High Seas and High School

Elliot and Asa have left for Manila while I am remaining here in Cebu. Elliot has described our trip as an Ancona field trip. Ha ha.. They promise to write more in the next few days before they leave the Philippines and Korea. I will be here for two more weeks. Jay Ar told me that he loved seeing the two boys here in South Leyte. He felt like they were brothers to him and Christian.

Today as we took a ship from South Leyte to Cebu Elliot and I had another great experience. We were getting tired of sitting in the passenger section, and as we passed the pilots' cabin, one of the people there asked us if we would like to see how the ship navigation took place. After determining that we were from America and more exactly Chicago ("Oh, Chicago Bullls, Michael Jordan"), they started to show us how the maps were used. We had to head in a 275 degree angle they pointed out, and because the ocean was about as calm as one could ever imagine, they asked us if we would like to steer the ship. Both Elliot and I did, and as you can see we did not sink it. The pictures will hopefully come in the next couple days.

Yesterday we had a tour of Bontoc National High School. Elliot and Asa were beginning to feel a bit like they were in a zoo with all the staring they got. Most of it was from girls. They would stare and then when we looked back they would hide behind a friend. ha ha. I finally got one of our friends, Aura, who teaches at the school to ask the students if they would like to meet us. And they did. School was out but at least forty students came to Aura's classroom, and we introduced ourselves. We had been watching several boys play a game called Takyan which involves bouncing a small lead weight off their biceps. It reminded us a bit of a juggling trick, and we had not brought our tennis balls so we felt a little out of our element. But with a little imagination we remedied the problem and started juggling chalk and erasers. The students were impressed I think. We told them about snow and started to try to learn a few more Cebuano phrases, and when we told them that we would put theiir pictures on the internet they all raced to the front (giggling all the way). Most of the kids told us that they had definite ideas about what they wanted to be--accountant, computer technician, nurse (pronounced nars), business woman, one cosmotologist and one professional basketball player. I told this basketball player who was a little over five feet tall that I had never played basketball because I was always too short. ha ha.

In the next two days I will be visiting Dalaguete which is the home of my friend Danny and Ester Hana. Hopefully I will get a chance to practice with the members of the Dalaguete Music Foundation there.

-Zeus