Day Three

      Friday began pretty early. We all start waking up around 4... 430ish. It just isn't the same when you don't: A. have a bed to yourself (sorry for pinning you against the wall Colette) B. have the room temperature controlled the way you want (warm when you fall asleep... freezing under a blanket when you wake up - thanks to the AC working through the night :-)  ) C. have to adjust to a 12 hour time difference.             All of this lends itself into making us closer and having a pretty good time though. So bright and early - it's time to shower and prepare to be clean for only about 20 minutes. You never actually get dry when you get out of the shower. It was so humid that you could stand there for a l.o.n.g. t.i.m.e. before you were ever dry (thank you for baby powder). Vergi was asleep in the living room - and couldn't figure out why we kept getting up so early - we weren't sure why either.

     Breakfast at 730... leave for clinic at some point after that. There were some people also staying with Vergi while we were there. There was this one girl who was doing an internship for her school for 2 months - and I think she was from Sweden. We only saw here a couple of times - but she was already comfortable being here - and her mom had even come to visit her. Sometimes they would talk in a different language - maybe Swedish... and hopefully they weren't talking about us!

      Anyway - while staying at Vergi's we got to have this instant coffee by Nestle that was surprisingly VERY good! It was called 3-in-1 and had coffee, cocoa... and something else -  maybe a lot of caffeine. I'm not sure... but I liked it! Breakfast usually consisted of an egg (fried), bread, mangoes :-) and peanut butter and jelly. 

      2nd day of clinic started off a little crazy. I was observing Jerilynn today and right when we walked up - this mom brought up her little son and he had a splint on his foot. She explained that the previous evening a rock had fallen and landed on his foot. They took him to a doctor where they cleaned it, put the tip of his toe back and sutured it up. The rock had basically chopped the tip of his toe off - and unless he was lucky - he was going to lose the tip of his toe. Jerilynn told me that I had to clean it. awesome. Filipinos hardly show pain - but I still wasn't excited about picking at his badly injured toe. And then... I wasn't drying it well enough. So thankfully she took over... and he cried. and screamed. One children's tylenol just wasn't cutting it. 

Some of what we saw at clinic.

Raindrop Psoriasis

(not cirrhosis)

pretty rare

It covered his entire body

Baby with Impetigo on her face

This is Vergi helping us (and translating) at clinic

       After we spent the morning depleting our fluid and sodium reserves (and doing clinic) - we went back to Vergi's, showered, napped, and then went on an adventure. We went to another mall and that is where Jason and Vergi went to try and find the American Express office. One little piece of advice - never try to find the American Express office in Manila. I don't think it actually exists. But besides them being gone for a few hours... we enjoyed some more Starbucks... bought a few little trinkets, turned the lights off in the bathroom (Colette), and soaked up the AC. Trying to get back to Vergi's was a different kind of adventure. We took a big bus (like a Greyhound) to the mall... but then thought we would take the train back. The train station was beyond crowded - rush hour... so we tried the bus station - with the same results. So Vergi said "Wait right here - I'll find a Jeepney" and she disappeared in the crowd. Oh my goodness. I bet she was tired of dealing with us by that point - and decided to leave us. We waited for about 20 minutes (and this is where Darcy became known as the "super sweater")

[just take a look at Colette's (middle) sweat lines... it was HOT.]

 to see her running and motioning for us to hurry after her. We had to run to catch our Jeepney. 

     Thankfully - we made it back to Vergi's without losing any of our party... and time to shower... again. :-)

    Birthday party for one of the worker's daughters and some interesting ice cream - cheese, rocky road, Ube, and vanilla. But the rice... rice noodles... soup... and mango - that was all good!!!!!!!!

Day Three - Complete