanging around, the one who lost his tail, that i stepped on and squished.

i know, ewwwww, right.

another thing to add to the "list ".

i was super busy over christmas, plus they sent all the kids home with caregivers so they could be home with their families on christmas eve and christmas day.  i brought home little isiah who will be 2 months old next week.  here are a couple pics of him in the apartment.

he is still waking every few hours to eat and DANG do i feel old because i just can't keep up with that routine!

isabell returned to germany for the holidays and will be back here in the philippines at the end of january, so i am staying in her apartment til she gets back.  that is where these photos were taken, and right next to the crib is the fridge from the gecko debacle.

tonight i am going to bed early but i promise i'll get christmas photos up tomorrow.  and by early, i mean right now, and it's 8:30.

in the mean time, this is one of baby joy that someone took when they were giving out stockings that were donated to the kids at the baby home.

you see why i feel lucky and blessed every day, don't you.

:o)

jo

today is sunday.  my sweet friend connie, who is the secretary in the office at the baby home, invited me to go to church with her.

i walked down the hill to meet her, and while i was waiting these two fellows strolled by.

yep, i'm pretty sure he's carrying a rooster. lots of cock fighting here.

and off they went.

i didn't want to be too much of a tourist, but i wish i'd have taken a couple photos outside. this was a sweet little church of the brethren.  they were having their christmas party after the service today.

the service was mostly in tagalog, with one prayer, a song and some christmas caroles in english. here the youth sang 'mary did you know'. you see that several kids had the lyrics on their cell phones.

i joked with connie about this tree, because their are no ornaments on the top. she said, we philipinos are too short to reach and no one noticed, heh.

there were lot of games, simple fun joiners like musical chairs that everyone really enjoyed.  so much laughing as you can see. this was a game where some husbands were blindfolded and put bright lipstick and eyeshadow on their wives.

this is a poor photo, but i'll include it so that you can see connie.  she is a single mom with two sons. there was a gift exchange and connie brought along a present for me so that i would be included.  so nice!!  she is a very happy and fun and chatty lady.  she talks almost as much as i do, ha!

i took this girl's picture because i loved her shoes.

super cute, right???

attached to the church is their christian school.  this was the view from up top where the classrooms (okay, and the bathrooms) are located.  this was about a 5 minute trike ride from our corner, you see how close we are to manila bay.

the song books were bible study books with black paper on the outside and the pages replaced by photo copied song lyrics.  i completely love this fellow's bible you see here on the bench with the song books.

is this fabulous or what.

okay, i thought it might be fun to just throw in all the latest photos from my phone, so you can see how we roll.

emma and tracy are midwife students living at the apartment. emma is from australia and tracy returned this morning to atlanta.  which is why we walked down to chow king last night to get some halo halo as a goodbye treat. this is emma.

typical example of how things go here. tracy ordered a medium, emma a large.  waitress brings a tray with 1 large and 2 medium. gives the large to another table, gives us 2 medium and leaves. emma walks to the counter, reports the error, watches sadly as they toss her halo halo in the trash bin. waitress makes a large, just as she leaves the counter, it slides off the tray and on to the floor. waitress makes a third halo halo for emma, which is why tracy is nearly finished and emma has only begun.

per wiki: Halo-halo (Tagalog: [haˈlo-haˈlo], "mixed together") is a popular Filipino dessert with mixtures of shaved ice and evaporated milk to which are added various boiled sweet beans, jello and fruits. It is served in a tall glass or bowl.

Ingredients include boiled kidney beans, garbanzos, sugar palm fruit (kaong), coconut sport (macapuno), and plantains caramelized in sugar, jackfruit (langkâ), gulaman, tapioca, nata de coco, sweet potato (kamote), cheese, pounded crushed young rice (pinipig). In terms of arrangement, most of the ingredients (fruits, beans, and other sweets) are first placed inside the tall glass, followed by the shaved ice. This is then sprinkled with sugar, and topped with either (or a combination of) leche flan, purple yam (ubeng pula), or ice cream. Evaporated milk is poured into the mixture upon serving.

which is why i didn't have one.  :o)

this is a pic of my bedroom door, decorated with a card and bow from a BEAUTIFUL treat i received in the mail from colin's mom, kathy cojeen.  she sent me a big container of oreos that she hand dipped in chocolate and decorated and then wrapped up in lovely little packages. we all hung the bows on our doors after.  i have enjoyed sharing some and enjoyed eating many.  YUM!

this was at the goodbye despedita for chris, who went home with her adoptive parents to live in spain. when we gather, i always love seeing the pile of shoes outside the playroom gate and i have a pile of photos to prove it.

these are a couple of pics i took of baby nicole. our babies wear cloth diapers and tracy brought some awesome new diaper covers that a friend donated to the nursery.  i saw nicole sleeping in her crib wearing one and looking all adorable, so i took these to send as a thank you.

when i came here, she was 4 days old and she just turned 4 months old.  wows.

i was sitting up in the laundry lines at the birth home soaking up some sunshine and i took this pic just because i though it was so pretty.

i took this at the department store, just because i thought it was hilarious.

i took this out the window of a car that would not stop even though the sunset was gorgeous and i was yelling in my head, where is dee when i need her cause she would have stopped in the middle of the road with me to take picures even if it was manila!!

these were not on my phone, but i wanted to tell you about this little fellow, isiah. he came to the little children's home when he was one month old.  he weighed 2.95K at birth and 2.9K a month later.

this is him with katherine when he first came to us.

i took him home with me for a few days and held him all the time, and woke him to eat and just spent lots of time with him. all the caregivers worked hard with him and we were all super happy when he weighed in at 4K 2 weeks later.  he started at about 6.5# and gained more than 2# in less than 2 weeks.  this was from the photo booth at the kids christmas party.  i want to thank everyone who prayed for him to do well, he is a sweet and quiet little fellow, and he is doing great.

i'm not sure what happened in the pic, but i'll assure you that my teeth have not turned orange . . . ?

i'll gather some more pics from the christmas party and get those up next.  i know that you look for a blog post on sunday, laurie jensen, so you'll find it no coincidence that i've posted these past two sundays. love you, my friend!  thanks everyone for checking in, and for all of your sweet encouragement.

merry christmas to you all, i hope you can spend it enjoying the company of the people you love most.  i'll be missing my girls, for sure.  especially this one.

xoxo  jo

okay, fast typhoon update . . . 

thankfully, the typhoon was a bust. even for a tropical storm it was a bust.  

all typhoons should be so gentle, although at last count it was reported that 21 people here did lose their lives in flooding.  i thank you all so much for your prayers for me, and please remember those poor folks and the people who love and miss them.

we got a couple of days of rain, no wind, no big deal. sooooo thankful.

isabell took these photos down near manila, showing a little of what the water does here.

i am sooooooo very much missing our beautiful katherine kaiser, who was doing a hunger program internship at the birth home.  she left yesterday to return to her family in south carolina and soon to her classmates at wheaton college in illinois.

i can't tell you how wonderful and dear she is to me.  here she is snuggling with our newest baby, isiah.

katherine loves those babies as much as i do, and we spent lots of hours smuggling a couple over to our apartment for hugs and kisses.

this is a beautiful photo that she took of the floodway in pasig, down in metro manila.

this is going to be a brief post, but i did want to let you know we are all safe and sound after the storm.  you can't probably imagine how much it meant to have so many of you checking in before, during and after.  it makes me appreciate you all and miss you all the more for your caring and good friendship.

in closing, here is the motley crew at the latest adoption celebration.

and y'all know how much i'm missing this cutie pie!

i've been on some fabulous adventures, and i will work hard on getting some of those photos up here for you shortly.  i'm mortified that i only posted once in november, what the what???!

love you all and miss you gobs!!!

xoxo  jo

time for a tour!

i went for a walk.  i've never gone further past the baby home than isabell's house, but beyond there is a creek and a neighborhood called creekside.  they refer to neighborhoods as the community.  so, we went in to the community.   there is a creek, duh, and a couple of small waterfalls.  this was absolutely the coolest thing i had done here so far, and it just entailed walking down the street.

there was a big flood here back with typhoon yolanda, and our ministry helped improve and rebuild the sidewalk and railing, there is a placque there which I will get a photo of next, and will add.  i have been wanting to get back there and take a couple photos, but it is just the kind of thing that keeps blogs from getting posted, eh?  better some photos posted than perfect photos never seen!

isabell's friend, anita, was visiting from germany which was the reason for this excursion.  once we got going, we ran into ate generosa (prn henna-rose-sa) who works with me at the baby home.   she lives on the creek and had never walked back to the falls.

along the way, we picked up a few boys who stopped to help us, pointing out where to walk and literally giving us a hand.  i was walking by the birth home that night, and a couple of them came up to me and said, do you remember me?  i said yes, you are ate generosa's friends who helped us on the river.  the way henne was bossing them i thought they knew her, but turns out they didn't!

as you can see from these photos, this was philippine rural poverty and natural beauty all wrapped up together.   this creek is where people wash clothes, bathe, and live.  i wanted to take photos of the homes and living conditions for you, because they were stunning in their bleakness and poverty, but i just couldn't.  so, i took it in with my eyes and left the camera in my pocket.  that being said, these photos will focus on the natural beauty and you can deduct the rest from the few shots of us where we stopped on the way back, to take a picture on the bridge.

i (per usual) will include more photos than necessary; it was just a beautiful place and i have a hard time choosing what you'd wish to not see.

do watch the video, it's the best of it, also per usual.

i need a film crew here, i really do.  this is a hit reality show begging to be made.

what a crazy life i am living, difficult and sad, beautiful and funny, lucky and blessed every day.

per usual!

okay, to begin, here is ate generosa.

i just love this photo, probably my favorite taken here in the philippines.  so far!

they aren't in this shot, but lots of people swim here.  don't forget that you can click on a photo to see a larger version.  :o)

isabell and anita.

sweaty hot mess!

hene and isabell sat while anita and i walked up to get closer to the falls.  

these kids were jumping around like goats, but it was treacherous walking and those little falls produced an amazing amount of force.

only a complete suspension of vanity allows you to see some of these!!  haha.

you see here that we were literally walking up the river.

there you go!  love you all and miss you lots.  xoxo  jo