The morning after our party, I caught a very cute moment. Usually I am unable to get pictures of Scruffy sleeping because as quiet as I try to move to go get the camera, he ALWAYS hears me and will jump up ready to play! I think after getting to visit with so many people he was so tired that he didn't even move as I got the camera and moved close to him!
Our adorable Auburn Tiger.
posted by Ellen at 10:21 PM
As quickly as our Thanksgiving feast ended, Christmas has begun in our house! It started as we went to pick out our fake tree. We brought it home and tried to set it up, but could not get it to fit into the stand that came with the tree. Dan was so patient, and we tried to come up with other ideas to make it stand up straight, but nothing worked! The next day our main mission was to get a new tree stand, especially since we had a party planned for the next day where we were supposed to decorate the tree! A leaning tree would just not have been the same!
Thankfully, we ended up with two tree stands, the store exchanged the one we had been given for a larger one, and Dan had some friends at work who were able to build us one. Dan's was so sturdy, we knew it should be the one to hold up our Christmas tree.
The decorating of the tree!
Friday evening we had a bunch of friends over to decorate cookies, the Christmas tree, and watch It's a Wonderful Life. We asked our friends to dress warm as we made the attempt to make our condo as cold as possible. (so it could really feel like Christmas) Even with the aircon turned on full blast I wouldn't say we reached a really cold point. Though, I was very comfortable in my turtleneck that I was incredibly excited to get to wear!
The Christmas season has officially begun!
posted by Ellen at 6:51 AM
I think I mentioned before about a website that I've been helping to create over the last couple of weeks. It's main purpose is to inform people about a linguistics conference called ICAL, as well as serve as a repository for all of the papers that are submitted during the conference.
I was able to publish it to the web today, (right on schedule, I might add!) so if you'd like to take a look at it, mosey on over to: http://www.sil.org/asia/philippines/ical/
posted by Dan at 10:44 PM
When Mom came to visit in August, she brought me an ingredient to one of my favorite dishes that she makes, AND is very hard to find here -- whole berry cranberries! Since then, I found a few cans at a store known for having some "American" products. BUT, regardless, I have been waiting until Thanksgiving to make one of my favorite treats, Mom's Cranberry jello mold!
Tonight we went over to a friends house for a Thanksgiving feast! They have been having a Thanksgiving gathering at their house for at least the last fifteen years. There were about 55 people from SIL there to celebrate!
Although we are miles and miles away from our family in the states, we are thankful to have gotten to spend Thanksgiving with our new friends!
We miss you and hope all of you have a very Happy Thanksgiving!
posted by Ellen at 1:49 AM
Although we now live in the Philippines, we have not lost our Auburn spirit! There are actually three Auburn families connected to Faith Academy here in Manila. One of them even has a child in my class! SO, via tape delay, (and trying really hard not to hear or read the scores!) we have watched or listened to each game! This evening we just finished listening to the Alabama game and hearing the domination of our Auburn tigers!
WAR EAGLE!!!
The Faith Academy Auburn Club 
posted by Ellen at 5:57 AM
The Toshiba has received a new temporary hard drive, and it's been running great. We are actually using it to print out all of our customized Thanksgiving cards--something that we are trying to make a Brooks family tradition.
Despite our best efforts, it looks like the card is actually not going to arrive before Thanksgiving. Our printer has been running pretty much non-stop for the last 48 hours, and the last batch is printing right now. We hope to have them all mailed tomorrow--at least just so that we can reclaim our bedroom! There are piles of envelopes, labels, stamps, paper that jammed in the printer, paper that needs to be folded, paper that needs to be glued, paper that has been folded but not glued; it's all over the place! Fortunately, we had some friends come over last night to help out--that saved us a couple of hours--very nice.
Anyway, we hope that you receive it soon! It'll give you something to read while you eat your left-over turkey sandwich!
posted by Dan at 5:26 PM
To the casual computer user, it's just a momentary annoyance. To the true geek, however, it's known as "The Blue Screen of Death". And our little Toshiba laptop has suffered through many of them over the last few weeks, and we have some computer guys checking it out right now.
No joke: there are some people in this World that love reading this stuff.
posted by Dan at 4:59 PM
Throughout this past week the elementary at Faith Academy has had a special International week. Each grade studies a different continent through the week. Third grade is always assigned Europe. To be honest, I didn't know very much about Europe, but now I know a lot more, especially about Spain, Great Britain, and Sweden, which are three countries we people come and speak to our classes about.
The culmination of the week was an elementary parade Friday, in which the students (and teachers) were asked to wear some sort of international attire. We had everything from an Auburn football player in my room, to traditional Indian dress.
Here are four of my boys!
I had the privledge of wearing a friend of mines native Isnag dress. This is the clothing of a tribe way up in the north of the Philippines. It was quite an honor for me to wear this very special clothing!
My friend, Enol whose clothing I had the privledge of wearing! She told me that I was the first blond Isnag. :)
After the parade and special chapel, I had the parents of my students back to my room for a merienda (snack time). It was really special, and after merienda was over a few of the parents even stayed to watch the kids play Cricket at PE!
posted by Ellen at 2:59 AM
Since the bulk of the short-term teams come in the summer, i've been asked to take on some new tasks to help ease the burden on some other people. I was really hoping to use this time to streamline some of our processes of getting teams in and out of the country--but that's OK. There'll be more time for that later, I'm sure. Right now, there are some more pressing needs that i've switched over to.
About one month ago, I was asked to help out a Filipina who was involved in a car accident. We originally thought that this would only take a couple of weeks, but because of some complications, it has now ballooned into a semi-major ordeal. It's not overly time consuming, but the time that it DOES take up is fairly precious. Like at 2AM, when the hospital calls and informs me that I need to come down and buy a unit of blood for the patient. I was kind of hoping that they would just put it on the bill and inform me about it in the morning--but that's not the best way to go, I guess.
My second project is a lot more fun--and is something where I at least have some idea as to what I am doing. One of our translators is hosting 10-ICAL : The Tenth Conference on Austronesian Linguistics. Admittedly, I know nothing about Austronesian Linguistics, but I do know a little bit about web programming, so he asked me if I could create a website for the conference. It's been a lot of fun working on it (more fun than sitting in a plastic chair in a hospital waiting room); after trying to hide it for so long, I think my inner geek is starting to show. Don't tell anyone.
Anyway, I'll post a link to the site in a few weeks when it finally "goes live". I also get to attend the Conference, where I'll be posting all of the 160+ papers that are submitted, and doing general tech support type of stuff.
posted by Dan at 5:47 AM
A couple weeks ago Dan and I had the opportunity to travel to Puerta Princessa, a city on the island of Palawan, during my fall break from school. It was perfect relaxation after the busy quarter teaching 3rd grade! While I enjoyed the entire trip, my favorite parts were the animals we met along the way!
These are two long tailed macaque monkeys. They were all over the place where we stopped to take a boat to visit an underground cave. I stopped to watch this mother and baby for quite a while...
Another stop we made was to a crocodile farm. Here they raise crocodiles mainly for meat and for their skin, though the claim is that it is a conservatory. We saw bathtub type containers filled with baby crocodiles. They looked really crowded, but not too unhappy!
After visiting all the crocodiles, Dan and I took a rainy walk through a nature center where they have many different types of animals that are native to the Philippines. Here we enjoined stopping and staring at this entertaining Bear Cat family
posted by Ellen at 5:20 AM
