And here we are!
38 hours of travel (50 hours between getting out of bed and the next time I got into bed…), which includes:
– 1 hour on a bus
– 1 hour on a train
– 4 hours on a plane
– 14 hours on a plane
– 1.5 hours on a plane
– 1 hour on a bus
– And a lot of time spent in airports before, in-between and after flights.
I’ve moved from being 5 hours behind everyone in the UK, to being 7 hours ahead of you (jet-lagged for sure). And I had no Saturday. We flew out of LAX at 1150pm on Friday and arrived into Hong Kong 14 hours later at about 5am Sunday. No Saturday. I didn’t see September 10th at all. Oh well 😛 It just means that I will have a number of 25/26/27 hour days during the coming year to make up for it 😛
We’re in Manila until tomorrow morning, when we will catch a bus and ferry to Mindoro, where we will be collected and head on to our ministry placement for the month. We’re currently staying in a home owned by Kids International Ministries, an organisation that provides a number of different opportunities for local people – from work in cosmetology, to a library, to providing a local equivalent of the Big Issue for street vendors to sell, to vocational training and more, as well as being linked to a nearby church, school and home for abused children. Their ministry centre is situated right in the middle of a poor community and they are able to reach many with these projects. Their website is www.kidsinternationalministries.org. An amazing ministry location and a place where a couple of the teams on our squad will be staying.
My team and I are moving on to work with Threads of Hope in Puerto Gallera first thing in the morning. You can find out more about them from www.threadsofhope.com.ph if you want and I will post more about them once we are settled in there and know more about what we will be doing. Peace out for now.
P.S. It’s definitely really warm out here (but not enough to complain about too much yet) and I’ve been a witness of pet snakes being fed hamsters, a pigeon and a little bunny (as well as a baby crocodile and some turtles feasting on another unfortunate hamster). Interesting if nothing else. (Did anyone else see this article?(!))
