Our Boxes Are Here, Our Boxes Are here!!!

Yesterday our boxes we dropped off in July finally arrived. It was great to have a little taste of home. We made tortellini for dinner! It was delicious!!
And Chris tried to drink the bottle of vanilla to Rylee's disgust!

Exhausted

This week I was asked to teach at Rylee's school again. I am subbing for a high school math teacher and I love it! But after only 2 days of teaching, I am exhausted! Guess my bodies out of practice for this teaching stuff :). So today after picking Rylee up for school, we sat down on the couch to hang out and I fell asleep petting Lily. Now I just hope I can sleep tonight!

More Trina

We had the privilege of babysitting Katrina again. Rylee was so excited we watched her at night this time.

Volley Ball

Rylee is excited to be playing volleyball again this year. Almost all of her friends are playing. There were so many girls that wanted to play, the coach had to split the team into two teams, the Stars and Suns. Rylee is on the Star team. Both teams still practice together and have great team spirit as they attend each others games. This Friday one of the girls on the other team is having a sleepover for all the girls on both teams. Then all of the girls will be going to the Stars game on Saturday together. Even though the game could possibly be an hour and a half to two hours away depending on traffic. I am very impressed with these girls and we are so blessed for Rylee to be attending such a wonderful school!

Below is a picture of the Stars team and their coaches. The lady on the left is also Rylee's wonderful P.E. teacher.Due to the cost of uniforms being very cheap here, about $6, each girl receives her own uniform and gets her last name printed on the back. We thought that was pretty cool! Unfortunately, when my camera crashed I lost better pictures of Rylee in her uniform and the back of her uniform. But you can kind of see it in this picture.
Rylee serving :)
I thought this was a cool picture. Rylee's coach is talking to her and a couple of other girls during a time out.

Our Home

Before and after pictures.

Prison

Below is a picture of Eddie teaching in the prison that he and Chris minister at. This also gives a better picture then when I tried to describe it :)

Dirt, Dirt and More Dirt...

...But not anymore :)

Now that I get to stay home, I have had the opportunity to try to keep our place clean. Due to the excessive pollution here, our dust is not just any old regular dust. It is black and well, gross!

So, Mondays are cleaning days for me, but after today, I have decided Tuesday will be fan cleaning day. This morning Chris helped me clean all of our fans. They were caked with blackness! I think if I clean them every week, it won't be such a big job and our place will be even cleaner :)

The fan Chris is cleaning above was the worst. Not only did it have the black dust, it had oil mixed in with the black dust, which made it really hard to clean. We're pretty sure the oil was splattered from the stove. When we first moved in, the stove had layer upon layer of dirty oil built up on it.

They're Back!

One thing I don't think I will ever fall in love with here in the Philippines is head lice. In the states, the word "lice" is like a bad four letter word and even the mention of the word lice makes the head itch. However, here in the Philippines and in the missionary community it is a very common word. We talk about lice here like we would talk about maybe mosquitoes in the states. We compare different techniques for getting rid of lice and share funny stories about our own lice. Because head lice is so prevalent here, I don't think we can ever fully get rid of it, we just try to control it.

After finding a louse crawling in Rylee's hair while sitting at the dinner table and one crawling on her arm later while sitting on the couch, that probably was already on the couch, plus a few others over the course of a couple of days, we decided it was time to take action, again.
Below is a picture of one of the lice I pulled out of Rylee's hair while combing it to rid her hair of eggs and lice. Unfortunately, it was alive, which means the lice are becoming desensitized to the lice shampoo or it was dying slowly.

Now the question is....who is going to spend 3-4 hours delicing my hair?

Baby-Sitting

I am learning that one of the greatest advantages to not having one full time job is I get to do a variety of things to make up a full time job. Teaching at Rylee's school, teaching at Cuatro, taking kids to the dentist, cooking, cleaning, and today I had the opportunity to baby-sit Katrina. I would say she is about 8 months old. Both of her parents are teachers at Faith Academy. However, her mom only works in the mornings. She is just the cutest baby and so easy! This was a great morning!
Uncle Chris helped too by setting up Katrina's Pack and Play to sleep in :)

Teaching at Faith

I had the opportunity to teach at Rylee's school today, Faith Academy! It was great to be back in the classroom. I taught, 2 Algebra II classes, 2 Pre-Calc classes and 1 Calculus class. I miss math so much! And teaching!

Supersize Me Day

Thursday was Supersize Me Day at Faith. We supersized Rylee's face, hair, shirt, pants, and shoes. Fortunately for Rylee, we have a couple of tall men that live in our condos. The one we borrowed the t-shirt and shoes from is 6'8" tall. It was pretty fun!Below is a picture of the middle school principle in red and middle school counselor in the suspenders. They looked pretty funny for two normally skinny guys.
The french fry and Wonka bar won. They were very cute!

Prison Ministry

Chris and his Filipino ministry partner, Eddie, have started a new ministry that they are very excited about. Every Friday, they will visit a Juvenile holding cell close to where Eddie lives. In the facility, the ages of the kids range from 5-17. All are boys except for one little girl who is about 6. They live in one cell that is about 20 ft by 40 ft. Chris said there are windows on the two long walls and the two shorter walls are concrete with no windows. Bunk beds line one of the walls with windows. The little girl stays in the cell during the day and sleeps on a cot in the locked entryway of the building at night right outside of the cell. Chris said the kids are filthy and wear the clothes they probably had on when they were picked up. One boy had shorts on that were ripped more than they were sown together. The kids are suppose to have clothes, soap, tooth brushes, and tooth paste provided for them and at least one good meal a day. Unfortunately though, the government pockets the money that would provide those things and the kids end up with no clothes, or products for good hygiene and only white rice for three meals a day.

These kids are classified as children in conflict with the law, CICL. Basically, they are street kids without families or the families just don't care. Some kids have been in there for at least a year, maybe longer. And usually do not have visitors.

Chris and Eddie have visited the kids twice now. The first time they went, there were 19 kids, the second time they went, there were 35 kids. Chris and Eddie's plan is to visit the kids every Friday, sharing the gospel through devotions and building relationships. The guards said the guys would be able to bring soap for the kids and other hygiene products.

Please be praying for Chris, Eddie and the kids.

Face and Hair Day

Yesterday was hair and face day for friendship week. We mostly concentrated on Rylee's hair.
After the judging, the participants get to play games. It was fun to see the teachers in the tug of war. they were pretty competitive :)

Imon Walking by Faith Academy

Today after leaving Faith at lunch time, I saw Imon walking with a couple of older kids in the street right outside of Faith's entrance. It was so great to see him! I got out of the car to say hi and the poor little guy didn't have any shoes on. Now Faith is close to where they live, but it's still about a mile away and to walk it with out shoes...poor little guy. I got back in my car and hurried home to get granola bars for the kids and money to buy them lunch at Faith, but by the time I made it back, which was only a couple of minutes, they were gone! I drove around a bit and then gave up. I plan to take Imon and Manny to the dentist sometime this year, so I will take them to lunch the :)

For those of you who did followed my blog, http://thehansonsinmanila.wordpress.com, last year hopefully will remember Imon and Manny.

Manny is a 6 year old boy, who provides marienda, afternoon snack, and rice for he and Imon, who is 3 years old. Manny does this by gathering the recycled paper at CCS everyday and then walking it about half a mile down a busy road to a junk yard that gives him some centavos for his bundle of paper. The centavos he gets amounts to about 2 or 3 pennies worth. We think their mom is dead and their dad works in a province, coming home once a week if even that. I have seen where they live and they sleep on the floor of their Aunts squatter home in Cuatro. Manny also attends CCC, Christian Cuatro Center for kindergarten. We tried to adopt them into our Children's Home, but the Aunt refused. Last year I fell in love with these precious boys.

Below is an old picture of the two boys right after I washed their feet at our ministry center.

Favorite Book or Movie Character

Rylee dressed up as Miss Fanny's Hat. Nobody could guess who she was, but still everyone liked her costume.

Unfortunately, my camera doesn't work well in the humdity here, so I was only able to save two pictures from all of the pictures I took. And this was the only picture that turned out. At least it was a good one of Rylee and Kameron.

The Arthur Center

Chris speaks at a church close to where we live the first Sunday of every month. He did a great job! And almost every chair was taken in the place, which is very exciting. The church has grown over the past couple of months.

Friendship Week

This week is Friendship week at Faith. The kids dress up as something different each day. Today was animal day. Rylee dressed up as a cheetah. The kids are judged at lunch time. Rylee won 4th place. Chris and I surprised Rylee and met her at lunch to watch the judging. It was a lot of fun!



Chris was trying to teach Rylee how to act like a cheetah...I think :)
Chris and Hannah watching the judging.