Embracing the Adventure

We live very near the Manila Polo Club - we can actually watch matches out our living room window. However, the US Embassy also allows us to go to matches for free. None of us had ever been to a polo match before, so we were excited to give it a try. It was fun, and quite a luxurious experience! Stomping the divots between matches! (Just like in Pretty Woman! Who knows what I'm talking about! :) ) Elias lost interest after a while, so he and I explored the rest of the Polo Club while Justin continued to hang out with his work friends. We discovered a cute little children's garden. There was also some exercise equipment that was good for climbing, and it was right on the edge of the polo field, so we had a great view of the match! It was quite peaceful down there, and we enjoyed watching the rest of the match from there. We are grateful for the opportunity, and we hope to go back again before polo season ends in March!

We were delighted to discover that among the hundreds of cool malls in Manila, there is one called the Venice Grand Canal Mall that is right in our neighborhood. It is modeled to look like Venice, with the canal going through the middle and even gondola rides! We went for a visit and thought it was so beautiful! We ate at a restaurant called The Meatball Revolution, and Elias got this cool meat pizza made on a tomato tortilla! He liked it! We're grateful for this cool city we have to live in and explore!

Elias' school doesn't go back until January 8, so we took the extra time to do some special fun things in Manila! We were excited to find that Disney on Ice was coming to Manila, so we got tickets, and we LOVED it! We've never seen Disney on Ice in the States before, but we sure did love it here! The show was called Everyone's Story, and so it was a broad summary of many of the most popular Disney stories. The premise was that Goofy and Donald were wanting to make a movie, but they couldn't think up a plot. So Mickey and Minnie tried to help them come up with ideas by summarizing other good stories they knew... Elias' favorite section was Finding Dory! We loved the turtles! I have no idea how they got that giant Crush to move so smoothly on the ice... The Frozen section was also hugely popular! The Mulan section was beautiful: And I loved the Lion King choreography, too! For the finale, everyone in the show came out to wave goodbye - th