Manila

Our plane to the Philippines left on Tuesday morning at 1 AM, the only good thing about leaving then was that we got to the airport in 10 minutes. I have never been out that late here and it was great not having to battle the traffic. The flight was only 2 hours and 15 minutes and actually left early. We took a taxi to a hotel that a friend had booked for us. It was run by Christians. There were verses posted on the walls and christian music playing and they even gave you a verse for the day. The workers were so friendly. It made for a wonderful stay. We went to check out the bible college that the Foursquare Church has there and we were even able to attend a retreat in a mountain city. The grounds were beautiful and they had three swimming pools. It reminded me of our college retreat days, games, competitions etc. We had to take the MRT from our hotel to the church and other areas and they all seem to be connected to malls. There were four malls within a 5 mile radius of our hotel. We actually saw at least 10 different malls as we rode the MRT. I got to go into several and one was a woman's paradise. They had one whole floor devoted to women's shoes and purses, it had to be at least a 1/2 mile long. I could only walk through it as we had to get back to our hotel to catch our flight home. Maybe next time. We also got to ride in their version of taxi's called jitney's, they remind me of large hummers and they put all kinds of advertising on them. Some even said, God Bless or Jesus saves. They were very cheap to ride in but the fumes and pollution were bad, even worse than Thailand. They also had every kind of restaurant that you see in the US, Outback, Tony Roma's even a new Spaghetti Factory. We did try some Philippino food which is similar to but different than the Vietnamese. Our friend likes to say, same, same but different. The best part of the trip for me was to reconnect with some friends that we had been through training with in the US and catch up on their lives. We also attended a cell group. I really miss these things in Vietnam.