activities

Here are now some impressions of two more activities of the PREDA people I joined. The first bunch of photos is about a theatre performance at a college in Olongapo, the second is about the school-feeding programm, I joined once, too.

Hungry streetkids

Remembrance I

Ready to go!

In the zone?!

 

Schoolkids

Lil' princess

Another hungry kid ^^

Remembrance II

Learning is fun ^^

Just the truth :P

The actors are bored of waiting for their performance to start 

 

There you go!

 

Lunchtime - Work first, then comes the fun!!

Good Bye!

(It was a oath of the children, but whatever ^^)

building site

Here are some photos of the building site, where the new boys home of PREDA Foundation is going to be built. so, that's the building my mother was looking for. She watched the process of building it as an architect that's what you are supposed to do, I guess :P!

Nearly finished??

 

 

The workers also sleep and live at the building site

 

 

 

"Is this pipeline done correctly?" - "I don't think so. And the roof is crappy, too!" :XD

Banaue

So, this will be more like a photo-blog from now on ^^!

In my fourth week in the Philippines my mom and I went on a trip to the province North Luzon to see the rice-terraces in Banaue and the area around Banaue. Below you can find some impressions of ths weekend in the north of the Philippines with some describing words.

This is the entrance sign of the place where we stayed a few kilometres away from Banaue.

A native cottage. Very comfortable and functional little building ^^.

Awesome view over the terraces from our "Native Village Inn"!!

There were nice plants, too ;).

And a cute little ape :D!

This is a part of Banaue. Banaue is not a big city, more a bigger village!

Street view in Banaue.

More to come in the next posts... ;-)

It's not over yet!!!

Although this blog was already over, I'm going to show you some more photos of my (and my mothers') journeys in the Philippines. Poorly my motivation was just gone, when I was back in Germany and my normal life went on, but I have taken many more photos of our "adventures" in the Philippines and Hong Kong, so I decided to catch up some stories. Now or never ;-)!

good boys

PREDA Foundation gives about 50 boys a place to stay. The facility is called boys home. The boys got in conflict with the law and the PREDA staff saved them from getting imprisoned or got them free out of jail in Manila, where many minor children are imprisoned even for very little crime. Most of the boys have a bad family background or are former street kids. I for myself like the boys I got to know yet so much. They are between 12 and 20 years old and most of them are into HipHop style and music. That is the reason why they (try to ^^) act really cool and handsome :-)!
Have a look :D:

olongapo_subic_preda

So, as you already know by reading the posts before we stay the most of our time in Olongapo at PREDA Foundation. It's a few minutes ride with a blue jeepney from downtown Olongapo up a hill out of town.

The city is set on the Subic Bay, where you can see a lot of ships anchoring. Most of them are Japanese ships used to export goods to other asian countries (Japan probably ^^). You cannot really know about the water in the bay wether it is poluted by the ships or not, but when you look at all the garbage swiming in the water you might think it is ;-)!

Olongapo City

Subic was a military base of the American forces during all the wars this country has been through. Espacially dunring the second world war there were a lot of American soldiers stationed here to fight against the Japanese forces. For a few years now the Americans are gone, but they left their traces in the city, the people and the society.

Subic Bay with beacon

PREDA now cares for one of these traces not only the Americans can be blamed for: sex tourism, exploitation and abuse of minor children, misstreated human rights and a lot more grievances in society. PREDA runs many programs and activities to help abused children and to fight for the rights of children and their standing in society. Just have a look at www.preda.org/german for more information!

PREDA main house entrance

manila_makati & centre complex

Mall mall mall mall mall mall.

The financial centre of Manila is set in a district called Makati. All the important institutions and many international banks and companies have their own buildings here. Besides them you can find a lot of famous hotels there surrounded by large malls. There you can go easily by tram, too. We went there on Saturday and tried to get on the rooftop of one of the higher buildings... we couldn't make it. But we visited a few malls or better, just one huge mall. In fact it's like you go in one mall and you don't have to come out to got to the next one. The result is that the streets are completely empty especially during the weekend. They are all connected to a huge complex of malls. The one we went in was named Glorietta and there was Glorietta1, Glorietta2, Glorietta3 and Glorietta4. Next to them was the Greenbelt Mall and next to it just came other malls and so on... The malls were crowded and chaotic just like a big labyrinth.

 

 

Vacant cultural centre

The last trip made during our visit in Manila was a walk to a place of which we thought it might be a kind of a cultural center, because on the map you see that there are for example the theatre and a convention center. In fact the place was nearly abandoned and the theatre was kind of a entertainment park with a rollercoaster and plastic dinosaurs.

 

manila_chinese cemetary

City of dead.

The next day we went to the Chinese cemetary by tram. The tram lines in Manila are the more comfortable way to move in the city. They are air conditioned and fast, but you got to be checked by the security to enter it ;-). It was raining all the time and so I got only a few pictures.

By the way, the weather changed during our visit of Manila. The first two days we had rain most of the time, the third day the weather changed into more clear and the sun came out, too. Wether the weather is good or not the humidity is incredibly tough all the time like in a tropic house... UFF... SWEAT!

A Chinese cemetary is just different from a Chinese garden. It's like a tiny city in the real city, but no one lives there. Maybe some Chinese undead scuffle around the tombs, but we didn't see any :P. Impressions below.

Main Road in the cemetary

Imprisoned dead

There are christian Chinese, too ^^

Heavy rain, the umbrella broke ;-)

manila_intramuros

The one day we went to the old part of Manila. We came along the Rizal Park. Rizal is the national hero of the Filipinos, he was the first man, who called himself a citizen of the Philippines, the first real Filipino. In the Park there was a Chinese garden, too, where we met a man named Paul. He works as a guide for tourists there, but we didn't want him to show us Intramuros (which comes from the Spanish words intra=inside and muros=walls), because we didn't want to pay him ;-).

But Paul was a really nice guy, who showed us the right direction to walk and added some information about Manila and its' sights and the Philippines for free. For example he told us, there isn't only a Great Wall in China, but there is one in Manila, too. We saw this wall later... it wasn't that big ;)...

Below some impressions of the old town of Manila.

Rizal Park 

Old fort or jail (?) part of the old city wall

 

City wall

 

Intramuros housing

 

Atrium