a February vacation

a great thing about working in Hong Kong is public holidays. there are a lot of them. Christmas, New Year's, Easter, plus a bunch of religious festivals, and then, the best yet, Chinese New Year - 3 days off for everyone. (and more if you're a teacher). in December, we found out that 3 of the teachers grant works with and a teacher from another school were going to Boracay in the Philippines for the holidays, so we decided to go with them. Boracay has an amazing reputation for white sand beaches, so we thought that sounded pretty perfect in February. And how it was...

the good things:
*great food and eating on the beach
*playing Scrabble and reading on the beach
*playing beach ultimate with the Boracay team
*sunny weather
*snorkeling and lots of fish!
*jonah's fruitshakes
*hanging out at the other girls' hotel
*very minimal sunburns for both of us!

the bad things:
*our hotel room. i suppose we only paid $30 a night, but still... a sink would have been nice, as well as a seat on the toilet bowl! at least things seemed clean, if not comfortable.
*both of us catching colds - how does that work?! luckily we're both nearly over them.

I think the good outweighs the bad... here are the photos:


This is the boat that took us from the island where the airport was to Boracay


we booked a boat to go snorkeling, but they stopped off at a little island first, where we had to pay (of course) to see some caves. there were also some random statues of bulls. I don't know why, but the natural thing to do is ride the bull, right?
this was the stairwell in and out of the caves
grant and the weird statue man
inside one of the caves


an accurate representation of how we spent our time (that's a great book, by the way)


the water is the same color as a pool would be!


I thought this picture looked like one of the backgrounds they would give you as a default on your computer


the 5 girls on the trip - 4 teachers and me!


sunset!


at night, local families would make intricate sand castles and creations. taking a picture basically meant giving a donation.