Blind Dates!!

During the Saturday Sports Day, which was only for ETCP college students, they had a blind date activity going on all day just for fun. Anybody could go to certain "secret" people and pay one peso to get a guy and a girl blindfolded and set up on a blind date. Or you could pay one peso to get somebody to come on a blind date with you. Of course it was the greatest idea to set up the foreigners on blind dates!! Randomly people would come up and lead people away blindfolded to their "doom". Once you were in the room you could take the blind fold off and you had to stay in there with the person for 5 minutes. To get an extra 5 minutes with the person you had to pay 2 pesos.

Whitney was the first to be set up, and so she went on a blind date with Jhun Jhun. She says it was awkward!! =)

Here's me being led to my blind date with James. It was alright...at least he was nice and wasn't shy!!
Then Melissa got set up with Hansel, much to his pleasure I think! :)
Melissa and Jobby were the ones who set up most of us on our dates...but mysteriously we never found out who set up Whitney!

Hanging with the Students

So here are some of the friends that we have made here at ETCP, although these are not all of them. Whenever you want to take their picture, they absolutely love it and they got especially excited when I said the pictures were to show my friends in Canada!!

Whitney, Melissa and Jobby

Whitney, Melissa, Jobby, Loida and Me
Jobby, Loida and Jeremy
(left to right) James, Noel, Gillian, Nenia, and Genevieve
Jenelyn, Leonida, Arlyn, Meshel, and Aileen

Calloy, Henry, Roland, Sam, Harry, Joel Ilaga, Joel

Hansel, Alfredo, Joel, John Paul, and I don't know his name
Go-Go, J.R., Whitney, Jobby and Melissa
Me, Jobby, Whitney, Naomi, and Loida
Jenelyn, Alfredo, Jo-Jo, Jobby, Whitney, Sonic (in the back), Aileen and Melissa

Sports Day at ETCP

So last Friday and Saturday were Sports Day at ETCP. Friday was mostly for the elementary students and all their parents were there. Although us 3 girls did play basketball: ETCP students vs. LS (the elementary) parents. Girls only of course. Girls basketball here is quite interesting since there are no rules except that some fouls are called and if there is a really long tussle for the ball, they call a jump ball. Mainly there is a lot of running without dribbling and tackling for the ball. It is actually kind of similar to rugby =).

The elementary students played a lot of relays and then their parents would play after them against the Grade 6's. Elementary here goes until Grade 6 and then they have 4 years of high school.

Here is Jeremy playing chess with Aga, the maintenance guy at ETCP.


Us teaching our friends some indoor games (since it started POURING!!!) like "Stella stella ola" and "Mango Mango" (credit to Mrs. Bingham for that one). They absolutely loved that game!!
Girls Basketball

Boys Basketball. Which is actually very professional with refs and rules. They are very good!!

We had A LOT of fun, got some good exercise, got quite sunburnt and became even better friends with the students. It was a great 2 days!

At the Midwifery Clinic

So last Thursday, Melissa, Whitney and I went to visit a midwifery clinic here called Glory Reborn. One of the missionaries here set it up for us after hearing about our medical aspirations. On Thursday afternoons they do prenatals and then in the middle of the afternoon they have a teaching time and a worship time. All the services are free, including delivering your baby there, but if you require medication or vitamins, you have to pay for those.

This lady here, Jen, is doing her midwifery practicum here at the clinic. She was the one who was showing us around.

This is the teaching time. This week's topic was the delivery process.
Below is the worship time.


Us charting and helping out with the prenatals. We got to do a lot!! Melissa even did one prenatal completely on her own!

Ministry Opportunities

Bevan teaching in one of his classes. Does he look like he's sweating a bit?? It was really humid that day. He teaches Tues & Thursday am from 7:30 - 10:30.

Emily teaching 2 our her piano students. She teaches approx. 20 students on Tues/Wed/Thurs. am. Many students are quite musical but have never learned to read music.

These next couple of pictures are kids from one of the elementary preschool classes that Melissa helps with on Tues/Wed mornings. They are sooo cute!!

Involvement with the college students:

Whitney, Melissa and Emily with two of the college students.

Yes, that's Emily with all those boys!! The boys around here are quite enamoured by our 3 beautiful girls!

Jeremy playing chess with Aga. Those of you on the team we brought on our last trip will remember Aga - the school maintenance man.

Coming soon from the girls:

Sports Day

Visit and helping at the Midwife Clinic

Squatter Houses

These pictures are from a squatter area between our house and the school. It is being taken down because of development. Squatter means an area of public or private land where over time people have built a little house, and then more people come, and eventually a whole area is filled. In this particular area some of the people have lived there for 17 years. This is private land, and the land owner passed away, and now the family wants to develop it. Our guess is that there are at least 100+ people living in this area. They will pack up their wood & tin, and move somewhere else. This is a very difficult thing for these people.

Another new church experience

Yesterday (Sunday) we attended a church that we had never been to before. It is called Living Word Christian Ministries. It is probably one of the biggest evangelical churches in Cebu. They have 5 services (2 in Cebuano, 2 in English, and 1 in Taglog) plus a radio ministry. This church is very close to where we live. When we arrived (10 min. early) there was about 100 people, but by the time the service was in full swing we figured there was over 900 people. And...as far as we could see we were the only 6 white people there! We enjoyed the service, but not the welcoming visitors part. At one point, they ask for visitors to raise their hands (we couldn't really hide because we kind of stand out) so we raised our hands. Then we had to come to the front, and they all sang a welcome song, plus about 20 designated people come by and shake your hand. After that you are directed outside of the sanctuary, where we sit in a group and they have you fill out the visitors brochure (which was in Cebuano - so we couldn't read any of it). After all that we went back into the service. It was a unique experience, but we enjoyed the worship music and the sermon.

After church we enjoyed a relaxing day at home (the girls went to a youth event) but the rest of us stayed home. This last week was mid term exams so Bevan had a full week with writing, giving exams and grading. Emily had the week off from teaching piano students. She teaches approx. 25 students on Tues, Wed, Thurs mornings at the school - some are in small groups. So this week we are back to our regular schedule again. It won't be long till the kids will have regular "home" school in the mornings.

Day at the beach

The missionaries invited us for a day at the beach. They have memberships at a couple of resorts which are beside each other, so we enjoyed a day of swimming in the pools, and swimming in the ocean.

Two of our friends - Jean Nelson and Carol Johnson.
Jeremy found a new friend - Mark Johnson. The Johnson's just arrived back in Cebu after a 3 month home assignment.

After snorkeling in the ocean, Emily, Melissa & Bevan got stung by jelly fish. Emily got it the worst. Believe it or not, she went out again later, and got stung again on her leg. They must like her skin!

For supper we went to the nearby fish market. There are a lot of vendor shops around, and then you get to the front of the restaurants which have displays like the one below.

The fish are very fresh - just caught and brought in. Some were still moving. We had fresh prawns, crab, lapu-lapu (local fish), mol mol, (another local fish), calamares ( deep fried squid), seaweed salad, and of course lots of rice. Melissa was brave and ate 2 fish eyeballs!
Choosing our dinner.

The dining area sits out over the ocean on bamboo stilts. We all had a great day. It was a nice break!