Thursday, January 5th - We're starting to get into a good routine now and we take on new jobs everyday.  We also begin to notice the homes evolving as we see our work actually starting to make a difference. Today we learn a bunch of new tasks: New Task 1 - Plastering By the end... Continue Reading →

Wednesday, January 4th - We're ready for Day 2 of the build.  We know we have to work even harder than yesterday if we want to reach our goal. Today we help build a staircase from scratch. Step 1 - Mix rocks, sand, and concrete. Step 2 - Add water and mix Step 3 -... Continue Reading →

On January 3rd, we started our build at the ANCOP site after a morning orientation (history, mission statement, organization structure, goals) with the ANCOP team at the hotel.  We traveled to Las Pinas city where we will be helping to finish ANCOP's Markham Village. We will be helping finish units in block 7.  The entire... Continue Reading →

A brand new second day of the New Year started off with a trip to a local zoo. Thankfully it wasn't very busy when we went so we were able to have the zoo entirely to ourselves! There were many interesting animals to see during our visit! Here's some pics of other animals we saw... Continue Reading →

Tired from our night out enjoying New Years Eve at the SM Mall of Asia, we toughed out a 4 hour car ride (which was supposed to be 2 hours) to a city in the Philippines called Tagaytay (considered one of the most beautiful cities in the Philippines). We were taken away by the breathtaking... Continue Reading →

New Years Eve in a different country is something many of us have never ever experienced before! Fortunately, we spent our day in the largest mall in the Philippines: the SM Mall of Asia. Some of us started off skating at the indoor rink inside the mall just to remind us of the weather our... Continue Reading →

Our 3rd day in the Philippines was entirely made up of a city tour of Manila and surrounding areas. First stop: Greenbelt The shot below is in front of an outdoor chapel where we were able to individually pray and reflect. Our next stop was at the Manila American Cemetery. We learned that most of... Continue Reading →

Before leaving El Dorado, we took time to debrief and reflect upon our day and our work. We had a little bit of time to wash up before our next destination but everyone was afraid to go the washroom because of this: So we headed off to the closest SM mall to find a public... Continue Reading →

After serving lunch to all the kids, we all grabbed a garbage bag and a pair of gloves to do a community clean up. We started off cleaning inside of the GK complex. As you can see above, it was relatively clean. It wasn't until we went into the core of El Dorado that we really... Continue Reading →

After we played the games and handed out gifts to all the kids, it was time to give out lunch.  Thanks to Mike's parents, in-laws, and their helpers for cooking all the food and preparing them behind the scenes while we played with the kids. Canada represent!! We had the system down and was moving... Continue Reading →