I scream, you scream....and all that jazz.

The Ice Cream "Truck" passes by almost 5 times a day. Everytime with the same, happy-go-lucky tune that will become stuck in our heads for the rest of the day. One day we made up silly, mindless lyrics to the ever popular Philippines Ice Cream Truck sound. Afterwards we decided to reward ourselves by actually buying ice cream from him. Anywho, here is a video of the song and our lyrics.





~Me and Her

"K'loaf, Rice and Cliffs" One of these things is not like the other...

Friday was a fairly lazy day. We have to admit, lazy days are nice once in awhile. In the morning we had a little girl and her mother stop by. A couple weeks ago, the little girl had been playing and fell and cut up her leg quite a bit. It had already become infected. So Sam pulled out her #1 weapon: Charcoal. 

Another advantage of Charcoal (besides the obvious healing benefits) is that it is a painless healing option. You would think with the wounds that these children show up with, they would be fearless when it comes to pain, but they still whimper and cling to their parent whenever Sam comes near to care for their injuries. This little girl was no different, but once the charcoal was put on and she realized there was nothing to worry about, she began to relax and gave us a smile or two.

We spent the day accomplishing little tasks and preparing for Sabbath. We decided to experiment and made Special-K loaf for Sabbath lunch. We supplemented tofu for the cottage cheese, we couldn't really even taste a difference.

This is a Filipino mixing bowl.....spelling obviously isn't their forte...lol.

Andrew came back from the project with a truck full of rice sacks to store in his apartment. These sacks weigh 50 kilos (110 lbs) and there were over 10 of them. Allison and Monica felt bad watching Andrew carry them all by himself, so they decided to team up and help him out. 

For Sabbath we attended the L.I.G.H.T. School graduation ceremony. The L.I.G.H.T. school is a program that teaches people how to become medical missionaries. Three of our fellow missionaries had been teaching at the school so the entire PAMAS group went for the graduation Sabbath.

Haddie fell asleep. So Danny decided to get a workout in. lol.
"Hey Danny! How much can you bench press?"
"Two babies!"

Afterwards we went down to the river. It was gorgeous, the water was SOO clear. So we spent the afternoon swimming. The water was refreshing on such a hot day.

Nini leads us to the river.

The kids are lucky. All they have to do is strip
down to their underwear. Wala! Swimsuit!

Nini wanted a picture with her head in the water.

After just floating around leisurely, we followed all the guys to a little cliff down the river a little bit. Along the very shallow river, there was ONE small section where it was deep enough to jump from the cliff. After seeing a couple kids and fellow missionaries make the jump we decided to try it out. It was EXTREMELY nerve racking because there was only one spot where it was safe to jump and if you missed that spot....it would hurt a little...after strong encouragement and a quick prayer of safety we made the jump. It was crazy and fun all at the same time. As Allison put it, "There's nothing like the total exhilaration of doing something completely stupid." lol. Here is a video of our jump:

Afterwards we were all given.....which is another Filipino treat. It looked weird but tasted awesome.

Sunday was suppose to be our Children's Program. It wasn't until we were getting ready to leave that we realized....wow...the roads are really quiet right now. There were NO cars, NO tricycles, NO people. It was like the twilight zone. We soon found out that Manny Pacquiao, a Filipino boxer and icon to almost ALL Filipinos, was fighting in the WBC light-middleweight title against Mexico's Antonio Margarito. We drove to Imunlod but there was no one to be found. If anything, I would compare it to Super Bowl Sunday in America. If you're not in front of your own T.V., you're in front of someone elses. We were sad not to be able to do our program but we completely understood ( I mean, hey, if the Packers make it to the Superbowl don't expect us to leave our computer screens for a second. lol, just kidding ;)  ) Oh btw, he won. Pacquiao won his eighth different belt. Yay for the Philippines!
Till next time...


~Me and Her

Hitchin' a ride

This past weekend was Fellowship Sabbath. Its hard to believe a month has already past for us. As some of you may remember, Fellowship Sabbath is where all the Adventists churches in surrounding village come together and since nobody has vehicles it is our job to pick everyone up. So we spent the entire week before Fellowship Sabbath building a trailer. Now, the project had a trailer but it was so rusted and the boards were so water logged and termite infested that we decided to renovate it.

 It took us all week to get the trailer back to full strength.

Sam with her flowers.

Sam being honored for Oct. birthdays

Fellowship Sabbath was a lot of fun. Every month they have the people who celebrated the birthday or anniversary in the past month stand up front and we all  sing to them and the kids give everyone flowers. Since Sam celebrated her birthday in October she was honored with everyone else. 

After the service, we stayed for the Potluck (which if you remember, is where everyone brings food for their own families and if anyone has extras they share with other people) We brought plenty of food….however, we forgot plates. So we ended up using the lids of our pots as plates. (Hey! Less dishes to do later)

Till next time…

Kids helping us better learn Tagalog

~Me and Her

A walk on the wild side.

Last week we were bored and we thought instead of waiting for sick and injured patients to find us, why don't we go out looking for them? So we decided, the next day, we were going to pack lunches, grab our 2L bottles of water and just walk around the jungle and look for sick people. We didn't care that we don't really speak the language that well. Sam knew how to say "Is there any sick people here?" and so we figured that suffice. 

Nomark's foot

We started out at the project and Micheil suggested that we ride the motorcycle with her and visit a couple of patients.The three of us climbed onto the little 125 motorbike and rode through the jungle. The ride was a little scary considering its the rainy season and all the dirt roads are now giant mud puddles but we managed to gain control of our nerves. Micheil, of course, could always be counted on for "calming" advice ("Close your eyes, Feel the pain") lol. 

Richard's leg. The blackness is
merely charcoal residue.

Our first stop was to check on Richard and his brother, Nomark. Richard's leg is starting to look like a normal leg now and Nomarks foot is back to normal. Only a few more charcoal treatments and the boys should be completely healed. 

Then we stopped over to visit Nini's home in Sabsaban. Nini's oldest brother, Susoy (the first of the 8 children), had an accident a couple of days earlier. He fell, from a coconut tree, 15 ft. and landed on his feet. It happened during the weekend so we couldn't take him to get a X-ray done at the hospital, because it was closed.  His family had taken him to see some sort of "village chiropracter/healer" and said that they "popped his spine back into place and all he would need was some Amoxicillin". After hearing this Sam was freaking out. Amoxicillin??? How would that help a broken back??? Sam did an assessment on him, making sure he could move his toes and stuff, and there wasn't anything we could do for him except to pray and instruct him to lay as flat as possible, without moving. (This week we were able to check on him again and Susoy is able to walk, sit and move around, but is still really sore which he probably will be for awhile But praise God that this 15 year old is not paralyzed.)

Can you see the swelling of the spine?

After visiting Susoy we headed back to the project. Not even 45 sec from driving off we wiped out on the motorcycle. The best part is we had the video camera running. So we got to capture us going down (unfortunately the camera turned off on impact) Anyways, Praise God, again, they only injury was a huge bruise on Allison's leg..lol.

Click on pictures to enlarge.

After we returned to the project we realized we still had some time to hike around the village to try and find some other patients. We came to a house where we had been told a man had injured his foot in a motorcycle accident (oh! the irony) Sam grabbed her Kerlix, Peroxide, Antibiotic Ointment, and some bandages and went to work. There was so much gravel and dirt covering the wound that she didn't realizing how deep it was until she finished cleaning it. In the end, it wasn't too bad. She wrapped up his foot and instructed him to keep it clean and to put the ointment on it daily. (A couple of days later Micheil saw him walking down the road without a limp. He said it was healing fine :) )

It was a really fun day. We definitely want to try our walking adventure again some other time. Till then...

~Me and Her

What's on the menu??

 Cooking here is way different than at home. First of all there is no Wal-Mart or grocery store right down the road with all your needs. If you want vegetables Monday Market is the day to get them. However, there are strange vegetables we've never heard of or maybe even just didn't like before now. lol. But above all, in our time here so far we've learned 2 very interesting facts about ourselves in the kitchen.

#1 We both realized that we have a common fear. A Fear of PRESSURE Cookers. Then again, we never really used one. We just remember our mom saying that if you open a pressure cooker before it's ready to be opened it would explode. And just the thought of death by pressure cooker was enough to keep us away from them all this time. However, as we were both realizing and admitting this fear we both have had to use the pressure cooker for numerous meals and now we are proud to say that, "We are no longer afraid." Yay!

# 2 Allison is a Master Chef! Most of you that are close to her would not expect to read that former sentence. We don't know what it is about Brooke's Point, but Allison has been able to shell out amazing dishes one after another. It's not as easy you think either. We have to look on the internet for recipes, but these recipes can't include any form of dairy, any form of meat…..or pretty much animal products of any kind. It wasn't our plan to become vegan's on this trip, but its not a bad thing either. We've found ways to substitute things in order to make our favorites. It's an art form really.

For example: On one occasion, we were craving Haystacks. But in the Philippines we don't have refried beans, taco meat, chips, cheese, or lettuce. Some would admit defeat. Not the Hanaway Sisters!! 

For the beans, we pressure cooked ( :D ) some kidney beans and when they were cooked we ran them through the blender. For the taco meat, we shredded tofu and fried it in taco seasoning. We used rice instead of chips, Cabbage instead of lettuce, and for the cheese we blended cashews, peppers, and other various ingredients to make a nacho cheese substance. We spoiled ourselves by opening up jars of black and green olives (YUM!) It was a taste of home, with a Filipino twist!

-Another food adventure was making Vegetable Curry (taking advantage of the abundance of coconut milk here :D)

This proves that the apples were
good...lol jk.

-We also made homemade applesauce( by using apples, water, cinnamon, and little bit of sugar.)

Not exactly Krafts but still
amazing!

-Mac N' Cheese (using the cheese concoction from the haystacks and mixing it with noodles and tofu)

-And an AMAZING, fresh, mango crisp (which, sadly, was eaten too quickly to take a picture of it)

Of course we cook a lot vegetable stir-frys with rice, rice casseroles, pretty much anything that includes rice lol. But when we want those special meals it's always fun to experiment. I'm sure we'll have many more opportunities for it :) Till next time…

~Me and Her

Sunday, Sunday (Da, da. Da da-da da.)

This morning started with a bang…or to be more specific…a blood curdling scream. 

Allison woke up and went to the bathroom and as she was reaching for the toilet paper a GIANT, HUGE, HAIRY, GROSS, DISGUSTING, (did we mention GIANT?) spider popped out from behind the toilet paper roll. 

This is a picture we found on the
internet that best describes what the
spider looked like. Eew!!

Now, here in the Philippines we have gotten use to many disgusting creatures. Cockroaches use to send us running and screaming out the door. Now, we can squish them on sight. Geckos roam the house, there is no way to get rid of them, they'll pop out of anywhere and the mouse/rat that lives upstairs, we've come to terms that as long as they don't bother us we don't really care. However spiders, we've not yet gotten use to…and Massive spiders (like this one) we had never encountered till this morning. 

Allison said the spider was about
the size of her sprawled hand. This is an
illustration about how big the mutant
spider was. Again, Eew!!

Anywho, so Allison screamed the most terrifying scream and ran out of the bathroom and "safely" back into the house. 

Sam jumped from bed at the sound of the scream and ran to see if everything was okay. Allison, shaking and stuttering told her about the spider, which of course made Sam laugh. "No! This is no ordinary spider! You have to see it, its huge!" Allison said, trying to defend herself. Sam just continued to laugh, however she refused to go look at it (CHICKEN!)

Michiel and Andrew after they
saved our lives. lol.

The scream woke up our little neighborhood of missionaries and everyone came to see what had happened. Sam just laughed and told them to "Ally saw a bug" 

"Wrong! It was a Mutant spider, it was HUGE! And it jumped out at me!" Allison corrected. Since we both refused to go into the bathroom and look at it we had to beg Andrew and Michiel to come and kill the spider for us. It was disgusting. And now the-intensive-bathroom-checks-before-we-can-even-walk-inside begin again…*sigh*…

Lookin' a little pasty, there...lol.

In the afternoon we headed to Imulnod for our children's program. Today, Andrew, Monica, Marcita, and Nini had nothing to do so they came along with us. On our way there we pick up a family of 12. Yesterday, they had invited some friends so there were 17 of them. So we had to fit 25 people in our Toyota Hilux. We decided  to give up our seats inside the cab of the trunk to the mothers with small children and road with the rest of the kids in the truck bed. This is a video from our ride:

The monkey. One of our favorite things to photograph...besides the kids
of course...lol.

When we got there, we had way more kids than we had expected. Because tomorrow is Election day so everyone was coming in from the mountains to vote. So we were able to meet more kids. Hallelujah! We had a lot of fun with them. We sang songs, told our childrens story, colored pictures and played a game. Here is a video of them preparing for the game we played:

We couldn't get it to embed...so if you'd like to watch the video of the game just follow the link. Sorry for the inconvenience.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLwrbjR51Q8

At the end, we rewarded them with ice candy (which is a Filipino FAVORITE! Its coconut, condensed milk, evaporated milk and water and then you put it into little baggies and freeze it. They LOVE it!)

Click on pictures to enlarge.

On our way back home, after dropping off the family, we decided to take a detour and walk around by the mountains to take some GORGEOUS sunset pictures. Maganda, maganda! Till next time…

~Me and Her