Trip Around the World - Week 1

On Monday, May 10, we embarked on a journey to the other side of the world, a twelve hour time change, to Cebu, Philippines. If you don't know, Cebu is where Lee grew up from age 1 through High School. It's his "hometown." His parents still live working at a Bible College. The last time we went to Cebu was in 2006. The last time we had seen his parents before this was over a year ago. They had never met Ana and Isabel was drastically grown up from the last time they saw her.

Isabel's "bed" we made for her at the LAX airport. It was like 3 am for her when this was taken.

The trip going there took us nearly 30 hours. We had a 6 hour layover in Los Angeles so met up with Lee's old roommate from college and his family. They took us to a nearby In N Out and we enjoyed each other's company. They are the type of friends that even though you don't get to see them often you feel right at home when you do. They have two little girls almost the same ages as ours. I don't know what I was thinking but we didn't take any pictures with them. I guess another time. Then we proceeded on a 15 hour flight from LAX to Hong Kong. Yea, I knew it was going to be a long flight when I asked Lee how much longer and he said, "only 11 more hours." Ugh! It was LONG! The girls were great though! We were fortunate enough to get a bassinet seat for Ana and it made a world of difference. I can't imagine having to hold her on my lap that whole time. We arrived in Hong Kong and literally had to run to our next flight and made it as they were doing the final boarding call. Then took our last flight from Hong Kong to Cebu! Finally, we arrived!!! We did at least, but not our luggage. It did come the next day though and we were grateful.

We stayed at the Baptist Missionary Home there also know as the Guest House. It's a large house that missions groups, missionaries, pastors, can stay at while traveling through Cebu. We all stayed in one room and got the only room that has it's only bathroom, so that was nice. I now know we can all sleep in the same room, although I must admit I like us all having our own rooms back now that we are home.

The first few days we mainly stayed around the Guest House, rested and tried to get our time switched around. Like I said it is a 12 hour time difference so their 1 pm. is our 1 am. The first two days were hard for the girls, but after that they started to adjust (or we all did). The guest house had a playhouse and swing set that was great for both girls.

The playhouse

This swing set was Lee's when he was little

Lee's parents had a membership to a pool at a local hotel, so we went swimming almost everyday, usually in the morning before it got too hot. They were having record breaking temperatures while we were there. It was HOT! It's pretty much always hot, but more especially when we were there, at least that's what they told us. Lee says I'm born to live in a hot country though cause I loved it!:) Basically you were sweating though from the time you got up in the morning to when you went to bed, but we did have air-con in our room at night. If you weren't in air-con your clothes just stuck to you. We'd usually spend the evenings at a mall enjoying the air-conditioning.

Isabel LOVES swimming. She was jumping off the side into the pool, in the deep end, no fear for her in the water, which is good and not at the same time.

A train ride in the mall. Not on tracks or anything, it would just drive through the mall and people watched out for it. Yea, not something you'd see in the USA.

The coolest thing ever. You had to jump on this horse to make it go. Great for a little girl who loves to jump. Wish I took video, but our camera died right after I took this picture.

Lee's parents invited their old helper, Ate Neneng, who worked for them when Lee grew up, to come and stay while we were there also. Ana adored her. I almost packed her in our suitcase to come live with us:)This is "Family Park." All the other little kids there were saying Isabel looked like a Barbie. They had a pond there and we brought some bread to feed the fish. So we were feeding them, but a smart little cat went and grabbed a few fish while they were close to the shore where we were feeding them.

How could we not get donuts with Lee's family. Actually one of Lee's classmates from HS owns this place too, "Gonuts Donuts."

We took a tricycle home...one mode of transportation there.

One night we all played Lolo's collection of instruments from Thailand.

Isabel is singing a song while she plays. I can't really tell anymore what she was singing, maybe cause of the loud banging noise.:) It might have been "Jesus Loves Me" though.

So that's some of week one. There is so much I could say. You can view more pictures on FB if you are friends with me, there are way too many to post on this blog. It might take me a bit to post the other weeks, as it took me like 3 or 4 days to get this post up. I'll do my best though.