Kanigan Family: A Few Month's Catch-Up!

I think it's about time I catch up on our blog! I'm sorry I've been terrible at posting lately. I always think that once school starts for the kids, I'll have all this free time to do a million things, but it never seems to stretch long enough.
A lot has happened in the past few months here in Manila. Each of the kids has settled in at their school and made friends. The school here has a great after school program, so they have been able to try out new things. Owen is learning to play the violin, Ellie chose ballet and gymnastics, Linc did Judo and soccer, and Logan the same. Logan is also taking his first strings orchestra class and picked the bass as his instrument. It is huge, but he loved it.
It's nice to live in a place with so many shopping locations close by. There are more malls here than people it seems. Christmas has been in full swing since September. They started playing music in the stores and setting up lights September first. They really love Christmas here, it's fun. For Halloween we went trick-or-treating up and down the floors of our apartment building. The workers here organized all the kids into groups, and even though the elevators were packed and we had to wait for a l-o-o-n-n-g time, it was a really fun experience. Some of the floors were decorated really well. I feel like we will need to do more next year, our humble little autumn wreath didn't come close to cutting it. :)

In November President Obama came to Manila. Dan was in charge of handling the press at the airport and was able to see him a few times there. I took the kids to a meet and greet and saw him there. Owen and Linc gave him a few high fives and Logan (who had a worn-out little Ellie on his shoulders) swears the president pointed right at him. It was a long day of waiting, but I think it was worth it. Owen told me when it was done that he had just created a new core memory, (we've watched the show 'Inside Out' a few times lately) so that's saying something!

Also in November, I checked a goal off of my bucket list. I self-published my first novel called, "Like Autumn in the South". It's available through Amazon for the Kindle. I'm really excited about it! I'm working on the hard copy now ... just have to work out a few kinks and it will be ready to publish.

For fall break Dan and I got a little stir crazy and took a last minute trip to Banaue to visit the two thousand-year-old rice terraces. The trip was long, with a stop in Baguio. Dan drove through traffic for most of it ... either that or winding mountain roads with large trucks and tiny trikes zooming all over the place. I also think that the highway we took had at least seven toll booths!
Since I wasn't the one driving, I had a great time taking pictures of everything and just being in the "real" Philippines for a while. We get stuck in our little bubble here in Manila and forget what it's like on the outside. All along our route people and children sat and played along the roads. Shacks and little stores are set up directly along the roads, barely a few yards away. We passed plenty of goats, pigs, roosters, chickens, cows, cats, stray dogs and lots of people spreading large piles of rice to dry in the sun.
In the cities there were tons of cars, trucks and trikes piled with people. Many people were even riding on the roofs. I saw one motorcycle that was carrying a family of eight ... no joke... eight. At every stop we'd be approached by vendors and kids trying to get a few pesos off of us. It was so hard not to want to give away all our trip money. I had brought a bag of treats for my kids, but I ended up handing them out all over the place along the way. In Baguio we spent a morning riding horses at Wright park, right through the busy streets of the city. It was an amazing experience. Baguio is located in the mountains, and though the climate is a refreshing change, there is so much smoke in the air from residents burning their trash, that I wouldn't necesarily call it "fresh mountain air". We didn't even book hotel reservations in advance, so the really adventurous part was finding a place to stay in both Baguio and Banaue. Just fyi, anyone planning on traveling to Banaue, there is one nice, large hotel in the city. You can also rent little huts, and there are plenty of motels and hostels, but for a family, we found liked Banaue Hotel. It also had a youth hostel on the same property, but we stayed in the hotel. It was large and rustic and had an amazing gift shop filled with native carved wood items. We bought a beautiful nativity set there for a great price ... among other things. I think we made the sales ladies very happy. :) The hotel did have a lot of bugs (especially ants!) and some interesting menu items in their restaurant, but considering we were in the middle of nowhere, it was pretty nice. The terraces themselves were absolutely breathtaking. I can't describe adequately with words how beautiful they were. We hiked down into one a little ways, and sat on a little slab of stone that gave us a beautiful 360 degree view. We watched a few hunched-back old women working the fields and just felt like we had taken a step back in time. I'll post plenty of those pics below. So, even thought the drive was crazy, we all though it was very much worth the effort. Even the kids agreed and they were the ones going stir crazy! On the way home, after driving for what felt like hours, we were about half a mile from the freeway when the road just stopped. There were a long line of trikes lined up, and a guy came up to our car and offered to show us the detour for a few hundred pesos. We didn't have much choice, so we agreed. He proceeded to take us on this crazy trail off onto a dirt road, through a field and into the dead of night where I was sure were would meet our fate, but eventually, sure enough, we arrived at the on-ramp and made it back to civilization. It was a very appropriate ending to a crazy/fun trip!
As far as December, we've had plenty of "end of the semester" activities (many related to the kids after school stuff) and Christmas parties, and time to just hang out together. We put up all our decorations the day after Thanksgiving, including a new tree we bought just after Christmas last year, and filled our little advent calendar with treats to count down to the 25th. I know this is a lot of stuff squashed into one post, and I'm hoping to keep up with things in the future better than I have so far, but with so many new experiences, I just don't want to forget anything. Living this sort of "gypsie life" isn't always easy, but I'm grateful for the experiences I've had. I'm grateful that my kids have seen what real poverty is like. I'm glad they get to meet so many different people from all over the world and see that really, we are all very similar. I'm grateful to have my faith and church wherever we go. I'm also grateful that being away from the people I love, especially during the holidays. It makes me appreciate and love them even more. So, here are the pics from our last few months (lots from our terraces trip!) and I hope to post many more very soon. Merry Christmas!!

The trip...