Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Another trip to the Philippines

I just got back from the trip to the islands. The first day there, Rizza's son Carlo was in a contest for his school. He and Marlene, Rizza's oldest daughter, put on one heck of a nice act. Carlo took the runner up spot a week later at the coronation ceremony. Way to go, Carlo!

We also spent some time visiting some of Rizza's friends which made it a bit easier for me to associate faces with the people she speaks about in our conversations.

I got a chance to see the new house or at least the rudimentary bits that were already in place at the time. Trails were dug in the ground to set up the walls and the frame was in place. I was told by the development folks that the place was 50% done shortly before leaving for the US. Rizza took a trip up to General Trias later on. She was really pleased. Hopefully, she and the kids will be able to move into the new place in a few months.

We also got the kids all baptized. Rizza spent quite a bit of time getting all the preparations done. She took care of finding folks willing to be sponsors/godparents, making arrangements for a party after the ceremony and all that fun stuff. It was quite an undertaking for her. She did quite well though. Everybody looked like they had a good time.

One other thing I tried to do while there was to meet with one of the city councilors from the the local Mayor's office in Trece Martires. I'd like to try to clean up their web site a bit more to see if it might help their commerce a bit. I have a few good pictures of one of the local schools as well as a government building and a statue to use for an example site. My plan is to put something small together as an example. I was able to spend a few minutes with the councilor, but wasn't really able to spend any quality time meeting with him due to the short trip. Hopefully I can spend a bit more time and give a presentation the next time I'm there. The current web site for Trece Martires is at http://www.tmc.gov.ph.

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