philippines

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Learning how to love anyone

Country of the Month         Restaurant
Jan 2003 - Armenia            La Mediterranee, Berkeley
Feb 2003 - Poland              Old Krakow, San Francisco
Mar 2003 - Ireland             Kells, San Francisco
Apr 2003 - Jamaica            Jamaica Station, Oakland
May 2003 - El Salvador      Balompie, San Francisco
Jun 2003 - Nepal                Kathmandu, Albany
Aug 2003 - Turkey             Bosphorus, Berkeley
Oct 2003 - Cambodia         Angkor Wat, San Francisco
Dec 2003 - Philippines        Aroma Cafe, Concord
Jan 2004 - Saudi Arabia      Rihab's Bakery, Belmont

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Tell me about the food. In the Philippines there are 50 kinds of bananas. I have had only three kinds of bananas in my life, red bana-nas, little bananas, and regular bana-nas. The little bananas are the best. The adobo was great. And I picked the crunchy fish eye out of a not-very-meaty fish. The rice was good. And there were prawns with long, long antennas.

Mabuhay!

Tell me something about the Philippines. The word for hello in the Philippines is "mabuhay". Luzon is the main island. The other big island is Mindinao. There are 7,000 islands. On the island of Bohol there are hills called the Chocolate Hills. There are 1,776 hills, all the same shape. There is a volcano called Taal. It has has a volcano crater lake around it (Lake Taal) and another smaller one in the middle of it. Lots of the fancy shells you see in the shell stores are from the Philippines, like the Sowerby's Dwarf, and the Delphinula. It is very jungle-y there and wild hibiscus grows.

Tell me about Venancio Ferrar Lim. He is my great-grand father on my dad's side. He was married to Alegria Nepomuceno Lim. She was Miss Pangasinan in the 1920's. He went to engineering school at Purdue University in Indiana. He is in the wall of fame there. He became chief engineer of the national power company. My grandmother, Lola, wrote this about him: "My father was imprisoned by the Japanese in 1944 and spent nearly a year in the dreaded Fort Santiago prison. He was confined to a small room with 50 other prisoners, so small that no one could lie down, only sit back to back. They were given uncooked komote tubers to eat, and were supplied with one water bucket and one 'honey bucket' (restroom). My mother and a friend of hers who knew the wife of the Japanese general in command of Manila, pleaded and bartered for my father's release resulting in his coming home in early 1945. He weighed 80 lbs, was very sick and weak, and was bedridden for the remainder of the war. We nursed him back to health and he again became active in business and government. Sometime around 1947 or 1948 he was appointed to represent the Philippines in the War Reparations Commission and made frequent trips to negotiate the reparations. He forgave the Japanese for his imprisonment, torture, and near starvation, and on his first trip purchased this silverware set. It represented his forgiveness for their inhumane treatment of him. My parents used this large set when entertaining, and my father was particularly fond of the silverware so he used one of the settings daily. You may find several pieces showing more wear than the rest." A friend of Alegria and the Japanese general's wife were school mates at Mills College in Oakland. Once the Japanese left and Venancio was out of prison, they killed all of the other prisoners before they left.

Tell me about Ferdinand Magellan. Magellan was killed in the Philippines by Lapu-Lapu, a Philippine war chief, in 1521. The Magellan voyage was the first to go around the world. He sailed from Spain but he was Portuguese. He left with 260 people and five ships. He had a mutiny and he executed the captains of two of his ships. Another ship secretly went back to Spain. Eighteen people and one ship survived and made it back to Spain. The captain was Sebastian del Cano. Going all the way around the world is called circumnavigation. He named the Pacific Ocean and the Straits of Magellan and the Philippines after King Philip of Spain. He was the greatest explorer ever by ship. The spaceship to Venus was called the Magellan to Venus.

Venancio F. Lim
1905 - 1968

Tell me about jeepneeys. The first jeepneys were made out of U.S. war jeeps left behind by the U.S. Army. Jeepneys are like a taxi. After awhile people in the Philippines made stainless steel jeeps for transportation because sea water and bad weather corrodes other metals. Jeepneys are brightly colored with lights and paintings. The driver owns the jeepney and that person is the decorator. Lots of decorations are metal horses.

Tell me about Corazon Aquino. She was the first woman president of the Philippines. She always wore yellow because yellow is the color of hope. She is a Catholic Christian. She was Ninoy Aquino's wife. Ninoy was killed as soon as he came back from the U.S. by soldiers by Marcos the dictator. At that time they had martial law. She said, "It's very simple, I just tell my sad story and people weep." She won an election but Marcos and his army would not leave office. Marcos sent his army down the highway to put her and her supporters in prison. Hundreds of thousand of people came out on the road and prayed the rosary. That was called "People Power". And Marcos left the country because the people were more powerful than the army. She said "I tell them I don't have any formula for ousting a dictator or building democracy. All I can suggest is to forget about yourself and just think of your people. It is always the people who make things happen."

What do you like about the Philip-pines? I like that they have an 8ft eagle because it is so big. I like their transporta-tion which is jeepneys because they are so brightly colored. I like that the people are mostly Christian. I like how many kinds of fruits and vegetables they have. I like their huge horn-bills, bee-eaters, and kingfishers.
Tell me about parols. Their kind of Christ-mas lights are called parols. They are star-shaped lights with paper on the outside and pic-tures on the inside and the light shines through. They are saying that they want Jesus in their hearts. I made a parol for my Philippino grandmother, Lola. You can see a picture of it below.

Tell me about Gloria Arroyo. She is the president of the Philippines now. She said, "Join me as we begin to tear down the walls that divide. Let us build an edifice of peace, progress, and economic stability."
What do you think about the fact that the Philippines has had two women presidents? I like that they have had two women presidents. I like the idea of woman president of the United States of America.

Corazon Aquino
1933 -

President Gloria Arroyo
standing with President George Bush

America and the Philippines are very close friends. There are so many people from the Philippines who live here and have gone to school here, and many Americans, like us, have relatives in the Philippines.

Tell me about the birds in the Philippines. The birds of the Philippines are mostly very brightly colored. Their national bird is the Philippine eagle with an eight-foot wingspan. It is also called the monkey-eating eagle. There are lots of kinds of hornbills that live nowhere else. There are 172 kinds of birds only found in the Philippines. There are Philippine eagle owls, kingfishers, brahminy kite, bee-eaters, grey heron, purple heron, great egret, black- naped oriole, frogmouth, luzon bleeding heart pigeon, olive backed sunbird, scaly-breasted munia, tarictictoc hornbill, white-bellied sea eagle, asian fairy blue-bird, coppersmith barbet, red jungle fowl, and the whiskered tree-swift.

Country of the
Month
by
Noah Arthur

The Republic of
The Philippines

What do you pray to Jesus for about the Philippines. I pray for them that they would have an easier life, that they would not be poor like they are. I pray for the Muslims in their country that they would come to Christ. I thank God for the huge Philippine eagle. I thank God for my family in the Philippines. I thank God that most of the people are Christian.

Tell me about the people. The Philippines is the only predominently Christian country in Asia. They are mostly Catholic Christians. Mindinao is a partly Muslim island. The Spanish introduced Christianity to the Philippines. The Spanish were the rulers for 333 years. The Philippines had a rebellion to be their own country but the United States beat Spain and became the rulers in 1898. They controlled the Philippines for 46 years. The Japanese came and captured the Philippines from the United States. At the end of World War II, on July 4th, 1946, they were a free country, finally. My grandmother, Lola, is from Manila. My family back there owns a power company. Venancio F. Lim was my great-grandfather. He was the chief engineer of the National Power Company.

www.fretnotgospel.com/philippines.html