~ 1st Christmas in the Philippines ~

Hey Everyone,
Today is Christmas night and I am done with my first Christmas here.. Kinda relieved and kinda sad and excited and just a lot of emotion right now cuz, I am so far away from home and yeah, I just feel weird.. It really doesn't feel like Christmas cuz, there's no winter in the Philippines lol. But, yeah, it basically felt like any other p-day. But that's alright.
Ok, so let me get started with what we did today.
I woke up, kinda depressing knowing that everyone else is waking up to presents and I woke up to an empty apartment but, oh, well. So, we went to Calaca and when we got there we couldn't find the Calaca Elders, so we looked all around Calaca asking for the "Noche" family but nobody knew where they lived. They just kept saying that there were a bunch of Noche's that lived in Calaca and that we needed the first name,.. lol, so needless to say, FAIL! haha! but when we went back to the bayan (center of town), we saw Elder Lopez. So we all met up and went to the Noche families house. It was pretty cool, they used to live in Canada so they weren't so kawawa (poor). They had a pretty nice house and they served us a TON of food, it was pretty good! Oh! And I ate pigs tonge without knowing it lol... I pretty much gagged when I found out that our ulam (dinner) was pigs tonge. But I ate it anyways. So, yeah, when we were there we ate, sang kareoke, and played billiards. The Filipinos are friggin' good at pool it's nuts! Lol..

So, yeah, we hung out there for a while and then we all decided to go to SM (super mall) Batangas. It was fun! I love the huge malls cuz they remind me so much of home and it feels good to be in an Americanized environment. Sometimes I just miss the convienences of home. But, yeah, there we just went and looked around stores and hung out. I ate at Burger King WOOT! lol.. Nothin like a lil' taste of home when your missing home lol.. But, yeah, we just window shopped.. I couldn't bring myself to buy anything. But after that we got some ZAGU, the Filipino equavelent of Jamba Juice, it's like a smoothie thing except it has little gooey balls in it. It's ok tasting but it's not as good as home lol... One thing I am coming to realize is that anything under 1000 pesos isn't "real" like back home.. It's sad cuz you'll buy something and it's super cheap but it breaks the day after you buy it. It's like the dollar store ya know? Everything is super cheap and not reliable at all.

But, yeah, anyways, after SM we went to look for a jeepney to take us to the bus station but there were no jeepneys so we just walked, it was fun navigating our way through Batangas city.. It's like the equavelent of Phoenix but about 100x's crappier lol.. But, yeah, we finally found a bus to take us back to our house. And yeah now I am here! On the Christmas scale this Christmas gets about a 4/10... I just miss you guys back home. Oh well... But, yeah, I love my life and I am so grateful for this opportunity to be a missionary! I love you all!
Elder Hansen.

I love you!