El Nido & Katherine's Visit

Photo credit: Katherine Willis

My sister Katherine visited us from Texas and it was nice to be connected in person again. She visited both Lauren's and my work sites while she stayed with us in Iloilo. We filled our days with Bananagrams, Cards Against Humanity, Uno, and cooked together in the evenings. It was exactly what we needed and I am so thankful she visited. We also got to see another major island while she was here venturing to Palawan, the farthest West island in the Philippines. We headed directly to El Nido on the northern tip of the main island where we island hoped. The scenery was beyond breathtaking as sharp rock islands jet out of the clear blue ocean.  

The island hoping tours allowed us to explore, lay on the beach, snorkel and swim in and out of caves. The tour guides provided a delicious lunch that they cooked on the back of the boats. While eating one day, we came across 3 monitor lizards hanging out in the bushes. They were certainly impressive in size, with the largest one reaching at least 4 ft in length.  

An abandoned church and monastery on the edge of Asian Christendom.

The tiny port of El Nido is a remote town of a few thousand who run eco-tourism businesses.

Custom mga bangka (boats) competing in a local race

were five times faster than anything we've seen in the Philippines.

We found the perfect spot to end the day. Watching the sunset with a drink in hand.  

Si Chiaki

This week we said goodbye to our friend and neighbor Chiaki Kakuto as she finished her contract and heads back to Japan. Alan's sister Katherine also was visiting from the Texas so we celebrated with a Japanese/American dinner and played Uno. 

She constructed a wonderful instructional module for making recycled paper and gave us these beautiful gifts.

Always cooking together when we visited helped create cross cultural exchanges like finding out how to properly fold gyoza wrappers and how to make carnitas tacos. 

Children's Rights Advocates Training - Iloilo March 2015

This week World Vision hosted a training to build capacity for advocates of children's rights. With the central goal of reducing the number of children who labor in the sugarcane fields, this group of youth leaders and their community leaders worked together to learn and discus children's rights and what we can do to help each child find a voice. They will now go back into their communities and continue the great work they are doing, armed with a greater knowledge and passion against child labor.

Fun came in the form of animated storytelling and sharing.

Fun was also in the form of activities which make us think about what it is like to lead and to follow. Long sessions about difficult subject covering the dangers to children in hazardous working conditions needed breaks like this.