He was really cool and took us around the island of Boracay to a nice snorkeling spot.  I actually got in the water and it was so beautiful to see all of the fish down there.  And luckily (or not) Joe brought some bread out there with us.  We broke the bread up and hundreds of fish came up to us.  There was a point when he threw a whole piece of bread in there for me to break up, but before I could get it, all the fish were already on it.  So I tried to pick it up, and it felt like they were trying to eat my hand off!!  but I still have it, don’t worry.

Later that night, we ran into some American guys that we me at the airport on the way.  They requested that we have a ‘San Miguel’ beer (brewed in the Philippines) with them.  One of them is married to a lady from here and I guess they had another girl tagging along for his brother.  Unfortunately, we saw a lot of couples like that.  As we were eating at the delicious buffet, we saw what looked like a lady with a European man and her 16ish year old daughter for his brother.  It was really disgusting for me to see that.  I felt like I wanted to rescue her and just have her come hang out with us.

After we took the rocky ferry back from the island and an airplane to the mainland, we explored the city of Manila.  We spent a lot of time just observing the culture and the remainder of the time at a historical museum.  Right before our flight, we took these little jeep-buggys to the Mall of Asia, which was really huge.  It had an ice skating rink that snowed every 15 minutes or so.

It was a really nice trip and I’m glad that I went.  It was great to see a white sand beach, but I probably wouldn’t go back again.  There is still so much to see in the world and honestly I wasn’t too impressed.  However, if you are ever on this side of the world, it is definitely something to check out.

I’m still a little anxious about going to China.  Just because I keep having a feeling that I’m going to forget something.  Either a class, or some money, or work out a situation with a phone card.  But we’ll see.  That’s the latest.

We work on the 9/80 schedule where you work everyday for 9 hours and we get every other Friday off work.  Last week was a really short week because Memorial day was Monday and we got Friday off.  After work Thursday some of the young people went out to this restaurant for drinks.  It was cool and even better because the guy that owns this sector and the guy right under him paid for all of us!

After that, and a little rest, the three interns, NB, JM (yet to be introduced) and I all went swimming in the pool outside.  I had already established that this would be the summer that I learned to swim.  It was kind of late, but I got the basics down.  I stuck my head in that water and actually swam the width of the pool (10 ft max, lol) but I was really excited.

Friday (no work), we went out to eat breakfast and got dressed to swim again!  NB hung out with his local friend so it was just me and JM.  I was trying to learn to tread water and float.  Everytime I tried to float, whenever the water touched my chin I would freak out and sink cuz I didn’t want it in my nose or eyes cuz that isn’t pleasant.  JM had some goggles that also covered the nose so I used those so I would have nothing to fear.  They didn’t really help me float but it made me not be scared.  Alas, I did it without the goggles and that was the first time I have ever felt at peace with the water.  I was floating all over the place, from end to end.  The deep side is about 5 feet   I tried to swim again, but my legs just don’t like to go to the top of the water.  They just sink to the bottom so I abandoned that and went back to my trusty floating!

Saturday, we planned a trip to the beach!!  It only took about 20 minutes to get out there.   It was kind of breezy.  NB went out too far in the water during a riptide and the lifeguard (in red shorts) came off his post and it was really like Baywatch!  It end up letting up some and he wiggled his way back to land.

It was a lot of fun and water-filled weekend and I can ‘swim’!