Last day in the Philippines

Today's Thursday and was our last full day here. In the morning we got a boat ride to another island - they took us to Coral Garden beach and we hung out there for a few hours. For quite a while we were the only ones there. It was a great place for us - it had shady spots, little waves, awesome sand that was a dark cream and had the consistency of cornmeal. The snorkeling was good too, except that you could tell that it used to be an incredibly beautiful reef and now a lot of it is dead. There are still a lot of fish there, and coral too, but the coral colors are dim in a lot of areas and there aren't many living plants.

It's not everyday you get to put a big stroller on a little boat.

Part of the shoreline of Sabang.

What a beautiful lady.

Again!

Claire loved the sand. She thought it was especially delicious!

For most of the day we had the whole beach to ourselves.

There was a guy snorkeling through the area and pulling a little boat with him with a rope. We wanted to figure out what in the world he was doing so I swam out to watch. I hung out watching fish and stuff until I saw him dive for something. He had grabbed an octopus with his hands! I talked about it with him and he said he catches about five a day - I guess he sells them to area restaurants. Interesting.

Tomorrow we go to Hong Kong. I'm glad to have been able to get to know the Philippines a bit. We've made some good friends here, especially a girl named Sha Sha. She's 16 and is the daughter of the nanny here. She's so nice and just a great girl. I hope she has a good life - we'll keep in touch via facebook.

Philippines is such a pretty place with all its green trees and beautiful water, though it's pretty crazy on land - nothing like America with its flat streets and car seats! This place takes me right back to some of the places I lived in in Brazil, except back then I only had myself to worry about instead of three little kids. I'm glad we've been safe through all the adventure of getting all of us around on jeepneys and boats and walking our group down the crowded crazy streets.

I'm happy to have been able to visit here and to enjoy the ocean. I'm thankful for a God who seems to have had so much fun creating beautiful fish - so many bright bold colors and designs and shapes!

Here are a bunch of interesting, random pictures from the Philippines. Such a crazy place! By the way, I didn't know this before we got there, but nearly everyone speaks really good English. They teach it tons in school. It was really convenient to be able to communicate so well with people.

The house we stayed at (from airbnb.com) is in the background. The road down to Sabang was crazy.

Part of the road up to the house.

Chad in a fruit stand. Our favorite jeepney driver, Noel, is in the foreground. Such an awesome guy.

A bus stop.