January 7th

By: Courtney Schoen 

Good morning from the Philippines!

This morning was the beginning of another eventful day full of church and meet and greets. To start the day we had a nutritious breakfast of none other than rice, eggs and bread. We have realized that we will be getting our fill of rice because it is served for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

After breakfast and preparing for church we got on our tourist bus and headed through the busy streets of Manila. The streets are so busy that for the 4 mile trip to the church it took us 30 minutes (which is fast according to the locals). Once we arrived to the church we were introduced to the pastor and other members of the parish. During mass we were even invited to stand up and be introduced in front of everyone that was at mass. When mass senses we could tell that it was time for lunch because our stomachs were all rumbling.

On the way home we stopped at a local restaurant called Max’s where we ordered family style to get a sample of all the common Filipino dishes. The favorite of mine was the the fresh lumpia and sinigong soup (pictures located below). For my drink I ordered Ube leche with flan that was the color purple! It looked slightly strange, but tasted amazing!

Once we were done with lunch we came home and rested before our meet and greet.  More MJ students have arrived from their winter break.  We played a game of telephone in Tagalog; which ended poorly with team one ending with “I don’t know what they said” and team two ending with “kaka poo poo” (not a Tagalog word).  We played a few more get to know you games and we ended with the MJ students daring CSS to eat Balut. An aborted duck. Everyone ate it but Tori and Courtney gave it an admirable effort but spit it out. All and all it was a good experience and we gained many new friends in the process!

Fresh Lumpia

Sinigang

Ube Leche with Flan