Day 3: ABCs with Erin

A - Austin photobombing everyone’s photos, especially mine (both intentional and unintentional).
B - Breaking down. The “taxi” breaking down multiple times throughout the day.
C - Cebu. Today we explored the city of Cebu, visiting different common tourist attractions.
D - Devotion. We started the morning with a devotion from the book of Mark during breakfast and we will be continue to do the same each day.
E- Earl. We properly met Pastor Earl today (our host for the first week and an half) and he took us around he city of Cebu and gave us some fun facts about the history of the Philippines.

​F - Food, a fortress and fun facts. Whilst some tried having some Filipino food at a nearby restaurant or dinner, everybody had a big breakfast of rice, spam, eggs, sausages and fruit. We visited Ferdinand Magellan’s (a Spanish invader who introduced Christianity to the Philippines) fortress that was made in 1565. We could see great views of the city from on top of the fort and saw some interesting images of Ferdinand Magellan, Lapu Lapu and more whilst receiving some historical fun facts from Pastor Earl.
G - Galavanting in a taxi. As mentioned a couple of times, we briefly explored the city of Cebu in what the Filipinos call a taxi. It’s basically like a mini bus with no sides, no back and no seatbelts!
H - Heat killing us. We’re already struggling with the heat and according to Emily, today was a cool day at 31 degrees Celsius and it’s going to get hotter!
I - International people stick out like a sore thumb. Even though we have only been here for just over a day, it has become clear to us all that we stick out more than we expected to as many locals continue to stare, wave, point and laugh at us wherever we go.
J - Juice. We had juice with breakfast.
K - Kids at school and performance. To begin or day, we visited a school run by the church to have orientation.
L - Lapu Lapu. Our hotel is situated in Lapu Lapu but Lapu Lapu isn’t just a place, but also a national hero here in the Philippines as said earlier.
M - Museum. There was a small museum at the fortress which was mentioned earlier.
N - Number of people on botoa botoa (kind of like a tuk tuk). We have devised a game where the person who spots a botoa botoa with the most amount of people on it wins chocolate. The most has been found by Emily Ireland with 10 people!
O - Old monument. Another place we visited was Magellan’s cross. It is a cross made out of timdalo wood which encases the original cross planted by Ferdinand Magellan on the very site on April 21 1521, introducing Christianity to the Philippines.
P - Portraits (people of Cebu). In another part of the fortress, there was a collection of photographs labelled “the people of Cebu” which consisted of photos of different people from the city of Cebu.
Q - Quality banter. There has been much quality banter amongst us all and many continuous jokes have been made......Tash Talks!
R - Red taxi. The taxi we were in today was red with flames.
S - Sweat. So much sweat.
T - Tel Europe. Because the H and O lights don’t work on the hotel anymore.
U - Unique architecture at the Taoist temple in Beverly Hills.
V - Very crazy driving
W - Written on number plates
X - xtreme traffic jams.
Y - Y are we walking around in matching T shirts, carrying 90L of water.
Z - zzz, we need it.

Erin