The Lost Plates of Jack and Leiana

  Not everyone gets to serve in two missions during one call. We are one of the lucky ones. We served our 1 year in Tacloban and are now serving our extension in Iloilo. It is another island in the Visayans, just 3 islands to the west of Leyte. We had to fly to Manila to change islands. While we were waiting for our last leg of the flight, we were hit with a conundrum.  Do we return to our old mission and familiarity or do we go for the new adventure that awaits? New adventure it is. Our gate eventually got moved to gate 12, which was downstairs where we caught a bus in the rain out to the waiting plane. It so reminded me of when we first came to Tacloban a year ago.

 We left our two story, 3 bedroom, 2 bath apartment for a much smaller one in Iloilo. We are on the 3rd floor of the complex. We still have two bedrooms but only 1 bathroom. No laundry facilities and no study room. It's a cute apartment and will be easy to keep clean, especially since the one bedroom only has our spare luggage in it.  I took a few pictures. Standing at the front door looking in Looking off to the left from the front door Spare bedroom just off the kitchen bedroom off the living room bathroom from the right of the front door. On the 2nd floor, there is an extensive outdoor patio that connects the various buildings of the complex. There are a couple of swimming pools, playground areas, seating areas, etc. We will definitely have to check it out in the morning.

 We finally made it to McArthur's Landing AND got a picture of us there. This is the spot McArthur returned to the Philippines after promising he would return. We got pictures of us in front of the statues in the reflecting pool as well as in front of the U-boat replicas.  We also checked out the museum. The cool part was they had pictures of natives in the area who had been living there when McArthur landed. It was pretty cool. They had pictures of them then and now.

 We took a 2 day trip up to Catarman to drop off supplies and to check out mold in an apartment. We took the Udalls with us and spent the night at Umaga Beach, a place the missionaries had recommended. The rooms had hot showers and air con even if the mattresses were on the floor. We were just off the beach. Jack and I watched the sun rise on the beach and did some exploring. We came back later to snorkel. The water was very shallow for a long ways out. However, as we kept going further, we found more and more varieties of fish. It was pretty amazing. Jack snorkeled a lot longer than I did. Sister Udall and I sat in the water for a while just enjoying the view. 

 Saturday night while we were in Baybay, it was just a little too early to go to bed. We decided to walk along the shore downtown. We walked north towards the Catholic church. They were having a movie in the park. We stopped to watch for a bit, but it was all about picking watermelon. While it looked tasty, it didn't motivate us to keep watching it. We walked south towards the Metro shop. On the south side in the parking lot was a group doing dance aerobics. We initially stood way back in the parking lot and tried to keep up. I noticed the security guard at Metro took some videos of us. We were bad but were having so much fun. AFter a couple of songs, we ducked out. The group encouraged us to stay and keep trying. We walked into the Metro for a bit to cool down then went back out to join them. This time we were with the main group. The instructor was lots of fun and had so much energy. I wish I could move like him. At the end, they took some group shots. Here is us in all our glory...

 I had to take Jack to Ulan Ulan Falls on Biliran Island before we left Tacloban Mission. We took the Udalls with us and our bathing suits. The water there was refreshing. It is the first time that the water has been cooler than the air temperature, which is usually quite warm. The falls is a 90 ft drop. It created ripples in the water and you couldn't get close to the falls. I don't know that I would want to stand under that much force and pressure. The water was only about waist deep but very rocky. It was hard to walk about between the ripples and the uneven footwork. However, it was so nice to be in it.