a good re-cap of Bourg D'Oisans

Snow, rain, slush, more snow, card games, rainy days, chocolate, -10°, board games, skiing, pizza, snow, crazy blizzards on a mountain top, frequently stacking it on my snowboard, looking out windows at beautiful rocky peaks shrouded in cloud, hot chocolate and coffee in cozy bars, good times with good friends, windy ski lifts, snow angels... snow...
These are the memories I will keep of our time with Dan and Candide. Their hospitality and generosity to us was so welcoming! We enjoyed every minute of it and will greatly miss their company. Hannah and I enjoyed getting to know Candide better during our visit, playing board games like brandy dogs, guillotine and take it easy together as snow fell on the window sill outside, and Candide even taught Hannah how to knit a beanie which she is wearing right now!
Dan was just as enthusiastic about playing board games and such, with typical b
'Danguage' being used throughout the games like "scumbag!", "work it" and "ma-jassive", always amusing to hear. :-)
The best part of staying indoors though was the food! I have never eaten such amazing tasting cheese before! Or as it's called in France, 'frommage'. We even got to try 'foie gras' and 'raclette', some traditional french quisine.

Bourg D'Oisans, what an enchanting place to live!  It's a beautiful little town of stone walled housed and paved skinny streets all intertwined around rivers and located in the valley, overlooked by huge, domineering mountains. The location is picturesque but with that beauty comes risks and extremes often not thought of by the usual tourist. For Dan and Candide to get to work each day they must travel along dangerous, windy roads that are challenging on a good day, let alone when it's raining or snowing! And if there's any loose rocks on the cliff-faces, roads can be closed completely, leaving no way to get to work or camp etc. Witnessing this first-hand was a great way to grasp the intensity and danger of the French alpes in winter and gave us all the more reason to keep D & C in our prayers during the camp off season.

Speaking of intensity, on Thursday, Han and I decided to go skiing at the place where Dan works, Les Deux Alpes. That place is intense! 3200m above sea level and subject to extreme weather conditions every day, we had no idea what we had gotten ourselves into! After a couple of epic descents and regular crashes on my part, we were exhausted! It's amazing how quickly the cold conditions sap you of your energy, and to think Dan stays out there 5 days a week for 6 hrs or more, I would hate that job! But he does it every week until April and is impressively positive about it all considering the circumstances...

So now we're on our way to Ville Lummiere, the city of light, a.k.a. Paris and are enjoying the speed of travel offered by the TGV with an average speed of 300km p/h! All in all it was a fantastic experience, one that I'll never forget. I think didn't include photos in this blog because you can see all of the photos in the linked picasa web album on the right so have a squiz through them if you're interested in seeing what we saw.

Next blog will be a catch up one on our last two days in Madrid with Phil and Lydia. For now though, bonjour!

Europe/U.K trip

Click on the picture of us if you want to see more pics of our trip!

Our first day in Spain

As I'm writing this, Hannah and I have just finished our highlights tour of Madrid with our own personal tour guide, Phil Lucas, and we're now just waiting for their church service to start.

Seeing the highlights of Spain today were made all the more exciting because we got to see them while riding a scooter around between each one! Phil suggested we get around that way because it'd be quicker and more conventional for all the stopping and parking etc and I jumped at the chance to ride a bike again, especially through the streets of Madrid! So 10 min later we were geared up and ready to go, Hannah riding pillion on the back of my bike and me following Phil like a hawk through the crazy traffic and complicated intersections. What a way to travel!

One of the stops was outside the mecca of Spanish football, Estadio Santiago, home of Real Madrid FC and players such as Ronald and Kaka. In a word, amazing! What was even more amazing was that when we got there we saw that they were selling tickets for a game that night and guess what teams would be playing? Real Madrid vs Barcelona! Biggest grudge match of the country! How could we miss that? So we lined up for tickets, stood in a queue for about half an hour, sent some bragging texts to various mates about how we would be seeing these two teams play, only to find out that the tickets selling for 75 euro were all only single seat tickets spread out randomly throughout the stadium and if you wanted to buy 2 tickets next to each other it would cost 275 Euro per ticket, over 700 Aussie dollars for Hannah and I to go... :-( I was super bummed but as keen as I was to see it, but I couldn't justify paying that much (and neither could Han). So we had to settle for a cozy pub with lots of passionate Spaniards yelling at the Barcelona players on the TV and some warm drinks to keep out the cold, it made for a pretty good atmosphere and a good consolation for the real thing.

After a disappointing loss for the locals we headed back home, me following Phil again but a little more carefully this time because of the wet roads from earlier rainfall. Hannah was a very brave pillion passenger all day, especially since she was frozen half the time! Riding home that night the temp was about 5 degrees!

Well jet-lag is beginning to set in so I'm gonna wrap it up now, need to get some rest before a 3 hour MTB ride with Phil tomorrow... and that's at HIS speed!

P.S. We're no later longer at Phil and Lydia's church, in case u were wondering about the confusing mix up of event orders, I'm writing the last part in the evening after church

A nice river in Spain

My attractive pillion passenger!

Sitting on the donkey of a famous statue in Plaza de Espana

The home ground stadium of Real Madrid F.C.

Queuing up for tickets only to find out they cost 275€ each!!

Warming up over some delicious Spanish Omelette and some wine after a cold day of sight-seeing, yum!! 

Puerta de Sol on a Saturday afternoon, it was packed!!

the square at night

Inside the Irish pub for the football game, sadly the home team lost :-(

A Chinese stop over... for 6 & 1/2 hours!

Well we made it to Beijing in 11 hours but the flight didn't seem that long because we fell asleep for 7 hours of it so that was a great way to pass the time.
We're now in a transit lounge at Beijing airport and are enjoying a quiet rest before the next flights to London.
The transit lounge has a very Chinesey feel to it, especially when you see the wierd snack food they give you to eat. The photo attached was a small sample of the most wider variety of sugar-filled snacks to enjoy (or endure)... Almost all of the snacks are sweet and feel really fake in your mouth, like the 'bun' on the top right which is filled with some sort of custard in the middle. Or the wierd coloured blob things called 'moochies'... there is absolutely nothing natural about those things. They feel like you're eating a glue stick and they taste like nothing at all!
The worst one of all though is the dried, sweetened chicken shreds. They smell horrible when you open them and the taste isn't much better. I steered clear of them after a quick test taste.
Well now that the hotel staff have finally found a powerpoint for phone (after trying about 8 different powerpoints and trying to communicate to me in broken English that they are all not working)
I'm gonna let it charge up so I can blog to you again soon. Hannah's crashed out on the lounge next to me and I think I might do the same...

Bye for now!

a little reminiscing (part 2) Malabon

Well now that reports are finished (thank goodness!!) I can get back to finishing off our Philipines trip blog before the next one starts.. c'mon John!


The following week in Manila was hectic with so many visits to places both rich and poor, but all of it making an impact.


One of my favourite places we went to next was called Malabon. This town was incredible and most of this blog will be about it. 


Malabon is one of the really poor places in Manila. So poor in fact that the location of the mini-city is below water level during high tide and the water comes up the streets like a flood. The people just walk right through it, like it's not even there. 

Hannah and I actually went to Malabon with a group that was independent from King Solomon Learning Centre, called Gentle Hands Orphanage. This was the orphanage where Emilio and Leanne Dendeluce (a couple from church) adopted their two Filipino sons from, and they're super cute.

Anywho, we went with this group to Malabon where every Saturday they do a type of 'Sunday school' outreach to all the children in the area. It's so cool. They set up in the middle of the basketball court, do a bible story, sing songs and teach the kids about Jesus and at the end they do a small food hand-out... cold spaghetti inside plastic bags... yum?? Not to us maybe but the kids absolutely loved it!!

When we arrived at Gentle Hands with the outreach team, we all had to cram into this tiny van/ute thing with bench seats in the back, it was so cool! I counted 24 ppl in there with us and that wasn't including the driver! I even got a random kid on my lap for 30 mins. It was a surefire way of getting everyone to meet and get to know each other, there was nowhere to look except into someone else's face!

 Hannah had more space than me!

Cozy!

Here are some photos of the outreach event in progress.

Telling a story about Abraham

I was lucky enough to get to share the "Father Abraham" song with them

Hannah watching from the back, kindly doing the actions with me... the other girls weren't so keen.

 More "Father Abraham". I got the girls up by then.

This is a shot Hannah took of a little girl giving Hannah a hug and looking up at her... she had the saddest eyes I've ever seen in a child...

 We split into groups and did a colouring-in sheet. I was responsible for roughly 20 kids.

After this was the time each kid in each group was supposed to receive their spaghetti bags. I was handed a big plastic bag with 20 small plastic bags inside each filled with spaghetti. The idea was that the kids who had done the worksheet got a bag each but you would not believe how sneaky these kids were!! I had to sign the sheets before they received their bag so I knew which ones I'd helped and which ones I were from another group. This worked for a while but then after kids got their bag they would hand their sheet to a kid from another group to try and get another bag from me! Then the kids would start trying to do my quick signature themselves as well! So sneaky! You can't blame them though, I'd try every trick I knew too if it meant I would get some more food off some white guy who had no idea how hungry I was.

 Getting rescued from the swarm of kids coming at me for food. Weak target I guess

Aww...

After this things settled down a bit. I got to play some basketball with the locals... and got whipped!! These guys were amazing! They could get some amazing air off the court and just made the white guy look hopeless! haha. I'm guessing they play a lot though. 

There was also this cool version of pool they had with flat discs and talcum powder on a table and it worked pretty well! 

I got to meet some of the boys that lived in the slums there and they were heaps of fun! I taught them a game called 'quick-draw' where you add each other's fingers together and the first one to say the answer wins. It's amazing how quickly they were getting it, without any education, and just goes to show how much potential every child there has if only they had the opportunity to grow and be taught in a school like normal. But unfortunately, that's not normal over there.

It turns out that the van we arrived in was actually full of medical supplies too! I just couldn't see any of it because I was surrounded by arms and legs the whole time. These supplies were set up in the back of the van and a mini-day surgery-type thing ran with a doctor guy who came along and Charity, the lady who runs the whole organisation.

This was just a small part of the group lining up to get treatment. Can you see Hannah in there?

Some of the maladies were minor, while some included seriously major sicknesses, like this woman who initially had a herpes infection but because it went untreated for so long it had spread up and around her back and to make matters worse, she was pregnant!! Poor thing.

I love this shot. These were some of the guys that help out with the Gentle Hands orphanage. The amazing thing is that the boys either side of me were actually rescued from this exact slum as orphans! Now they have been raised in the orphanage and are helping to rescue more kids like themselves from the same fate that they would have faced had they not been taken in as orphans. Pretty cool I thought. 

There's so much more to tell about this place but I've run out of steam. More to come at some point. That was Malabon. 

P.S. Here's another shot from our on-going competition of sleeping photos... I reckon it's a winner.

a little reminiscing (part 1)

So it's been a long while now since Hannah and I were in the Philippines, almost 11 months in fact. Which means I should probably fill you in on the details and share some of the stories with you that are too long to tell when catching up normally. Well seeing as this flight to Manila was the first plane ride I'd been on since I was 2, I thought I should include a picture of me on the plane, I was a bit excited...

Woohoo! a boarding pass! (it was a bit exciting)

 Settling in for the long flight.


So when we arrived we had the usual warm greeting that most people who visit from Australia get at KSLC but that doesn't make it any less wonderful. It was so cool turning up to about 100 or so little kids rushing up to you and saying "Hello Joe!" Hannah was pretty popular with the girls there...

 After this we found our rooms, dumped our stuff and washed up for dinner in the downstairs restaurant, the food was so good! We were formally welcomed during this time with two performances in the dining area from a hip hop dancer and a little girl reciting a poem in a bee costume 

Cute huh?

The next day was a bit of a surprise for us because the initial thought in our heads was that since this was a short term mission trip we would be hanging out with the locals, painting churches, building stuff, that sort of thing... but the first morning we were there Jun and Milleth (our host parents) took us on a boat ride to another island near Manila called (I've forgotten...) It was an island involved in the war between the Filipinos and the Spanish when they were invading the Philippines and it has some pretty interesting history behind it if you're into that stuff. The photos below are a snapshot of some of the things we saw there

 This guy looked pretty hardcore..

 Hannah and Todd enjoying some tasty drinks at the top of the lunch resort place.. They had some weird jelly in them and a strong coconut flavour

 It was a pretty nice view up there

This was our crazy driver/tour guide for the day. It was a whole day tour and we were his captive audience! For some reason, although there were about 20 people on the bus, he just kept asking me all the questions about the island and no-one else! It was really awkward after a while... "Hey John, do you know how long this statue has been here?" "Hey John, guess where the army hid from the Spanish when they invaded this part of the island?"

Check out my guns...

So during the trip Nick, Todd and I had this on-going competition of how many people in our group you could photograph while they were sleeping without waking them up. It was a pretty good way to pass the time on the plane trip but it was the boat ride home that surprisingly offered the most opportunity for sleep-shots... here's a few of the good ones..

Todd was literally sleeping with one eye open, freaky!

You would think that the tourist activities were over for the day but after that we went straight to a city in Manila called Intra Muros (I remember this one!) It was a beautiful, older style place with a big stone church in the middle of it.

This building actually had a wedding going on inside when we were there so we couldn't go in and see it but it was still nice from the outside.

Last but not least, we were treated to a 'horse and cart' ride around the local streets of the city. It went for about 20 minutes but that was long enough because most of the time you were fearing for your safety inside the rickety carts we were squeezed into, not to mention the fact that if two people sat in the back seat before someone sat in the front seat the whole thing would tilt backwards and up-end itself! Made for an amusing boarding.

 The proud rider and his trusty steed

 Balancing acts

Ali said was quite glad to have us in the carriage with her because she thought the driver might just take off with her down some dark side street if it was just her in there. He wouldn't have of course but it was funny to see her stressing.

And so that was the first day of our trip to Manila. More stuff to come when I can be bothered uploading pics and waiting for progress bars to finish... 

John.