philippines days 4 and 5

pictures! this is all from day 4 when we went to this place called treetop adventure and ziplined through the rain forest while sitting in chairs. it was awesome. this platform was up 50 or so feet in the trees and from there, you go on a whole zipline course.
the wait for the zipline was 2 hours so we did a 'jungle survival' course first with this nice man who taught us lots of useful things like..
how to make a fire using bamboo and a sharp knife:

how to be manly men in the rain forest:
how to glow like an angel due to a foggy lens in front of a giiiiant tree:
the trees can do it too.
i couldn't figure out a good way to photograph the torrential rain. it rained like we were in the middle of a typhoon for an hour or so, including the time we were on the zip line.
josh and steve have all of the pictures from when we were actually doing it since my camera isn't waterproof enough or small enough to take with me on stuff like that. hopefully i can get those pictures in the next couple of weeks.. but both of them are notorious for not ever uploading stuff.

steve did really well for being afraid of heights. it was creepy because you had a clip on your harness that they'd clip onto the fence somewhere.. but before you sat in your chair, you weren't clipped to anything while standing on a wet, metal, downsloping platform with a hundred-foot or more drop off.
we took a 4 hour bus back to manila and i was sitting next to this really fantastic philipino girl, ivy, who spoke fluent english. she told the bus driver where we wanted to get off the bus and then she somehow arranged it so there was a taxi to pick us up right when we got off. it was nice to chat with her during the ride and we both learned a little about the other's country.

we had heard that manila could be pretty sketchy and i read a million horrific hotel reviews (mice! cockroaches! worms coming out of shower drains! bedbugs.), but the imperial palace suites hotel was wonderful. for $100US or so, we had 2 beds, a real bath room and little living room area. the neighborhood wasn't scary at all and we had french food for dinner.

this early afternoon we hopped on a plane to come home. the guy sitting ahead of josh on our flight had the flu so they more or less made us put on face masks and they took our contact info so they can let us know if the guy turns out to have swine flu.
the man sitting next to me was flying to hawaii with his family and he wasn't happy at all about the mask situation. he felt weird and he didn't want to put it on his baby but the flight attendant was really adamant. i tried to explain that it's just an asian thing.. but he couldn't get over it.

i wish i had a picture of the look on my kids' faces when i told them i was in the philippines this morning. i think it blew their minds. i was so happy to see them. i chased everyone around in my little kid class to hug them, which has become our tradition in there, and scott and jerry kept lingering around me so i'd catch them.

tonight we went to dinner with tess' parents at the thai place. they were super friendly and tess-y. they both work in the airline industry so their family has traveled all around the world. i was surprised when tess didn't go stay with them in the hotel for their last night in town and she isn't going to go with them to the airport tomorrow. it would be nice to be so independent. i know i'd be at the airport until they went to the gate at the very least.