Daily Report: Christmas Party

We went to a Christmas Party at Spooks tonight in CDO. Many of my friends from last Sunday's pool party were there, as well as many other familiar faces. I'm finally getting to feel that I have as large a circle of friends here in The Philippines as I had in Thailand, which is a nice feeling.

The girls got all dressed up. Epril and all her fashionista friends looked very fetching.

After a brief introduction from Ted Trenholme, a prayer from J'Neth Albar, and a rousing speech from Mike Farrell, we all dove headfirst into the delicious buffet that Spooks had put out for us, including beef stew, pork mushroom stew, chicken cordon bleu, fried chicken, fruit salad... an endless supply of yummyness, and I know I ate until I was stuffed, as I'm pretty sure everyone else did as well.

After that, we played some "adult" couples' versions of kids party games, including Musical Eggplants (based on Musical Chairs), where the wives, plus one single lady, walk around the men (always one less than the ladies) and have to grab a man's eggplant when the music stops. The lady without an eggplant plus her husband are eliminated from the game each step of the way. The girls all laughed and laughed as they scrambled for an eggplant to hold onto.

After that was a game where couples danced. While dancing, the husband held a candle, while the wife tried to blow everybody else's candles out. Epril and I decided that the combination of open flames, hot wax, and horseplay in close proximity to my money makers (my hands... I do type for a living) was enough reason to sit that particular game out. Everyone else enjoyed the game though... and nobody did catch on fire, so my fears were unfounded.

There were about 20 couples there, including several new people I had not met before. I met a nice fellow of dual citizenship from Poland and Canada named Roman, another fellow from Norway (I think) named Boia. As usual, lots of the regulars as well.

After that, I sat around and chatted with the guys (and even shot a little pool... god I'm out of practice; did you know I used to be quite a player 10 years ago?) while Epril and the girls danced and (as usual whenever a dozen young ladies with a dozen digital cameras are all dolled up) engaged in lots and lots of picture taking.



After the party was over, I went off to Kinse Amigos to talk to Attorney Palugna, and then Epril and I caught a taxi home. We've found a nice taxi driver named Chris who will drive us back to Jasaan whenever we want for 500 pisos ($11 for a 25 mile trip). We have his number that we'll be sure to use often.