D8s

Have I mentioned that I'm learning A LOT here? It's crazy. Not only am I learning some interesting stuff in school, but I'm just learning a lot about myself, about people, about this country, about God's nature. Man. It's a crazy journey.

So last night I had a date with this really cool girl from my church named Aby. She's really nice and sweet and just cool to hang around. She's also 18... but she's in her second year of college.

Let me fill you guys in: Here in the Homeland, most kids graduate high school when they are 16. It's not because they all start really young, either. It's because they don't have Jr. High. Which I think is awesome. I hated Junior High. It was pretty much "Drama Fest Spectacular". Let me tell you something. Junior High kids are MEAN. And like an immature mean. They can tear you up and feed you to the dogs. They're bad.

I remember this one time last year when our Student Ministries class went over to the Middle School (Desert Christian has Preschool to 12th grade over three campuses) to just hang out with the kids, play games, beat them at football/basketball... and the like. Prior to this trip, I had already done worship a couple times for the Junior High chapels...

Ok so this particular day, we're hanging out with some of the little brats (i say with all lovingness in my heart) and one kid comes up... a 7th grader I think... and goes, "Oh yeah! I remember you! You sang in chapel a couple weeks ago."... "yeah, that's right" I respond... the kid replies sharply, "Oh man! You suck!".

I wanted to slap the little satan. Just kidding. But seriously, little kids can be cruel.

Ok, back to the date... yeah she's 18. Before our date at 6pm, It starts raining like OH-MY-GOSH-WHAT-THE-HECK-TROPICAL-STORM! No joke. From inside my room, the rain pounding on the roof sounds like we're being attacked by ze germans. When I leave my house at around 5:30pm to catch a jeep to downtown, I open the gate and immediately see that there's this huge flood rolling down the street. It didn't exactly look all that deep, but when I stepped in it, pretty much my whole feet plunged straight into water. Wet socks. Great.

Man, wet socks are the worst. There's only a couple things I hate more than wet socks... one being jr. highers. (kidding.)

Luckily, I have my umbrella. So I save myself from being totally drenched, but with the angle this rain is coming down at, it was darn near impossible to stay dry. I hailed a jeep got in as fast as I could and took my seat... My jeans were soaked. Ugh. Wet socks, wet jeans. This is the ills. (btw, i'm starting to say "the ills" for anything that's not all that cool... downers.)

During the commute to downtown, it was kinda funny to watch people scrambling across the streets using any single item to keep themselves partially dry... purses, books, backpacks, cardboard, plastic bags...

A couple cars got stuck in some heavily flooded areas. Man, it was crazy.

So I finally get to Kaloi's Internet Cafe (or KIC) and wait for everyone else to show up so we can get this double date rolling... Apparently, everyone had trouble getting to downtown because of the rain.

Originally for the date we were supposed to go to this restaurant on this large hill overlooking downtown called "Jack's Ridge", but we decided to forego that because of the rain. Instead we went to Picobello, this awesome itallian restaurant on the 5th floor of the mall right next to KIC. We had some great genuine italian pizza, talked for a little, then roamed the malls. Oh and I treated everyone to dinner. Seriously though, for 200 pesos a pizza (roughly $4 for a large size), how can I not treat everyone? I plan on eating lunch there tomorrow.

So Aby and I had a good time together. At least on my part I think so... Kaloi and Lea walked around the mall finding stuff to buy for their soon to be home (they're getting married February 5th, 2006 and want me to play the sax at their wedding... yikes), so Aby and I had some coffee, talked a little bit about the dramas of life and how God is awesome... then went to the arcade where she kicked my butt at pretty much all of the games... but I think I let her win... or did I. I dunno. She was good.

After that, we walked across the street to McDonalds or McDo (mick-doh) as it's referred to around here, and had some desert. I got an Oreo Mcflurry and she got just a regular sundae. We talked a lot about the language... I pretty much just got tutored in Tagalog... it was awesome. I'm really starting to learn a lot of the language.

Funny story. While we were chatting, there were these two girls outside... maybe 12 or 13 each and they were trying to get someone's attention who was eating inside... So this one girl, kinda chubby, starts dancing around... or more like flailing around in front of this window. I was trying my darned hardest to keep my attention focused on Aby, but I just had to point it out to her and we started laughing so hard. Great times.

So yeah the date was awesome possum... also, Lea and Kaloi really want the two of us to be close friends... I know they do. Jeez, those guys are so obvious...

Anyway, that was last night... Today I didn't really do much except go to church, have some discipling time with the campus guys, and play DotA... a Warcraft III mod... it's interesting I guess... it's like cocaine here for all the teenage guys though. Thousands of Filipino kids are wasting their life away playing DotA. Hey, I can't blame them though... I pretty much waste my life away on World of Warcraft.

So... I pretty much love the campus ministry here. These guys are so cool. They definitely rock my socks.

Here's a little thing I threw together on Photoshop:


Aby is the girl second from the right. Lea is second from the left. Kaloi is in the middle (on the guy's picture. duh)

The rest of em, I'll introduce another time. Anyway, I have some homework to finish up, so I'll let you guys go. For now. Yeah.

W00t!
Cy