December 2012
My 1st Christmas in the Philippines
I finally took pictures of our Christmas decorations (and my keyboard). Some of the decorations and tree ornaments are mine and some are Ruth’s.
This is my first Christmas away from my family. God is good in providing understanding friends here. This is a more difficult time than I had at Thanksgiving; however, God is faithful. I try to remind myself of this and the many blessings He has provided here when I am sad about not being home for Christmas.
One thing that struck me today as being different than Christmas in the States is that they don’t have Christmas Eve services at the Protestant churches here. I’m spending dinner and part of the evening with friends (and will play some Christmas songs for them) but it will be different. They do decorate with lights and have been playing Christmas music in the malls and grocery since the -ber months started though (SeptemBER, OctoBER, NovemBER, and DecemBER). 🙂
I hope you have a wonderful time with family and friends and take some time to focus on the most precious gift we could ever be given – the gift of salvation through Jesus, the Messiah.
Vietnamese Restaurant
I went to a Vietnamese restaurant with friends a few weeks ago and wanted to share a few pictures. That was the first time I ate Vietnamese food.
Here is my housemate, Ruth, and me at the restaurant.
Here is our appetizer.
This was my meal: chicken, mildly spicy sauce, veggies, & cashews.
On the left is one of the other meals.
The light fixtures were really neat.
Mini Oranges
I’m making another food post. 🙂
There are these oranges here that are really little. I really like them and thought I’d show them to you too.
IMPORTANT- new way to subscribe to my blog
1. Thankfully a few of you let me know that the FeedMyInbox program that you used to subscribe to my blog is not going to be working soon.
2. Thankfully Chris, who set up the blog for me, found a different service to use so you can still subscribe to my blog. Thank you Chris!
This new service is called FeedBurner. You will need to subscribe again. If you look to the right of the screen and scroll down a little you will see “Subscribe Via Email.” You want to insert your email address there to subscribe.
You may then want to unsubscribe from the FeedMyInbox emails so you don’t receive double emails when I make a post. SO…once you have confirmed your email address with the new service (FeedBurner), then you probably want to click the unsubscribe link in the lower right corner of one of the emails you received from FeedMyInbox.
If you have any questions about this please let me know. 🙂
My Classroom
This is a pretty delayed post since the 1st semester ends in about 2 weeks. I took some pictures of my classroom back in August or September. It doesn’t look quite like this anymore but I thought I’d share them with you anyway. I’ll be posting about my classroom at the end of Christmas break (most likely) since I am planning to organize and perhaps rearrange a few things. We will see how the time goes. 🙂
Anyway, for now I hope you enjoy these pictures.
Here is a view from the back of the room to the front.
These are my rules & consequences (with connected Bible verses) on one of my doors.
This was a plot diagram from 8th grade literature. We used sticky notes to fill it in. Different types of sticky notes were for different stories.
The table has 3 trays (one for each grade) in which they submit their assignments.
This is a view of the front of the classroom.
Here are my bookshelves along one wall.
Of course I need a Dr. Seuss poster!
Vocabulary bulletin board
Grammar bulletin board and another plot diagram
Hopefully I’ll have some updated pictures in a few weeks!
Eden Nature Park – Part 2
Next we took the guided tour around the park. I saw many different and beautiful plants.
I got to see Mickey Mouse plants. Do you see the ears?
Below is a coral vine – Ruth’s favorite.
My shirt matched the jade vine. (please ignore the finger in the corner)
I saw these and thought of Baby Moses hiding in the bulrushes. I’m not sure if that’s really what they are or not.
This is called Matinlo Falls. I would love to go back to Eden and go on the hiking trail. I think it goes by the Falls.
The second tour stop had examples of houses that the different tribes of Mindanao have used. There was also a group of children who performed a dance.
Lola’s Garden was the third and final stop on the tour.
It was hazy so we weren’t able to see Davao City as clearly as you can on some days.
This hibiscus was in front of me in that little hut.
These hibiscus flowers were floating on the water in the wishing well. They were so pretty!
There are deer in the Philippines! I wasn’t sure because I didn’t remember seeing any when I was here last time. They are much smaller than white-tailed deer and their fur is dark. I included a few pictures of them below.
The two pictures below are of a young deer.
