We have almost completed our first Christmas/holiday season in the Philippines. After we finished grades for our first semester of teaching at Faith, we collapsed into the break from school. We have read a large number of books, held un-rushed conversations with friends and family, and slept a lot. We explored a few new-to-us areas of the city, successfully found and used a post-office, and replaced our front doorknob. With friends and with each other, and with much gratitude to God, we celebrated the birth of Jesus and the coming of a new year. It has been a high-quality holiday time.
Among other things, we had most of the other TEAM missionaries who are based in Manila over to our house for a pre-Christmas dinner. It was a really fun evening with MUCH food, singing, sharing, and a game of Apples to Apples. Unfortunately, nobody took any pictures. We also do not have any pictures of our Manila explorations or doorknob exertions. However, we do have a few pictures below that will show you some of the last couple of weeks.
Christmas morning we opened gifts- from each other and from friends here. Our holiday will be extended into January because some gifts from family will arrive then. We don't have a Christmas tree this year, so instead of gifts under the tree, our gifts were under the nativity scene and star.
Another consequence of not having a Christmas tree was the need to get creative with our lights and other decorations. So we made Christmas banisters! Our stairway has lights, ribbons, a few ornaments, and a number of cards and notes from students and colleagues.
Christmas afternoon we had dinner with fellow teachers Katy, Nate, and Valerie at Nate and Val's house. It was a yummy meal with especially yummy turkey. Afterward we played games, so that made Seth and I very happy. We have been thrilled to find many game-playing friends here.
For New Year's Eve, we went to a fondue party at the home of some friends who live right next to the Faith Academy campus. There were a lot of different families there, so we thoroughly enjoyed talking and eating. Here, we were chatting with Nate and Meg. (Meg is one of the teachers who we met this summer at our training in New York!)
At around 11:00, we walked the rest of the way up the hill to Faith's campus. It's a good place to sit and look out over the whole city of Manila, which is worth your while if you're ever in Manila for the new year! Here we are settling in to enjoy the show.
These are a few of Laura's 7th-grade girls who were hanging out on the tennis courts right behind us. MANY Faith Academy families (student and staff) come up to campus to ring in the new year. It makes for a fun and energetic atmosphere, and if you look below, you'll see why we gather there.
New Year's is a holiday for fireworks in the Philippines. Families buy all kinds of fireworks, from little sparklers through bottle rockets and on up from there. They set them off in streets and neighborhoods and parks all over the city. If you're IN a neighborhood, it's very loud and smoky and probably a bit scary, and you can see only the fireworks nearby. From the vantage point of Faith Academy, it is still remarkably noisy, but you can see firework displays going on all around the city, all at once. It was quite beautiful. We could tell how close it was to midnight by how intense the fireworks were getting, and right at 12:00, you had to yell to be heard above all the explosions!
