GREETINGS FROM MANILA!!

Hey there! Here we are in Manila at the City Garden. It has been a long day of traveling but all in all, it has gone very smoothly.

The day started with some well-timed phone calls even before we left. My favorite was from Lindsay who was already at school with her first graders. They sang "Zippidy Do Dah" to us over the phone. What a great way to start the day! Thanks Lindsay!! We loved it!!

The first leg of our trip was to Detroit. Nothing remarkable. Our flight to Nagoya was long and poor Allen was really quite uncomfortable. We tried to get exit row seats for him, but were unsuccessful. It didn't seem fair since 99% of the folks on this flight were Japanese and about 2 feet shorter than him! Oh well, Allen ended up sitting in between me and a man who had evidently been to the sushi bar shortly before takeoff. No kidding...we kept getting wafts of raw fish and beer from his direction during the flight. This man spent much of the trip sleeping. He had some nifty plaid eyepatches which were quite effective in blocking out the light. Unfortunately, he forgot to turn off his overhead light before he went to sleep. Allen and I were reading, but when we turned our lights off to get some sleep, we realized that HIS light was on. It was a blinding light that was pointed directly onto Allen. It would have been weird for Allen to reach over the man's body to turn the light off, so he just tried to close his eyes with (at this point) the ONLY bright light in the plane which was shining directly on him. We had a good laugh about this and thankfully, our friend eventually got up for a bathroom break. We then reached over to turn of his light.

Immigration and customs were a breeze at the Manila airport. It was helpful that we had been here last January and knew exactly where to go. CSC had a driver waiting for us so we hopped in the van and are now at the hotel.

It's been a good day. We fly to Cebu tomorrow afternoon and will then meet up with our kids. I like being here. I really think that Filipino people are very friendly... and I don't think I am just making this up!!:) Lots of smiles and people are generally very courteous. It's a good thing. From the time that we left Cambridge to when we landed in Manila was about 25 hours. The Philippines is 13 hours ahead of Minnesota time if you are trying to keep track. I guess that will change with daylight savings...

That's all for today. Tomorrow is a biggie! On our way to the hotel tonight, Allen looked at me and said... "Mary, what have we gotten ourselves into???" Yep, we are nervous about tomorrow, but it's all ok. We're excited and very ready to begin this next chapter!