Filipiniana Week Part 2

After Tuesday's successful field trip, the elementary kids left the school campus again on Wednesday to participate in some ministry projects around our area of Manila. Each grade had a different project, but all ended their day by cleaning up trash on the roads leading up to school. The 4th grade planned a beautification project, which consisted of planting trees and landscaping. Will says he personally dug holes and planted 2 trees. I was not in attendance so I am not really sure how big these trees were or if he had help in digging the holes. I guess we will have to go check them out next week.

The week ended today with the annual Elementary Fiesta. Filipinos love to have Fiestas and of course that means lots of traditional food. I was in charge of serving food to 4th and 5th graders, the Faith Academy Filipino staff, and the school van drivers. I served bibinka which is a sticky rice dessert, hot roasted peanuts, and a cruncy corn snack. (just in case you are confused, I didn't make any of this, I only served it.) We also had typical street vendors with Popcorn and ice cream cones. The ice cream flavors this year were chocolate, mango, and ube--a purple root crop.

No Fiesta is complete with out tinikling, the traditional national folk dance of the Phillipines. Tinikling is very similar to jump rope, but instead of a rope, two bamboo poles are used. The poles are held by two people, one pole in each hand. They hit the poles on the floor and then hit the poles together. The person in the middle hops in between, outside, and over the poles as they move together and apart. The cadence of this tends to get faster as you go along. Needless to say some of the kids are much more skilled than others. Here are a couple pictures I took of Will's class dancing the tinikling, followed by a video of some professionals we taped at a cultural show. Keep watching past the first 30 seconds if you want to see some fast footwork! You can really hear the Spanish influence in the Philippines in the traditional tinikling music.

Will taking his turn