I’m a few days behind… I need to do some serious typing. 😉

This morning was a bit of a different schedule for the dorm lads. Today was the day (the teddy bears had their picnic), but also the day where all the dorm men go to the B’s house for breakfast and fellowship. A round of applause is probably due to any family being up to the challenge of feeding 16 hungry lads but by a miracle it was managed. If Jesus had been there he might have had to bless the fish and bread twice!

Once the food was eaten, the hymns all sung and the fellowship… Fellowshipped? We took a couple of tricycles back to the dorm. How many people do you think can fit in a tricycle?We managed 5 excluding the driver. And by Filipino standards we’re probably not even close to the limit.

Right now I’m having a well spent hour out on the balcony overlooking the banana trees and the building ruins. The lads are playing with my ukulele and working out Christmas carols. Not really adventurous but there is an atmosphere of brotherhood here… camaraderie perhaps. And a plucked ukulele guarantees a peaceful setting.

Suddenly there is a commotion from below, of course there is nearly always some sort of commotion within earshot, vendors shouting, children yelling or tricycles roaring down the tiny street… But this was different. It was a musical commotion. Craning my neck over the balcony I saw that one of the mountain people had arrived at our door.

So the mountain people are people that live (guess where) in the mountains! Apparently they usually keep themselves to themselves but during the Christmas season they’ll come down in the hope that people’s generosity will provide a bit of money for them. Our mountain man had a small drum and quite the knack for whistling Christmas carols. I was quite impressed but it’s when my ukulele apprentice picked up the uke and played along (again with the same 3 chords) that I was really entertained. So myself and some of the dorm lads put together a small collection for the entertainment.

Back to the balcony I received a rather startling electric shock when trying to unplug my iPad. The faulty wiring is… Interesting. Sometimes the plug just starts crackling randomly.

My classes today started with bible doctrines where it was opened by the adorable duo singing Christmas carols:

Of course everybody loved it, and they gave out cookies to the class later so were obviously popular. I was secretly grinning because I knew that tonight they’d have the favour returned. More on that later…

Music theory class continued the games, though this time we had cryptic pictures which revealed then the name of a carol, we then had to search for the carol in the hymnal, identify what scale it was written in, calculate the parallel minor and wrote it on the board before the other 2 teams did. And that’s what I call a musical challenge.

Of this wonderful day the evening was undoubtedly the highlight. On Facebook I had joined a secret group set up by my piano teacher where it was suggested that we form a secret choir and go to each of the faculty directors houses (and it just so happens that one of them is Mr B).

And so a group of about 30 mischievous singers gathered in the lobby, we set off first for Ate J’s house (interestingly one of the other directors rode past on his bicycle….) but we carolled for her, then for Director A and his two little lads who had given us cookies earlier. Their expressions were filled with wonder at the sight of us. But my favourite was the B’s house. After we knocked on the gate Master B came out and asked who it was. I quickly motioned for the choir to be silent and pretended that it was just me who needed to see his parents as I’d “forgotten to bring something from their house”. It was beautiful, the trap was set and as the family opened the gate they were greeted with 30 voices heartily singing the first stanza of Joy to the world. Mwahahaha. They were very grateful for the midnight cheer. (Half past nine cheer…whatever).

So here is a picture of the choir on the streets. There was quite a few of us.

Getting so many of us back to the college was the interesting end to the night. We created a fleet of tricycles (each carrying at least 6 people). We should have sung carols as we rode but the motorbike engines would have drowned us out I think.

So I’m not off to Olongapo tonight. If I did then I’d arrive at 5 in the morning and I do have my mortal limits. So, I stayed with Kuya A and a friend of his in a room which had been prepared with Arctic-like conditions to suit me. Purely because I’m British. I was fine with it, my Filipino Kuya apparently went to sleep on the couch downstairs. People here have less of an idea about what cold is than the Australians do…

So night night. My mischievous evening is at an end and I’m ready for much travelling tomorrow.