December 22

December 22 turned out to be quite a day.

First, we had our outreach program. We coordinated with an NGO called Childhope Asia Philippines, they are an organization who sends out educators to different locations to teach children who are out on the streets, and they sent around 30 kids to join the program varying from age 7 to 10. We had a blast! My teammates and I really enjoyed partying with the kids who eagerly joined each game that Jollibee prepared (too bad, I forgot our host’s name, she’s really good by the way). But what made the event more fun was Jollibee himself! He was so funny, he really lived up to his name – Jolly Bee! The kids and the kids at heart enjoyed dancing and playing and of course picture-taking with him. The event was really enjoyable, though I also felt kind of sad because I felt for the kids. At such a young age, they are left to fend for themselves and I was told that some of them also experienced abuse of some sort. It’s just sad. But then again, I think it doubled the happiness for us because somehow and in some way we were able to make them feel like kids again even for just two hours. Here are some pictures, courtesy of my friend's blog.

After the Jollibee party, we proceeded to MOA-Seaside to have our team’s Christmas dinner. There we exchanged gifts (I got two books, yippee! And I gave a swarovski bracelet which made the receiver really happy, hehe.), gave out the awards (these are “kalokohan” awards), gave our farewell gift to an officemate who is resigning, and of course, ate a lot of food!!! Towards the end, while we were waiting for our service van to get there, I was able to say goodbye to that officemate that I referred to above and being the cry-babies that we are, we can’t help but shed a couple of tears. Of course, our teammates were teasing us and they even tried to get a picture of us crying but we kept our backs to them. We became a bit close first because we are seatmates and second because we are both handling NZ. She’s one of the nicest people I’ve met at work and people like that are not that easy to find in the workplace. I’m actually missing her already. But as she has said, we’ll still see each other again.

It was a tiring day but I’m not complaining, it was a good kind of tired. =)