Baby Watch

This is NOT (repeat NOT) a "we're having a baby" announcement. This is a story of how a street vendor tried to get me to be a customer by insulting me.

Food Adventure- Deep Fried Squid

Yesterday for dinner I had deep fried squid.  It came out and it was just the tentacles (I was kind of disappointed about that).  It was really chewy and didn't have much of a flavor,  the squid looked like KFC chicken in little strips, but tasted like rubber.  It was fun to try it, but I don't think I will try it again.  Sorry no pictures.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - WOW

We're staying in a downtown hotel in Kuala Lumpur. We can see the monorail right outside our window. We can see an intersection where 5 or 6 streets come together. Our corner room has large windows on two sides. The windows don't seal all the way and so we hear lots of street noise but traffic isn't so bad.

Scuba Diving

A few days ago, I went scuba diving. We noticed a little shack when we first came to the island that said “izmi diving”. I didn't know what izmi was, but the diving part sounded promising. So we went the next day to the shack and talked to the owner of it about diving. He told us about the intro course and it sounded like fun. Later we talked it over and decided that Sam, my dad and I would go. We went out to the little shack at 11 in the morning and we learned what all of the tubes that connect to the breathing tank do. One changed your buoyancy, one was how you breathed, one showed how much air you had, and the last one was an emergency breather thing. Then we went out to chest deep water and did some drills that taught us how to breathe and obtain neutral buoyancy.  I kept drifting around because I was so light.  After about 15 minutes of that we went deeper. The deepest we ever got was 12 meters. We saw all sorts of fish and coral. The teacher of the class showed us a puffer fish and tried to make it puff up, but it wouldn't. The teacher tried to catch some fish, but they were way too fast for him, he also pointed out odd fish and other things. As we went down lower and lower we had to pop our ears so they didn't explode or something. We spent about a half hour under and then we came out. The scuba equipment was about as heavy as my backpack and so it was hard to climb out on the ladder. It was really fun, but I wouldn't be too interested in getting certified.

Best part of the Philippines

The very best part of our visit to the Philippines was being able to see my parents.  They have been serving as missionaries in the Philippines for 15 months now. We were able to rent an apartment just a few floors above where they live so it was easy for us to run down and see them very often.

World War II and the Philippines

While in the Philippines I was able to learn quite a bit about the Pacific theater of World War II. Most of my world war II studies have been about the war in Europe so I must admit I didn't know a lot about the Pacific war. I knew the Philippines were part of the war, but didn't understand how or why. So here is a little history lesson about what I learned. The Philippines had been under US rule since 1898 and in 1935 became a commonwealth of the US and was on a 10 year plan to full independence.

Live Shells on Corregidor

While in Philippines we visited the island of Corregidor for a day tour. It was a really neat tour that included a stop at the Pacific War Memorial Museum. I think the neatest part of the museum was the artifacts displayed. Our guide told us an interesting story about one of the artifacts.