Lunar Break H4H, Tagaytay, Phillipines

What a great trip with twelve amazing students and three other inspiring teachers! Over the course of the week, every kid grew in one or more of the following ways: their work ethic, their gratefulness and appreciation for their health and what they have, their realization that there is more to life than tests, cellphones and the SAT, their compassion, their maturity, and, most importantly, their relationship with the Lord, seeing His love in others and spreading His love.

Of course, as usual, there are hiccups along the way, like getting to bed early and being able to be at breakfast on time. However, a couple mornings of sprints up the steep 50m hill inspired a miraculous improvement in punctuality (these kids love having a cross-country coach on their trips).

On my second Habitat for Humanity trip to the Phillipines, I was fortunate to be on the trip that was returning to the same area where I had been two years before - Tagaytay, 2-3 hours north of Manila. This time we stayed at an apartelle across from a spectacular view of the Taal Lake and the Taal Volcano. Precioso! Even more precious are all of the smiling faces of the Filipino people, their relaxed, laidback attitudes, and their love for laughter. Our hosts, H4H members Bugs, Delly, Joelle, Zernan, and Paul - or, should I say, "the 1958 Phillipines Olympic Volleyball Team," as they humbled called themselves on our day at the beach - demonstrated this attitude along with a love for life, for people, and for singing karaoke (rock on!). I can't wait to return!

By now you all know better than to just expect a spattering of pictures...
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=4zp3vcn.c1ugsai3&x=0&y=-qd3gx3&localeid=en_US

Christmas 2007-08 Leg 2: Thailand

Our Christmas trio hopped on a plane from Phnom Penh headed for the sandy beaches of Phuket, Thailand. After a Dairy Queen treat in the Bangkok airport (just don't see DQ in Korea!) before our connecting flight to Phuket, we settled into our hotel room in Karon Beach and went to enjoy the first of many delicious Thai meals (well, except for when Tiffany and Ange got sick - then nothing was delicious). We met up with friends and colleagues from Korea for a couple of days before Tiffany and I took off for an overnight snorkeling tour of the Similan Islands, a chain of 9 beautiful islands in the Andaman Sea, with the whitest, most powdery sand my toes have ever felt among them! Quite a production with speedboats everywhere during the day, but when the daytrippers left, the island was serene and quiet. We camped and managed to avoid seeing the python that others saw when trekking to the nearby beach to see the nocturnal chicken crabs. Ironically, we had opted to search for a different empty tent, since ours had many holes in it. After hearing about the python spotting and watching rats run across the pavilion floor that night, I still didn't have the most restful sleep, but it was much better than it would have been if we had stayed in the more "air-conditioned" tent!

We definitely enjoyed this relaxing leg of the trip before returning to Semester 2 of this school year!

Enjoy pictures at this link:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=4zp3vcn.3zsd3m3v&x=0&y=-paqiem&localeid=en_US

Christmas 2007-08, Leg 1: Cambodia

The Foreign Correspondents Club (FCC), an open patio-style bar/restaurant with heavy leather wingback chairs, dark wood stools to match the thick wooden columns, and framed black-and-white photographs of life 20 and 30 years ago, as taken by those who used to frequent this establishment after a hard days work, both physically and emotionally. I couldn't help but imagine this place, overlooking the Tonle Sap River from its second-floor view, 30 years ago as Cambodia's borders opened and journalists and photographers from around the world came to record the footprints of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge's mass genocide of their own people. Phnom Penh must have been virtually abandoned at that time, aside from some remaining revolutionaries, the Vietnamese who led the invasion into Cambodia, and the news correspondents; during Pol Pot's regime, the city's population was reduced to the bare minimum government workers and leaders, as everyone else was sent out to the countryside to complete their agrarian responsibilities. For most, it was inevitable that they and their families would eventually be sent to Tuol Sleng to be tortured and forced to confess to irrational and paranoid accusations of treason against the regime before being shipped off to the Killing Fields, where pieces of victims' clothing still litter the ground today.

The 5-hour bus ride from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap provided us with a glimpse of life for the typical Cambodian. For the grand majority, every day seems to be a survival game; most huts had a few animals, and a small garden. The land was dry, mostly due to the season and to the fact that people cut down most of the trees to sell the wood. Survival.

Speaking of survival, our next destination before leaving Cambodia was Angkor Wat, the wonder of the world that survived a couple of centuries under the rule of the jungle, unknown to man until rediscovered in the mid-1800s. A source of pride for the Cambodian people, perhaps because the survival of this man-made marvel epitomizes their resilience in spite of their turbulent past and their certain survival despite the still-long road ahead of them - this sprawling city of great temples, many of which are still intact despite the huge bayon roots seemingly wanting to crush the walls to no avail.

All in all, the Cambodia experience left Tiffany, Ange, and me wiht a desire to learn more - and a determination to bring a leash for one counterpart who happened to lose her group in Angkor Wat while taking pictures... who could that be???

Paste the following link into your browser to check out my pictures!
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=4zp3vcn.4cza6ok7&x=0&y=-b6dbxa&localeid=en_US