Mabuhay, the Philippines
Thursday, February 26th, 2015 Have you ever been to the Philippines? Today we went to the Philippines with Liezel. When we arrived at school she said: ‘Mabuhay’ and we all greeted our friends and teachers in the same way, whenever they came into the classroom.
She showed us a Jeepney which is a taxi that is extremely colourful and bright. 
Each Jeepney has its own unique look and often has special decorations both inside and outside. The one that we have at school is made from clay and is brown in colour. We also looked at a model of a man selling ice cream and another one of a man riding a buffalo, taking 
vegetables from the farm to the market, so that he can sell them. We looked at some handmade baskets which are made out of leaves from the fan palm tree called “Buli” in the Philippines. The leaves are dried and then used to weave the baskets. This reminds us of our weaving that we did on the wire rack which still hangs in our classroom. The “Buli” is the largest fan palm tree in the world.
We did cooking in our class again today and this time, we made something that is typical to the Philippines. It is called “turon”. It is like a spring roll with a banana inside. The difference with the banana is that it is a cooking banana, you don’t usually eat it like a regular banana. It is called “saba” and looks different from the bananas that we know and eat. Liezel peeled it for us and passed it around so that we could smell it. She showed us how to cut it length 
ways and roll it inside a sheet of dough.
After we rolled our “saba” we put them in a pan with a little bit of oil in it and watched it change from creamy white to golden. We ate them after we had eaten our own snack and they were sooooo delicious. We wanted more so our teachers cut the leftovers in half so that could satisfy our appetites. When we wanted to say please we said “ pakisuyo” and 
when we said thank you, we said “salamat poh”. Just before we had snack time, Liezel said “itaas ang kamay” which means ‘hands up’. We learnt some “Tagalog” which is one of the languages that people speak in the Philippines. They also speak Spanish and English. We counted to ten; isa, dalawa, tatlo, apat, lima, anim, pitoh, waloh, siyam, sampo. It was funny to hear that ten is sampo because in Japanese sampo means to go for a walk.
We also learnt a game called “Sung ka” which is played on a long board with 
indentations on it. You use counters which are shells and put them in the spaces. It is more of an adult game however we played it as well. We counted seven shells and placed them in our space. Liezel then showed Hisami how to play the game properly.
Today it was raining so we stayed inside and moved our bodies to the Wiggles CD and we did a fun exercise which is for our pelvis. We had to walk on our bottoms all the way to the red cushion and then we had to reverse and go backwards back to our places. Our teachers did it too. Hisami 
incorporated name recognition in this game. She held up our names on our flashcards and then we knew that it was our turn. We laughed a lot and you can see from the photos that some of us had to concentrate so hard on moving our bodies without putting our hands on the floor. This is a great exercise for adults too as it strengthens the core muscles which are the muscles that are the hardest to maintain when we get older. We learnt the “frog” which is another exercise that is good for the pelvis. It is not such a comfortable position.
Mika, Manuel and Michaela did their dot paintings on either a koala or a kangaroo. Tomorrow William B and Vincent can complete theirs.
Thanks Liezel for a fabulous trip to the Philippines on this cold and rainy day. We wish we really could have been there as it would have been much warmer than Tokyo today.
Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel