Preparation Day - Monday, 28 April 2014

Okay, so on Monday, some of the sister missionaries decided to take a short trip to downtown Manila to buy beads.  Sister Wong and her daughter and son-in-law (who was our driver) went along for two reasons: 1. to get us where we needed to go and 2. so merchants wouldn't take advantage of us.  This was to be a 30 minute ride with shopping about an hour and 30 minutes back home, so 2-3 hours tops!  Wouldn't you know it.  Guess who was in town?  Yikes!  You know how I told of Manila roads with four lanes painted and six or seven lanes of cars?  Well, because of Obama (we can really blame this on him!) they had closed off the roads in both directions and for miles, the 7 lanes of traffic were forced to one lane and a detour through the barrios.  We saw things we never would have seen otherwise, which was interesting.  As we got closer to the Church where we needed to turn, the foot traffic was immense.  We were right in the middle of the protesters rally.  It took us 2 1/2 hrs to get to the bead market!  We would have turned around and gone home but in Manila you can't just turn around and go back.  There are one way streets that are a mess.  Anyway, we decided to go on and did eventually arrive at our destination.  We shopped and thought things would have thinned out, but the rally was still going full guns.  Our driver, knew another way around the mess but it took us way out of our way.  We told him, let's do it.  Well, we had good traffic but it still took us 2 1/2 hours to get back home.  Don't know what the news in the states said about his trip, but not everyone here is excited for it.  Here is what some of our trip looked like:

Hundreds of people were at the bus depot

This is the sign on the bldg in the next picture

I would hate to see what the old
rooms look like!

Instead of cross walks, they have walk-overs

Hmm...

Just about every other bldg was a church

If not a church, a dentist office.  This
dentist was even out on the street
rounding up business!

A well ignored sign as there was
parking on both sides of the street.  One
car had a fabric cover on it that looked
to be 20 years old.

This old man had the most interesting
face, but he didn't want his picture taken.  Sucks!

This is the Church of the Black Nazarene.
It is truly amazing.  I would like to go
back here sometime.

Under this arch is where
we went to buy beads.

Aye yi yie!  So many people, so many
smells.  This is also a wet market which
has fish and veggies and everything else
imaginable!  I felt like I needed a hosing off! 

More people going places!!!

These are some of the pictures I pulled of the internet about the protest.  There were actually four of the burning in effigy, but they were pretty spooky.  Kind of like a horror film where the devil gets burned up.  Oops! Maybe I shouldn't have said that.  Anyway, I know there are little kids who read this blog and I didn't want them to think grandma was in an unsafe place, so I only put the first one in.

It was good to get back home, safe and sound!  What 

will the next adventure be?  Remember from UP, "Adventure

is out there."  Check back to see.