Tali/Manila

Been awhile, I know... But I got a bit fed up with this entire blog thing to be honest because I had to do all the uploading of photographs for the children's blogs. Egad. It takes way too long!

Spent Friday and Saturday at Tali with Tech, Phil and their twins and we visited the lot again. The children were extremely amused because the lot's been cleared and we seem to have acquired a sad looking cow. They also played with a weed which was all over the lot called makahiya, which literally means bashful. As soon as you touch their leaves, they close.

We had to leave late on Saturday though because Alasdair went on a motorcycle road trip with Lito, my brother. Lits works with BMW and had a couple of motorbikes ready for Alasdair, so they set off very early Sunday morning for Tagaytay. Tagaytay's a beautiful place - we pass it every time we go to Tali or Calatagan, but I suppose that because I see it all the time, I'm no longer that impressed with it. However, I really should be. From Tagaytay you can get a fantastic view of Volcano Island, which is in the middle of a lake and it then encircles another lake. This entire area is part of Taal Volcano, which is quite an active volcano, having had activity as recent as 1991 (it has been dormant since 1977 though). Alasdair and I were saying though that should this suddenly erupt, a lot of communities could be destroyed as Tagaytay is quite an active little town. And it's also only 50 kilometres from Manila...

While Alasdair was on his way to Tagaytay, I dragged the children to join me on an all-women race. Although the boys couldn't join, I thought it would be nice for them to cheer their sister (and mother) on. Nikki and I did the 1.6 km (1 mile) race with Mayet and Sari. We had to be connected to our daughters with a bit of elastic band, which nearly proved to be our undoing as Nikki nearly tripped because of it. However, I was so proud of her as she ran the whole way and we finished it in 10 minutes. But sadly, the boys were not at the finish line! They were around for the first two laps, but they suddenly disappeared. As it turns out, Sandy (Mayet's husband - suddenly persona non grata) had dragged the boys off to Krispy Kreme. Ho-hum. We followed them and scoffed a few doughnuts ourselves - here in Manila, if the Krispy Kreme light is on, you get free doughnuts. Yum...

Later in the day, we all met up at Lito's place for lunch. Sadly my parents and Tech and Phil could not make it, as they were still in Tali. Very pleasant afternoon though - Lits had a new underwater camera bag and he took a few photos of all the children. Only 10 (!), as Tech wasn't around with her twins and Andie, Alan's (my other brother) daughter wasn't feeling too well...

Ended up having dinner at Mayet's place - I really could get used to this!

Tomorrow very early in the morning we leave for Sagada, north of the Philippines. It's a long drive - around 12 hours direct, so we've decided to stop over at Banaue, home of the famous rice terraces. It's still an 8-hour drive to get there though, but apparently, it's absolutely worth it.