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Manila Zoo

On Christmas day we visited Manila zoo. It was a lovely visit, with a variety of animals! Enna-Marie particularly enjoyed seeing the elephant and the zebra, which she remembered from her book 'On Safari'. Also Enna-Marie's cousins ate Tabriz and ate Lofti enjoyed their first visit to a zoo. Below are some impressions of the day.

The elephant has his home near the entrance to the zoo.
Enna-Marie in front of the section with tropical birds.
Tita Tatutz and the three cousins.
Enna-Marie enjoying a short break from the animals on the slide.
Daddy and Enna-Marie posing in front of Giraffe and Elephant.
Mr. Owl also was present in the zoo!
Lolo Max and Enna-Marie during lunchbreak.
Uncle Maxwell showing off his courage by embracing a large SSSSSSSSnake!!
Mommy and Enna in front of the zebra and the horses.

Kiddie Rides

I enjoyed my first horse ride in the SM Fairview mall. Ate Lofty was flying in an airplane, and both she and ate Tabriz also got to enjoy the ferry-wheel that took them almost as high as the next floor in the mall! Because I'm still too young I could not join them there, unfortunately.

Enna-Marie's First Birthday!

Enna-Marie and mommy Menchie next to a birthday banner outside the house

Yesterday we celebrated Enna-Marie's first birthday! We started the day going to Goldilocks (the nationwide bakery) to get a birthday cake for her, and then friends started arriving at lunchtime. The family prepared a delicious lunch and everyone enjoyed themselves! "Highlight" of the day was the blowing out of her birthday candle! Here's a video of the big moment!



Afterwards we played some games which the children who attended (mostly Enna-Marie's cousins) greatly enjoyed! Altogether, this was a wonderful first birthday! Here are a few pictures to give an impression of the day!

Enna-Marie in her beautiful new birthday dress together with mommy
Playing with the balloons together with her cousin Ate Tabriz
Enna-Marie with her other cousin Ate Loftiness (in the middle) and second cousing "MJ". In the background are Bonito (Menchie's cousin and MJs granddad), Lolo Max and Lola Ping. Enna-Marie affectionately refers to Lofti as "Ate Ti".
Preparing for blowing out the birthday candle...

Cambodia and Angkor Wat

After a few days of silence, we're back online! We are now in Metro Manila staying with Menchie's sister and family, and are having a wonderfully relaxing time together. We'll share first about our trip to Cambodia and then post some updates on the Philippines.

We arrived in Cambodia on Friday evening and were picked up by Marisa and Mavic, Menchie's cousins that work there. For two nights, we stayed at the Somadevi Angkor hotel in Siem Reap, a four-star hotel that would easily pass for five-stars anywhere else in the world! Siem Reap is jam-packed with hotels, to accommodate all the tourists visiting the famous Angkor Wat ruins.

On Saturday, we were shown around by a local Bahá'í, Ban Chonhlaa, who makes a living as a tour guide. We started our day at Angkor Thom, which was established in the twelfth century as the capital city of the Khmer empire. Enna-Marie particularly enjoyed the live elephants that were gathered in front of the entrance there. Then we went on to the temple complex of Ta Prohm. Ta Prohm is a temple in the jungle, and the ruins have become intertwined with giant roots of trees. Ta Prohm was also the setting of the movie Tomb Raider!

In the afternoon we visited Angkor Wat, in the scorching heat! Angkor Wat is the temple built for King Suryavarman II in the early 12th century. apparently it is the largest religious structure around the world, and is the symbol of Cambodia.

In the late afternoon we enjoyed the refreshing water in the swimming pool as a reward for our efforts ;)

The second day we visited a floating village nearby Siem Reap. This floating village has a hospital, a store, a garage etc. and it was quite unbelievable for us to see how people can actually live like that. The floating village is situated on a river that ends in the Tonlé Sap lake, which connects to the Mekong river.

In the evening we transferred our residence from the hotel to the home of our friends Mario and Marpha. To wrap it all up, we had a wonderful dinner in a Chinese restaurant and walked around the centre of Siem Reap for a little while.

Highlights of our last day in Cambodia were the visit to the local market where we bought some nice silk fabrics, and a visit to a silk factory outside Siem Reap in the afternoon. At this silk factory we could see the whole process of making silk fabrics beginning with the silk worm and ending with the store that sells the finished products.

In the evening we enjoyed the Nineteen Day Feast with the local community, and the next day we left for Manila!

We safely arrived in Bangkok...

We are here now in Bangkok airport, the trip went well from Tel-Aviv. Our baby Enna-Marie managed the long trip, she slept well in a cot and from time to time in mommy's arms. Now she is fully awake hopefully she will sleep longer later and us too that we can rest in the hotel. We are waiting for three hours here then we are off to Siem Reap where we will stay for 4 nights.

We are on vacation...

Dear family and friends,

Thank you so much for constantly viewing our blog, we appreciate it and glad that you are enjoying reading our postings. We will be away for six weeks first we will go to Cambodia in Siem Reap to visit Menchie's cousins, then to the Philippines where we are going to meet all family members, some relatives and friends. In view of this, we don't know if we can update our blog often, but we will try when opportunity permits it.

Loving greetings to all,
Schoot family

Bye-bye to some friends...

Our dear friends Samarih Monajjem and Quddus Nasseri are leaving the World Centre this month. We met Quddus through another dear friend George Costant who also served here. Then Quddus got married this year to Samarih and then Samarih became our friend too. It is amazing how the chain of meeting friends works. These two souls are such wonderful people, always happy and radiant, perfect for each other. We attended recently a devotional farewell gathering in their honor, please see pictures below.

Samarih and Enna-Marie

Enna-Marie playing & enjoying so much Auntie Samarih's company

group photo taken after the devotional gathering












Another dear friend who's leaving the World Centre is Hank Wich from the United States. His wife Ginger has left earlier as she got her new job as a director of a Montessori school. You will recall that we posted something about our marriage group/classes before. Ginger and Hank were the facilitators of our classes, we were among the first friends here to be part of their marriage deepening classes, and it continued and grew to more groups until they finished their services. This couple is remarkable, talented, full of love, trust and generosity and so much committed in telling friends that marriage is indeed a 'fortress and salvation for well being'.

Beautiful Children...Part One

In the coming weeks, I will be posting pictures of the children of my Filipina friends who are married to non-Filipino husbands. The mixture is so beautiful that is why I'd like to share with you...

First is Allison Delgado, she is called Ally (her name 'Ally' came from the tv program 'Ally Mcbeal'). She recently turned 3 years old and speaks both English and Tagalog. She likes Filipino food, Mac and Cheese, and spaghetti, also eats lots of vegetables. Her favourite books are Curious George’s adventures, Corduroy and some short stories about animals. She plays with lego blocks, doll houses and a pretend food and dishes play set, trains, and puzzle boards. She can sing the Tagalog songs 'Inday ng Buhay ko and Bahay Kubo'. At a young age, she is currently taking art, gymnastic and swimming classes.

Her parents are Helen Eugenio Delgado and Brian Delgado. Helen is from the northern part of the Philippines, has 6 siblings, her 4 brothers came and served at the World Centre. Her family is close to the Balundo family. Brian on the other hand is from the United States who has a Mexican-Spanish background, has one sister and his parents are also from the States. Helen and Brian met and served at the World Centre and got married in the States, they are now married for 10 years...wow! This family was recently here in the Holy Land for pilgrimage, we had the bounty seeing them in several occasions.

Here are some baby pictures of Ally:



















Helen and Ally:





















Family picture:



















Ally with Enna-Marie playing at home:

















Ally acting as a turtle, the pillow is the shell of the turtle.













Picture taken at home when they came to visit us

Zane's First Birthday...

My friend Zane turned one year old this week. Me, Shiori and Lillian enjoyed his party so much. First we had the Mother Goose class where we had some nursery rhymes songs. There is a video that my mommy took while Auntie Amelia was doing the songs with the birds and monkeys. Then next we sang the happy birthday song for Zane and afterwards we had some group pictures taken, then our mommies started eating the delicious cake Auntie Vida made. Grandmas Izzat and Pari were also present in this occasion.

Enna-Marie's smiles, poses and profile ...

These are Enna-Marie's smiles these days when she sees you taking her pictures. Thank you to Auntie Ailsa for the nice coverall she gave Enna-Marie when she visited Haifa early this year.













The next set of pictures was taken when Enna-Marie was looking outside, waiting patiently for the birds to pass by. Daddy Maarten and Oma Ineke love these profiles of Enna-Marie.

Little Climber

Enna-Marie has discovered how to climb the stairs... So far, she can only climb up, but she's getting quite good at it and is very FAST!