December 4, 2008
Panama City Rescue Mission can use your help this month. Like to be a part of the Festival of Trees? Or sell raffle tickets for a giant children’s playhouse? Serve Christmas Day dinner? Click here, or phone Jacki Dumas at 769-0783 to volunteer.
November 16, 2008
I found FreeRice.com, a website committed to ending hunger. Advertising sponsors pay the UN World Food Program for our participation in an online vocabulary game. For each word shown in turn, click on one of the four given possible definitions or synonyms. Every correct answer gains 20 grains of rice for the poor, donated by the sponsors. more →
October 7, 2008
I’ve found that many web surfers find this weblog when they search for “beggar,” “poor in the philippines,” “pictures of poverty in baguio city,” “photos of poor weary burdened,” “poor kids photos,” “poor beggar,” “baguio poverty,” “reaching the poor,” “begger” (sic), “beggar kids,” “jamaica pictures of poverty,” “pictures of poor people,” “philippines’ beggar,” “poor and reach people,” “the poor” and such terms in Google and Yahoo search engines.
September 10, 2008
AidtoChildren.com has a very easy vocabulary game in which one selects from four supplied choices the correct synonym for words such as beverage, student, guardian, doubtful, triumph, fate, gratitude, deadlock, sanitary, functional and fumble. If the FreeRice.com vocabulary game is too challenging for your children, steer them to AidtoChildren.com, where each correct answer nets a quarter of a cent for children in poverty who’re beneficiaries of World Vision. more →
June 29, 2008
I pray that John and Kim and their sons accomplish all that they desire in their visit to the U.S. that they return safely to the Philippines.
Today Mack came to the house around 3:15 to do the homework that he didn’t come here yesterday to do. Unfortunately he didn’t have poster board, so he and Dominic went to Baguio City to get groceries and cartolina (paper) while I walked to Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church in Turning Point.
June 10, 2008
Warm thanks to my parents and to JoAnn P. for depositing donations for the A/V/A family’s poverty relief. The monies donated will pay for the kids’ inoculations, asthma medicines, a water tank and chicken feed.
May 6, 2008
While I await Mack so that we can return to the city to buy chicken wire, vegetable seeds and a 5-gallon jug water dispenser for his family, I will write. In my medicine-induced sleep this morning, I had vivid dreams, including one about volunteering in a Filipino school. I dreamed that a high school vice principal, whom I met yesterday, hassled me about fellow American volunteers tutoring and coaching sports after school. She was adamant that I was supposed to collect money from them and give it to her. So I’ll tell you what I didn’t write yesterday about Mack’s education.
May 4, 2008
I walked down to Baguio Gold again. Isn’t that how I begin several posts? According to a Digital Globe topographic map, our home is 4609 feet (.873 mile) above sea level. The Baguio Gold Barangay basketball court is 4002 feet ASL. So the vertical drop is 607 feet in about a mile. I don’t know the walking distance. Out here in ‘the country,’ we’re not on maps of Baguio City and its environs. I estimate 5/6 of a mile.
May 2, 2008
(Dominic) After surveying the land, Brian and I have discovered that the Philippines government is not very accommodating of foreigners who want to set up shop either a for-profit or not-for-profit organization. Apparently, many bad actors have come to the Philippines for less than noble purposes and hid behind not-for-profit organizations in order to operate drug rings, sell pirated videos, prostitution, or whatever.
May 2, 2008
The A/V/A/C (four surnames) family in Baguio Gold consists of grandmother ‘Nanay,’ Mack (nickname), age 18, Patrick (16), Audrey (13), Nikko (11), Charisse (7) and Toni Rose, age 6.
April 26, 2008
Today I walked down to Baguio Gold borough again, to play Sepak Takraw with the youths, using the new ball and net. Well, I hardly knew the rules, and I certainly didn’t have the skills and ‘the moves,’ such as the bicycle kick. So I thought that I’d photograph the kids playing while I learned the game.
Brian writes of
misadventures in
the Philippines
