People's Park

Our new Filipina friend ate lunch with us and showed us around one of the beautiful parks in Davao. It is called People's Park and has a lot of statues and neat photo ops! Also, we have been told that it has pretty lights at nighttime so we will need to find a time to go back some evening.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Even though there are Christmas decorations everywhere, it is now Thanksgiving time! Here are some pictures of food in honor of this holiday:

This is Durian. It is famous here in Davao. What makes durian such a special fruit is that it smells...really bad. It's not allowed on airplanes because of the smell! But many people say it tastes great! The picture on the left is the whole fruit cut open. The picture in the middle shows the fleshy part that you eat surrounding the pits. We have tried it a few times and have agreed that we have other favorites in the Philippines...for example, pineapple and banana smoothies!

Pure MSG. It can be difficult to find certain foods
without it. And it's available to buy in very large quantities!

Giant fish! We have bought fish in the marketplace instead of the
grocery store, but couldn't resist a picture of this very large fish!

 Here we have Halo-halo which in English means mix-mix. This is because it has so many ingredients mixed together! This is a dessert that can be found many places in the Philippines...so we are doing a taste test and trying different ones! Some of the ingredients include ube ice cream, flan, coconut milk, beans, coconut and pineapple pieces, and much more!

We have eaten many Filipino foods but there are still many more to try. Have a Happy Thanksgiving!!

Christmas is Here!

Hello World!

It's been the Christmas season here in the Philippines since we've arrived. Complete with a countdown in one of the malls and everything. However, now the decorations have really exploded! I think most of the places I go, I hear Christmas music and see at least a couple of twinkling lights.

Normal sized Christmas tree.
This is in the coffee shop where we have
a lot of language lessons.

GIANT Christmas tree in one of the malls.
Also in the left of the photo, there's a Hello Kitty Christmas Village.

Need some decorations?!?

It's nice to see all the Christmas things around here but also reminds me that we should be praying for the Filipinos to understand why we celebrate Christmas--the birth of our Savior Jesus who came into the world, lived a perfect life and died in our place on the cross so that we can trust in His sacrifice and live in relationship with Him. Please pray with us!

Elizabeth