Happy Thanksgiving from the Philippines!

The Philippines LOVE to take holidays. Our favorite, little, next door neighbor, Nini, is constantly home from school for "holiday". However, Thanksgiving is one holiday that they don't celebrate :/ (Which is understandable. Why would they need to celebrate pilgrims coming to the 'New World'?)

It wasn't until about noon, that we got on Facebook and everyone was wishing us "Happy Thanksgiving" that we realized, "Oh yeah, its Thanksgiving today". We were just gonna shrug our shoulders and say, "Oh well". But then Sam turned on some Christmas music and we started to get a little homesick. Then all of a sudden, Allison got up and said, "We're not gonna do this. We're gonna celebrate Thanksgiving." 

So we decided the first thing we should start on is the pie (I mean, whats Thanksgiving without Pumpkin Pie, right?) However, there are no pumpkins here. To some this would be a major downfall, but not to the Hanaway sisters. 

It didn't take long for the pie to
disappear.

We had a Kalabasa (which is a squash-like vegetable as shown in the picture above) at our house so we pressure cooked that and ran it through the blender. Then we added evaporated milk, brown sugar, and of course, the cinnamon, nutmeg, and all spice. We whipped it all together and poured it over a graham cracker crust. (Another downfall was that we didn't have a pie plate. So we just used a regular baking pan) 

After we had put the pie in the oven, we realized that we didn't have any whipped cream for it. So we used this little box of all purpose cream that they sell here and added some condensed milk and then put it in the freezer. It came out more like a creamy frosting than whipped cream but it still tasted amazing. 

Then Allison went on a cooking rampage. Dirtying almost every dish in the house to put together a Thanksgiving Dinner. 

Nini poses next to our dinner.

We had mashed potatoes, green beans, corn,  vege-meat with a cashew gravy, rolls, and cashew cheese. It was AMAZING. 

Vege-Meat with Cashew Gravy

After the dinner, we were so full that we made ourselves go for a 2 mile walk around the block. We came back and cleaned up our mess, then sat down to try our Pumpkin pie "creation". It tasted like the real thing! We could barely tell the difference. 

Mashed potatoes are good in any
country.

When we realized it was edible, we decided to see if our fellow missionaries wanted to try some. They really liked it….so much in fact, that it is now gone. Andrew had commented that " It didn't feel like Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie". So we were excited that we were able to bring a little Thanksgiving to the other missionaries. 

Though Nini wasn't around when
the meal was cooked...or eaten...

We made sure to wake up early this morning (6ish) to Skype our family back home and share their Thanksgiving holiday with them.

...she did stop by when we brought
the camera out. Which is her favorite
part anyways. ;)

We have SOO much to give thanks for this year. We're so thankful that we were able to come to the Philippines as missionaries. We are SOOO thankful for all the donations and support we've received from everyone back home. We are very thankful for the internet and Facebook and Skype, they definitely help make the 7,000 miles between us and our loved ones feel so much shorter. We are thankful for our AMAZING family and friends back home and for our new missionary family here. We are thankful for our health and for all the knowledge that we have to be shared with the people here. We have been very blessed this last year!

We hope everyone else enjoyed their holiday and was able to reflect on all the blessings they've received in the past year. Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!! Till next time…

~Me and Her

Life's *Simple* Pleasures

A very giggly Din Din poses for a picture

Ahh....the simple pleasures in life. In America, things like air conditioning, cable, wireless internet, vehicles would come to mind. What about a running toliet? Last week, Sam had an eye opening experience when she had to teach a Palawano how to use a toilet. 

We have spent a lot of time with this family, and have countless pictures of the kids. They help us in the rice fields, and we take care of their sick children and give them medications when needed. In fact, their youngest, Mindy, was featured in our blog The Weekend Is Here. 

Well one day, while the men were in the fields, we were hanging out with the mom and kids. Then the mom started motioning that Din Din, one of her youngest sons, had to use the bathroom Sam said, "Oh ok. Come with me, I'll show you where it is." We walked into the house and she brought them to the bathroom and then closed the door for privacy. Soon the mom came out and was asking for "tubig" (which is Tagalog for water) So Sam figured it was so she could wash Din Din's hands. So she went in and turned the sink on and showed the mom that he could wash his hands in the sink. But the mom starting looking from the sink to the toilet with a puzzled look on her face. It was then that Sam noticed Din Din. He was standing on the toilet seat squatting over the toilet bowl. 

Din Din gets silly when his picture is taken.

The mom then started to motion that she needed a bucket to carry water to the toilet. "Ohhhh" Sam said realizing that she thought you had to flush the toilet with a bucket of water (which is EXTREMELY common in the Philippines. Even in our little pink house thats how we flush the toilet. But the toilets at the project are "high tech" and they actually flush. Anyways, back to story) "Oh, no here" Sam said. She motioned to the toilet "flusher" handle and pushed the lever down. The mom was surprised. Then Sam noticed she was looking for something to clean Din Din up. So Sam grabbed some toilet paper and motioned for her to wipe him with that. 

As the mom was wiping him, Sam began to wonder if she knew what to do with the toilet paper when finished. Sure enough when the mom was finished she was looking for a a place to put it. Sam told her "Just drop it in the toilet" The mom looked shocked. "No, really, its ok" Sam said. So she did. Afterwards, instead of washing Din Din's hands in the sink she took him to the water faucet out and back and had him wash his hands. (Perhaps too much of a culture shock for them?)  After that we went back to our usual day. However Sam was shocked that she just had to teach someone how to use a toilet.

Mindy is such a happy baby!

Its amazing, really, how much we take for granted. I know what you're all thinking, "Oh heres the big speech that all missionaries and world travelers bring back. How spoiled we are as a country and blah blah blah". But it's really true. Its almost like you can't fully appreciate life's simple pleasures until you see what they really are. We never thought that a flushing toilet would make our list of "Simple Pleasures". But it only took a mom and her 3 year old son to make us realize that it is. How many more of life's true pleasures will WE learn from these people....Till next time.


~Me and Her

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