Day 5

Got up early and packed. Then got to the chapel at 7:00 and prayed/slept for 1 hour. Read the first reading at Mass and then moved bags over to vans for the journey to Manila. After saying goodbye to the nuns in Tagatay we spent 2 hours on the road to Manila, this time I sat in the air-con car! Fantastic. We arrived at the Jesuit University of BLAH. And then went to the library to use the Internet. Picked up copy of student newspaper.

We rode tricycles to Fr James' House and then had a brief orientation about Verbum Dei work in Manila. The tricycles were amazing and after equipping myself with a bandanna I also had a respirator, which was essential when riding as a second passenger on the bike. We then waked around the slums and met some of the people in the community. The kids were fantastic. Bandanna in its own preventing ear sunburn. We walked right up on to the ridge and looked out across the whole of Manila the view was breath taking. We saw where the river flooded in 2009 drowning lots of people, (later on we too were to be drowned but to a lesser extent). We caught tricycles back to Fr James' House where we played volleyball with the Missionaries. It was excellent.

For dinner went to Pizza Hut by tricycle again. This was very cheap only costing 25 pesos in total. The food was good and some very cheap. In particular San Miguel was 85 pesos. I had a regular Hawaiian Supreme with cheesy pops.

When we left Pizza Hut it was raining about a 2 out of 7 scale according to Fr James. Bandanna was used as a hood. We walked back to The Institute of Social Order at the university. Where, after having a shower, a brief sharing session and writing the blog I fell asleep. Its mentally humid.