Hello to everyone again. Hope you are all doing well.
So, I'm right now back in Manila at Crystal's place. Tomorrow I leave for Thailand - we've arranged for a taxi to pick me up to take me to the airport quite early in the morning but I'd rather be there early than too late because I still need to pick up my ticket there. From there, in Bangkok, I'll be staying at the downtown hostelling international hostel for the first two nights and then I'll keep you updated with more news as to where I am. I'll try to write tomorrow with the address to those who need to know!
So, since I last wrote you, I've done quite a bit. The day after the last email - I woke up in Borocay still and went scuba diving. It was a really great experience. I went with the dive master to a dive site called Crocodile Island - no crocodiles there, though. I was very glad not to see any sharks, either. We dove to 20m (they use a different system here than in Canada - they go in meters and pressure is in bars) which is about 68m. We were under for 35 minutes. We saw lots of fish and clams and lots of coral and school fish and angelfish and there was one big colorful one. It was good because we spent almost the last half of the dive at only about 5 meters so we didn't have to take a safety stop at the top. the place we went with was also good because they let Crystal and the other two girls we went with use the boat to go snorkelling for a cheap cost and even let them use wetsuits.
After that, we just relaxed on the beach and then went out for dinner later. Crystal and the other girls wanted banana splits for dessert so we went to this place that had them but they were disappointed because they were basically tons of bananas on cabbage if you can believe it with this weird Filipino ice cream on top and no chocolate sauce. My dislike for bananas, though, kept me from ordering that - I ordered the best chocolate crepes I've ever had.
Yesterday we flew back to Manila and later these nice missionaries took us out for dinner. I'm pretty lucky, I think. We went to TGIF Fridays - it's an american restaurant and I had the biggest hamburger!
Today we went to church at Crystal's church and I sort of helped with the sunday school class Crystal teaches. After the service, Crystal, Gerry (Crystal's boyfriend) and I went out to eat and then went to one of Gerry's friend's baby's baptism (cristening). It was at one of the Catholic churches here and they make a really big deal about it. Gerry was sort of a godfather to this baby. They had this huge reception afterwards at their condo rooftop - it was a beautiful view and I took some pictures there. They had a huge meal there but seeing that we had just eaten just before the baptism, I wasn't that hungry. These people lived in a nice area of Manila - Gerry said they were likely upper middle class. There is a big distinction in classes here. Then we went to MegaMall again!
Well, hope you are all doing really well. I'll write more in Thailand.