The Philippines - Day 4

Monday, November 15, 201o; 7:45pm

Today, we had something forgot breakfast.It rained a lot and created a giant puddle around the house next door. We didn't do much today. Our three oldest cousins, Jacob, Jeremy, and Liwliwa (Who are still younger than us), went to school. The camera stopped working. We were invited to a large ceremony for Shannon at Alinunu School. It was all about thanking her for setting up a project to send books and supplies to the school. When we left, all the kids waved at us. We had sort of a fish dish for dinner.

It was also Riza's birthday today. Riza is our youngest cousin. As a result, we got a squishy rice read along with our breakfast. It was nice. Jacob took me to a shop after his school was out and we got corn chips. Its kind of strange to be there, because I am a tall white boy and many stare at me.

Oh, well. Its not like I haven't been the strange one of the bunch anyway! To learn more about the Alinunu Book Project and how to help out, go to the following link:

http://alinunubookproject.blogspot.com/

The Philippines - Day 3

Sunday, November 14, 2010; 8:35pm (Philippines Time)

Today, we had noodles and pineapple juice for breakfast. We all dressed up nice and went to church. Church there was long and the songs were really long. Someone in the back kept clapping very loudly. We then went and met some more of our mom's relatives. We then went back to the house and had

pancit (more noodles) for lunch. We went to the beach after that, but on our way, we went to see relatives. They are our Lola and Lolo, which is the equivalent of great uncles and aunts in America.

They had

pigs, piglets, puppies, and doves. Everybody there was sitting around watching Manny P

acquiao. Apparently, he had a big match that day. Afterwards, we went to the beach and played. It

was fun, wet, and sandy. When we got back, we played with our cousins until the Alinunu Elementary School principal came to see us (My sister had started a book project a short while back, whose goal was to giv

e books to the Alinunu Elementary School for the kids there. For more information on this project, go to http://www.alinunubookproject.blogspot.com/ ).

The Philippines - Day 2

Saturday, November 13th, 2010;6:36pm (Philippines Time)

Today was a very fun. We woke up and had a breakfast of rice and chicken. After that, Miriam, my sister, Jacob, my cousin, and I went out into the rice field, where we got almost completely dirty, though we did get a lot of snails. My mom was pretty mad at us. We got back in time to change for the bible study hosted at our aunt and uncle's house. My uncle let me drive his Kuliglig, which is basically a two-stroke engine connected to wheels and a wagon. We drove the Kuliglig to pick up kids from around the town to go to the bible study. The bible study was bilingual and they sang songs and learned about Elijah the prophet. Afterwards, we gave the kids Kool-aid and lollipops. For lunch, we had the best fried fish that I have ever tasted. It was delicious. We then drove to see another bible study by the same teachers, but at a different place.

We did this to support their ministry, and we passed out more lollipops. After seeing this bible study, we went to our mom's old high school and met one of her old teachers and some more of our mom's relatives. After that, we came home, where I played with my cousins and found out that they like puzzle books. We had Lumpia for dinner. Lumpia is a food that is made of a meat that is rolled in a bread and is fried. That was also good.

The Philippines - Days 1

In November of 2010, my family went on a trip to the Philippines. The reason was partly to sight-see, by mostly to visit family. Half of my family lives in the Philippines, and I haven't seen any of them since I was 3, so I had a lot of catching up to do with them.

November 12th 2010; 4:14am (Philippines Time)

We are in Manila after flying through Hawaii. My ears are plugged from the last plane ride and I can only hear a little. We are about to fly to Cagayan and then drive to Abulug. That's about it.

November 12th 2010; 7:51pm (Philippines Time)

Today, we flew to Tuguegarao, where we me our uncle, two of our aunts, and one of our cousins. Then we drove to Abulug and met five more of our cousins, our most closely related aunt in the Philippines, and our uncle. We went out with our uncle to harvest coconuts and we caught frogs and snails in the rice field. We then had fresh coconut milk. The kids found that my older sister is afraid of spiders and went around chasing her while saying "Spider!" or "Lawalawa!" It was hilarious. I feel kind of sick, having a stuffed nose, plugged ears, and major jet-lag. I told my dad that if I could learn drive in Tuguegarao or Manila, I could drive anywhere. The lines on the street in these places are optional and almost completely ignored.

College Road Trip -Days 3 & 4

On days two and three of the College Road Trip were the first official days of seeing colleges. We saw UC San Diego and UC Irvine.

Monday, July 19, 2010; 7:18pm

We finally made it to one of the colleges on our list of colleges to go to. We made it to UC San Diego. UC Merced is puny compared to UC San Diego. I liked the fact that UC San Diego is broken into 6 different colleges based on your wants for your classes. I also liked the Geisel Library, the buildings, and the fact that you can sign up for a radio slot. We went to a restaurant called Currants and then drove down to Irvine. Too bad we are miss Comic Con by only one week

Tuesday, July 20, 2010; 8:38pm

Today we made our way to UC Irvine. UC Irvine is one of the most fun colleges because it has an Ant Eater as its mascot. It had a nice eating area out behind the student center. It also had a nice fine arts area which was design by the architect of the Vietnam Memorial. My dad can still remember where the Starbucks was located. We also started heading towards Santa Barbara. On our way, we stopped at one of the friends of our family on our mother's side. We met them, saw there humongous garden, and then went to dinner with them. It was a long, but fun day.

Another Story of a Young Girl

Happy Birthday, once again, to my little sister Miriam. :^)

There was once a young girl. She had a mom, a dad, a brother, and a sister. This young girl loved playing with LEGOs. She loved them so much that she got all the LEGOs in the world and made a giant tower to the moon. When she made it to the moon, she looked around from her spot on the top of the LEGO tower. There in front of her was an alien who shot her LEGO tower into a million pieces. She fell and fell, and kept falling until her pet squirrel, who happened to fly, caught her and landed her down in Bolivia, where she spent five years eating JELLO. Then her pet mole came to her and told her that he had dug a hole to China. They then went to China to find that all the Terracotta warriors had come to life because of the young girl's sister. The girl's father then fell out of the sky right in front of her. The girl then threw her father into the hole to Bolivia. As she walked along, she found a giant red button, and she pressed it, which blew up every Terracotta soldier that there was. An angry guy with a wrench then came up to her and hit her on the head. When she woke up, she was under the bed in the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House. When she walked out the door of the Bedroom, everybody thought she was a terrorist, but she stopped them with her 'La Jolla' ninja skills. She then walked to Nebraska and found a giant pile of LEGOs which she played with for the rest of eternity.

THE END

Youth at Work

Youth Group Work Day

Today was the last official work day for my youth group. So far, we have had three work days over the past two weeks. Our youth group is having a missions trip to Shonto, Arizona, on an Indian Reservation, where we help people there to fix, build, and paint buildings down there. To prepare for the trip, we were required to spend at least one day helping to work at our church. Our job was to clear the cut down all the weeds in the 2 and 1/2 acres behind our church within the three 4 hour periods we had to work on it. To do this, we had three main jobs assigned to us. The first job was to weed-whack, or cut down the weeds. We did this with the church owned weed-whackers, some of which didn't even work. The second job was to rake all the weeds cut down into piles, so that the third group could get all the weeds into bags. Three days we worked, and although we did not accomplish our goal of cutting down all the weeds, we did very good for a small group of teenagers with a few weed-whackers that hardly worked.We will probably have some more work days to finish the job, but we will probably only need 1 or 2 more days before it is finished.

East Coast - Day 11, 12, & 13

This part of my travel journal is about our last actual sight-seeing day and our two days on our way home.

Tues. June 6, 2006; 9:45pm (East Coast Time) -
We went to the Crayola factory in Easton today. We made clay figures. My mom made a snake, my dad made an Octopus, Miriam made a yo-yo, and Shannon made two flowers and a plumb which she mixed up and made a ball out of it. I made a lasso, a flat crab, and a snail. Miriam got to stuffed crayons today. [I left a lot out of the whole day. The day was actually very interesting. We saw a model of a canal and we saw how canals worked. I also saw the world's longest blue crayon. I also had my first true understanding of stop-motion animation here. If you want to see some work that came out of this understanding, go to my YouTube channel {www.youtube.com/rabkdoomfish}.]

Wednesday, June 7, 2006; 2:30pm (East Coast Time) -
We are waiting for our airplane home. I didn't want to go home. I had a very good time in the East Coast.

Wednesday, June 7, 2006; Time Unknown -
I do not know what time it is. I am on the airplane. I met a man with no legs named George. I got a whole can of ginger ale!

Wednesday, June 7, 2006; Time Unknown -
I saw St. Louis! [Please remember that I was 10 at the time and that my comments might be a little like a ten year-old's comments. We saw St. Louis from the sky. The pilot pointed it out to us.]

Thursday, June 8, 2006; 9:15am (West Coast Time) -
We are back home in El Dorado Hills. It feels so good that we are back home.

East Coast - Days 9 & 10

Sunday, June 4, 2006; 9:16pm (East Coast Time) -

We had a free day today. My mom is truing to make herself think she is checked into The Four Seasons Hotel [A fancy restaurant in Philadelphia]. We saw a quarter glued to the sidewalk. We also saw a cockroach. We saw the original 'Thinker'.

Monday, June 5, 2006; 9:21pm (East Coast Time) -

We went to D.C. today. We saw the Capitol Building, the Library of Congress, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial [From the top of the Washington Monument], the White House, ducks, geese, and squirrels. My dad has gotten 3 Starbucks mugs on this trip: Philadelphia, New York, and D.C. A man said he liked my Princeton University shirt. I played the Revolution Scenario of Civ4.

East Coast - Day 3 & 4

On Monday, May 29, 2006, I was probably supposed to journal, but I didn't, so there is no entry for that day. In brief, we went to the Delaware River and Princeton University that day. That is a very short description, but it works.

Tuesday, May 30, 2006; 3:06pm (East Coast Time)
We had to leave the East Coast Lewis's. We are in Philadelphia now. We went to Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell center, the Independence Visitor Center, the Constitution Center, and the U.S. Mint. We also went to Reading Terminal Market where we had Philly Cheese steaks.In the Constitution Visitor Center, we watched an awesome show called 'Freedom Rising'. Wherever we went, we ran into kids on field trips. It was so annoying. In the Constitution Center, they made me go all the way to the end of the line in the gift shop. We met a nice lady named Mary in the Reading Terminal Market. She showed us the best places to get different things. Swallowed some gum that will stay in me until 2013, when I am 17 years old! [Remember that I was 10 years old at the time].

Interesting Rain

When a person lives in a place like El Dorado Hills, you don't really get to experience extreme weather, but this week has been one of the craziest weather weeks that I have ever experienced here. On the this last Monday, the 26th, the weather seemed nice and normal. Nothing new, just sun and sky, but the next day, there was a dramatic change in weather. From the nice, sunny Monday, there came a dreary, wet, and rainy Tuesday. Even though I thought that the rain was bad enough, the weather got worse. During lunch that day, I sat happily in a classroom, free from the wetness of the rain, but I didn't know what the bell for 6th period would bring. When the bell rang, me and a friend, as usual. went out the classroom's back door into the auto shop garage. Because the garage doors were open, I could hear the tapping of the rain on the cars parked outside. Although I expected this, I thought that the rain was a little loud. When my friend and I were under the awning, my suspicions of hard rain were confirmed when I saw a small creek running down into the garage. Unfortunately, my 6th period classroom was on the other side of the school. I went into the rain and was immediately soaked by the rain. Ignorantly, my friend and I didn't run to our next class, but just walked. That was a huge mistake. The upper parking lot, which we had to walk through, was like a small pond, and when we had to go down from the upper parking lot, we had to go down a set of stairs, which actually seemed more like a waterfall. There was a wall of water at the edge of the roof on each building. My 6th period teacher was standing under the awning watching his class come in from the rain. He had to let us take off our shoes and drop all our stuff in a pile near the back of the classroom. The rest of this week was on and off rain and sun, but I still find stuff at the bottom of my backpack that are still wet.

The Lewis' Weekly Bible Verse

The Weekly Lewis' Memory Verse for this week should actually be called The Weekly Lewis' Memory Verses because this section is more than 1 verse long, but this verse struck me this week.

Mark 12:41-44
Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts, but a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth, but she, out of her poverty, put in everything - all she had to live on."

The Lewis's Weekly Bible Verse

The Weekly Bible Verse is back, but is not officially the whole family's verse, so its really only Brahms' Weekly Memory Verse, but it doesn't sound as awesome.The Verse for this week is...

Numbers 6:24-26

"The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace."

Thank You